China rising, nervously
It
doesn't take long for the new rising China to make a strong impression,
about seven minutes in fact. That's the time it takes the Maglev speed
train to barrel down the countryside from Pudong's international airport
to the newest part of the country's bustling metropolis of Shanghai,
separated by some 40km. And in this city of contrasts home to 16
million, sometimes it seems everything is racing at 430 km per hour. The
bullet train than beats Japan Rail's Narita express hands down (1 hour
service to the airport 65km out of Tokyo) is out to serve notice that in
this day an age China is out to compete with the best of Asia and
beyond.
The
economy seems unstoppable after yet another quarter of growth close to
the double-digits, overshadowing Japan's own string of growth successes
in the last quarters, and needs to stay that way, to feed the hunger for
jobs of over a billion citizens all eager to take part in the giant's
economic miracle, a term usually reserved for its insular neighbor.
But
when the Maglev banks in one of its steep turns, one could feel the
impulse of throwing one's hands in the air, as in a roller-caster. The
comparison is fitting. While the economy keeps roaring, its effects are
causing their ups and downs in society in general. Farmers protesting
lands seized and unfairly compensated to make way for large-scale
developments, such as was the case in Guangzhou last week, and miners
dying in the country's desperate and often unsafe search for coal to
power the mighty turbines, as was reminded last week during the
sentencing of mining directors in Tongchuan city for one 2004 accident
which killed 166 miners, are just some examples of the often heavy price
paid for rapid development. The same day 11 more miners died in
north-west China.
Elsewhere
complaints from citizens protesting a worsening environment or
evictions in old neighborhoods to give way to yet another gleaming
skyscraper, are rising tensions in a country where the iron rice bowl
has been held with an iron first despite the liberties of the new
economy. Trying to keep a lid on excesses, the government has shown a
growing concern for issues such as the environment and worker rights
instituting a party policy of "socialist harmonious society" while
attempting to crack down on corruption by targeting greedy party leaders
in Beijing and Shanghai.
But
some only see in the crackdown President Hu Jintao's attempt to remove
officials of the old guard he never considered loyal anyways, while many
Chinese fail to discern much "harmony", the need for policy in itself a
reminder of the current "disharmony". And some of it is surprisingly
seeping to the surface.
During
a recent 10-day exhibition on "human rights", petitioners and
protesters made it a habit of dropping by the exhibit in Beijing to
voice their complaints on a variety of issues from corruption to
unfairly compensated seizures, calling security guards' attempts to stop
them an affront to the entire exhibit. Visibly embarrassed by the
presence of curious journalists on location, officials would stop short
of evicting the unheralded visitors, pleading for understanding. In
itself the exhibit was an important step for a country which still
resists the need to free its stranglehold on society as it has on the
economy.
The
arrest of a Hong Kong reporter accused of spying was just the latest
sign Beijing is not ready to let its citizens enjoy the freedom of
flowing capital. And even that has its limits. Last week's revelations
that senior Chinese officials interfered in the sale of Hong Kong
telecommunications group PCCW, in a special administrative region which
should in effect remain independent for another four decades, was a sign
both of Hong Kong's submission to the mainland and an indication that
Beijing intends to be very much hands-on even when it comes to business,
a reminder often made when state-owned Chinese companies take over
firms in the West.
If
the exhibit and even Hong Kong are for show, like the numerous
Christmas decorations in a country officially atheist, then there are to
be many more pretend acts of open-ness as China gears up for its coming
of age parties in 2008, during the Beijing games, and two years later
when Shanghai holds the world expo. Already the government has lessened
strict rules on journalists in preparation for the games, while mock
protests were even tolerated during a recent IOC inspection where
Olympic officials reminded the future hosts that the spirit of the games
had to strive beyond the tracks and the fields.
North
of Beijing where the installations are going up in record pace, the
same sea of cranes that dominates the Shanghai skyline; especially in
the new city of Pudong built over old pastures and marshes. The changes
in the last half a dozen years have been breath-taking says lifelong
Shanghai resident Lewis, a Fudan university sociology student whose
wealthy parents gave a Western-sounding name so he could strive and make
a fortune abroad. "Development has brought some good and some bad, it's
a balance," he explains. "There has been much development, but then
there have been problems with the environment."
Howard,
a student in his program but from a very different background, points
first to "corruption" when describing the country's ills. A bright
student from the poor country-side, he was able to attend the country's
more liberal university with strong grades, which he hopes will enable
him to become a civil servant and perhaps change the system from the
inside. That's quite a hopeful thought process for someone who's father
suffered under the current regime, and was reminded that in today's
China, a variation of the old "it's who you know and not what you know"
still rules.
What
is also hopeful is that both share the same class despite their
different backgrounds, and that Fudan, which like all colleges is
government-run, allows for a healthy level of debate on anything from
government corruption to current policies, granted "without inviting the
subversive". Frequent visitors have seen noticeable changes in the
country, such as tourists who no longer have to be tailed by
government-minders. To be sure in Fudan's halls, criticism of Mao and
other regimes has become a national sport, and copies of the little red
book and Mao pins are more likely to be found on stalls of the city's
open-air "antiques market" than homes. After all, all these pins and
books for sale, cheaply, were once actually owned by people.
Locals
also note the rise of religious rights, in a country where they are
often seen as competition to the almighty party. Slowly freeing
religious rights once banned under Mao has changed people's behavior
Lewis claims. "It has made them more polite, now that they can express
themselves." And in reopened Taoist, Buddhist and other shrines across
Shanghai, the result is attendance that fills the air with incense and
the tills with loose change.
But
corruption seems to be on the minds of many we were surprisingly
reminded, during a street show of young girls who bent their little
bodies beyond the humanely possible for pennies, and would be quite
suitable for Beijing's circus of the spine-deprived. "You see what we
have been reduced to?" one man dressed in a suit approached us saying.
"These are the poorest of the poor, look what they have to do to
survive! Here the rich and corrupt grow stronger and the poorest suffer
more and more!" The outburst, never before heard by our Chinese-Canadian
companion, was yet one more sign of discontent bubbling to the surface
on the pond of government-sanctioned "harmony". "Harmony! That's a
joke," she tells us. Just like human rights exhibits and the country's
apparent embrace of capitalism.
As
with everything new to China, the realities are adapted to local
tastes, at least those considered to be local tastes by the hierarchy,
like the hot green bean pie offered at local McDonald's. The reason many
cite, is the size of the nation's population, some 1.4 billion, but at
that level really who is counting. Because of the numbers, different
rules have to be obeyed, some officials argue, to keep the peace. An
interesting observation considering that the day may come when China's
population comes second to that of the continent's other giant, India,
whose rising economy may not be as glittering, but where democratic
values are quite in another league.
Population
is important in China, it is the reason why it's so valued as a market
by investors anxious to get in at any price, often by bending their own
rules. Wal-Mart recently accepted that all its branches there could
house unions, something viciously combated in Canada where it is
considered anathema by the managers.
Google
and other internet companies have also accepted to modify their
products in order to obtain the seal of approval of a government anxious
to keep its citizens' eyes away from "unsuitable" material. Which
apparently includes the Northern Press web site, as inaccessible there
as the BBC's. Not an ugly pedestal to be sharing. Occasionally even
executives have a pang of consciousness, such as Microsoft exec Fred
Tipson who said concerns over the repressive regime might force the
company to "look again at our presence here."
Demographics
also have everything to do with explaining why the country is where it
is today under current policies, notes scholar Dr Pang, recently invited
to Fudan to lecture foreign students. He points to the dramatic shift
of birth and mortality rates in the late 50s as "the most significant
period in modern Chinese history" which he says defined how the country
would adopt a one-child policy and handle other domestic affairs.
Demographics,
he says, may also herald the crises of tomorrow, such as the imbalance
between men and women, the result of the policy. "I am looking at this
with quite a degree of pessimism," he says. And what can't be good for
over a billion Chinese may not be for the rest of us. Other projections
point to a drop of the population, the result of growing urbanization,
in a country still mostly rural, and its incidence on fertility, now
below the reproductive level of 2.1. "If India becomes the most populous
country, that's good news for us," says Lewis, repeating a popular
opinion. But then it wouldn't be the world's largest market, and its old
arguments of population control would survive serious scrutiny even
less.
The
notion that its large population is a problem, as large populations
over-all were in Europe in the 1960s when theorists supported the notion
of zero-growth, is largely based on the fears related to the country's
growing inequalities. The gap is as visibly stunning as the climbing
steel forest of the new area of Pudong.
While
entire neighborhoods can be flattened to make way for the new city,
there is no escaping the reality that a meal in the exclusive "new
world" part of town, ironically placed near the site of the first ever
Communist party national congress meeting, can be had for 5% of the
national wage of 16,000 yuan (about $2300). Joining us for supper at the
grill famous for filet mignon served on a hot plate, Howard was
flabbergasted to his country-raised core. And on a scholarship which
allows him to attend Fudan, he is among the wealthier Chinese citizens.
The
state may even have to worry about his potential state of
disgruntlement. Last week Tibet became the last province to remove job
guarantees for graduates, and there is evidence that after years in
which graduates were ensured good jobs, the number of degree-holders is
outstripping the number of jobs. And nothing screams out protest like a
jobless well-educated college graduate no matter where you live. Again
the good of sustained growth, the rising number of well-educated
citizens, must be balanced with the rest.
"The
fruit of China's strong economic growth have been very unevenly
distributed," Kim Eng Tan of Standard & Poors tells the Independent
in a recent interview. In it, the paper points out that the country home
to a quarter of the world's population only represents 4 percent of
world household consumption, and that may leave its middle class no
larger than Canada's level of population. All the rest can only stare in
awe, sometimes fuming.
Behind
the gleaming new towers, rapid growth and loud construction sites,
there is a growing fear that "disharmony" will stretch the current
system beyond the breaking point. Perhaps that's when the
magnetic-powered Maglev comes off the rails. And at that speed, the
consequences could be quite earth-shaking. Then again maybe there is
some hope for a degree of equality down the road. The government is
considering higher taxes on luxury goods to redistribute through social
programs. and this year paper-recycling tycoon Zhang Yin became the
first woman to top the list of China's richest people. A minority among
the minority maybe, but some could still call it a little leap forward
on its own.
Still a great game
Relics
of the cold war era? It's hard for people, least of all Canadians, to
imagine spies are still at work in their midst. After all it had been a
good ten years since two of them had been arrested in Toronto. Friends
and co-workers were stunned to learn at the time that Dmitriy Olshevsky
and Yelena Olshevskaya, who went by the bogus names Ian and Laurie
Lambert, were actually "sleeper" agents for the Russian Foreign
Intelligence Service when they were arrested and promptly removed from
Canada in 1996.
A
decade later the spy capers came in pairs as Canadian intelligence
arrested a man on espionage charges, supposedly an elite Russian spy who
had been collecting intelligence on Canada for more than a decade,
while deporting a Chinese embassy official also suspected of playing the
great game. Wang Pengfei, a second secretary at the Chinese Embassy in
Ottawa, was sent packing for spying on Falun Gong practitioners while
posted in the nation's capital.
China
and Russia, the two Eastern powers, are certainly very active in this
country, agree intelligence experts, who note that Canada is an
extremely interesting target due to its wealthy resource-rich power
status, and proximity to the U.S. with which it shares delicate
technology. "Although espionage is often thought of as a relic of the
Cold war, in reality it has continued, and in many ways has intensified,
over the past 15 years," reads a CSIS study dated July of this year
obtained through access to information. "Canada is facing an increasing
threat from economic espionage, which has had serious ramifications for
Canada, including lost jobs, corporate and tax revenues, and a
diminished competitive advantage."
The
Russian bust certainly promoted Canada's counter-intelligence
abilities, according to experts, at a time the conservative government
is bullish on security and is pondering a foreign role for the Canadian
Security Intelligence Service. CSIS lined up interestingly detailed
charges against the suspected spy, identified as Paul William Hampel,
who was taken into custody by the Canada Border Services agency on Nov.
14 at Montreal Trudeau airport.
Documents
filed in Federal Court said CSIS believed Hampel is a member of
Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service, or SVR, a successor to the KGB,
and used a fraudulent birth certificate to obtain at least three
Canadian passports. CSIS recommended that he immediately be deported.
Ironically he was on his way out of the country when he was arrested,
carrying a fraudulent Ontario birth certificate in a travel pouch under
his shirt, $7,800 in five currencies, three cell phones, two digital
cameras and a short wave radio. In short the full kit of the modern
James Bond.
"Hampel's
establishment of a legend based on Canadian documentation has provided
him with the ability to covertly further the interests of the SVR for
over a decade both within Canada and abroad," the federal summary reads,
accusing him of being "an elite intelligence officer." For awhile last
month it seemed hard to turn a corner without running into spy capers.
Across
the Atlantic, Russia, whose officials refused to comment on Hampel's
arrest, was busy denying any involvement in the poisoning of a former
KGB agent who came in from the cold and died in a hospital bed in
London, where British officials were giving the investigation top
priority. Counter-terrorism police were called in to lead the probe into
the incident which afflicted Alexander Litvinenko.
Friends
were accusing the Kremlin of ordering the assassination of the man, who
has become a fierce critic, by administering an odourless, colourless
poison though his food. Initial reports were that thallium, a
cancer-causing metal and deadly poison banned in Britain since the 1970s
and historically used in assassinations because it dissolves easily and
can't be detected by the person ingesting it, had been responsible for
his death. Photos of the former spy showed him looking gaunt and
hairless, hooked up to a bank of medical equipment.
Doctors
later determined another radioactive material was responsible, traces
of which were later found on planes and acquaintances of the former
Soviet spook. As long as there are secrets there will be spies,
observers say, and governments willing to silence turncoats.
Hampel's
case goes to show that spies have been blending into society well
before terrorists started doing the same, notably in preparation for
Sept. 11. Still being able to do so for over a decade shows great
abilities according to Martin Rudner of Carleton's Norman Paterson
School of International Affairs "To survive ten years in a society, and
to build up from a legend into in effect a persona, that is excellent
tradecraft." It also shows a government's means and determination to see
operations through in a prized market such as Canada, home to
technology secrets that vary from the military and communications to the
nuclear industry.
"Canada
harbours a vast wealth of natural resources and human talent which
continues to generate major technological advances," reads the CSIS
study. "As such, Canada remains an appealing target for foreign powers
whose goal is to steal secrets in order to advance their own interests."
As an indication old habits die hard, SVR's capabilities abroad are the
subject of praise domestically, CSIS notes in documents filed to the
court obtained by the NPU.
"To
Russian audiences, the SVR makes no secret of its continued high-level
espionage and frequently boasts of its theft of Western financial and
industrial secrets to aid the failing Russian economy", it reads. "To
international audiences, however, the SVR prefers to speak of
cooperation with the United States, Canada and other countries in the
common fight against terrorism, organized crime and nuclear
trafficking."
Canada
can at least boast it caught one of Russia's finest. SVR "illegals"
such as Hampel are "regarded as having considerable status by the SVR
leadership and are deployed in particularly sensitive operations." The
ambassador to Canada denied Hampel was a Russian agent, but he later
confessed he was at least Russian, known under another name, and would
gladly go back to Russia. As far as the government knows, he was never
in a position to steal any secrets. Which would have been a fabulous
waste of a decade.
Le cèdre en pleurs
Tant
de larmes dans un si petit pays; dans la région, c'est une pénible
règle qui unit Arabes comme Juifs. L'assassinat du ministre chrétien de
l'industrie Pierre Gemayel perpétue une tragédie grecque, ou digne des
Kennedys, emportant, à 34 ans, le quatrième membre de la famille; une
pénible série qui remonte à attentat à la voiture piégée qui a emporté
la vie de Béchir, tué en 1982 un mois après avoir été élu président,
suivi par l'assassinat de deux grands de la presse anti-syrienne.
Pourtant
le pays ne s'est même pas remis de la perte de Rafic Hariri, sujet
discussion au sein du Conseil de sécurité de l'ONU, qui le jour du
dernier coup de tonnerre approuvait le projet de création d'un tribunal
international pour juger les assassins présumés du premier ministre.
Celui
de l'heure était encore sous le choc, mais n'a pas manqué d'éloquence,
alors que les Libanais descendaient dans les rues de la capitale pour
pleurer leur dernier martyr. Faisant appel à l'unité, Fouad Siniora a
soutenu que le Liban ne serait pas intimidé et appuierait davantage le
lancement du tribunal.
Pourtant
les divisions n'ont ajamais été aussi vives, les obsèques du défunt et
contre-manifestations du hezbollah tournant le drame en affaire
politique.
Aussitôt
établie, la commission d'enquête de l'ONU sur l'assassinat de Rafic
Hariri avait le double rôle de fournir une aide technique dans l'enquête
sur le meurtre de Gemayel, répondant à une demande spéciale et urgente
de Sinora.
Se
sentant immédiatement dans la mire des regards perçants internationaux,
la Syrie, qui avait fait face à la fougue internationale et avait
retranché ses troupes après le meurtre d'Hariri, et qui tout récemment
était accusée, avec l'Iran, de soutenir le hezbollah dans ses attaques à
la rockette contre Israél, a immédiatement crié son innocence. Elle
qui, avec l'Iran, avait cherché à poser un geste conciliateur dans la
région en rétablissant les pourparlers avec Bagdad.
La
crise risquait davantage de déchirer un Liban très divisé
politiquement, après la démission d'une demi-douzaine de ministres
pro-syriens et chiites du Hezbollah et du mouvement Amal du
gouvernement, dans un pays ou les partis se définissent encore selon
leurs relations avec Damas, malgré le retrait des troupes.
L'influence
syrienne était d'ailleurs redoutée dans cette manoeuvre politique,
alors que le puissant Hezbollah réclamait avec ses alliés chrétiens et
prosyriens la formation d'un gouvernement d'union nationale dans lequel
l'opposition aurait une minorité de blocage. Cette démission s'est faite
à la veille d'un conseil des ministres extraordinaire destiné à
examiner la dernière version du projet de création d'un tribunal
international.
Avant
même quelque procès, la Syrie est une fois de plus montrée du doigt
puisqu'il s'agit bien du sixième assassinat d'une personnalité
antisyrienne depuis la mort de Hariri. Faisant appel au calme, le père
de Pierre, Amine Gemayel, précise n'avoir «pas encore de preuves ou de
présomption» mais estime quand même que «tout prête à croire que c'est
le comportement habituel de la Syrie».
Il
n'en fallait pas plus pour mettre au placard tout éventuel
rapprochement de Washington et Londres avec Damas, le président Bush
réaffirmant son «engagement inébranlable» à soutenir la démocratie et à
s'opposer aux ingérences syriennes et iraniennes. Pour l'heure les
obsèques de Gemayel sont aussi celles des tentative de normalisation des
relations entre Damas et l'occident.
Contestation au Congo
Un
président à présent démocratiquement élu, le premier procès du tribunal
international permanent du Congo, un air de normalité s'installe au
coeur de l'Afrique, et
les
signes précurseurs n'ont rien d'encourageant. Le rejet des résultats du
second tour de la présidentielle, qui confirmait l'élection de Joseph
Kabila, jusqu'à récemment président par héritage, par son opposant
Jean-Pierre Bemba, n'a en rien calmé les tensions au Congo, ou l'on
s'est dépeché de mettre dans les rues de nombreux soldats de la mission
des Nations unies
(Monuc) et de l'Eufor.
Car
l'ex-Zaire, qui a connu les guerres et les déchirements des armées
étrangères sur son territoire, ne semble pas moins déchiré que durant
les crises qui ont porté au pouvoir le père du
président-élu,
que l'assassinat a porté au pouvoir après le 16 janvier 2001. "Je ne
peux pas accepter ces résultats qui sont loin de refléter la vérité des
urnes. Je prends l'engagement d'user de toutes les voies légales pour
faire respecter la volonté de notre peuple", déclarait Bemba.
Comble du paradoxe, le vainqueur du scrutin s'avère en fait hautement impopulaire dans sa
propre
capitale, avec moins du tiers des suffrages, et dans l'Ouest, sans
parler de l'Equateur, fief de son rival, ou il a recueilli a peine 3%
des suffrages. C'est l'Est cependant, de loin la région la plus troublée
de ce pays de (parfois) toutes les misères, qui a sauvé le jeune prince
de 35 ans, portant sa part des suffrages généraux à 58%, avec une
différence de plus de 2,6 millions de voix.
La
crainte que les violences ne replongent le pays dans la guerre, comme
la plus récente qui à son terme avait directement ou indirectement
(maladies, malnutrition) entraîné la mort de près de 4 millions de
personnes, est palpable depuis les troubles de fin août, lorsque la
proclamation des résultats du premier tour avait entraîné trois jours de
violence entre les partisans de Kabila, arrivé en tête, et Bemba. Ces
violences ne seraient à elles seules pas si dangereuses si les deux
camps ne disposaient pas de milliers d'hommes en armés, et d'un profond
manque de respect pour le rival.
Le
secrétaire général de l'ONU, Kofi Annan lui-même faisait appel au calme
après la publication des résultats, demandant "à tous les dirigeants
politiques et au peuple congolais d'accepter les résultats dans le calme
et de façon responsable, et de s'abstenir de tout recours à la violence
et d'éviter de faire des déclarations qui pourraient menacer la
conclusion des élections nationales
dans des conditions pacifiques".
Le debut du premier procès du seul tribunal pénal international permanent pendant ce
temps
ne manquait pas de rappeler les pires crimes des milices congolaises
dans le passé. En effet pendant ce temps une Française, Christine
Peduto, était le premier témoin à comparaître au procès de Thomas
Lubanga, le chef de l'Union des patriotes congolais (UPC), accusé
d'engager des enfants de guerre: "La résidence était gardée par des
enfants en armes et en uniforme", a-t-elle raconté, "ces enfants
portaient des kalachnikovs".
L'enrôlement des enfants comme garde du corps "était une pratique systématique" selon elle: "Je
les ai vu, dans les différents bureaux et dans les résidences de l'UPC. (...) Ils ne quittaient pas les
commandants,
protégeaient leurs résidences, on les voyait à l'arrière des pick-up
armés de kalachnikovs et de fusils mitrailleurs, parfois même avec des
bazookas", a-t-elle raconté. "Les enfants ont tous raconté des
conditions de formation assez difficiles. Les conditions de vie étaient
assez mauvaises, les enfants se plaignaient de la qualité de la
nourriture, certains racontaient dormir dans des tranchées, les enfants
se levaient souvent avant l'aube (....) Certains disaient
qu'ils devaient aller dans les villages environnants pour chercher de la nourriture," selon elle.
"Les
enfants étaient menacés de représailles s'ils tentaient de s'échapper.
(...) Les enfants étaient menacés de mort, menacés d'exécution. Et les
familles qui s'opposaient au
recrutement
d'enfants étaient elles aussi menacées," ajoute-t-elle, tandis que
l'accuse decrivait les enfants a titre d'orphelins venus demander une
protection dans les rangs de l'UPC. Dans certains cas les enfants
formaient jusqu'à 40% de certains groupes armés, selon des ONG
et
étaient souvent utilisés comme esclaves sexuels par les soldats
adultes. Les milices de Lubanga sont par ailleurs tenues responsables de
viol à grande échelle et les meurtres sommaires.
Les mauvais garçons
Quand
le Canada a-t-il commencé à faire partie des mauvais garçons de
l'environnement? Un an après avoir été l'hôte d'une conférence
internationale sur les changements climatiques le Canada a radicalement
changé de politique, présentant une délégation divisée à Nairobi, site
de la conférence de cette année, tandis que le Premier ministre décidait
d'éviter une conférence canado-européenne par crainte de faire face à
la musique environnementale.
Il
faut dire que depuis l'élection des conservateurs, qui n'ont jamais
caché leur scepticisme en matière de réchauffement climatique, la
politique environne- mentale du gouvernement a fait l'objet d'une
révision considérable, similaire à celle que Harper entend faire subir
au protocole de Kyoto à Nairobi, notamment dans la catégorie des cibles
de réduction d'émissions de gaz à effet de serre.
Alors
qu'il y a un an Paul Martin reprochait aux Etats-Unis de ridiculiser
ces dernières, Ottawa les considère à présent irréalistes, une remise en
cause qui va dorénavant à l'encontre de la majorité des pays de la
conférence qui souhaitent faire avancer les choses dans les plus brefs
délais.
La
conférence suit la publication de trois rapport environnementaux, dont
un canadien, qui mettaient en garde à propos de l'imminence et l'étendue
des changements climatiques. Récemment le Stern Review, publié à
Londres, avertissait que les changements climatiques pourraient avoir un
effet aussi dévastateur sur l'économie mondiale que la grande
dépression des années 30, en conservant les habitudes actuelles.
Changer
ces habitudes pourrait pourtant améliorer notre sort, soutient l'auteur
du rapport: "Il est encore temps d'éviter les pires impacts des
changements climatiques, si nous agissons maintenant et de concert. Mais
la tâche est urgente. Attendre avant d'agir, même une décennie ou deux,
nous poussera en terrain dangereux."
Un
second rapport faisait écho de tels scénarios tandis qu'un troisième,
plutôt inattendu car issu du département de la défense canadien,
résumait les implications internes alarmantes du réchauffement
climatique, soit de faire du passage du Nord-ouest une voie navigable à
l'année longue dans moins de dix ans.
Cette
semaine encore l'ambassadeur des Etats-Unis au Canada rejetait la
souveraineté canadienne des ces eaux plutôt convoitées: «Notre position
est que le passage du Nord-Ouest doit être sous juridiction
internationale», soulignait-il. Les problèmes de juridiction sont au
coeur du rapport de la défense. «Même si le Canada revendique la
souveraineté du passage du Nord-Ouest, les Etats-Unis le considèrent
comme une route maritime internationale et soutiennent que les navires
étrangers ont un droit de passage. Si le rythme actuel de fonte des
glaces continue, le passage du Nord-Ouest pourrait être ouvert à une
navigation plus régulière en 2015», écrivent les spécialistes militaires
à l'intention du ministre de la défense.
Curieusement
il s'agit de l'année choisie par le gouvernement Harper pour commencer
l'implantation des mesures obligatoires de réduction des gaz à effet de
serre (GES), choisissant de fixer des objectifs plus sévères à
long-terme au lieu de se vouer à ceux qui ont été fixés par Kyoto à
court-terme, soit une réduction des effets de serre de 5% d'ici 2012.
Difficile
d'ignorer, évidemment, que la fiche du Canada va plutôt dans le sens
contraire depuis 1990. Les plus récentes données scientifiques indiquent
qu'un réchauffement moyen du globe de plus de 2 degrés celcius mènerait
à des changements climatiques dangereux et irréversibles. Certains
scénarios voient cette augmentation se chiffrer à 5 degrés.
Pendant
que le Canada fait figure d'enfant terrible côté environnement, à
l'interne, Québec et Ottawa sont à couteaux tirés sur la question des
changements climatiques, une division qui risque de paraitre au grand
jour à Nairobi. Le gouvernement québécois maintient qu'il atteindra les
cibles qu'il s'est fixées en vertu du Protocole de Kyoto et réclame du
fédéral une somme de 328 millions $ pour financer les initiatives de son
plan vert. Il s'agira d'une première occasion de tester la promesse du
fédéral de laisser le Québec parler de sa propre voix dans les grands
forums internationaux puisque la province a l'intention d'afficher sa
position si elle n'est pas reflétée par celle d'Ottawa.
Pour
rendre notre position encore plus complexe, une certaine confusion
semble régner au sein du gouvernement, dont la ministre de
l'environnement, Rona Ambrose, se montrait ouverte à la mise en place
d'un marché du climat visant à échanger des crédits de gaz à effet de
serre, une suggestion qu'elle avait pourtant rejeté dans le passé et qui
contredit d'autres membres du gouvernement.
Tandis
que le Canada se range tranquillement dans le camp des parias de la
conférence de Nairobi, presqu'à même titre que les Etats-Unis et
l'Australie, qui ne souscrivent pas à Kyoto, la foi en Kyoto n'est
cependant pas à son plus fort étant donné le non-respect des cibles par
plusieurs signataires et le fait que plusieurs émetteurs importants de
GES, notamment la Chine, qui en 2009 devrait dépasser les Etats-Unis au
titre de pollueur champion, et l'Inde, ne sont pas contraints par ses
engagements.
Autre
fait troublant pour les partisans de Kyoto, la croissance des émissions
des Etats-Unis entre 2000 et 2004 aurait été moins importante que celle
de plusieurs pays européens qui ont signé l'accord.
Democrats sweep Congress in US mid-term vote
A
system of government based on the principle of checks and balances was
going to see plenty of both after the Democrats wrested control of the
House of Representatives and the Senate from the Republicans in a
repudiation of presidential policies that left George W. Bush facing the
prospect of a congressional opposition led by the first female House
leader in U.S. history following this year's mid-term elections.
"From
sea to shining sea, the American people voted for change," declared
Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat who becomes House speaker.
"Today we have made history," she said, "now let us make
progress."President Bush called the night's onslaught a ''thumping.''
Americans
had to wait late into the evening to find out the Democrats had reached
the threshold of 218 seats, enough to control the House, also becoming
the new gubernatorial majority. In fact early into the next day no
Democratic incumbent had lost his seat.
Perhaps
it was fitting this reversed the look of the House for the first time
since the 1994 Republican revolution, as Americans expressed their
strongest dislike of Congress since that mid-term election. A key
republican win in Tennessee seemed to deny Democrats a majority in the
Senate until the very last race, in Virginia, gave them the 51 seats
they needed, completing the sweep for an electorate that wanted to send a
stern warning to the administration following the loss with two years
left in the Bush presidency.
Bush
wasted no time replacing the longest serving member of his cabinet,
Sec. of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, architect of the unpopular war; but he
later said that win or lose, Rumsfeld, who had offered to resign in the
past, would cede the post to former CIA director Robert Gates in any
case.
Things
seemed alarming early on for the president when a Florida Republican he
was campaigning for failed to show up at a rally Bush was attending in
the days leading to the vote, perhaps the most publicized case of
allergy to the chief executive in a campaign Democrats advertised
proximity to Bush as a handicap. By then the growing unpopularity of the
Iraq war, which Bush himself went so far as to compare to Vietnam, and
scandals highlighted by the indecent email exchanges of representative
Mark Foley with a Congressional page, had compounded the unpopularity of
the GOP.
Call
it the scourge of the four-letter words. Growing U.S. casualties in
Iraq and plummeting public support for the war have taken a toll on
Bush's approval ratings, but Republicans in Congress could not pin
everything on their commander in chief no matters how far they wanted to
distance themselves from him.
Ethics
was also on the voters' minds as representatives such as Tom DeLay, who
was charged with participating in a campaign finance scheme and
resigned from the House, and Bob Ney, who also resigned after pleading
guilty in the Jack Abramoff influence-peddling investigation, added to
the list of pre-campaign casualties that preceded Foley's stepping down.
Exit polls, in an election called a referendum on the Bush
administration and the war in Iraq by some, revealed corruption in
government as well as terrorism, the economy and Iraq were on the minds
of electors.
The
day was marked by heavy voter participation but also difficulties at
the polls in a country where counties vastly differ in the way they
conduct their votes, from pulling a lever to punching holes and pressing
computer screens. Many of these key issues, in addition to a high
participation rate usually favorable to the opposition, clearly favored
the Democrats, 60% of respondents to one exit poll saying they
disapproved of the way the president, who was not on the ballot despite
the general mood, is handling his job.
A
disgruntled electorate seemed to head to the polls after one of the
meanest campaigns in memory. Polls leading to the vote warned of a
backlash against Republicans, but the last surveys seemed to be showing
some life for GOP hopefuls. Divisions between the veto-wielding
executive and legislative could mean gridlock for the two remaining
years of the Bush administration some fear, while others point to Bush's
experience working with Democrats as governor of Texas.
While
the administration is adamant it will stay the course in Iraq the
Democratic majority comes with its own agenda, pledging to examine the
administration's conduct on issues such as the war in Iraq, now under
new leadership, and surveillance of terrorist suspects without court
warrants. Democrats also want an increase in the minimum wage, adoption
of the 9/11 anti-terrorism recommendations and competition by Medicare
for cheaper drug prices.
Regional
initiatives on marijuana, gay marriage and oil and tobacco taxes were
just some of the side issues Americans were also called to vote on
Tuesday, but national issues seemed to largely determine how people
would cast their votes. Humbled by the results, Bush called for a halt
to the acrimonious bipartisan bickering, as he faced the final years of
his presidency.
"I'm
open to any idea and suggestion that will help us achieve our goals of
defeating terrorists and ensuring that Iraq's democratic government
succeeds," he said, showing rare level uncertainty on an issue which the
Republicans had championed with success in the past but caused their
defeat this time around. On Iraq, "We cannot continue down this
catastrophic path," he said. That's the same general message he got from
electors last week.
Le retour d'Ortega
Pour
les Etats-Unis, l'ancienne bête noire qui a mené la lutte armée
sandiniste dans ce petit pays d'Amérique centrale lors des années 80 se
compare davantage à Fidel Castro ou Hugo
Chavez.
Pourtant, veilli d'une vingtaine d'années, Daniel Ortega n'est plus le
révolutionnaire de ses vieux jours, et semble parfois épouser des
politiques bien plus proches de celles de Washington que d'autres
dirigeants de la soi-disant "gauche dure" qui a pris le pouvoir dans
certains pays d'Amérique latine ces dernières années.
Son
élection lors du dernier scrutin présidentiel au Nicaragua avec 38% des
votes n'a pourtant pas manqué de semer la panique chez les gringos, las
de devoir à nouveau composer
avec
un gouvernement gauchiste et populiste dans son pré-carré compromis.
Washington ne l'avait pourtant jamais perdu de vue, seize ans après
avoir quitté le pouvoir et après trois
échecs
aux présidentielles précédentes. Ortega n'avait en fait jamais
abandonné la quête du pouvoir, qu'avait également dans sa mire le
conservateur Edurado Montealegre, diplômé de
Harvard et favori de Washington.
Les
alliés d'Ortega n'ont pas attendu avant de se prononcer, le félicitant,
avant la publication officielle des résultats, d'un succès qui, selon
la Havane, saura mieux unir le continent. Son élection est avant tout
saine pour ce petit pays de 5,7 millions d'habitants, diront ses
partisans, après une période de révolte contre le président sortant
Enrique Belanos, accusé
de corruption et mêlé à plusieurs scandales financiers.
Besoin
d'assainissement cyclique peut-être, mais Ortega aura davantage profité
de la division du camp opposant, entre Montealegre, qui a récolté 29%
des suffrages, et Jose Rizo, représentant du parti au pouvoir, avec 26%
des voix. Les autres candidats, tout deux d'anciens sandinistes, se sont
partagés le reste. Parmi les observateurs, qui de manière générale ont
approuvé la tenue
du
scrutin, imparfaite soit-elle, la présence de Jimmy Carter, président
américain lors de la saisie du pouvoir peu démocratique d'Ortega en
1979, ne pouvait pas passer inaperçue.
Celui-ci s'est déclaré stupéfait par la rapidité et la finalité du décompte. Selon lui, les rares ratés
de
l'organisation de l'élection, qui s'est largement déroulée dans le
calme, n'étaient pas suffisants pour remettre en cause les résultats
comptabilisés. Le calme, c'est à présent ce que recherche l'ancien
révolutionnaire marxiste, promettant la réconciliation au rythme du
"give peace a
chance" qui fut son hymne électoral presque officiel.
Pour
une importante partie de la population cependant, les sanglantes années
de la lutte contre les Contras ne sont pas prêtes à être oubliées.
Léchant ses propres plaies électorales,
George
W. Bush voit réapparaitre le spectre qui avait disparu lors du mandat
de son père. Il ne manquait en effet pas de fantomes puisque même Oliver
North, conseiller à la Maison blanche mieux connu pour son implication
dans l'affaire Iran-Contra, s'était déplacé pour encourager
l'éternelle lutte aux Sandinistes.
Tous les moyens avaient d'ailleurs été employés pour encourager l'union de la droite
afin d'éviter «la création du modèle Chavez» au Nicaragua, mais sans succès. Pourtant
Ortega
a mis de l'eau dans son orthodoxie et s'estime à présent moins hostile
au milieu des affaires, se réconciliant même avec l'église catholique,
jadis l'adversaire le plus acharné de son régime communiste athée.
«La
défaite d'Ortega aux élections de 1990 a mis fin à l'expérience
sandiniste. Il a encore échoué en 1996 puis en 2001, résume au Figaro le
politologue Emilio Alvarez Montalvan. Alors, il s'est adapté. Il a
éliminé toutes les références révolutionnaires de son programme. S'il
promet la fin du capitalisme sauvage, il assure aussi que les
nationalisations massives ou le contrôle des prix ne sont pas à l'ordre
du jour. Il va respecter le traité de libre-échange signé avec les
États-Unis. Il se dit prêt à négocier avec le Fonds monétaire
international.»
Alors qu'Ortega semble avoir tourné la page, il en est autrement à Washington, qui derrière ses
lunettes
de guerre froide pâlit à fur et à mesure que la gauche enregistre des
gains en Amérique latine, et prévient qu'avec Ortega le Nicaragua risque
de "mettre en danger les relations commerciales entre les deux pays".
Un accueil peu chaleureux.
A verdict on Saddam
In
power for twenty four cruel years, perhaps the crimes against a
dictator such as Saddam Hussein were countless to begin with. The roll
call of atrocities committed by his regime are usually led by the
infamous 1988 gassing of Iraqi Kurds and various acts of barbarism
committed during the occupation of Kuwait. But in the end if was for the
wave of revenge killings carried out in the city of Dujail following a
1982 assassination attempt against him that Saddam and his two
co-defendants were on trial and ultimately sentenced to death by hanging
for crimes against humanity.
At
the time one of the last expressions of opposition under Saddam, the
underground Islamic Dawa party claimed responsibility for organizing the
attempt on his life, but the entire city where the event took place
ultimately paid in blood. Nearly a quarter century after the fierce
retribution Dujail greeted the sentencing with celebrations, burning
pictures of the former tormentor. In a show of division which did
nothing to support the calls of unity across the scorched country, in
his hometown of Tikrit, 1,000 people defied the curfew and carried his
pictures through the streets, condemning the verdict and declaring the
court a product of the U.S. "occupation forces".
The
verdict sparked fears of further bloodshed in the midst of a sectarian
crisis few are still hesitant to call a full-fledged civil war, enraging
hard-liners among Saddam's fellow Sunnis but a
cause
for celebration for the country's majority Shiites, who were persecuted
under his rule but now largely control the government. After the fall
of Saddam's regime in early 2003, and the arrest and trial of Saddam
Hussein, hopes the verdict would unify the country by reminding its
citizens
of past hardship were just the latest to be dashed, the sight of Saddam
on television sometimes even reminding of times when suicide attacks
weren't claiming so many civilian lives.
Fearing
his client's statement would be viewed as a rallying cry and cue to
launch widespread reprisal, his lawyer said the former dictator had
called on Iraqis to reject sectarian
violence
and refrain from revenge against U.S. forces. As the appeal process
gets under way, possibly taking several weeks, one last outburst, in a
court-room drama which lacked
none,
saw the former dictator shout "God is great!" and "Long live the people
and death to their enemies" and an American attorney, former U.S.
Attorney General Ramsey Clark, get thrown out minutes before sentencing
for handing the judge a memorandum in which he called the trial a
travesty.
What
some were calling the most anticipated sentencing since the Nuremberg
trials certainly didn't appear to be like anything else in recent
memory. The theatrical court-room drama was marked by defense team
walkouts, boycotts and hunger strikes and alternated from
eliciting
shock during testimony, to laughter, when one defendant appeared
dressed in underwear, while always remaining the stage of Saddam's many
tantrums.
Drama also unfolded away from the court house, where three of Saddam's lawyers were killed, a
fourth
fleeing the country, all the while the judge was changed and a
replacement rejected for being an ex Baath party member. But Saddam's
many outbursts during the 9-month trial may have played a key part in
his conviction according to some U.S. officials citing his admission in a
March 1 hearing that he had ordered the trial of 148 Shiites who were
eventually executed, insisting that doing so was legal because they were
assassination suspects. "Where is
the crime? Where is the crime?" he asked, standing before the panel of five judges.
He later argued that his co-defendants had to be released because he was in charge
and
he alone must be tried. The prosecution had recently presented evidence
in the form of a presidential decree with a signature they said was
Saddam's approval for death sentences for the 148 Shiites, their most
direct evidence against him.
While
some countries such as Canada hesitated to react, citing the coming
appeals process, U.S. President George W. Bush greeted the news
favorably as "a landmark event in the history of Iraq" that would serve
as "a milestone in the Iraqi people's efforts to replace the rule of a
tyrant with the rule of law." But critics could not help pointing out
the verdict came days before a U.S.
mid-term
election where the unpopular Iraq war has been the rallying point of
calls to loosen the Republican grip on both houses.
In
addition the sudden end of proceedings, after they had been extended
beyond October, as the defense was to continue its case, fueled
suspicion the Iraqi high tribunal was pressured to pass judgment just
before the elections, something U.S. officials rushed to deny, fearing
this perception alone could be costly ahead of the vote. During the
course of the trial its first judge had resigned halfway through,
claiming he was being pressured for being too lenient on Saddam, and a
replacement had been blackballed by Shiites for being formerly a member
of the Baath party.
Others
pointed out current Prime minister Nouri Al-Maliki, who collected
praise for the sentence after a tense period of disagreement over policy
with Washington, was himself A member of the Dawa party, now a major
force in Iraqi politics.
In
the Arab street, suspicion co-existed with the jubilation of the
Shiites and condemnation of the Sunnis, observers claiming no trial
could be fair under a U.S. occupation. Amnesty International was among a
number of observers claiming the trial left to be desired, but while
some U.S. officials conceded it was far from perfect, they stressed it
remained a fair exercise of Iraq's new brand of justice.
In
any event, jubilation or condemnation could lose out to just plain
indifference in the end considering the rising level of violence in the
country. One report estimated some 600,000 Iraqis have been killed since
the war while the death toll of U.S. soldiers neared 3,000, with over
100 killed last month alone, one of the bloodiest on record. Already
sentenced once, Saddam wasn’t done appearing in a court-room, as he
prepared for the case of the 1988 gassing of the Kurds which branded him
a brutal tyrant in the court of world opinion. The country’s Kurds
hardly needed to await that sentence to start rejoycing.
Conflicts and development
Reconstruction
efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan leave to be desired because of the
surrounding violence which manages to undo much of the work. Canada's
reconstruction efforts in the volatile south of Afghanistan is often
overshadowed by the latest report of casualties, but the difficulties
facing aid efforts are more than a matter of over-reporting the violence
and under-reporting the development successes.
A
major case in point in Iraq is that oil production was supposed to pay
for the country's reconstruction, but remains barely higher than the 2
million barrels per day produced before the fall of Saddam Hussein,
mainly due to the sabotage efforts of the insurgency. While some
estimates are more optimistic, placing production above 2.5 million bdp,
the insurgency is hampering the industry.
"Militant
attacks against the northern oil pipelines have been relentless. Iraqi
oil officials have said that, in the absence of such attacks, an
additional 400,000 bpd could be exported from the northern fields to the
Turkish port of Ceyhan," noted a recent Stratfor intelligence report.
The result is frequent blackouts in a country supposed to be an energy
powerhouse. It doesn't help that the US military hasn't achieved its
goal of handing primary security matters to Iraqis.
Securing
the peace and matching development aid become particularly strong
arguments in a recent British report on development aid which, by
focusing on a number of African countries, found that the cost of just
one conflict almost equals the value of global annual development aid.
This
is the contention of the International Development Select Committee of
British members of parliament, for whom government should make conflict a
policy priority, lest it prefers pouring aid down a bottomless pit. The
committee reported that one civil war in a low-income country could
cost $54bn, roughly two-thirds of the 2004 worldwide aid budget of
$78.6bn.
The
British lawmakers also supported the notion that companies should not
be allowed to benefit in conflict zones as trade could "intensify and
prolong conflicts". The fact that the report, Conflict and Development:
Peacebuilding and Post-Conflict Reconstruction was commissioned, was
telling in itself as Britain questioned the effectiveness of its
peacebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction policies, especially in
African countries such as Sierra Leone, Uganda and the Democratic
Republic of Congo, which could hardly qualify as examples of stability.
"Some
conflict-prone states are rich in resources which can sustain warlords,
encourage foreign adventurism and lead to the failure of the state and
increased poverty for the many as the few get rich," cautioned committee
chairman Malcolm Bruce. "If the government prioritised the link between
conflict and development it would do more to create a climate for
poverty reduction in these countries than any amount of costly aid
programmes."
In
September African officials meeting at the U.N. agreed the continent's
hotspots, marked by protracted fighting or violent disputes, had
undercut progress in development issues such as health, economic growth
and governance, sometimes sparking large refugee flows. "For Africa, the
most urgent challenge remains the resolution of conflicts and the
sustenance of peace and security as the foundation for socio-economic
progress," said Nigeria's Foreign Affairs Minister. African officials
also stressed that development was not possible in some areas such as
the border with the Sudan and Chad, until the endemic insecurity there
was eradicated.
The
linkage of aid and conflict resonates in Canada particularly after
Josee Verner, the minister responsible for Canada's aid effort,
completed a two-day trip to Afghanistan pledging $5 million for
emergency food aid and another 6 million to finance reconstruction and
repair of roads and bridges in Kandahar. ''Every Canadian wants to know:
'How do we spend the money in Afghanistan?''' Verner said from within
the walls of Canada's fortified Kabul embassy. ''I'll be able to tell
them I met officials here and I announced projects.''
Verner
raised some eyebrows when she claimed Canada built ''around 350
schools'' in the country in recent years as well as stressed that the
CIDA-funded Provincial Reconstruction Team in Kandahar had either begun
or completed 93 projects, considering the rapidly deteriorating security
situation in southern Afghanistan.
The
trip was however aiming to remind Canadians the mission there was not
only to fight the Taleban but help rebuild the country as well, a notion
sometimes drowned out by the bag-pipes of 42 fallen soldiers. The
insurgency has not only been targeting foreign troops but the fruit of
their reconstruction efforts as well, notably schools and health
clinics. ''There is no question that there are many more schools being
burned than being built,'' John Watson, president and chief executive of
CARE Canada, told the National Post. ''And that's because the military
is engaged in the building of the schools. The schools are looked upon
as part of the conflict.'' Watson is concerned that as a result aid
agencies appear too close to the military.
In
Sudan, only two UN agencies still operate and tend to millions of
starving and homeless refugees, after a string of attacks against
international organizations. The risks in southern Afghanistan, where
CARE recently announced it would not bid on reconstruction projects in
order not to appear too cosy with Canadian troops, is no less volatile.
Still
Canada said it would spend some $1 billion over the next ten years to
rebuild the country, boasting it helped national programs targeting
working on 118 projects in 25 provinces. The irony is that sometimes the
actions of Canadian troops themselves appear to run counter to
reconstruction efforts according to CIDA's own estimates, which stress
that the new food aid money would ''assist the World Food Program (WFP)
to deliver food aid to 12,000 vulnerable families from Panjwai and
Zherai Districts, who were displaced from their homes during the
NATO-led Operation Medusa against anti-government groups.''
Another
irony was that security concerns kept the International Co-operation
Minister from actually inspecting any of the Afghanistan projects being
funded by her department. Opposition leader Jack Layton said the money
for the trip could have been better spent elsewhere, let alone the money
spent on Canada's combat mission. "What we have are photo ops
announcing funds for aid, but at the same time the government is
spending the same amount in a week in a military operation as they're
spending for aid," he said.
Getting serious about Darfur
When
U.S. president George W. Bush addressed Darfur and warned Sudan about
committing atrocities in its Western province, members of the Sudanese
delegation openly smiled,
mocking
his intervention, convinced any defiance would be left unpunished.
Embroiled in two overseas conflicts and facing a bitter election
campaign at home, the U.S. would
have no stomach to do more than uttering empty threats they reasoned.
After
America's threats against Pyongyang's development of nuclear weapons
went unheeded, it's a safe bet Khartoum will remain defiant, even
against a super-power which has accused it of "genocide", let alone the
United Nations. Not satisfied by denying the entry of U.N. troops to
calm a conflict which has claimed over 200,000 lives, Sudan's government
ordered and obtained the removal of its chief U.N. envoy, branding him
an enemy of the regime for his outspokeness on Darfur.
Sudan's
foreign ministry accused Jan Pronk of demonstrating "enmity to the
Sudanese government and the armed forces" and of involvement in
activities "that are incompatible with his mission" after reporting that
morale was low after government forces suffered defeat in a
number
of rebel attacks. "The SAF has lost two major battles, last month in
Umm Sidir and this week in Karakaya. The losses seem to have been very
high," he wrote in his blog. "The
morale
in the Government army in North Darfur has gone down. Some generals
have been sacked; soldiers have refused to fight. The Government has
responded by directing more troops
and equipment from elsewhere to the region and by mobilizing Arab militia. This is a dangerous development.
Security
Council Resolutions which forbid armed mobilization are being
violated." While Pronk describes the difficulty of dealing with an
increasingly spintered rebel movement bent
on
fighting itself as much as the regime, his last entry, dated three days
before he was asked out of the country, described more positive
developments in fostering dialogue with one of the rebel groups in
Darfur, while rebels in the East of the country, fighting a separate
conflict, signed a peace agreement. Of course peace agreements usually
fail the first few times before holding on, and Pronk considered peace
in Darfur a prerequisite for lasting peace in the East.
Khartoum's
latest act of defiance comes as the U.N. is still hoping to inject
20,000 troops in Darfur, to foster a peace 7,200 poorly-equipped African
union troops have been unable
to
enforce, despite the best intentions of top troop contibutor Nigeria.
As the U.N. was lauching its new session in September, the Security
Council passed Resolution 1706 authorising the force, but it can only be
deployed if the Sudanese government agrees.
In
his speech, Bush even considered Nato intervention to help with
logistics and blamed Sudan for letting the fighting go on. "The regime
in Khartoum is stopping the deployment of this force. If the Sudanese
government does not approve this peacekeeping force quickly, the United
Nations must act." Bush named a special envoy on Sudan and this month
Washington stiffened sanctions against the regime, targeting its
lucrative oil industry, expanding on sanctions imposed by his
predecessor which included a ban of defence exports and sales and
controls over US exports to Sudan.
Special
envoy Natsios however conceded America's relations with Khartoum was
"complex", what some consider is an admission Washington can only do so
much to criticize Khartoum because of input it may have on the war on
terror, but still hoped to obtain Sudan's permission to bring in the
blue helmets. The U.N. meanwhile has been partly embarrassed that
Pronk's writings,
for which he has been criticized in the past, have made public such sensitive data about his acticvities.
His
account of army casualties in the hands of the rebels however seems to
confirm the increasing boldness of factions which never signed on to
May's peace agreement with the government, supplied with arms taken in
successful raids against the army and handed by backers in neighboring
countries such as Chad and Eritrea. With Sudan in turn reportedly
supporting rebel movements in both Chad and the Central African
Republic, while an islamist regime takes roots in nearby Somalia, the
stakes are increasingly regional.
President
Olusegun Obasanjo, whose country hosted the Darfur peace agreement and
has the most troops in Darfur, recently warned of a possible genocide
in the Darfur region of Sudan. “It is not in the interest of Sudan, nor
in the interest of Africa, nor, indeed, in the interest of the world for
us all to stand by and see genocide being developed in Darfur,” he
said, adding he would be willing to provide more troops.
The
UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, said that 224,000 people were
out of reach of food aid. Only a handful of UN agencies still operate in
Darfur and one of the priorities of a blue-helmeted mission would be to
ensure the safety of about 14,000 aid workers there, but Khartoum fears
they would also be used to arrest officials likely to be indicted by
the International Criminal Court, which is investigating possible war
crimes.
L'avenir c'est le canal
Pendant
que des entrepreneurs canadiens polissent des rêves de voie maritime
permanente dans le passage du nord-ouest et que le Canada répète haut et
fort sa souveraineté du grand nord,
les
habitants du Panama ont appuyé l'expansion du canal qui est devenu la
raison d'être de leur petite nation d'Amérique centrale.
Autrefois
partie de la Colombie, Panama a pris naissance comme moyen de
facilitier le développement du canal qui allait sauver des jours de
trajet maritime, et des fortunes au commerce international, au début du
siècle dernier. Mais l'ampleur prise par ce commerce a avec le temps
tracé le dessin de navires gigantesques incapables de suivre le chemin
étroit des ingénieurs français et américains.
Propriété
du gouvernment panaméen depuis 1999, le canal, dont les 80 kilomètres
représentent à eux seuls 20% des recettes nationales et ou transige 5%
du commerce mondial, doit par conséquent faire l'objet d'un
agrandissement tellement conséquent, et onéreux, qu'il a été
soumis à un vote référendaire, puis approuvé par la grande majorité des électeurs de ce pays moins peuplé que Montréal.
En
effet 78% des électeurs a approuvé les plans d'agrandissement, chiffrés
à 5,2 milliards de dollars, écluses et tracé parallèle inclus. Il y
avait un peu de fierté nationale à entamer un si grand projet, mais
principalement il fallait y voir une politique économique et sociale
essentielle pour ce pays dont 40% de la population vit sous le seuil de
la pauvreté.
Le canal n'en est pas à sa première modification depuis les tracés originaux, mais il
s'agit
de loin de la plus importante, lors d'une course aux parts du commerce
planétaire qui ne manque pas de compétiteurs. Alors qu'un tracé polaire
canadien, que certains prédisent avec le réchauffement terrestre,
pourrait sauver des heures de trajet, et éviter les embouteillages de
Paname, un projet similaire au Nicaragua, ne manque pas de susciter
d'intérêt dans cette autre pauvre nation d'Amérique centrale.
Le canal projeté y serait plus profond, capable d'accueillir le 10 pourcent des navires
actuellement
incapables de traverser celui de Panama, et sauverait une journée de
trajet entre New York et Los Angeles, mais en revanche il serait presque
trois fois plus long et coûterait 18 milliards de dollars à
concrétiser. Un tel projet, rêve des explorateurs espagnols remontant de
plusieurs
siècles, suscite également beaucoup d'intérêt en Chine, ou il pourrait
sauver plusieurs jours de trajet et des centaines de millions aux
armateurs desservant la côte est américaine.
Alors
que le Nicaragua estime que le traffic galopant pourrait facilement
faire grouiller les deux canaux, Panama y voit un rival inquiétant,
motivant sans doute la décision des
électeurs.
Un passage canadien ouvert à l'année longue aurait aussi ses avantages, réduisant un trajet
Londres-Tokyo de 23 300 à 15 700 kilomètres par rapport à Paname (21 200 par Suez)
tout
en n’imposant aucune limite de gabarit, mais pour ça il faut compter
sur la fonte de la banquise canadienne et des ententes territoriales
compliquées par le développement
d'une
artère si importante. Et alors que ce projet peut à la longue assurer
le développement du grand nord canadien, en attendant en revanche il
laisse craindre le pire en cas de besoin de sauvetage. D'autres n'aiment
encore mieux pas penser à la possibilité d'une catastrophe
environnementale à la Exxon Valdez si près du pôle.
Loin
de tout ça, bien au chaud et caressant des projets plus concrets, le
Panama, qui n'a pour l'instant pas encore de quoi se payer le projet,
estime avoir pris une décision historique.
"Aujourd'hui,
nous avons posé la fondation pour construire ensemble un pays meilleur,
estime le président Martin Torrijos, c'est probablement la décision la
plus importante à prendre de cette génération". Les détracteurs, de leur
côté, redoutent la fracture finale, et craignent que le projet ne
creuse autant la dette nationale que la campagne du pays, tout en
profitant davantage aux
utilisateurs du canal qu'aux Panaméens.
Comme
avec tout grand projet d'infrastructure, on craint également la
corruption qu'il pourra entrainer. Mais le camps du "oui" y voit de l'or
à court comme à long terme, songeant aux 40 000
emplois créés par le creusement du canal, soit cinq fois le niveau actuel des employés.
Dealing with a nuclear North Korea
With
a broad smile the North Korean announcer described the event as
"historic", praised it for "defending the peace and stability" and
"making a great leap forward", but the country which coined the phrase,
China, and many others that had warned Pyongyang not to go forward with a
nuclear test, condemned the Nov. 9 act that effectively recognises the
hermit kingdom as the world's latest nuclear power, putting to rest
years of ambiguity about its true capabilities.
U.S.
officials confirmed the nuclear test had taken place, recording seismic
activity but casting doubts on the size of the blast, while the U.N.
Security Council, whose warning against testing had been unheeded,
prepared to confront the isolated communist regime by issuing
non-military sanctions. The first country to conduct tests since India
and Pakistan confirmed their nuclear status in 1998, North Korea is the
great outsider of the nuclear club, at a time China had closed ranks
with other countries to discourage the North's nuclear programme.
The
timing was notable, coming days after North Korean guards had received
warning shots for venturing into the demilitarized zone and as the U.N.
was expected to elect a South Korean as Secretary general. Incoming Ba
Ki-moon, who had criticized predecessor Kofi Annan for never visiting
North Korea and not doing enough to stop its nuclear ambitions,
therefore has his hands full with a major crisis he has intimate
knowledge of, just hours into his new post.
The
chorus of international condemnation was led by China and the U.S.,
which sought to consider at the U.N. how to impose new sanctions on what
is already one of the most isolated countries in the world. Both failed
after years of diplomatic full court press to dissuade the North from
conducting tests. China, Pyongyang's closest ally expressed its
"resolute opposition" to the "brazen" test.
Days
before the threat from the peninsula had brought together rivals Japan
and China as Tokyo heralded a new period of cooperation with its
neighbors by making China and South Korea, as opposed to Washington, the
first foreign visits of new Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe. He and
host President Hu Jintao of China agreed a North Korea nuclear test
"cannot be tolerated", a development that left Pyongyang unfazed.
The
crisis comes as the U.N. was also warning Iran against pursuing its own
nuclear programme, with Tehran showing a now familiar defiance and
threatening to retaliate if it were to suffer sanctions for maintaining a
nuclear programme it claims is solely for peaceful energy needs. While
Washington called Pyongyang's test a "provocative act", Tehran viewed it
as "a reaction to America's threat and humiliation."
Last
week representatives from the five UN Security Council permanent
members plus Germany agreed to discuss sanctions against Tehran after it
refused to heed a new deadline to halt uranium enrichment and said they
would start drafting a sanctions resolution, a priority now being
shaken by the tremors on the Korean peninsula. The test followed a
provocative test of seven ballistic missiles in July, which also ignored
worldwide warnings.
While
the test in itself is no sign North Korea can successfully "weaponise"
its bomb, it may point to Pyongyang's ability to spare one bomb to
testing, indicating the possibility of other stockpiles. Experts
especially fear North Korea is willing to disseminate its nuclear
technology to compensate for current sanctions. Some analysts view the
test as a sign of domestic weakness as the government attempts to
deflect attention from famine and endemic poverty. But weakness and the
successful testing of a nuclear weapon hardly seem to go hand in hand.
Divided about Afghanistan
As
Canada reached yet another sad milestone in its afghan mission,
recording its 40th military death, it became more and more obvious that
the resurgence of the Taleban in a country where they had been routed
five years ago was owed first and foremost to the increasingly visible
cracks in the alliance against it.
While
Canada mourned its latest victim, its defense minister did not hesitate
to point fingers at Nato allies he claimed did not play their part in
the fight to defend and rebuild Afghanistan. Gordon O'Connor said
countries like Italy, France and Germany, who have troops in fewer
number and positioned in safer parts of the country, were among the
countries of the alliance that were not pulling their weight.
After
a recent call for additional troops, only Poland, a recently admitted
country eager to please, volunteered extra troops. While Canada's losses
pale to that of the U.S., a recent report said Canadian soldiers
accounted for 43 percent of NATO coalition casualties in Afghanistan
since February, when they took up position in the volatile south of the
country. The impatience among some NATO members comes as the U.S. was
trying to patch up another rift between Afghanistan and Pakistan, who
have been mutually accusing each other of not doing enough in the war on
terror.
While
Pakistan's president Pervez Musharraf has accused his neighbor of not
doing enough to suppress the insurgency, president Hamid Karzai has
stated allies had to look over his border to find the sources of the
insurgency. The president's spokesman told the NPU it had to be "cut at
the roots."
Musharraf
himself has not hesitated to take shots at Washington, claiming in a
recent book the U.S. threatened to bomb his country into the stone age
if it did not cooperate in the war on terror right after Sept. 11 and
calling Washington's decision to attack Iraq a mistake as it created
''more extremist across the world.''
Pakistan
has been criticized for making a recent truce with Taleban leaders in
border areas and a growing chorus of critics are accusing its security
services of undermining efforts to eliminate the insurgents, remnants of
Taleban and mujahedeen forces it helped equip throughout the years.
Musharraft made no friends here when he said Canada should stop crying
about losing ''four or five'' soldiers (36 had been killed at the time)
while his country had lost 100 times as many.
The
U.S. has also been vocal, gen. Janes Jones, the U.S. commander in
charge, complaining that Afghan militants were moving freely in the
Pakistani city of Quetta, near the border. Last week Afghanistan
arrested seventeen suicide-bombers who admitted to being recruited and
trained in Pakistan. But while growing rifts are causing concern between
allies, the British commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David Richards,
warned that a rift may soon be created with the Afghan people, unless
Nato troops can stabilize the country and make it more liveable.
Richards
said the country was at a ''tipping point'' and warned that some 70% of
Afghans could switch support to the Taleban unless their lives improved
in the next six months. ''We have created an opportunity following the
intense fighting that left over 500 militants dead in the southern
provinces,'' he said, referring to the largely Canadian-spearheaded
offensive. ''If we do not take advantage of this then you can pour an
additional 10,000 troops next year and we would not succeed because we
would have lost by then the consent of the people,'' he said.
As
in Canada, British opinion has shown support for a removal of troops
from the country, which has claimed an equal amount of lives for double
the amount of troops. Britain is however also engaged in Iraq, and both
countries' leaders have vowed to stay the course until the job is done.
But their work may be increasingly undermined by a rift between allies
that could extend into a rift with the local population.
Des soucis à Outremont
Dans
les jours qui ont suivi la tragédie de Laval, les ingénieurs casqués
s'affairaient autour de ce qui restait du viaduc de la Concorde, une
partie en suspension à l'est du viaduc, des restes déchirés qui ont vite
été supprimés. On se pencherait plus précisément sur l'armature de
métal dit-on. Etrangement, à plusieurs kilomètres de là, certains
citoyens faisaient leur propre inspection du viaduc de Rockland,
inauguré par le maire Bernard Couvrette en 1966 et son homologue de
Mont-Royal.
"Ingénieur?'
demande-t-on à un homme d'Outremont et sa femme inspectant la structure
du viaduc enjambant la cour de triage. "Non, ingénieux, mais intéressé"
dit cet automobiliste qui prend le viaduc souvent et se fait du souci.
"Hier ils l'ont fermé parce qu'il y avait un gros trou, il y a des
fentes partout, surtout du côté Mont-Royal, c'est à se demander s'il ne
faudrait pas passer par ailleurs".
Le
viaduc a été fermé pendant deux heures pour une inspection d'urgence le
lendemain du drame de Laval parce que des employés du coin avaient
rapporté des chutes de béton. Deux nuits plus tard, il est à nouveau
fermé pour travaux urgents, la chaussée s'étant affaissée du côté est.
Il
faudra pardonner le maire de Laval, où un autre viaduc a été fermé et
sera également détruit, s'il a osé dire qu'il essayait le moins possible
de rester sous les structures lorsqu'il se déplace. Depuis la tragédie
du Souvenir en 2000, également à Laval, c'est le réflexe de plusieurs
Montréalais. En fait selon un récent sondage trois Québécois sur cinq
craignent de passer sur un pont ou un viaduc de la province.
92
pourcent des répondants jugeaient que les autorités auraient dû
interdire l'accès au viaduc de Laval après la chute des premiers débris
tandis que près des trois quarts des personnes interrogées ont déclaré
ne pas avoir été rassurées par les actions du premier ministre Jean
Charest et du ministre des Transports Michel Després.
Certaines
structures, dont l'échangeur Turcot, laissent à désirer même s'il a été
déclaré hors de danger par la récente série d'inspections. Sur 19
structures semblables inspectées d'urgence depuis la tragédie, une seule
exigeait des études dans le détail. Celles-ci ont révélé qu'il valait
mieux s'en départir. Mais il faut noter que le viaduc de la Concorde
était jugé en bon état après son inspection de mai 2005.
Une
véritable armée d'ingénieurs a passé en revue dans les heures après le
drame, les plans de 875 structures surélevées afin d'identifier ces
viaducs, pour lesquels le ministre des transports a exigé un rapport
d'inspection dans les 48 heures. Sur les 4900 structures au Québec, près
de la moitié, 2200 sont en mauvais état. Cette proportion de structures
en bon état a chuté de 58,7% en 2001-02 à 54,8% en 2004-05. Cette
année-là 71 structures étaient corrigées, moins que ce qui est prévu par
Transport Québec qui se dit traverser "une pointe de besoin de
réparation". Au Canada 59% de l'inventaire des ports, autoroutes, rails
et ponts a plus de 40 ans.
Alors
que le viaduc de Rockland fête ses 40 ans, le viaduc de Laval en avait
moins et devait durer 70 ans. A quelques heures du drame, on y notait
des chutes de béton. Un inspecteur est même passé, a nettoyé les débris
et rendu son rapport. Un ingénieur aurait été en route au moment de la
tragédie.
Le
pire cas visible de structure défaillante était celui de l'échangeur
des Pins, récemment détruit et réaménagé, note notre visiteur intéressé.
Il ne faut pas se prétendre ingénieur ou être alarmiste, mais les
signes de rouille, les amas de débris au long de la structure de
Rockland, et les dégoulis d'eau entre les fentes, laissent naitre
certaines craintes.
Deux
jours après le drame de Laval, l'ingénieur Michel Meunier grattait la
structure de Rockland, qui s'effrite facilement par endroit et laisse
choir d'importants morceaux de plusieurs dizaines de centimètres. Son
rapport fera beaucoup d'intéressés, car c'est à se demander si Transport
Québec n'a pas favorisé dans l'immédiat les plus importants axes, les
viaducs au-dessus des autoroutes, plutôt que les viaducs de quartier.
Celui
de Rockland trahit bien des signes de vieillesse, mais reste soutenu
par plusieurs pilons et porte-à-faux, un dessin différent de celui de
Laval. Le viaduc de la Concorde avait été conçu selon un modèle qu'on
voit moins aujourd'hui selon la sous-ministre des transports. C'est «un
type de conception qu'on a abandonné depuis plus de 15 ans», au profit
de conceptions «plus performantes».
Aux
côtés de M. Couvrette au moment de couper le ruban, à présent ingénieur
lui-même, Michel Couvrette voit des signes alarmants à partir des
photos NPU. "Inquiétant en effet. Le problème avec ces viaducs c'est
qu'ils ont été construits avant l'ère des armatures avec epoxy et des
éléments à protection cathodique qui empêche l'armature de rouiller à
l'intérieur du béton," dit-il. A Laval les ingénieurs ne semblent pas
s'attarder sur la rouille mais étudient en effet l'armature.
"Ce
qu'il faut regarder c'est le dessous du tablier pour voir s'il y a
infiltration d'eau et de sel et les appuis sur les colonnes, poursuit
Couvrette. Sur la photo (Rockland) il semble y avoir de la rouille (le
drain serait en cause). Il faudrait frapper avec un marteau pour voir si
cela est en surface ou si ça sonne creux, il peut y avoir du béton
démantelé en profondeur".
L'ingénierie
livre une féroce bataille aux excès de dame nature. Lors d'un comité
exécutif de la ville fusionnée il y a trois ans, le viaduc Rockland
était jugé avoir "subi les effets négatifs de son environnement: sels de
déglaçage, cycles gel-dégel, carbonatation, etc" exigeant des travaux
alors estimés à 2,5 millions, à une période où la cour de triage était
encore dans la course au projet du super-hôpital. «Le viaduc Rockland a
été construit en 1966, poursuit le rapport du comité, il comporte
maintenant plusieurs déficiences et nécessite d'importants travaux de
réfection.»
Trois
ans plus tard, le projet de super-hôpital mort et enterré, les travaux,
pourtant urgents à l'époque, n'ont toujours pas été complétés. Un
«sommaire décisionnel» du comité exécutif de Montréal, adopté plus tôt
en avril 2003, le citait à titre de priorité. Pourtant le travail n'a
pas été fait en dépit d'avoir retenu les services de la firme BPR pour
superviser les travaux et du fait que Division des ponts et tunnels de
la ville estimait que son devoir d'assurer la sécurité des usagers -
«était mis en péril».
Selon
André Lazure, chargé de communications au Service des infrastructures,
du transport et de l'environnement à la Ville de Montréal, des
réparations étaient prévues sur le tablier du viaduc Rockland bien avant
l'effondrement à Laval. D'autres opérations vont avoir lieu au cours de
l'automne avant une reconstruction importante d'ici 2008, ça dépendra
de la liste des travaux prévus en 2007 lorsque sera déposé le budget de
la métropole, à la fin de l'année.
Malgré
tout, le maire Harbour estime le viaduc solide pour le moment. «Je me
fie au jugement expert des ingénieurs et ils m'assurent que l'intégrité
structurale [du viaduc Rockland] n'est pas menacée». Mais c'est un avis
pas partagé par tout le monde. «L'état de ce viaduc nous inquiète,
commentait le porte-parole de Ville Mont-Royal Alain Côté. Nous ne
savons pas pourquoi il n'a pas été réparé plus tôt. Nous avons fait
plusieurs demandes à la Ville de Montréal, qui est responsable de
l'entretien.»
Voilà
qui résume bien le problème pour certains. "C'est un problème de
maintenance ça," lance notre interlocuteur. "C'est à suivre"
ajoute-t-il, un peu résigné avant de rentrer chez lui. On le crie haut
et fort, l'entretien n'est pas à la hauteur malgré des millions de
dollars en taxes à l'essence et autres taxes désignées à cet effet. La
moitié des structures au Québec laisse à désirer.
"Je
pense que le Ministère des transports préfère construire de nouveaux
ponts que d'entretenir les anciens," estime Couvrette. Selon un estimé
il ne faudrait pas moins de la totalité du budget actuel du Ministère
des Transports, 1,8 milliard, rien que pour l'entretien du réseau
actuel, soit dix fois le montant désigné aux structures annuellement.
Bisbille à Budapest
Des
enregistrements honteux avouant au mensonge depuis des années, des
semaines de manifestation et un revers cuisant aux urnes, pourtant il
n'y a toujours rien, semble-t-il, pour déloger le gouvernement du
Premier ministre socialiste hongrois Ferenc Gyurcsany, qui tient bon et
s'est engagé à poursuivre les réformes et à mettre en oeuvre des mesures
d'austérité en dépit des revers enregistrés lors des élections
municipales de dimanche.
Gyurcsany
a déclaré qu'il entendait poursuivre ses mesures de rigueur visant à
ramener le déficit budgétaire vers un objectif de 3,2% du produit
intérieur brut en 2009, contre 10,1% cette année. "J'aimerais rester le
Premier ministre qui continue cette politique", a précisé M. Gyurcsany
au siège du Parti socialiste après une journée où l'opposition a raflé
18 des 19 comtés et 19 des 23 villes, mais sans Budapest.
Le
Premier ministre est au plus bas dans les sondages depuis son arrivée
au pouvoir, lui qui a été le premier chef du gouvernement réélu, en
avril dernier, depuis la fin du communisme en 1989. Signe de déception,
il s'agissait du taux de participation (53%) le plus haut lors
d'élections municipales depuis le rétablissement de la démocratie en
1990.
La
divulgation des résultats a été suivie par une autre importante
manifestation de 10 000 personnes devant l'imposant parlement qui
surplombe le Danube sur le côté commercial de la ville (Pest). C'est une
scène qui devient familière depuis les manifestations qui ont
accompagné la diffusion à la radio publique de propos tenus à huis clos
où Gyurcsány évoquait ses mensonges proférés "matin, midi et soir".
Après
les résultats de dimanche, la voix du président Laszlo Solyom est venue
s'ajouter à celle des manifestants, semble-t-il. "Le Premier ministre
refuse d'admettre qu'il a utilisé des méthodes inappropriées pour garder
le pourvoir," estime Solyom, qui n'a pas plus réussi à obtenir la
démission du chef du gouvernement.
Il
faut dire que plusieurs Hongrois restent perplexes même après les
derniers résultats, que la droite voulait transformer en plébiscite sur
le gouvernement. Car si la popularité du Premier ministre a pris un
coup, elle n'empêche pas certains de croire que le gouvernement actuel
doit poursuivre les réformes en cours.
Puis
les manifestations du 18 septembre des sympathisants de droite et
d'extrême droite ayant viré à l'émeute, plusieurs hésitent à donner trop
de pouvoir d'un côté ou de l'autre, d'autant plus que les politiques du
gouvernement laissent paraitre un certain équilibre centriste.
"Les
électeurs hongrois ont ce soir remplacé le Premier ministre en
exercice", estime pour sa part le chef de l'opposition et du parti
Fidesz, Viktor Orban, "nous appelons le Parti socialiste à s'abstenir
d'aller contre la volonté du peuple et de mettre en oeuvre la décision
des électeurs". Gyurcsany constate pour sa part toujours obtenir
l'essentiel soutien de ses partenaires de coalition.
Thailand's friendly coup
In
the land of smiles, there were to plenty to go around even as the tanks
took position in front of key buildings in Bangkok as a bloodless
palace coup ended the government of Thai Prime Minister Thaksin
Shinawatra. The out-of-control insurgency in the south, which claimed
1,700 lives over the years, including a Canadian's just days before,
compounded with corruption allegations, led to growing tensions that
boiled over after largely boycotted general elections this year were
annulled due to concerns about their legitimacy.
It
wasn't long that rumors of a coup started circulating. Now one only
needed to see both domestic and international reaction to the military
presence in the streets of Bangkok to realise that while the martial
means were generally condemned, the end results were less so. Countries
such as the United States and Canada diplomatically condemned the coup
and called for the restoration of democracy as quickly as possible, but
the expressions of "disappointment" so much hardware was necessary were
not accompanied by demands for deposed Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra
to be returned to power.
Foreign
governments urged the coup leaders, who made sure to obtain royal
assent, to keep their promise to quickly hold democratic elections, as
the junta named a new prime minister, retired general Surayud Chulanont,
and unveiled an interim Constitution that gives them sway over the
current government and extends draconian emergency powers for months.
Army chief Gen. Sondhi Boonyaratkalin said a general election would be
held in October 2007.
In
the streets of the capital Thais seemed to not only heed king Bhumibol
Adulyadej’s appeal to “remain peaceful” but took amusement at the sight
of tanks, often cordoned off to keep at bay the hordes of
camera-snapping onlookers in what so far has been the friendliest coup
in recent memory. In fact soldiers posing in front of their hardware
with broad smiles made the troop presence seem more palatable to
visitors than honey-roasted bugs on sale at various food stalls.
The
death of Canadian Jessie Lee Daniel, 35, who was among at least four
people killed in the attacks 950 km away that preceded the coup, was
perhaps as close as it came to violence as Shinawatra’s government was
being ousted. Media reports said the bombs were apparently
remote-controlled, and were possibly the work of local Muslim militants
celebrating the one-year anniversary of their founding and could have
been a response to a state-organized peace rally held in the region
previously.
The
country’s first coup in 15 years, orchestrated while Thaksin Shinawatra
was in New York at the U.N. General Assembly and which took place
without firing a single shot, put the country under martial law in part
to solve security problems in the south. Sondhi said on nationwide
television that the overthrow was needed “in order to resolve the
conflict and bring back normalcy and harmony among people.”
The
approval of the Thai street, in part due to the blessing of the revered
monarch, was note-worthy considering the last successful coup-plotter,
when a military general toppled the civilian government in a bloodless
takeover in 1991, was ousted a year later following street
demonstrations. While the Bhuddist country has seen some 18 coups since
independence 70 years ago, they have taken an increasingly blood-less
nature.
“The
armed forces commander and the national police commander have
successfully taken over Bangkok and the surrounding area in order to
maintain peace and order. There has been no struggle," the new leaders
said in a statement on national television.
Thaksin
had angered the military recently by alleging that senior officers had
tried to assassinate him and also attempted to oust officers loyal to
Gen. Sondhi from key positions in the military. 59-year-old Sondhi, a
member of the Muslim minority, was picked to head the army last year
because it was felt he could better deal with the Muslim insurgency in
the south.
Ironically
while military talks of democratic-friendly coup leading the way to
much-needed reforms, what used to be the most popular leader in Thai
history, after winning consecutive landslide elections, is being blamed
for fomenting much of the growth in violence due to no-compromise
military policies. Sondhi, who in March called military coups “a thing
of the past” clashed with Thaksin over the handling of the conflict in
the south, recently proposing negotiations with the separatists.
While
the ruling military brass is promising elections, the coup pre-empted
new elections scheduled for November which were expected to return the
billionaire to office on the wings of widespread support amid the
nation’s poor, and also due to the opposition’s relative weakness. To
his credit, raising awareness of the less fortunate may become Thaksin’s
legacy, now that his leadership in conjugated in the past tense.
The
coup meanwhile has shown the military remains as much part of the South
Asian landscape as pagodas and motorbikes. In the Philippines it was
the military that cleared the way for President Gloria Macapagal
Arroyo's rise to power, turning against Estrada. Even in Indonesia,
where a fragile, democracy, has sprung following 32 years of
dictatorship under Suharto, a former man in uniform, President Susilo
Bambang Yudhoyono, has taken the helm after the years of disappointment
under Sukarnoputri.
The
generals now are more likely to be given flowers than feared. So long
as they keep their promises of returning to the barracks. But even the
Thais were reminded killing machines are not very apt at running
democracy. Days after the coup the military brass prohibited all
political activity, for an indetermined amount of time.
Gab-fest ends with apology
Words
may hurt, but as long as people keep talking, the damage is contained.
But does a page out of the book of Llewellyn Thompson, the U.S.
ambassador to the Soviet Union at the
heart of the Cuban missile crisis, always hold true?
Perhaps
this is where open chatter warfare takes place. The giant room that can
hold 1,800 people on the East side of Manhattan has increasingly been
described as a spiritual
chamber.
Last year Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad felt the "light" of God
while addressing world leaders. Last week, President Hugo Chávez of
Venezuela saw the devil, in a television moment the New York Times
called positively "Khrushchevian".
The man with the better tan won the battle of the ungrateful guests to the U.S. host,
trumping his Iranian counterpart, and friend of circumstance, who duelled with
U.S.
president George W. Bush, speaking hours apart from the same stage.
Speaking later, Israel tried to swing back the pendulum and spoke
favorably of the U.S. while declaring Iran its gravest threat.
But
neither the God-friendly world's most powerful man, nor a leader
speaking for citizens who consider themselves the chosen people could
come close to the Latino-accented rhetoric that rose across the hall to
both gasps and giggles. “The devil came here yesterday, right here,"
Chavez said, speaking a day after Bush took the same podium. “It smells
of sulfur still
today,
this table that I am now standing in front of,” he said in a session he
resorted to waving Noam Chomsky’s “Hegemony or Survival: America’s
Quest for Global Dominance” rather than quoting from holy text.
Ahmadinejad
on the other hand seemed to throw the book on the assembly. “The
question needs to be asked: if the governments of the United States or
the United Kingdom, who are permanent
members
of the Security Council, commit aggression, occupation and violation of
international law, which of the organs of the U.N. can take them to
account? Can a Council in which they are privileged members address
their violations? Has this ever happened?”
But
while his intervention, which lacked no build-up due to the scheduling
of his speech, received the usual polite, applause, Chavez got such loud
and long-lasting applause and cheers that
officials
had to contain the enthusiasm of the diplomats. Not to be outdone,
Ahmadinejad, whose visit had been preceded by a much less hostile U.S.
tour of his predecessor, reformist Mohammed Khatami, took his rant to
another assembly, and squared off in America's Council on
Foreign Relations, where he politely spent 40 minutes questioning the evidence that the Holocaust ever happened.
“I
think we should allow more impartial studies to be done on this,” he
said after hearing the account of an 81-year-old member who saw the
Dachau concentration camp as Germany fell. No
less
had been expected by members of the organization who had reacted with a
rare outburst when they learned of the decision by council president
Richard Haas to invite the firebrand Iranian president to the session.
The decision by the former head of policy planning at the State
Department was met by disapproval by the current head of the department.
“It’s fair to say that
Dr. Rice thought this was a bad idea,” a senior State Department official told the Times. “A really,
really bad idea.”
The Council reminded that other dictators such as Castro and Mugabe had also been guests in
the past. Truly to the hosts' credit, the invitations being extended could hardly be reciprocated.
But
in a week of sulfuric incantations and flying vitriol, no address
garnered the attention, and created the outburst, of the world's billion
Muslims like pope Benedict's quotations of a
medieval
passage calling Islam "evil and inhuman". None of the nearly two
hundred leaders speaking before the U.N.'s general assembly had managed
to send to the streets of
Mideastern
cities, in scenes reminiscent of the protests against Danish cartoons
depicting the prophet Muhammad, thousands of irate protesters, some of
whom burned the holy father's
effigy, fire-bombed churches and even killed a nun in Somalia.
Days later Benedict XVI said he was “very sorry” that his remarks at a German university
precipitated
a storm of anger, before issuing a second expression of regret,
stressing that his words, mostly about faith and reason and largely
criticizing the West, had been
misunderstood.
This Monday the apology tour continued as the pope told ambassadors
from 22 Muslim countries that he respected Muslims and that, in a phrase
borrowed from a
previous papacy which had professed a need for “reciprocity,” “interreligious and intercultural
dialogue is a necessity.”
While
Benedict stopped short of the full apology that some Muslim leaders
demanded, the gesture, which was shown live on Al Jazeera and was held
at the pope's Summer retreat at Castel Gandolfo, seemed to satisfy some
of the guests. “The Holy Father stated his profound respect for Islam.
This is what we were expecting,” Iraqi envoy Albert Edward Ismail Yelda
said as he left the 30 minute meeting. “It is now time to put what
happened behind and build bridges.” It wouldn't have sounded more
convincing in the thickest-layed U.N.-speak.
Dawson's familiar tragedy
Stringent
gun laws, a mandatory weapons registry and cries of "never again" were
no match for the acts of a lone gun-man who for fifteen long minutes
spread panic and bloodshed through Canada's second-largest city,
revisiting one of the darkest chapters of its modern history.
Again this month Montreal was sent reeling from the tragedy of a shooting at one of its schools
when
25 year-old Kimveer Gill targeted the students of Dawson college,
re-enacting one of his disturbed fantasies and in the process killing
one girl and injuring 19 others before turning a gun on himself.
That the attack had all the appearances of a Columbine copy-cat was not surprising, the
black
trench coat-wearing murderer admired Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris,
killers of 13 Colorado students in 1999, and like them was captivated by
weapons and the gothic arts and vowed to
fall in a hail of bullets.
While
Gill did not live to tell about this darkest wish, which he kept from
the few friends he had, let alone his parents, his personal blog on a
goth web site was graphically eloquent about his disturbed state,
featuring photos of him posing with a number of weapons, some illegal in
this country, and speaking volumes of his hatred for "normal people".
"Work
sucks ... school sucks ... life sucks ... what else can I say? ...
Life is a video game you've got to die sometime," he wrote in his
profile for a Web site called vampirefreaks.com. The one videogame
which particularly captivated him enabled him to re-enact the Columbine High School shootings.
Sadly,
Canada didn't need to look south of the border to recall previous
gun-shooting incidents in school. A mere week later 14 year-old Todd
Cameron Smith entered W.R. Myers High School and shot two students with a
.22 calibre rifle, killing one and wounding another. In 1992 it was a
college professor taking aim at his colleagues at Concordia university, a
few blocks from Dawson, and killing four. But the darkest of all days
was surely soiled by Marc Lepine on Dec. 6, 1989, who gunned down 14
women during the infamous Polytechnique bloodshed.
In
the midst of these tragedies, important lessons are being learned, and
may have prevented a much starker outcome. Gill carried three weapons
with him, including an automatic weapon and a 12-gauge shotgun, all
perfectly registered, and stashed in the trunk of his black Sunfire was
enough ammunition to wage his own personal bloody campaign of terror.
But the swift
response
of officers already answering another call at the time of the shooting,
and the rapid execution and strong coordination of emergency services,
prevented a much graver
tragedy. Even if such practise tragically comes as the result of repeat incidents.
The 1989 rampage led to new tactics after Montreal police was criticized for waiting too
long
outside Polytechnique as Lepine carried out his murderous attacks
against women. Montreal Police Chief Yvan Delorme said the lessons
learned from other mass shootings had taught police
to try to stop such assaults as quickly as possible.
"Before
our technique was to establish a perimeter around the place and wait
for the SWAT team. Now the first police officers go right inside." In
fact the first respondents were quick to
corner
Gill, who tried to shield his body with the friend of the only victim
of the shooting, 18 year-old Anastasia De Souza, and left Gill no
possibility of causing more carnage, but not before
causing mayhem and shutting down part of Montreal's downtown for hours.
Students
ran out of Dawson screaming after hearing the gun-fire, some with
clothes stained with blood; others cried and clung to each other once
they were at a safe distance. "I was terrified. The guy was shooting at
people randomly. He didn't care, he was just shooting at everybody,"
said student Devansh Smri Vastava. The attacker started firing outside
the college before walking in the
front door. Much of the shooting was in the second-floor cafeteria, in another scene only too reminiscent of Polytechnique.
Police
were not able to establish a motive for the attack, but his background
alone meant that whatever the explanation, it would defy common
understanding. In an exclusive interview with the NPU, his mother
described in tears how she learned about her son's death from the media
moments before the police came to the door to confirm the news. "What
can I say after I have just
learned my son was killed?" she said. "He was a good man, just ask anyone, ask the neighbors."
These
neighbors however painted the portrait of a solitary man with few
friends who lately had taken to changing his appearance, adding to his
usual dark line of clothing a freshly cut mohawk, which
unsettled
some neighbors. "I feel horrible, when it comes so close to home, I
have no words, I am numb, I am totally numb," one of them said.
The
sentiment, despite previous incidents, is felt by many in a province,
and across a country, which has once more dropped its flags at half
staff and drawn international attention for all the wrong reasons.
Longs aurevoirs de Blair
Les
Libanais l'ont conspué et traité d'assassin, les syndiqués l'ont
chahuté en sortant bruyamment d'un congrès auquel il prenait part, même
les membres de son parti lui font des signes de jeter un oeil à la
montre: plus facile d'être Tony Blair par les temps qui courent.
En
effet le Premier ministre britannique à l'origine de l'alliance
progressiste trans-Atlantique, dont il est d'ailleurs le dernier membre,
risque de faire l'objet d'autres remontrances au courant de la longue
période d'adieux qui précède son éventuel remplacement par Gordon Brown à
Downing Street.
Blair
devrait abandonner son poste après avoir fêté sa dixième année en tant
que Premier ministre en 2007, ce qui est plus que n'importe quel autre
leader travailliste avant lui. Il aurait pu tenter de battre le record
d'endurance de Margaret Thatcher en poussant son mandat à terme, mais en
annonçant qu'il ne se présenterait plus après sa dernière ré-élection,
il précipitait sa marche vers la sortie, un scénario pas tout à fait
inconnu au Canada, où l'on a tant suivi la saga Chrétien-Martin, avec le
dénouement qu'on connait.
Blair
revient bredouille d'un voya ge au Moyen-orient où sa tentative de
jouer un rôle de médiateur a été déboutée à deux reprises; à Beyrouth,
où on l'a accusé d'avoir épousé une position trop pro-israélienne lors
du récent conflit, et en Palestine, où le bagage historique de l'ancien
empire, sans parler de la participation britannique en Irak, ont laissé
chuter ses appels au dialogue israélo-palestinien sur des oreilles de
sourds.
En
effet rien n'a atteint la popularité de Blair comme la guerre en Irak,
au courant de laquelle le premier ministre a préféré ignorer les
manifestations monstres dans les rues de Londres et suivre les traces de
l'Oncle Sam. Cette d'image, non de bulldog, mais de caniche boiteux
suivant George W. Bush au pas, l'a même accompagné lors de son récent
périple. «Il est le plus grand criminel et un esclave des Américains et
nous ne comprenons pas pourquoi il vient», déclarait à l'AFP Hamzi
Moussa, un manifestant de 15 ans.
Le
ton avait même été donné à la veille de sa visite, lorsque le Premier
ministre palestinien, Ismaïl Haniyeh, a critiqué la politique "partiale"
de Tony Blair au Proche-Orient qui aboutissait, selon lui, à punir le
peuple palestinien. Les appels de Blair à la levée conditionnelle des
"sanctions économiques" contre l'Autorité palestinienne après la
formation d'un gouvernement d'unité nationale très attendu n'ont rien
amélioré son image. Et penser que les dirigeants politiques aiment
trouver lors de passages à l'étranger de quoi se distraire des querelles
domestiques.
Il
faudrait d'ailleurs que Blair conserve un peu de la haute surveillance
qui l'accompagne à l'étranger en rentrant chez lui, ou l'annonce de son
départ l'an prochain n'a en rien fait taire ses détracteurs, notamment
17 députés travaillistes, habituellement loyaux au Premier ministre, qui
ont signé une lettre l'invitant à démissionner. Parmi eux Tom Watson,
secrétaire d'Etat à la Défense démissionnaire, a été particulièrement
bruyant, écrivant récemment: "Je partage l'avis de l'écrasante majorité
du Parti travailliste et du pays selon lesquels le renouvellement du
parti et du pays passe nécessairement par celui de ses dirigeants".
D'autres
ont emboité le pas et pris la porte de la sortie. Tandis que Blair se
prépare à en faire de même, des proches collaborateurs parlent
d'organiser une "tournée d'adieux" à leur "star", au courant de laquelle
on voudrait véhiculer l'image de "la domination des idées du New
Labour, sur le triomphe du blairisme". Un spectacle qui ne manquerait
pas d'élever d'un cran le niveau de sarcasme, déjà flagrant, à
Whitehall.
Of dust and ashes
After
burning for 58 minutes the south tower of the World Trade Center
collapsed at approximately 10:00 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, sending
hundreds to their deaths and a dark cloud of smoke, dust and soot up
into the air and across lower Manhattan, filling the spaces left between
the buildings that shaped New York's financial district.
The
smoke and dust wouldn't settle for many days. From heaping mounds to
thin layers of it covered everything within a radius of many blocks,
from building windows hundreds of feet up in the sky to pay phones in
the street below.
For
nearly three weeks the owner of Chelsea Jeans, David Cohen, kept his
Broadway store open without selling anything. A tidal wave of dust had
broken its way into his clothing store when the towers collapsed,
covering every single item, from the shirts hanging on the walls to the
neatly stacked blue jeans, with a thick layer of ash that left all his
merchandise in the same color.
He would invite visitors in to look around and take photos, but they had to promise not
to
touch anything. "I wanted people to see it as it was," he said at the
time. Eventually Cohen started cleaning up his store, just as the rest
of the shell-shocked city started sweeping up. It took him a month, but
when he was done he left the wall of his store next to a window near the
entrance untouched, and proceeded to encase it behind a glass panel, as
a memorial for the victims. "I
wanted
to preserve it just as it was, to freeze this moment in history," he
said. "I knew that no one would remember how bad, ugly, how sad Sept. 11
was."
Cohen eventually closed his store in October of 2002, but not before entrusting the
New
York Historical Society with preserving the 50 square feet of space
that became known as the Chelsea Jeans Memorial. From Aug. 25 to next
January, a Society exhibition entitled "Elegy in the Dust" showcases the
memorial to mark the 5th anniversary of the terror attacks. It
re-creates the
dust-covered
shelves of jeans, shirts and other merchandise carefully preserved by
Cohen, and is accompanied by photos drawing a timeline of the day's
horrible events.
The
dust-cloaked garnments are encased in a sealed exhibition case not only
meant to protect them, but the viewing public as well. The World Trade
Center dust has been described as hazardous by a number of studies
conducted since 9-11 which have found them laced with sometimes toxic
and
even cancerous building material, such as asbestos. Last week one study
found that 70% of the first respondents who had worked at "ground zero"
to look for survivors and clear the debris had developed respiratory
problems and other ailments since, including 61% who had no health
problems before.
The
dust was deemed so dangerous that workers in chemical suits were used
to seal and transport the Chelsea Jeans artefacts to the exhibition
site. "I don't want to get near that thing," a member of the staff told
the NPU at the gallery that faces central Park.
But for the families of the victims of 9-11, the dust has gathered a significance that has little to do
with
health considerations, something Cohen and the society became quite
aware of before the exhibit was prepared. For Cohen, the realization
came the day, soon after Sept. 11, when one woman accompanying with a 10
year-old child asked if she could collect some of the dust he had left
untouched in his store.
He
acquiesced before understanding the deep connection they felt with the
powdery substance caking every nook and cranny in his establishment. She
then told him the boy had lost his father in the attacks and needed
something to remember him by. The notion that the dust could be
comprised
of more than pulverised construction material, computers and machinery
was not lost on the victims' families. Nearly three thousand people had
been killed when the towers came down in a puff of smoke, hundreds of
them were simply recorded as "missing".
As
a result transporting the exhibition meant looking out for more than
health considerations, but bearing in mind some of the dust could
contain the ashen remains of the victims. "We tried to treat the dust
very respectfully, very reverently," explains curator Amy Weinstein, "We
don't know what's in it, we know there have been many analyses of the
dust and ash from Sept. 11 and we know that those analyses have shown
different things at different times."
One
account discussed during a panel at Pace university last week described
it as a "toxic brew" consisting of components of construction,
computer, furniture and jet fuel. Many of the cheminals included toxic
dioxins and benzene, as well as materials such as asbestos, lead and
mercury. "The sheer volume of the particles would overwhelm the body's
ability to defend against exposure,"
explained
panelist Dr. Jacqueline Moline. But despite the growing body of
research, a direct causal link between the ailments and the debris isn't
that easy to establish Moline concedes, a stance also being observed by
mayor Michael Bloomberg.
In
the lead up to this year's anniversary, as a congressional hearing was
held in New York to address the issue, the city was being accused of not
doing enough to protect the health of the first respondents by failing
to provide filtering masks, even if an NPU reporter had been provided
one
one week after the attacks, just to follow the activities at the site
from a distance. It would not be the last accusations the city would
face, years after the unity and harmony that marked the immediate
aftermath gave way to impatience and accusations.
On
the hallowed site where the towers used to stand, barges had
criss-crossed the Hudson river for months to clear over half a million
tons of debris and rubble to a Staten Island landfill. But while the
clean-up efforts cleared what many considered an urban burial ground,
the transfer helped
create
what could in turn be considered the victims' urn, at the ghastly-named
Fresh Kills landfill site in Staten Island, one of America's largest.
The
sprawling site off I-278 started filling with the debris of the World
Trace Center less than a day after the attacks and would eventually fill
up a 48-acre area at the rate of 9,000 tons a day over the next ten
months. Some 65,000 personal items were recovered there, not to mention
over 20,000 body parts, half of which remain unidentified. In fact
identifiable remains of 42 percent of the 2,749
victims
have yet to be found five years after the attacks, prompting
authorities to consider new DNA technology to help with their
investigations.
Some
family members of the victims know the malodorous municipal landfill
off the West Shore expressway, deceptively among green hills that used
to be old dumps, as the only burial ground for their loved ones, and
have obtained special permissions to visit the Fresh Kills to pay
their respects. Among them, the Hornings have made a habit of dropping by on holidays and whenever they can make it.
After
coming to a checkpoint where they flash id cards issued by the NY
medical office they wait to be escorted to hill 1/9, where the ashes of
their 26 year-old son Matthew lie. The notion
their
burial ground lies in the heart of the country's biggest garbage dump
outrages them. Founders of the WTC Families for Proper Burial, one of
many 9-11 related lobbies to have sprung up in recent years, the
grief-stricken parents are fighting to have the ashes removed to a
proper burial site.
They
aren't alone. On Saturday their group gathered friends, families and
supporters by the WTC path station to protest that the remains of so
many 9-11 victims have been disposed of so unceremoniously. "This is
morally reprehensible and emotionally unacceptable, and we
are
going to fight it all the way," said Diane, who deplores the families
were once promised they would obtain the return of the remains after
they were sorted out.
Earlier
this year the families seemed to have scored a victory in the state
assembly in Albany where a bill requiring that the NY Port Authority
remove the ashes from the landfill site was unanimously approved, but it
is all window-dressing, members of the protest group tell the NPU where
the towers used to stand. The large number of unidentified remains
makes returning the ashes, and closing a very difficult chapter for
hundreds of families, all the more difficult.
The
group deplores that many families do not have any remains to reach
closure with and are suing the city for improperly sifting through the
wreckage of the towers, not for money, but to make sure
families
get a proper burial, they insist. "Up until a month ago they were still
finding new bone fragments," says Matthew's cousin Anna.
Matthew
was eventually officially identified when bones and his wallet were
found at ground Zero a full year after the terror attacks, she tells the
NPU a day before president Bush toured the site, but by then family
members had made their peace, knowing his floor was above the level
struck by one
of the planes and that no one there had survived. In that sense, they were fortunate to know, she says.
Cinq ans en Afghanistan
L'offensive
était une des plus importantes contre les forces talibanes depuis
l'arrivée des troupes canadiennes en 2002, faisant plus de 200 morts et
infligeant un dur revers à la guérilla, mais Operation Méduse a
également ajouté cinq soldats canadiens au compte des victimes, et les
chiffres ne font que confirmer l'importance des forces en présence selon certains.
Cinq
ans après le 11 septembre et le début de l'invasion qui renversa le
pouvoir taliban à Kaboul, les hostilités sont loin d'être terminées dans
ce pays souvent envahi et rarement conquis. L'offensive actuelle,
dirigée en grande partie par les troupes canadiennes, pourrait durer
plusieurs semaines, et prévoit déloger des forces talibanes solidement
ancrées à l'ouest de Kandahar, ville principale du sud et centre de
commandement de l'OTAN.
Pourtant
on n'est pas à la première opération du genre dans la région,
reconquise et à nouveau perdue par l'OTAN au courant de l'été.
«Franchement, j'ai été surpris de la résistance qu'ils ont démontré, a
déclaré le major canadien Geoff Abthorpe, commandant de la Compagnie
Bravo. J'avais bien l'impression qu'on allait leur donner un solide coup
de poing.»
Il
faut dire que les insurgés ont eu le temps de se préparer à défendre
leurs positions, les populations locales ayant été averties de fuir la
région en prévision d'une offensive de l'OTAN, un avertissement qui
tentait de limiter les victimes civiles mais a considérablement réduit
l'effet de surprise sur
le
champ de bataille. Ainsi cinq ans plus tard les éclats retentissent
encore sur le territoire afghan, tandis qu'Osama bin Laden, l'homme le
plus recherché au monde, manque toujours à l'appel.
En fait les combats actuels font état du regain des effectifs dans le camp taliban, un
regain
sans doute en partie dopé par la croissance de la culture de l'opium
dans la région, le produit à la base de l'héroine et de la morphine qui
finance en partie la guérilla. En effet, selon le directeur du bureau de
l'ONU sur le crime et les stupéfiants, Antonio Maria Costa, les
derniers chiffres sont "alarmants": malgré les politiques d'aide au
décrochage de la culture de l'opium dans la
région, la dernière récolte était de 49% supérieure à celle de l'année précédente. "C'est
une très mauvaise nouvelle, c'est hors de contrôle", dit-il.
Les
chiffres ne le contredisent pas: la guérilla a de son côté tellement
encouragé la culture de l'opium pour financer ses opérations que la
production aghane représente à elle seule 92% de la production
mondiale
et excède même la consommation de 30%. Plus d'un tiers du PIB afghan
est en fait directement lié à la production de stupéfiants,
particulièrement provenant des régions du
sud,
ou les combats actuels suivent leurs cours. «Le sud de l'Afghanistan
montrait des signes évidents et imminents d'éclatement, avec une
production et un trafic de la drogue à grande échelle,
le terrorisme et la guérilla, la corruption et le crime» pouvait-on lire dans un communiqué peu reluisant des Nations Unies.
Les
talibans ne sont pas les seuls à encourager cette culture illicite
puisque certains anciens dirigeants locaux en font autant, mais de plus
en plus, la guerre en Afghanistan, celle qui a lancé la guerre
internationale contre le terrorisme, semble inséparable de la guerre
contre la drogue.
Mais
d'autres groupes blâment la pauvreté et la misère des camps de
réfugiés, ou encore les politiques américaines, pour expliquer le
renforcement des effectifs chez les talibans. A la veille de signer une
accord de coopération durable avec l'Afghanistan, l'OTAN en fait de même
en projetant de gonfler les rangs dans le sud à 23 000 soldats d'ici la
fin de l'année. Selon certains porte-paroles de l'organisation, les
troupes étrangères n'ont pas tout le temps du monde pour mettre fin à la
menace talibane, en raison des tensions suscitées par les attaques
tuant des civils.
La fronde contre l'uni-polarité
La
multi-polarité, presque tous les pays hormis les Etats-Unis, la
puissance hégémonique, y croient, mais les plus récents adeptes de cette
vision du monde parlent ouvertement de fronde contre Washington. Cette
idée est à l'origine de drôles d'alliances de circonstance, entre
certains pays comme la Chine, la Syrie... et le Vénézuela.
Lui-même
adepte de Fidel Castro, le président vénézuélien Hugo Chavez effectuait
récemment une série de voyages à l'étranger qui, tout en aboutissant à
la signature d'ententes économiques, semblaient unir les voix
dissidentes contre Washington. Alors que le terme de "multipolarité" a
souvent
été brandi par certains membres du Conseil de sécurité, comme la France
et la Chine, Chavez, en effectuant ses récents périples à l'étranger,
veut passer pour le champion des petits, qui en unissant leurs forces,
veulent tenir les Etats-Unis en échec: "Quelque soit la force de
l'empire américain, il sera battu", déclarait lors d'une visite en Syrie le président Chavez.
Il
faut croire que son message réussit à passer dans le monde arabe, ou on
l'accueillait en héros à Damas la semaine dernière. Chavez promet de
construire "un nouveau monde" et de "creuser la
tombe
de l'impérialisme américain", ce qui, à la veille de son voyage au
Moyen-orient, l'a mené à faire appel au retrait des troupes israéliennes
au Liban, comparant les frappes du Tsahal dans le pays du cèdre à un
génocide.
Si
Chavez fait partie de l'axe contestataire Morales-Castro en Amérique,
il ne se veut pas moins interventionniste au sein de l'alliance
Iran-Russie résistant aux sanctions que veulent imposer à Téhéran les
pays critiquant le programme nucléaire iranien. Le Vénézuela vient
d'ailleur d'être admis
au
sein de la Ligue Arabe avec le statut d'observateur. Mais Caracas
pourrait davantage faire le poids en arrachant un des rares sièges
non-permanents disponibles au Conseil de sécurité de l'ONU cet automne,
d'ou les visites récentes chez deux de ses membres permanents, qui
résistent à la fois à
la vision unipolaire du monde de Washington et aux appels aux sanctions contre Téhéran, soit la Chine et la Russie.
Alors
que Chavez signait à Moscou des contrats militaires critiqués à
Washington, il obtenait de Pékin une quinzaine d'accords commerciaux,
notamment dans le domaine énergétique, mais surtout, le soutien de la
Chine en vue d'obtenir un siège au Conseil de sécurité. "Nous sommes
reconnaissants
du soutien de la Chine, affirmait Chavez, c'est très important, c'est
un soutien politique et moral surtout parce que nous partageons les
mêmes objectifs d'un monde de paix et de respect de la souveraineté des
peuples".
Cette
souveraineté passe par l'affirmation d'une multi-polarité, l'objet
d'une conférence à Kazan, capitale de la république russe du Tatarstan à
majorité musulmane, ou l'on visait à approfondir le dialogue entre la
Russie et les pays musulmans et à défendre un "monde multipolaire" face
aux Etats-Unis. "Un monde unipolaire sans système d'équilibre génère des
tensions et des guerres locales", y a déclaré le président du
Tatarstan, Mintimer Chaïmiev, à l'ouverture de la conférence.
Pour
ce qui est du siège à l'ONU, Washington ne cache pas sa préférence
pour le Guatemala au Conseil de sécurité, alors que les relations se
corcent davantage avec Chavez. En effet la CIA annonçait récemment la
création d'une mission spéciale sur le Vénézuela et Cuba, tandis que
Washington et Caracas échangeaient des missiles à boulets rouges après
l'interception au Vénézuela d'une valise diplomatique soupçonnée de
contenir du matériel de contrebande destiné
à l'espionnage.
Les
voyages à l'étranger de Chavez ne sont qu'un échappatoire temporaire
des divisions qui l'attendent chez lui, à quelques mois des
présidentielles de décembre. Populaire chez les plus pauvres mais
indésirable pour les riches, notamment la classe affaires, Chavez a semé
la
consternation en engageant des réformes agraires radicales, largement inspirées du modèle communiste cubain.
Les
politiques socialistes de Chavez créent parfois des divisions au sein
de son parti, qui ne veut pas pour autant faire fuir les investisseurs.
Chavez tentera de retrouver chez lui d'ici décembre une part du prestige
qui l'accompagne lorsqu'il voyage dans certains pays à l'étranger.
The bush's 7-ton problem
Even
for life-long observers of the bush like Neil Heron, the spectacle was
unique and tale-worthy. The half-eaten impala left bloodied and dangling
halfway up a small bush tree meant the leopard that left it there would
surely return.
When
he did however, some time around 10pm in the pitch dark African night,
he wasn't alone. A young lion, drawn by the smell of fresh raw meat,
also approached the tasty decoration hung up the three like a macabre
Christmas ornament. For him only, being at the top of the food chain,
would there be a holiday feast that night. After two charges amplified
by loud echoing growls, he had won the battle of nerves against the
young spotted predator, who left reluctantly a pray he had carefully
stalked and defeated a few nights before.
Darwin's
law rules in the bush of Kruger national park in South Africa, but the
natural state of affairs has been transformed dramatically in the last
few years, Heron says after a night spent listening to the grinding
sound of impala bone against a lion's teeth as he polished off the
remains of the small antelope common to these parts.
Scenes
like these may simply disappear in time, he fears, because "the real
kings of the savannah" are profoundly modifying a habitat limited and
crafted by men. Some 12,000 elephants march triumphantly throughout the
Kruger, while this may not seem like much in a park the size of Israel,
it is an increase of 50% from a decade ago, a brisk pace that sparks
fears saturation is nigh.
"It
is simply becoming too much for the ecosystem," says Heron, who has
lived most of his years in the bush and has been a Kruger guide for 13
years. "A new debate is necessary and it should address the conflict
between eco-tourism and conservation," he says.
Heron
has entertained the subject for years and fails to see an alternative
to a solution which has led one newspaper to brand him "elephant
killer". "We should forget about all the issues of morality, there is
simply a need to cull elephants," he says, pointing to changes they have
brought to their environment, which he refuses, but others do not
hesitate, to call "destruction".
But
the conservation area of nearly 2 million hectares, which may one day
merge with areas in neighboring countries to form a unique international
conservation zone, does not lack tell-tale signs of the pachyderm's
transformation of the bush. These 5 to 7-ton "habitat modifiers" strip
bark off acacias and other trees, if they don't knock them altogether,
bringing changes to a vegetation other animals depend on to survive.
Elephants
have little respect for international boundaries, let alone park
fences, which they topple, leaving other animals to infiltrate the park,
sometimes spreading diseases. In the worst-case scenarios, they destroy
homes and kill people, a reminder they are quite more wild than their
rather docile Asian cousins. To their credit their also have positive
impacts on the park, but the negatives are starting to outweigh them.
Heron
says he was there to witness the first vasectomy performed on an
elephant, a measure he disapproves of because its spread as a measure to
control their population would radically transform the creature's
social structure. "You just have to observe them briefly to tell they
revolve around the young elephants," he says.
What
brought on this overpopulation scenario was a measure widely acclaimed
as a victory for conservation only a decade ago, the end of all elephant
poaching, eliminating, Heron says, the only predator elephants had to
fear in their every day environment. "We need to reintroduce man to the
ecosystem (the park) and not just as paying visitor, but as a living
participant, who will be allowed to hunt in a limited way," Heron says.
"Elephants need to once more fear a predator."
An
unpopular statement among activists, it is a position gaining interest
among conservationists, no doubt because it comes from someone with a
passion and undeniable knowledge of the park's fauna. "I agree
completely with Neil that culling is the way to go," says Tom Cohen of
Conservation International, who has lived in South Africa for many years
and now works in Washington.
"The
opposition comes from animal rights activists who oppose any culling,
and some who argue that the cull will somehow bolster the illegal ivory
trade by making more ivory available. Maybe so, but the elephant
population is too big for the Kruger environment, so something must be
done."
For
Heron, the need to kill animals is a difficult but necessary solution.
"I love this country, I love this park," he says. "If I had to kill an
animal I would probably have to drop my work, I would have failed my
job." And yet his record is clean despite close encounters with
everything from lions to elephants, as he led visitors on private tours
of the park that is among the world's largest ecosystems. "People who
have killed elephants often dropped their weapons and cried. Do you
think it's easy?"
But
changes are needed if South Africans and nature lovers from all over
the world want to keep enjoying the park South African president Paul
Kruger founded in the XIXth century. The park is after all about much
more than flora and fauna he says. "South Africans need to come here,
not only to spend their vacation and see the animals, but to visit their
heritage, and learn their history," he says.
Sending in the blue berets
As
a tenuous cease-fire holds between Israel and Hezbollah after a 34-day
conflict which made over 1,000 victims, most of them Lebanese civilians,
European countries are scrambling to fill the ranks of a UN force
expected to stand between the belligerents, but 50 years after playing a
historic peace-keeping role in the region, eventually giving its Prime
minister the Nobel peace prize, Canada says it won't send troops to
Lebanon.
Ottawa
announced it was creating a $25 million Lebanon Relief Fund last week
but made clear it would not commit boots to the ground, one Canadian UN
observer having already been killed by Israeli air strikes and the armed
forces having their hands full in Afghanistan where a 27th soldier was
killed this week in a suicide attack, the 8th this month alone.
The
US has similarly dismissed sending troops but said it would contribute
some $230 million in relief and reconstruction aid. That didn't keep
Washington, which partly brokered the cease-fire, from calling for a
swift deployment of UN troops to southern Lebanon. Italy was the first
to seriously answer the call, saying it would play a leading role in the
peacekeeping force by committing 3,000 troops but seeking guarantees
Israel would cease military action.
Over
the weekend Israel conducted an incursion in the Bekaa valley and was
widely condemned for violating the Aug. 11 resolution calling for "the
immediate cessation by Hizbollah of all attacks and the immediate
cessation by Israel of all offensive military operations." The
cease-fire took effect three days later.
EU
foreign ministers meanwhile were preparing to meet with UN Secretary
general Kofi Annan to discuss troop contributions but already plans to
send some 15,000 soldiers to the region are being reconsidered. Half
that number may end up heading to the region. Countries have expressed
disappointment France, which helped broker the agreement and was
expected to lead the force, limited its initial commitment to some 200
specialists, saying it was apprehensive about sending more without a
stronger mandate to disarm forces.
One
major concern is a repeat of the Bosnian UN experience, during which
some 80 French soldiers were killed, a mission where blue berets were
not allowed to use force and many were held hostage by Serbian forces.
France is also wary of its history in the country where 58 of its
soldiers were killed in 1983 by terrorists, the same year the US Marine
barracks were hit, leading to the withdrawal of both armies from
Lebanon. France eventually boosted participation to 2000 troops.
Israel
meanwhile, which has not halted strikes in the Gaza strip, was accused
of committing war crimes by Amnesty International, and is concerned
about Iran's growing influence in the region. The regime backing
hezbollah has been bolstered by the terror group's stronger image at the
end of the conflict, a fact observers say was apparent this week when
Tehran said it would seek serious negotiations over its nuclear
programme but refused to promise to suspend the enrichment of uranium.
Hezbollah
meanwhile, which has gained status for standing up to Israel and keeps
its weapons but has not returned Israel's captured soldiers, is seen as
the big winner in the crisis. Israel, disappointed it was not able to
crush the group, fears it will rearm during the cease-fire, the eve of
which Hezbollah had sent the largest amount of missiles into northern
Israel. Hezbollah, meanwhile has sought to conquer minds upset by its
instigation of the conflict by being a major source of aid and relief in
the most affected regions.
Without apartheid to kick around
The
boys are out to play after class in the courtyard of Belle higher
primary school in Soweto township, south of Johannesburg. Dressed in
their school uniform, a burgundy polo and dark pants with comfortable
shoes not made for running around, they kick around a soccer ball in the
dirt
near a wall that offers a stark reminder of South Africa's ills.
A
painted on message reads "save sex for tomorrow" next to a now sadly
familiar red ribbon, the symbol of the country's campaign against AIDS.
"Hey mister, hello!" a boy screams out as a visitor observes them
playing. That he chose English rather than Afrikaans to salute strangers
is especially
significant
in this township, where protests against government regulations to
force students to learn Afrikaans thirty years ago sparked violent and
often bloodied protests and became the milestone in the movement against
apartheid.
One need only look across the street at the memorial of Hector Peterson, the first and youngest (13)
student
to die in the uprising, and the museum inaugurated in his honor, to be
reminded of the beginning of the end of the regime that
institutionalised racism, viewed blacks as inferior and kept them out of
cities. With the release of Nelson Mandela, in 1990, whose old home is
now a museum a
few
streets away, and the first non-racial elections that brought him to
power four years later, blacks were no longer confined to the townships
built to keep them away from white urban centers.
Now
they are free not only to go where they please but run the country,
currently under the presidency of Mandela protege Thabo Mbeki. Many
moved to the city, doubling the population of some urban centers such as
Cape Town in a mere decade, pouring in at the rate of 10,000 per day.
But one need only travel the distance from the Cape's airport to the
city, lining rows and rows of shacks made of old metal sheets -
sometimes left-over billboards - stitched together in the
rusted canvas of the shantytowns, to be reminded that the divisions of apartheid would not disappear overnight.
Twelve
years after the African National Congress took power, the old geography
of apartheid remains and while divisions persist, some suspect that
inequalities have in fact grown worse as the rich have become richer and
the poor poorer. "Yes apartheid is over but there are the very rich and
the very poor, nothing in the middle, and that's what we need, to
elevate the middle," says Neil Heron, a former head of Penguin
publishing South Africa which now runs a safari tour service in the
world-famous Kruger national park.
Himself
an opponent of the old regime, Heron points out the park was in fact
one of the rare areas of the country, from its inception early in the
last century, where blacks and whites could coexist without making a
fuss. But as in the Peterson museum, most of the visitors are white,
while most of the workers are black. The same observation can be said
about patrons and workers at the trendy mall in the white suburb of
Rosebank, which would not be out of place in Pasadena. One could say
that as many whites take the popular packed omnibuses that are the
terror of South Africa's roads as there are blacks who fly South African
Airlines.
A precipitated reflection no doubt based on the snapshot of a flash visit, but echoing a reality
often
splashed into the country's papers. Last week one major trade union
charged prize-winning SAA was "lily-white on top and pitch black at the
bottom" because 95% of top-level management belonged to the first
category.
Archbishop
Desmond Tutu, who still lives in Soweto, recently took issue with the
racial divide when he told the BBC that ten years after the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission began its work, whites, who benefited from
apartheid, did not appreciate the "magnamity" of the country's blacks,
whom he noted still lived for the most part in poverty.
In
fact while the government has maintained stability and sought to
alleviate poverty, running some 90 consecutive months of economic
growth, which averages 5% annually, its traditional political base of
poor black South Africans have barely felt the impact of it all, leaving
the country with an unemployment rate conservatively put at 27%.
Such
is certainly the view from the various levels of the Peterson museum,
looking over shanty dwellings of corroded metal in the shadow of a power
station which once fed white communities but not the millions of blacks
surrounding it. Now the towers of the Orlando power station are
decorated with paintings singing the praises of heroes of the struggle
against apartheid, but some areas are still neither connected to
electricity nor water.
Touring
the area, Thebe, who was raised in Soweto, where his family lives, but
moved out to live closer to work, takes time to say hello to his many
friends in the old neighborhood. "The government is going to eliminate
all this and build new houses," he says pointing to the worst areas. The
government has indeed built some 2 million new homes and connected over
4 million households to power and nearly three times that amount to
water. But in some areas of Soweto itself, the divergences are striking.
In
one sector of Orlando, homes at the top of one hill would not be out of
place in middle-class white suburbs while at the bottom lies a
monstruous camp of rows of dirty grey connected flats once built to
house miners, behind a fence of barb wire. While up the street Sowetans
come home to sattelite TV in their SUVs, down below a girl fetches water
at the local well, walking between piles of rubbish. Not very far,
half-naked children run across the streets, and surprisingly beam to
white visitors who tour the area in the increasingly popular township
tours.
The
phenomena of a divided township is growing evident in the real estate
market, which did not exist at first but where homes can now fetch for
fancy prices. Even some of the more run-down shacks can be snapped for
some $20,000, a home buyer's market no longer limited to the higher and
middle class. Some people that could afford to move indeed decided to
stay, not only because they are exempt from taxes, as Natives living on
reserves, but because this is home.
Yes
there is poverty and squalor, but not mysery, Thebe says. "I love it
here, I only moved to be closer to work but my heart is here, this is my
home, the people are beautiful." Reports of violence across the country
are largely exaggerated he says. After leading the fight against
apartheid the people are leading the fight against crime. "It is getting
better, the new Soweto is safer," he says despite guide books still
warning against touring the areas unescorted. "If you rule out theft of
commercial goods."
The townships are life itself, blink and you miss something, like girls jumping on a trampoline
in
the middle of a park or a young man getting a hair cut in a makeshift
barber shop on the sidewalk. In fact Mandiba himself, the revered elder
leader Mandela, would still be living here if not for the invasion of
the admiring hordes at all hours of the day and night when he returned
from prison, guides in his museum say. Now he has four homes, one in a
suburn north of the city near his foundation, another in his native Cape
province. His second wife Winnie still lives in Soweto in a relatively
well-guarded compound.
Segregation
over all is coming down, Thebe says. While some whites may still be
uncomfortable if blacks move into their neighborhoods, and some even
elect to move out as a result, "things are getting better". The ANC has
done relatively well in bringing people together, Heron agrees, but
inequality has perhaps worsened, and growing corruption scandals are a
sign the ANC should go. But what would replace it?
While
South Africa has relatively well handled the transition into democracy,
some transition issues, such as the transfer of white farms to blacks,
remain racially charged. And "democracy" may lack the scientific meaning
political scientists give it. According to some, a country living under
dictatorship or other undemocratic regimes, becomes democratic after
living through two peaceful transition periods.
While
the first occurred in 1994, the ANC has been in power ever since and
has to some become a one-party state. "That's the big fear," says Heron,
whose work-place includes leopards, lions and elephants but says
"people" are the worst predators of all. In fact the ANC's approach to
politics is creating fears its race for leadership, for coming elections
during which Mbeki will not be able to run again, involve too much the
inner circles of the party and not enough the "people" so much in
evidence in Soweto.
"Liberation
now, education later," Thebe says the old cry goes in the townships.
Living both, the boys of Belle-High keep kicking away chasing dreams of
glory when the country hosts the World Cup in 2010. Massive stadium and
other construction projects between now and then will no doubt create
plenty of work and maybe drop unemployment slightly, but the work the
government needs to do runs much deeper. In part because of the lack of
skilled labor.
Officials
were recently praising a policy of luring expatriates home, some 1,200
in the last two years, as a way to get that skilled labor back. Many
fled when apartheid ended and blacks took power. Some are still not used
to that. If they return however, it could go much further than helping
the economy.
Industrie de la peur à Sao Paulo
Il
était 2:30 du matin dans la nuit du 12 au 13 aout quand l'homme
encagoulé présenté devant un mur couvert de slogans a pris l'antenne. La
lecture de son manifeste a duré 3 minutes et 36 secondes, une éternité
sur les ondes, surtout sur la chaine la plus importante du Brésil.
Pourtant
TV Globo avait permis cette transmission inhabituelle, estimant ne pas
avoir eu le choix apres l'enlèvement d'un de ses reporters. "Nous
n'avions pas le choix, s'est excusé Globo lors d'un communiqué, apres ce
qui s'est passé à Sao Paulo au cours des derniers mois, aucun doute
n'était possible sur le point auquel pouvaient aboutir les actions des
bandits: il suffit de dire que les morts se comptent déjà par
centaines".
Un peu fort sur le chiffre, mais sinon, en effet, depuis le 12 mai, un genre de terreur règne sur la
mégalopole
d'Amerique du sud de 20 millions d'habitants, date ou l'organisation
criminelle Premier Commando de la Capitale a lancé des vagues d'attaques
contre des cibles civiles et militaires à Sao Paulo, faisant environ
180 morts dont 43 agents.
Opérations
menées depuis des cellules de prison, ou sont incarcerées les têtes
fortes du PCC, celles-ci ont prises des millions de Paulistas en otage
en attaquant les infrastructures de transport, comme les lignes
d'autobus, en plus des postes de police et autres symboles de l'ordre et
du pouvoir.
Dénoncant
les conditions de détention dans les prisons, les membres du PCC
passent pourtant leurs directives par téléphone cellulaire, et en cette
nuit de la mi-août, passent leur message en onde télévisée. Le
porte-parole au visage caché dénonce pendant ces longues minutes un
nouveau régime disciplinaire imposé aux chefs incarcérés de "sanction
cruelle" et réclame un "système pénitentiaire avec des conditions
humaines et la fin des humiliations et passages à tabac".
Le
message pourrait passer si les méthodes employees par le PCC ne
faisaient pas souffrir une population généralement pauvre, nous explique
notre guide lors d'un des légendaires embouteillages de cette jungle de
béton et de bitume ou circulent tant bien que mal six millions de
véhicules chaque jour. "Ce qui enrage les gens c'est que les criminels
s'en prennent aux transports urbains (notamment en incendiant des
autobus), que prennent la classe moyenne et les plus pauvres pour se
rendre au travail."
Car
s'il y a beaucoup d'autos à Sao Paulo, il y a encore plus de pauvres,
il n'y a qu'à voir les taudis des bidonvilles qui séparent l'aéroport et
les banlieues telles Guarulhos du centre-ville. La banlieue de
Sao
Paulo, c'est là ou a lancé sa campagne de ré-élection présidentielle
Luiz Lula da Silva cet été, à Sao Bernardo do Campo, ou il avait
participé au lancement du parti travailliste 27 ans plus tôt. Promettant
d'aider davantage les plus démunis et les classes ouvrières, "Lula" a
décrit les politiques économiques et sociales comme étant les "deux
facettes d'une meme pièce".
Un
discours bien équilibré pour la métropole financière du pays. Il y est
revenu à aux moins deux reprises depuis, le weekend de la transmission
du communiqué verbal, pour exiger l'intervention de l'armée sur le
dossier, et la semaine suivante, à Osasco dans la banlieue, pour
rehausser l'image d'un candidat local bousculé par l'insécurité.
Il
faut dire qu'à Sao Paulo, l'insécurité, c'est déjà une grosse affaire
comme laissent témoigner les concessionnaires de véhicules blindés dans
les zones des plus riches, qui constituent une minorité de 15% de
Paulistas. Si ce n'est pas pour éviter les embouteillages monstres, les
cadres préfèrent également se déplacer en hélicoptère pour éviter les
enlèvements fréquents qui financent les bandes criminelles, comme en
témoignent les nombreux bâtiments munis d'héliports.
L'enlèvement
c'est toute une industrie nous dit-on, avec un prix de rançon
généralement fixé dans les 5 ou 6 millions de dollars. Pour s'en
défendre, on estime à 70% la proportion des véhibules blindés dans les
quartiers chics, qui sinon préfèrent mettre leur sûreté dans les mains
des compagnies privées plutôt que les autorités policières.
Les
premières sont d'ailleurs presque trois fois plus nombreuses dans leurs
rangs, mais le manque de régularisation du milieu rend ces chiffres
incertains, et sans doute sous-estimés. La crise qui secoue la métropole
du pays, "une guerre civile non-reconnue" selon on expert sur le PCC,
ne passe pas inaperçue sur le plan politique, et contribuerait davantage
à la ré-élection de Lula en octobre croit-on, dont l'opposant
principal, Geraldo Alckmin, qui accuse déjà plus de 20 points de retard
selon un sondage, est gouverneur de l'état du même nom.
"Les
gens de Sao Paulo ne méritent pas ce qui leur arrive, lançait Lula lors
d'une entrevue radiophonique ou il dénoncait l'accès des prisonniers
aux téléphones portables. Il y a tellement
de gens en libérté qui n'ont pas de cellulaire, pourquoi devraient-ils en avoir?"
Malgré les slogans gauchistes du président devant ses partisans, le thème de l'insécurité et
la
nécessité de former des alliances en chambre, ou il pourrait perdre
certains sièges, risque de glisser son parti vers le centre selon
certains analystes. Des accusation d'achat de votes et d'escroquerie de
plusieurs milliards de dollars ont secoué son gouvernement et son parti,
ce qui
pourrait réduire sa majorité dans l'assemblée de 700 places de Brasilia.
Mais
la réalité économique reste positive, soit un taux de croissance de 4%,
des exportations à la hausse, un fort investissement étranger et une
inflation sous contrôle. Ce qu'il faut c'est assurer l'appui d'une
classe moyenne qui estime ne pas ressentir les retombées de cette
croissance. "Notre prochain gouvernment va corriger ce que nous avons
fait de mal et ajouter à ce que nous avons fait de mieux" lançait Lula
son premier jour de campagne. Dans une ville d'inégalités et
d'insécurité comme Sao Paulo, il y aurait de quoi remplir un agenda
pendant plusieurs mandats.
Israel strikes deeper as world seeks compromise
Israeli
troops drove deeper into Lebanon to hunt for Hezbollah militants who
retaliated by firing rockets while the world seeks a compromise to halt
the crisis in the Middle East.
The
matter was expected to be presented to the UN Security Council as it
seemed likely the US would be willing to press for the end of the air
strikes even if Hezbollah is not eradicated so long as it renounced
military action and remained strictly political.
Israel
said it would halt its attacks when an international force is sent to
southern Lebanon. Meanwhile it continued its objective of creating a
buffer between Israel and southern Lebanon, where Hezbollah is largely
based.
Israel
resumed exchanging fire with Hezbollah in Lebanon this week as
investigators looked into the mistaken bombing of a building in Qana
which killed over 50 people, mostly children.
On
Sunday Israel said it regretted the deaths but added it was targeting
Hezbollah fire originating from the area. Prime minister Olmert said
there would be no ceasefire in the short term.
Prime
minister Stephen Harper meanwhile said investigators looking into the
bombing of a UN monitoring post last week confirmed it had killed
Canadian Major Paeta Hess-von Kruedener. Three other observers were
killed.
Israel
apologised for the bombing and said it there would be a joint
investigation into the incident with the UN, which was outraged by the
attack because the post's location was well-known to Israeli
authorities. The UN said it had been alerting the IDF it was striking
too close to the location of its observers and initially called the
attack "deliberate" before accepting Israel's apologies.
Kruedener
was aware of the constant danger of attack, writing in emails before
his disappearance that "we have on a daily basis had numerous occasions
where our posiiton has come under direct or indirect fire form both
artillery and aerial bombing," adding that "this has not been a
deliberate targeting but has rather been due to tactical necessity" as
Hezbollah fighters were operating close to UN positions.
Harper
said the attacks were unfortunate but not deliberate, staying
supportive of Israel's position in the crisis. This has apparently
translated into a drop of support for his party in the polls.
Canadian
opposition politicians criticized the government's position as well as a
decision to end large-scale evacuations on the weekend and called for a
ceasefire. They said Canada's pro-Israeli stance was undermining its
ability to mediate in the crisis.
Israel
says it wants to create a special security zone in South Lebanon, to
protect itself from daily Hezbollah rocket attacks, one day after 8
soldiers were confirmed dead in a ground attack in Lebanon.
On
Wednesday the UN Security council failed to agree on a resolution
condeming the Israeli attacks in Lebanon which have killed over 600
people. China blamed the US, a veto-holding member, for preventing the
resolution.
Meanwhile
al-Qaida's deputy leader Al-Zawahiri said his organization would not
"stay silent" during the attacks, threatening to hit Western targets in
retaliation for Israel's strikes on Gaza and Lebanon.
While
al-Qaida and Hezbollah have their differences due to their different
religious allegiances, the threat heralds a possible alliance of
circumstance against a common enemy, Israel, which kept targeting
Hezbollah positions in Lebanon for a third straight week.
There
are growing fears tensions in the Mideast may find their way across the
Atlantic after a man proclaiming support for Arabs shot and killed one
person and injured others in a Seattle Jewish center this week,
prompting synagogues and other locations to boost security across North
America.
Liban: triste rappel du passé
A
nouveau, une tragédie s'abat sur la perle d'Orient. Un an après
l'assassinat du premier ministre Rafik Hariri, un appel désespéré au
cessez-le-feu du premier ministre libanais se fait à peine entendre sous
les bombardements israéliens, des répliques pour certains
"disproportionnées" aux attaques de militants du Hezbollah dans le nord
du pays hébreu, après qu'ils aient capturé deux soldats lors d'une
opération osée en mi-juillet.
Si
l'assassinat de 2005 rappelait la forte influence syrienne, condamnée
par la suite par les Nations unies dans cette affaire, la reprise des
hostilités dans ce pays en reconstruction met à l'évidence
l'insuffisance de ses institutions, une direction sous tutelle, aissant
le pays du cèdre à la merci des autres.
Si
ce n'est pas la Syrie qui mène le jeu, c'est l'Iran, en finançant les
militants du Hezbollah, tandis qu'Israel domine le ciel et songe a
ré-établir une zone tampon là ou ses troupes avaient été évacuées en
2000. C'est une réalité qui laisse planer la menace d'une crise
régionale, une véritable étincelle dans la poudrière du Moyen-orient.
Alors
que se multiplient les appels à la fin des hostilités, qui ont fait
plus de 300 morts depuis une semaine, la très grande majorité au Liban,
certains proposent l'établissement d'une force d'intervention, effaçant
celle qui est symboliquement en place depuis plus de vingt ans. Car nous
n'en sommes pas a la première fois qu'Israel intervient au nord de sa
frontière pour riposter aux attaques de militants se cachant derrière
une démarcation poreuse.
Elément
déclencheur de la guerre de 1967, les forces isréalienes y sont
intervenues pour contrer la menace d'Al-Fatah. En 1978 l'opération de la
rivière Litani était une autre intervention de taille, inspirant par la
suite l'implantation de la mission de paix de l'ONU, UNIFIL, toujours
symboliquement d'office. Quatre ans plus tard l'utilisation du Liban par
l'OLP comme base d'attaque a à nouveau mobilisé les forces israéliennes
vers le nord, décidant d'y rester jusqu'en 2000.
Entre
temps la naissance du Hezbollah, lors de la première année de cette
intervention, n'allait en rien diminuer les tensions au long de la
frontière. Obligé de lutter sur deux fronts depuis l'éclatement des
hostilités avec la bande de Gaza le mois dernier après la prise en otage
d'une soldat israélien, le pays hébreu ne retient pas ses tirs,
détruisant de nombreuses infrastructures à travers le Liban, ou l'on ne
soupçonne plus Téhéran et Damas de transférer d'armes de plus en plus
puissantes dans les mains du Hezbollah.
La
nature sophistiquée de ces missiles a surpris les stratèges israéliens
qui ont vu des tirs terroriser Haifa et d'autres localités plus au sud
de la frontière. L'attaque d'un navire israélien assurant le blocus du
pays a également étonné le hommes de kaki, qui n'hésitent plus de parler
de "guerre" avec les militants principalement positionnés dans leur
fief du sud du Liban.
C'est
là ou une famille Montréalaise a perdu onze de ses membres, huit
Canadiens, lors d'une seule attaque aérienne. La tragédie a secoué le
pays, qui compte environ 40,000 ressortissants canadiens sous le cèdre,
dont certains ayant conservé leur passeport après être retournés au
Liban depuis des années. Sept bateaux furent promis pour évacuer les
Canadiens lors de l'opération du genre la plus importante de l'histoire
du pays, mais les plans ayant eu du mal à se concrétiser en plain
conflit, le gouvernement Harper a fait l'objet de reproches quant à la
lenteur et l'exécution de l'évacuation.
Mêmes
reproches de lenteur du côté américain, ou les dirigeants songèrent
même à faire payer leur ressortissant de leur poche pour l'évacuation.
Pour un congressiste démocrate, il s'agissait ni moins d'un nouveau
"Katrina" La Grande-Bretagne de son côté ne ménageait pas les efforts,
se lançant dans l'opération du genre "la plus importante depuis
Dunkerke" selon un parlementaire britannique.
La
franche position canadienne dans la région, un soutien sans équivoque
d'Israel lors d'un discours moins équilibré que les précédents, avait
déjà surpris plusieurs observateurs, Harper estimant les attaques
israeliennes "mesurées" lors de son passage au G8 en Russie. C'était se
rapprocher d'une position américaine qui voit les affrontements à
travels le prisme de la guerre au terrorisme.
«Le
Hezbollah [...] est financé par l'Iran et protégé par la Syrie. C'est
de la dimension de la guerre contre le terrorisme, a déclaré un
porte-parole de George W. Bush. Le groupe des plus puissants a
d'ailleurs limité ses commentaires à la condamnation des attaques du
Hezbollah et avec un appel à une certaine retenue d'Israel, un document
interprêté différemment par des dirigeants aux positions parfois
opposées.
Alors
que le président Jacques Chirac regrettait la nature "complètement
disproportionnée" de l'opération israélienne, les Etats-Unis laissaient à
Israel le temps qu'il fallait pour mettre fin à la menace du Hezbollah.
L'appel des réservistes et les incursions furtives au sol dans le sud
du pays laissent présager un long affrontement, promettant un bilan
d'autant plus dévastateur au Liban, le pays à la merci des autres dont
les dirigeants sont à peine maitres chez eux. D'autant plus que les
infrastructures du Hezbollah pourraient s'avérer relativement intouchées
par rapport à celles du pays hôte.
Le cabinet de sécurité israélien a autorisé la poursuite des opérations au
Liban
«sans limite dans le temps» et aurait pu ajouter «dans les moyens».
Impuissant et découragé, le premier ministre Fouad Saniora déplore les
actions autant
israéliennes
que militantes, mais condamne de plus en plus le pays hébreu,
avertissant que la misère engendrée par la destruction de son pays lors
des pilonnages risque de faire naitre des individus démunis et
désespérés, encore d'autres, pour entourer Israel de voisins enragés
avec bien peu à perdre.
Il
y a même de quoi convertir des Libanais maronites, d'habitude ennemis
jurés du Hezbollah chiite, bien qu'on se promet d'éviter les divisions
qui ont déchiré le pays par la guerre dans le passé. Comme dans la bande
de Gaza, ou les nouvelles institutions ont été rasées par les tirs
nourris israéliens, on redoute à moyen terme une crise humanitaire
d'envergure qui ne fera aucune distinction religieuse.
Doubts amid the fog of war
After
initially supporting the war in Afghanistan and reluctantly putting
aside their preferences for their traditional role of peace-keepers,
Canadians are slowly starting to turn against the idea of an extended
stay in the far away country, as the casualties start to mount and
questions arise from the purpose of Canada's military mission.
A
recent poll found that 41 percent of those surveyed, including 54 in
traditionally war-wary Quebec, simply believe troops should be brought
home now, while 34 percent believe they should stay for a limited period
of two years or more, this as the military confirms its commitment to
bulking up the war machine with new purchases and higher troop levels.
48 percent said the effort in Afghanistan was going worse than expected,
and that was before two more casualties brought Canada's death toll to
19 troops and one diplomat.
Meanwhile
all the signs point to a possible extension of Canada's stay in the
country, considering the resurgence of the Taleban in the south and
growing needs for international troops local officials say should reach
150,000 to secure the country, five times current levels. Sadly, while
playing its part defending the country and rebuilding it, the Canadian
mission has seen a number of firsts it would rather have done without:
from the first combat casualty since the Korea war to the first female
casualty.
One
of the latest also involved one of Canada's youngest fallen soldiers,
Corporal Anthony Boneca, 21, a reservist killed in a firefight west of
the city of Kandahar, but what he could be remembered for is raising the
first internal objections to the war in Afghanistan.
While
Boneca himself never publicly spoke a word of disapproving the mission,
said he was disgusted by it, pushing him to the point of contemplating
talking about suicide to get discharged early.
While
Canadians have grown used to hearing about strong opposition to the war
in Iraq from Americans, have seen consciencious objectors seek refuge
in Canada, and in the more extreme cases, heard of US soldiers taking
their own lives, it was the first time they were exposed to a vaguely
similar reality over Afghanistan.
Friends
of Boneca said the soldier considered his second tour of duty, which
was drawing to an end, a "living hell", which deflated his spirit and
led him to question Canada's role in the conflict.
"He
was telling me no one wants to be there, no one knows exactly why
they're there and why is Canada in a war zone when all we do is protect
and peace-keep," Dylan Bulloch, one of his best friends, told reporters.
Bulloch
said Boneca had recently complained of being overworked and seemed
uncharacteristically drained of energy. "He's one of these people that
are able to bounce back full of energy. And hearing him saying he was
tired and his morale was down was a complete shock."
Boneca
also listed a litany of complaints unfortunately common in the
military, which included lack of training and equipment for the mission,
leading him to look for ways of getting out.
"The
second time out [his second tour], he was e-mailing and phoning here
and just saying how much he hated it and he was scared for his life,"
said his girlfriend's father. "He just hated it over there."
On
one occasion Boneca said a seven-day patrol stretched into a 22-day
patrol which depleted rations causing him to lose weight. He jokingly
referred to it as the Kandahar weight-loss program.
"Mentally
they weren't ready for hand-to-hand battle and all this other stuff,"
he added. "I don't feel any reservists should be put on the front line
like he was."
While
reservists comprise 10-15 percent of the Forces in Afghanistan, they
represent double that share of casualties. But Defence Minister Gordon
O'Connor defended the military's decision to put reservist soldiers in
combat roles, especially at a time of major overseas commitment, and
dismissed suggestions Boneca felt "misled" and wanted out of the
mission.
"You
don't opt out once you're in," O'Connor said at a news conference. "You
don't get a choice about what you do or don't do. This is the
military."
The
minister denied reservists were ill-prepared for such a mission. "Once
they go to operations, everyone is trained at the same standard," he
said. "There's no difference between a reserve soldier and a regular
soldier. They take the same tasks, they take the same risks, and if you
can imagine whatever the benefits are, they get the same satisfaction."
His
father said Boneca had never made negative comments in discussions with
him and said he was a proud soldier who understood the mission in
Afghanistan. "He was proud to make a difference," he said. "Certainly
Anthony wanted to come home, but I ask: what soldier wouldn't in that
situation?"
Nineteen
Canadian soldiers and one diplomat have been killed in Afghanistan
since 2002, fifteen of them since the troops relocated from relatively
peaceful Kabul, and the Forces have been warning they were expecting
more casualties as they were taking an increasingly aggressive role
against the Taleban in the south of the country.
US
forces are soon to hand over control in the south of the country to
NATO forces but Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, on a flash visit
to the country, said this week that did not mean the US would play less
of a role in the country. The US and other NATO forces provide key
logistics enabling Canadian troops to move about in the air.
Unshaken resolve
Four
days after London marked the first anniversary of the transit bombings
that shook the British capital, it was Mumbai's turn. Again a sprawling
metropolis' transit system was targeted, again coordinated attacks
suggested the work of the global jihad, again the victims were many. But
for all those tragic similarities, a more uplifting one also holds
true: the resolve of a nation too strong to be swayed by the bloody acts
of the coward and incompetent who seek refuge in violence.
In
Britain last year Londoners followed the lead of their inspirational
mayor who defied the terrorists and declared that they would fail to
change Britain's free way of life. "In the days that follow, look a t
our airports and seaports, and even after your cowardly attacks,"
Livingstone said. "you will see people from all over the world coming
here to achieve their dreams. Whatever you do, however many you kill,
you will fail."
On
July 12, Mumbai picked up the pieces after a series of devastating
bombs on its rail line system, killing over 200 people and injuring
hundreds, and boarded once more trains which had been sent to their doom
the previous day. The country's financial capital, which came to embody
India's 21st century ambitions, shrugged and moved forward. While the
bombs had targeted the country's well off by being placed in first class
compartments, they rolled up their while collars and sent the Mumbai
exchange rallying after the previous day's losses. The markets, were
already no longer registering that day's rush hour calamity. In London,
the City had rallied even before the markets had closed.
"No
one can make India kneel. No one can come in the path of our
progress," Prime minister Manmohan Sing vowed in a television address.
"The wheels of our economy will move on."
Police
in Mumbai, who have arrested hundreds and charged two, were
investigating possible links between the serial attacks and a Pakistani
group with ties to many suspected terrorists recently arrested across
the world, including Canada.
The
Anti-terror squad of Mumbai police busted two suspected cells of
Lashkar-e-Taiba after seizures of radio-enabled detonators in March but
said it wasn't sure all possible plotters had been caught. They are now
questioning whether people under custody knew of the attacks. Recent
anti-terror arrests in Canada, Australia, the US and Britain had some
ties to the group which emerged after 9-11 as a significant player among
Islamic militants, with important ties in the West. Some suspect camps
run by the group in Pakistan are serving as the new training ground for
militant groups from across the world, as Afghanistan once did.
A Canadian arrested in Lebanon and was plotting to target New York said he planned to
attend
one of these camps. A number of suspects arrested in the alleged
Toronto plots are also thought to have links with groups in Pakistan.
Al-Qaida recruiting DVDs handed out at some Toronto-area mosques were
also said of referring to "our brothers" in Kashmir, the site of recent
terror blasts, some coinciding with the Mumbai attacks, according to
media reports.
Anonymous
intelligence sources were telling the Times of India police thought LeT
were behind the attacks with the support of the "Local student Islamic
movement of India" in order to "trigger communal conflagration in the
country's financial capital." L-e-Taiba denied the charges and Pakistan
said it was dangerous India looked north of the border for answers, even
though the suspicion is fed by both the sophistication of the attacks,
made from materials foreign to India its police maintained, and the fact
that the terror group had targetedMumbai 11 times in the last decade
alone.
Mumbai is no stranger to terror attacks, Kashmiri separatists were blamed for a twin
car
bombings in 2003 that killed 53 people there. In 1993 some 250 people
killed when at least 13 bombs were sent off in a day known as "Black
Friday". Some analysts think efforts to open the border between Pakistan
and India in disputed Kashmir helped trigger the attack, some groups
benefiting from the continuation of hostilities between the two
countries.
Pakistani
president Pervez Musharraf strongly condemned the attacks as a
"despicable act of terrorism" but some blame his intelligence services
for supporting groups such as LeT, which some see as frontline
resistance fighters in Kashmir. Investigators say the military-grade
explosives used in the blasts were favored by the militants. The attacks
certainly created a chill between the two nuclear neighbors.
La Corée du nord s'essaie encore
Et
si on avait apaisé l'Allemagne de 1918 et tapé sur celle de 1938 au
lieu d'accepter le compromis de Munich? L'histoire est de nature
révisionniste, mais on se pose aux Etats-Unis déjà des questions
beaucoup plus d'actualité: si l'Irak n'en valait pas la peine faut-il
laisser la Corée du nord poursuivre ses éssais stratégiques en toute
impunité?
Washington
n'a certes pas d'appétit pour un nouveau conflit, surtout contre un
adversaire qui a l'habitude de faire des éclats aux allures stratégiques
pour se faire remarquer, mais l'aveu l'an dernier selon lequel
Pyongyang aurait développé l'arme atomique a donné un sens beaucoup plus
sévère aux essais de missiles stratégiques récents, ratés ou non.
Alors
que le régime hermite prétend avoir des missiles capables d'atteindre
les côtes américaines, les essais de la semaine dernière se sont soldés
par des échecs cuisants, aboutissant au fond de la mer du Japon. Ce qui
n'a pas empêché le Conseil de sécurité de se saisir du dossier et de
faire planer la menace de sanctions, peu efficace soient-elles envers un
pays où il manque déjà de tout.
Alors
que cette fois Washington s'engage à faire front commun avec ses
partenaires internationaux, le président Bush n'a pas manqué l'occasion
de soulever la menace lors d'une rencontre avec le premier ministre
canadien Stephen Harper à la Maison Blanche, qu'il verrait bien
participer au controversé projet anti-missile, qui connait de maigres
succès: "Nous essayons de déterminer si le missile s'en allait chez
vous" a lançé Bush à propos des essais coréens, bien que les côtes
canadiennes soient à des milliers de kilomètres de la mer du Japon.
Harper
n'a pas mordu, préférant ne pas ouvrir le dossier, mais a laissé
entendre qu'il pouvait très bien comprendre l'utilité d'un système
anti-missile chez certains alliés. Washington a d'ailleurs dépêché deux
navires équipés d'antimissiles en Asie, mais comme pour les essais du
bouclier anti-missile américain, l'interception est loin d'être
garantie.
Cette
mise en place défensive est pour l'instant la limite des possibilités
militaires américaines, l'option offensive étant écartée. Pourtant les
tentatives diplomatiques au niveau du Conseil de Sécurité s'avèrent
frustrantes pour Washington, malgré les cris de "provocation" qui ont
suivi les sept tirs d'essais nord-coréens la semaine dernière.
D'une
part Pékin et Moscou, qui détiennent un véto, résistent aux appels aux
sanctions. Puis la Corée du sud, qui caresse encore des rêves d'union
avec le nord, a fait état d'autres divisions en accusant le Japon de
"faire des histoires" et d'être un brin alarmiste à propos des tirs en
portant l'affaire au Conseil de sécurité. Il faut dire que le Japon
tient en ce moment des propos qui lui sont d'habitude étrangers, allant
jusqu'à songer à la possibilité théorique et constitutionnelle de
frappes préventives.
Voilà
qui met des bâtons dans les roues de Washington, qui tient à ce que "le
monde parle d'une seule voix" à Pyongyang. Encouragé par cette
situation, le dirigeant Kim Jong-Il a pu y aller d'une diatribe typique
en menaçant les Etats-Unis de "guerre totale" en cas de "vengeance"
américaine, refusant toute "concession" aux "ennemis de toujours".
Pourtant
il y a dix mois les Etats-Unis et la Corée du nord participaient bien
aux pourparlers à six censés conduire au désarmement nucléaire du pays
hermite. Ce dernier doit cependant se demander pourquoi a réagi si
différemment une communauté internationale qui a vu l'Inde procéder à
son propre essai de missile balistique de moyenne portée à capacité
nucléaire, ces derniers jours, sans la moindre réaction.
Le
29 avril, le Pakistan, autre puissance nucléaire régionale, avait
procédé à son propre test. Pyongyang soutient que ses tests font autant
partie des exercices militaires de routine. Même si la routine, en Corée
du nord, c'est avant tout la famine...
L'Italie championne, après tout ça
Pour
un mondial qui suivait un fil bien ordinaire et sans histoire, celui
d'Allemagne a connu une fin digne d'une mise-en-scène de la Scala. Les
deux finalistes ne le sont devenus qu'à la suite de coups de théâtre
étonnants.
Déjà
ils avaient leurs récits bien à eux: les Italiens voulaient à tout prix
oublier un scandale sportif touchant 13 des 23 joueurs sélectionnés et
la France voulait marquer la fin de l'ère Zidane avec une certaine
émotion.
Cette
sélection française, qui n'avait rien démontré d'exceptionnel, a pris
goût à trouver le fond du filet après deux matchs médiocres, battant le
Togo 2-0 et éliminant l'Espagne 3-1.
Tout
était en place pour souhaiter une retraite méritée au vénéré Zinedine
Zidane en quarts contre le Brésil quand les bleus accomplirent le coup
d'éclat des éliminatoires en éliminant la Séléçao 1-0. Le duo
Zidane-Henry auteur de ce but allait montrer ses dents juste à temps
pour faire de 60 millions de Français d'inébranlables croyants.
De
leur côté, les Italiens, à peine mis à l'épreuve aux quarts contre
l'Ukraine (3-0), allaient, comme à chaque douzaine d'années depuis la
finale de 1970, s'assurer d'une participation au match ultime, en
sortant les hôtes quelques minutes avant la fin des périodes
suppémentaires, 2-0.
Comme
s'il s'agissait de la culmination de ces moments cardio-vasculaires
forts, la finale avait de quoi convertir même les Nord-américains
friands de roman-savons. La présence italienne assurait une
tragi-comédie indubitable, tandis que celle de la France, empreinte de
sauce berbère, allait insérer un bonne dose de drame à la rencontre.
Les
émotions fortes ne se sont pas fait attendre, Thierry Henry chutant
après quelques minutes de jeu après un choc à la tête. Un moment de
répit en touche mais rien de cassé.
Quelques
instants plus tard, un premier carton jaune à la suite d'une faute sur
Viera. Mais c'est à la septième minute que l'arbitre a vu rouge,
ordonnant un pénalty contre l'Italie après faute dans la zone critique.
Comme
lors du match précédent contre le Portugal, l'homme désigné ne laissait
pas l'ombre d'un mystère, et Zidane parvint à déjouer Buffon sans même
avoir à trouver le fond du filet lors d'un 'panenka' osé qui devait tout
à l'effet de surprise. Sur le coup, le gardien italien méritait son
nom.
Douze
minutes plus tard les Italiens répliquèrent lors d'un but de Materazzi
qui allait leur donner des ailes. Ils allaient en effet dominer le reste
de la demie (60-40%) et frapper la barre horizontale avant les 45
minutes. La France allait bien revenir dans le match en force mais sans
changer le résultat.
C'est
lors des périodes supplémentaires que le choc de la fin se préparait.
Buffon effectua l'arrêt cette fois lorsque Zidane aligna une tête
impardonnable, le genre de tête qui avait poignardé le Brésil à deux
reprises en 1998. Puis à la 110ème minute, une tête inexcusable, sur la
poitrine de Materazzi celle-là, à la suite d'une discussion à la teneur
toujours pas très claire.
Pour
la quatorzième fois de sa carrière Zizou allait être renvoyé par carton
rouge, mais la dernière celle-là, l'excluant des tirs de pénalty qui
allaient déterminer le sort de la rencontre, remportée par l'Italie 5-3.
L'ère
Zidane prend fin inexpliquablement, son auteur une énigme et un génie,
capable d'excès qui ont servi le pire comme le mieux, mais sans jamais
laisser indifférent. On désigna Zidane vainqueur du précieux ballon d'or
du tournoi, pour ce qu'il avait fait de mieux.
COMMENTAIRES
"Il
m'a dit de choses très dures, commentera Zidane quelques jours par la
suite, des choses très personnelles" entre autre sur sa famille. Zidane
s'est excusé auprès des jeunes pour son geste mais sans exprimer de
véritables regrets, considérant celui qui l'avait provoqué de coupable
dans cette affaire. Pensez-vous, dira-t-il, qu'on pose un tel geste dans
une finale parce qu'on en a envie? Il y a des mots plus durs que des
gestes, dit-il.
La
FIFA enquête présentement sur l'affaire et pourrait, en fin de piste,
retirer le ballon d'or de Zidane, qui avait été décerné par la presse
avant la finale. Materazzi fait également l'objet d'une enquête, puisque
ses commentaires pourraient avoir été de caractère racial.
Setback for Latin left
The
are limits to the leftward tilt Latin America has experienced, the last
weeks have shown, as one of its most influential countries stayed true
to its pro-business tradition while one of the architects of the
socialist surge suffered a minor setback.
All
eyes were on Mexico’s elections as conservative National Action Party
candidate Felipe Calderon appeared headed for a narrow victory in the
divisive presidential election, but left-wing, former Mexico City mayor,
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, of the Democratic Revolutionary Party,
promised he would not go without a “polling station by polling station”
recount of the tally.
On
election night, election officials abstained from declaring a winner
due to the close results, but the late counts seemed to be in the former
energy minister’s favor, signifying a continuation of the policies of
the outgoing Vicente Fox. “There is an irreversible result, and it is in
my favour The result gives me a very clear victory that cannot be
reversed,” Calderon ventured, despite leading by less than 400,000 of
the 40 million votes cast across the country.
The
loss would keep socialist parties out of Mexico, stopping the leftist
wave sweeping the continent for the last few years. While during recount
results showed the tally tilting toward the leftist candidate at one
point, further tabulations returned Calderon’s lead. Calderon offered
his opponent a spot in cabinet but Obrador remained defiant, saying he
would provoke massive demonstrations and challenge the results in court,
citing irregularities.
After
a review of the votes, Calderon of Vicente Fox’s PAN, took 35.88
percent of the votes to Obrador's 35.31%, separating the two by about
220,000 votes. Bearing very much the likeness of the new leaders of the
Americas, Obrador is a populist and champion of the poor who promised
massive spending on social programs and infrastructure projects.
The
former mayor of the sprawling metropolis led in most of the polls,
until recently, when his opponent staged an unlikely comeback. News of
Calderon’s preliminary results alone jolted the Mexican markets by
nearly 5 percent, fearing his opponent would work against the country’s
embrace of free-trade policies. Markets across Latin America have been
concerned about a string of recent elections which have brought to power
leaders of various shades of leftist red.
Among
the most radical has been Evo Morales of Bolivia who sent shockwaves by
nationalizing energy and other companies in the last months. As Mexico
was counting he suffered a setback of sorts, winning a narrow majority
in a new assembly but falling short of the two-thirds majority he needed
for full control to rewrite the constitution. At the same time four of
the country’s nine regions, all rich in natural resources, seemed to
back more autonomy, something Morales is personally opposed to.
“We
want to be an exemplary country in Latin America with the participation
of the people,” Morales said, trying to hide his disappointment. “That
is what is historical about today.” Morales is determined to pursue
radical reforms which have already included redistributing land and
cutting public sector salaries. Morales also wants to give the
indigenous population he belongs to more of a voice, tighten state
control of the economy and make the political system more transparent
through constitutional amendments he hopes to put to the people.
The
lack of a clear majority in Mexico, where both candidates initially
claimed victory, will also be an impediment to needed reforms on labor,
judicial and energy-related fronts. At least the incident-free
organization of the vote and multiple-party participation was a reminder
of already entrenched reforms in the country which for seven decades
was ruled by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, now a shadow
of its former self. International observers noted no major
irregularities and thousands of striking teachers even postponed their
protests to leave the polling places clear for voters.
But
the flood of illegal immigrants to the U.S. remain a testimony to the
weaknesses at home, a very divided land where few have profited from the
growth brought on by free trade with Canada and the U.S. Heavy crime
has also left a scar in some regions of the country, especially along
the U.S. border, the crossing point of the lucrative drug trade.
Leading
the hard left among Latin American countries is Venezuelan president
Hugo Chavez, whose country was recently admitted into the Mercosur trade
bloc and may be looking too far ahead in terms of integration, seeking
to become a counterweight to Nafta. Soon after his country's admission
Chavez called for the regional bloc’s Armed Forces to “merge”, a debate
deemed premature by other leaders who noted it took Europe decades of
integration to consider military matters.
A
model and mentor for some, such as Morales, Chavez has however created a
backlash of sorts across Latin America, where other leaders have been
wary of upsetting the United States. Regardless, last week Venezuela
celebrated its Independence Day with a massive military parade that
served as a show of force to a Bush administration which has frozen the
supply of arms and parts to the country.
Mexico’s
results, at least as they stand now in what is still a very divided
country, have shown that Washington can still count on at least a few
remaining allies in the region that remains its precious back yard.
Israel creates buffer to repel attacks
Less
than a year after abandoning the Gaza strip, Israel served notice it
would not hesitate to cross the newly established border into Gaza to
prevent attacks or rescue one of its own even if it involves
assassinating elected officials.
In
the last weeks Israeli forces seized control of former Jewish
settlements in the northern Gaza Strip, effectively carving out a buffer
zone after Hamas Islamist militants fired rockets into a major Israeli
city. Since last week Israel massed tanks across the border while
airstrikes hit targets where the rockets reportedly originated, in
bloody clashes triggered by the killing of two Israeli soldiers and the
abduction of another when Palestinian militants attacked an Israeli
military post.
Since
settlers have been caught in the crossfire and tens of Palestinians
have been killed after what the UN condemned as the use of
"disproportionate force." But Israel has spared no efforts to recover
its soldier, arresting eight ministers and 55 elected officials while
conducting flash incursions into Gaza.
Palestinian
critics say Israel is only seeking to do away with a Hamas-led
government it was helpless to watch win recent elections and that recent
events have served as excuses to oust elected officials. The UN has
pleaded for both sides to avoid all-out clashes and said an airstrike
hitting Gaza’s only power plant risked creating a humanitarian crisis,
while the U.S. cautioned Jerusalem about ousting president Abbas, who is
said of being squeezed by militants in the Gaza strip.
Palestinian
prime minister Ismail Haniyeh, whose office was targeted by air raids,
said Israel’s offensive is aimed at toppling the Hamas-led government,
but maintained mediation was necessary to end the crisis over the now
famous Israeli soldier, 19 year-old Cpl. Gilad Shalit. “This total war
is proof of a premeditated plan,” he claimed.
In
addition to massing troops along the border and launching incursions,
Israel sent undeniable messages, destroying the interior minister’s
office and flying fighter jets over Syria, which it accuses of
supporting militants in the Gaza strip. Israel said both were targeted
because they were “a meeting place to plan and direct terror activity.”
A
ministry spokesperson called on Palestinian security forces to mobilize
to repel an anticipated Israeli invasion, but the security forces were
stripped of authority by Abbas, the moderate leader of rival faction
Fatah, in a power struggle following Hamas’ victory in January
parliamentary elections. Fatah’s leaders have not been able to obtain
the soldier’s release from Hamas and other groups which do not want to
be seen capitulating.
In
the continuing search for a compromise which Israel insists is not
taking the form of negotiation, both sides have rejected each other’s
overtures, Palestinians refusing to trade the ministers for the soldier,
and Israel rejecting offers to secure the soldier’s return by releasing
a number of Palestinians under custody. “Surrendering today means
inviting more extortion,” Israel prime minister Ehud Olmert insisted.
Egypt’s
efforts to broker an agreement have been hurt by divisions within Hamas
itself, split into parts in Gaza and in Syria, where its political
leader Khaled Meshal lives. Abbas made his frustrations plain: “The
Hamas leadership abroad says that the decision is in the hands of the
military wing in Gaza,” he said. “While the military wing says that the
decision must be made by the leadership abroad.”
The
raids were the first into southern Gaza since Israeli soldiers pulled
out last year after a 38-year occupation. Olmert ordered his military to
do whatever was necessary to pressure militants to free the Israeli
soldier. While putting the squeeze on Gaza, Israel did allow a limited
opening of two border crossings to allow in basic supplies of food, fuel
and medical supplies but U.N. Secretary general, Kofi Annan, said he
was concerned Israel’s actions were casting into doubt the development
of the impoverished Gaza strip. “I remain very concerned about the need
to preserve Palestinian institutions and infrastructure,” he said.
“They will be the basis for an eventual two-state solution in the
interest of all."
Concerns
soon spread to Israel's other neighbor, Lebanon, when Israeli forces
moved into the south of the country searching for two soldiers captured
by Hezbollah guerillas.
The means to catch terrorists
They
may not have had all the necessarily equipment, explosives, or
sometimes even an official target, but they all had intent and their own
motives, law enforcement officials say of some 40 people arrested
worldwide in the last year for plotting terror attacks, including 17 in
Toronto.
Rounded
up in the count are seven men arrested last week in Miami planning
attacks in that city and Chicago, a reminder that the U.S. remains an
important target. While they may not have official ties to Al-Qaida,
they have espoused its ideology of terror as their own, police say,
developing their own networks through the internet and sometimes daring
to meet face to face after crossing international borders.
In
both Toronto and Miami's case, their undoing was a carefully crafted
sting operation that some legal observers including lawyers of the
accused say crosses the fine line of entrapment. In Toronto's case they
sought to purchase enough ammonium nitrate to make a number of
devastating bombs, in Miami's, a law enforcement officer posed as a
representative of al-Qaida.
In
both cases many of those involved, five of the seven in the U.S., were
nationals, examples of the latest scourge decried by police officials:
home-grown terrorists. In the U.S. the group, operating out of a Miami
warehouse, took an oath to al-Qaida and plotted to create an "Islamic
army" to attack the U.S., condemning the war in Iraq and other Bush
administration policies. Critics were however quick to point out they
neither had explosives nor necessary funds, and didn't pose an immediate
threat to domestic interests. They were held in custody on conspiracy
charges.
"While
they may be bungling wannabes, they are potentially dangerous wannabes
who, based on the allegations, were pursuing extremely dangerous plans,"
said former U.S. attorney Kendall Coffey. The same can be said of the
17 Canadians held in custody since last month's shocking arrests, as the
FBI investigates other possible international links to the men, all
Muslim.
In
their efforts to untangle the global web of conspirators, which led to
earlier arrests in Denmark and Bosnia, and other arrests in Britain last
week, intelligence officials of all countries involved have been taking
turns visiting various countries where suspects are held in custody to
interrogate them, the Globe & Mail reported, citing the case of one
suspect visited by US, Canadian, Danish, Swedish and British officials
in Bosnia.
The
arrests have revealed that the suspects were willing to imitate
al-Qaida to the point of reproducing some of their attacks. The Miami
suspects were allegedly planning an attack on the Sears tower in
Chicago, in an effort to outdo the 9-11 attackers. Even al-Qaida
supposedly attempted to re-enact its Sept. 11 attack by planning to
hijack planes from Heathrow and run them into a Canary Wharf skyscraper,
London's tallest being Canada Tower. This despite the emphasis on
airport security since 9-11.
Other
similar attacks were planned by al-Qaida in the U.S., Australia and
Italy, nine in all according to a U.S. Homeland Security report dated
June 16. It makes plain al-Qaida "likely desires a successful repeat of
the 2001 suicide hijacking against the United States." Separately
al-Qaida released a video purportedly showing a "20th hijacker" of the
9-11 attacks, killed in Saudi Arabia in 2004. Arrests of suspected
terrorists were also made in the kingdom last week after a shootout.
The
Miami arrests occurred as the U.S. was still reeling from reminders of
an old al-Qaida plot to spread deadly cyanide in New York's subway
system, a plan which was mentioned in a recently released book. Law
enforcement officials say threats like these justify secret programs to
collect intelligence against terrorists, after revelations the US
government gained access to financial records from vast international
databases, monitoring transactions of Americans and others on foreign
soil since Sept.11 according to the New York Times.
This
came as the smoke had hardly settled from revelations the National
Security Agency eavesdropped on Americans without warrants. In a
statement similar to how the Bush White House had responded to the NSA
revelations, spokesman Tony Snow said the program complied "with the
letter and spirit of the law". "Let me tell you why this is important:
it works," he said.
As
al-Qaida and Qaida-inspired individuals with international connections
mount threats against governments, officials say they will try to keep
one step ahead of those seeking to commit terror acts by using any tools
necessary. But critics increasingly question the methods being used to
monitor citizens caught between the war on terror and what some call the
war on privacy, especially as House Republicans were planning to
condemn the New York Times for breaking the intelligence stories.
Arrests
of the last weeks in Miami and Toronto certainly offer a glimpse into
the sweeping monitoring powers at work in all countries. But as rights
groups promised to fight the program giving the US access to financial
data in Europe, Canadian groups were planning to fight a bill by Ottawa
to increase internet snooping expected this Fall or early next year.
This week the Supreme Court ruled the Bush administration had
overstepped some boundaries in its war against terror on the right to
try detainees held in Guantanamo by military tribunal.
Paix effacée au Sri Lanka
Qui
peut bien tant en vouloir à la Suède, au Danemark et à la Finlande?
Selon les rebelles tamoules qui revendiquent une large autonomie du nord
du Sri Lanka, il s'agit de pays membres de l'Union européenne, qui
vient de placer le mouvement des Tigres de libération de l'Eelam tamoul
(LTTE) au compte des organisations terroristes, et par conséquent ne
sauraient faire d'impartiaux agents de la paix dans un éventuel
règlement du conflit qui perdure sur l'ile troublée.
Autant
en dire de même du Canada, qui a cette année placé les Tigres sur sa
propre liste noire. Qui reste-t-il donc pour faire régner le respect du
cessez-le-feu de 2002? Ceux qui répondent encore à l'appel peuvent à
peine se faire entendre sous les échanges de tirs biens nourris, car
autant dire que quatre ans après les tentatives de pacification, la paix
fait toujours défaut au large du sous-continent indien.
Ce
mois-ci de violents affrontements navals et terrestres ont fait au
moins 52 morts dans le Nord-Ouest de l'île, le dernier décompte d'un
conflit où l'on dénombre plus de 60.000 victimes depuis presque deux
décennies et qui ne fait que se compliquer. En effet des accrochages
récents ont parallèlement eu lieu entre la rébellion tamoule et une
faction dissidente des Tigres, faisant au moins une demi-douzaine de
morts dans l'est de l'île.
Contrairement
aux espoirs de solidarité au lendemain du tsunami devastateur de l'an
dernier, les camps n'ont jamais été aussi au bord de la guerre depuis
l'accord de cessez-le-feu signé en février 2002. Il faut dire qu'un an
plus tard à peine, sa validité était déjà remise en question lorsque les
discussions sur un accord de paix ont été interrompues en avril 2003.
De
féroces batailles navales ont relancé les hostilités ces derniers
temps, huit unités navales des Tigres ayant été coulées et 30 rebelles
tués lors d'accrochages récents selon les autorités sri lankaises, des
chiffres que contestent les guérilleros. C'est un attentat contre un
autobus, au milieu du mois, qui a véritablement mis le feu aux poudres,
faisant 64 victimes, l'attentat le plus meurtrier depuis 10 ans.
Le
gouvernement de Colombo a attribué l'attaque aux Tigres, ignorant leur
démenti et déclencheant des frappes aériennes sur des positions
supposément controlées par le LTTE. Lorsque l'UE a exhorté les parties à
"mettre fin aux violences, à revenir à la table des négociations afin
de renforcer le cessez-le-feu et à s'acheminer vers un règlement
politique durable pour mettre fin au conflit (...)" elle avait déjà
perdu l'oreille des rebelles, outrées par la nouvelle liste des groupes
terroristes de l'Union.
Alors
que le processus de paix n'est pas mort, il est pour le moins haletant,
deux réunions prévues entre les rebelles et le gouvernement ayant été
annulées en avril et en juin après une réunion éclair en février. Il
faut dire que le ton est nettement moins propice à la négociation depuis
la campagne présidentielle de novembre dernier lorsque le président
Rajapakse a orchestré une campagne plutôt dure rejetant les rêves
d'autonomie tamouls et a remis en cause plusieurs aspects du processus
de paix. Le dialogue n'a plus été le même depuis.
Les
Tigres repensent cependant leurs relations avec l'extérieur en
exprimant pour la première fois leurs "regrets" par rapport à
l'assassinat de l'ancien premier ministre indien Rajiv Gandhi, tué en
1991, en soi presque un aveu d'avoir été impliqué dans sa mort. C'est ce
macrabre assassinat qui avait transformé leur image de rebelles luttant
pour l'indépendance en terroristes sanguinaires.
Indonesia's woes
If
you didn't know any better, assuming you do, you would think the
archipelago that is among the world's most populous nations was the land
of the damned. In a matter of a few days the country battered by last
year's tsunami captured world headlines for all the wrong reasons.
First
there was the report of a suspicious cluster of avian flu deaths that
suggested the country had seen the first cases of human-to-human
transmission of the H5N1 virus. Human bird-flu cases in Indonesia were
caused by person-to-person transmission, the World Health Organisation
confirmed last week, but added there was no evidence indicating the
virus had mutated or that it had spread beyond the seven relatives
involved.
While
the scare was limited to a son transmitting bird flu to his dad, it
represented a first, and WHO officials fear human-to-human transmissions
could trigger a world-wide pandemic. The rising number of deaths
(around 40) related to bird flu has secured Indonesia's spot as the
second most afflicted country, after Vietnam, with all the momentum of
overtaking it. The World Bank recently slammed the country's response to
bird flu, saying it was disorganized and underfinanced while WHO said
Indonesia was no longer even keeping track of most poultry outbreaks.
Then
volcano Mount Merapi threatened to erupt and wash away entire villages,
sending populations fleeing in central Java. All the while the former
Indonesian island of East Timor was erupting into violence, requiring
the presence of Australian troops to restore order and end riots and
looting blamed on Pro-Indonesian militias. The troubles there were
sparked after the dismissal of 600 army troops, who then launched a
rebellion.
While
a relative calm has gradually returned people have descended to the
streets to ask for the removal of the leader of the former region of
Indonesia which has become among the world's newest countries. East
Timor’s former interior minister was put under house arrest for
allegedly distributing weapons to a group whose leader has said he was
ordered to assassinate political opponents of the country’s embattled
prime minister, Mari Alkatiri.
Engaged
in a political struggle with popular president and former rebel Xanana
Gusmao, Alkatiri said he would resign if so were the wishes of his
embattled party, and ultimately stepped down. The resignation however
failed to stop the violence according to reports of fresh attacks this
week. As the UN prepared to send more troops to the island, its
Secretary general Kofi Annan suggested that the previous peacekeeping
mission there had been ended too quickly. The violence left 30 people
dead in the last month, a far cry from the archipelago's worse enemy:
mother nature.
All
the while a 6.3 magnitude quake killed over 5,000 people near
Yogyakarta, threatening to further destabilize nearby Mount Merapi. Some
experts say the state of the volcano and recent earthquake are related
to the tsunami, an underwater earthquake that triggered killer tidal
waves in a region covered with major fault lines.
Tragically
and significantly, the presence of the Australian troops and resources
stockpiled in preparation for the eruption of the volcano, provided
much- needed early aid to the quake survivors and rescue and recovery
efforts, a starting point for teams overwhelmed by the needs of the
disaster. Two days after the quake and a number of just as frightening
aftershocks, significant amounts of aid began arriving in Bantul, the
town hit hardest by the tremors.
Countries
such as Canada promised emergency aid (Ottawa rushed some $2 million),
as authorities tried to calculate the growing needs of the afflicted
population. Preliminary reports put the damages from the quake at some
$3 billion. Hundreds of miles from coastlines once swept by deadly tidal
waves, the towns were no less in danger of facing other perils, events
showed. Indonesian president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, moved his
offices to Yogyakarta and saw some of the quake's aftermath for himself.
As
United Nations and Red Cross agencies met in Geneva to coordinate a
mounting international relief effort for quake victims, Yudhoyono said
it was time to draw from experience and be effective coordinating aid.
"There were cases (in the past) when despite a large amount of aid
supplies, distribution work often failed to reach those in need," he
added, referring to aid work following the devastating Dec 2004 tsunami.
"We don't want any assistance to miss the target -- not even a kilogram
of rice."
As
Indonesians were dealing with the aftermath of the quake there was
increasing concern the tremors and aftershocks would massively set off
Mount Merapi, which sits in the same central region of Java and has been
giving worrisome signs of seismic activity for weeks. Volcanologists in
Yogyakarta said the powerful quake had destabilized a fragile dome at
the mountain's peak, which could trigger a large eruption of lava, rocks
and hot clouds. Eruptions of searing hot gas and debris sent people
fleeing just days after Indonesian authorities considered the threat
lowered, hardly an encouraging sign in a landscape dotted with volcanoes
and yet again calling into question warning systems.
While
Indonesia could hardly take more bad news, damage to the important
Hindu site of Prambanan also hurt the country's precious tourism
industry. But nothing has hurt business and tourism more than the threat
of terrorism since the 2002 Bali attacks. The release of Abu Bakar
Bashir, the spiritual leader of the Islamic militant group suspected in
the Bali bombings, served as a reminder of that other stigma tied to
terrorism.
Bashir,
who served two years in prison for conspiracy in the 2002 attacks but
was released despite cries of protest in Canberra and Washington, was
hardly repentant and called the attacks "God's will." Millions of
Indonesians hope the same expression can't be used to describe the ills
striking their archipelago these last weeks.
Was it Canada's turn?
In
one of the world's most ethnically diverse cities they should have felt
quite at home, and yet. The 17 Muslim men, five of them minors,
arrested in Toronto for plotting terror attacks in Canada on June 2nd
were of diverse backgrounds and origins, from countries stretching
across three continents, but brought together by a now familiar
ideology of hate that authorities described as "inspired by Al-Qaida".
A
doctor's son who had just finished college, a modest shift worker who
had received basic military reserve training, and a volunteer at a local
mosque who preached intolerance to the young men he accosted, all left
the country stunned as court documents revealed a series of plots, as
chilling as they might have once seemed unlikely.
Plans
to detonate truck bombs fueled by fertilizer, gunning down pedestrians
in a packed public space, or targeting the nation's parliament by taking
hostages in exchange for releasing prisoners or removing troops in the
far East. Even threatening to behead Prime minister Stephen Harper. One
idea more baffling than the next, all leading to the same puzzling
question: Had Canada narrowly avoided its date with fate?
Sept.
11 2001, October 12 2002, March 11 2003, July 7th 2005, scars on the
face of modern cities that spilled the blood of the innocent. Not going
to Iraq had not spared Canada it seemed, Afghanistan proved no more a
safe substitute in the war on terror, neither did it feel safer back
home than it did in the field. But more worrisome was the fact that the
suspects were either residents or citizens of Canada, where
multiculturalism was supposed to allow for the free expression of
cultural identity steamrolled by other approaches to immigration.
"The
arrests show the menace is real," officials said during a press
conference on the day most suspects were to appear in court in Brampton,
facing various security and terror-related charges such as
participating in or contributing to the activity of a terrorist group,
including training and recruitment; providing or making available
property for terrorist purposes; and the commission of indictable
offences, including firearms and explosives offences for the benefit of
or in association with a terrorist group.
By
then authorities were looking into ties with cells in a number of other
countries such as the U.S., Britain, Bangladesh, Bosnia, Denmark and
Sweden, where arrests were also carried out. On Wednesday two men in
Britain were arrested as terror suspects with possible connections but
released soon after.
Police
nabbed the Canadian men, who had been monitored for some two years,
sensing they were about to act on their devilish plans, having trapped
them in a sting during which they had ordered three tonnes of ammonium
nitrate, a fertilizer used to make explosives in the 1995 Oklahoma
terror attack, but substituted by another substance for the operation.
"It
was their intent to use it for a terrorist attack," said Mike McDonell
of the RCMP. "If I can put this in context for you, the 1995 bombing...
that killed 168 people was completed with only one tonne of ammonium
nitrate. This group posed a real and serious threat."
Youngsters
boasting their intentions in chat rooms over the internet triggered the
investigation, Canadian security services such as CSIS and the
secretive Communications Services Establishment monitoring them until
the RCMP launched a criminal investigation as the group picked targets
and plotted attacks, sometimes meeting with suspects from other
countries, including two Americans arrested in the U.S. earlier this
year.
Some
400 agents in all swooped in as the group went from a theory supplied
over the internet, to practise, some suspects, including the teenagers,
having gone to Washago, some 150km North West of Toronto last Winter, to
allegedly train for an attack and make a video imitating warfare. In
this Ontario tourist community locals eventually complained about
target-practise gunfire and called authorities, who monitored their
every move.
Unfazed
by threats on his life, Harper said the arrests reminded the country
was not immune to the threat of terror and that its security services
were effective. "It is a dangerous world one we cannot turn a blind eye
on," Harper said. "We are targeted because of who we are and how we
live; our society our diversity and our values, such as freedom,
democracy and the rule of law. Values that make Canada great."
The
arrests came days after a senior Taleban commander threatened Canada
for contributing to the stabilization effort in Afghanistan, where
Canada has some 2,200 soldiers. In 2002 bin Laden had included Canada in
a list of countries targeted by his terror group for its support of the
war on terror. In the week leading to the arrest, CSIS had set the
stage by warning a Senate committee of the threat of home-grown
terrorism.
The
arrests, which gathered international attention as trails extended
elsewhere, were not directly linked to Al-Qaida but sparked concern
across the border where Canada's lax immigration policies have been a
cause for concern. Some Americans have never shaken the flawed notion
that some of the 9-11 hijackers came from the north, remembering the
arrest of Ahmed Ressam who tried to cross into the US with a bomb in
1999.
But
for administration officials, who have buried the hatchet with Ottawa,
the sting and arrests were signs of good policing and tightened
security north of the border. In Congress there was more concern as the
U.S. boosted inspections along the border and some lawmakers called for
more focus on the northern border, which gets less attention than
Mexico's, one even suggesting building a fence along it. But U.S.
ambassador David Wilkins told the NPU this was not necessary, stressing
the differences between the two US borders and praising the "swift,
decisive heroic efforts" of Canadian authorities.
In
Canada there were fears of strained relations with the Muslim
community, despite words of support from the city's imams, after some of
the suspects were found to have visited the same mosque of Al-Rahman in
Mississauga. Some mosques were already vandalised the day after the
much-publicized arrests, while authorities appealed for calm.
As
the country entered a period marked by a number of high profile court
appearances, authorities said they were monitoring other suspects,
suggesting other arrests were possibly in the works. Canadians, most of
whom now fear they will eventually be targeted by an attack, already
can't imagine they will hear more mischievous plots than those they have
already heard. Then again, many were probably not suspecting their
country could be so fiercely targeted by the Qaida-inspired freelance
guerilla waged on West.
Mort de Zarkaoui après tant de revers...
La
mort du numéro un d'Al-Qaida en Irak, le militant jordanien Abou
Moussab al Zarkaoui, lors d'un raid américain, c'était une rare bonne
nouvelle au sein d'une guerre au terrorisme qui compte de nombreux
revers. Mais elle fut de courte durée. Quelques heures après l'annonce
de sa mort à peine, une autre bombe faisait des victimes dans la
capitale.
Alors
que le Canada apprenait de graves leçons sur la mouvance islamiste à
l'intérieur de ses frontières et que les Talibans reprenaient du poil de
la bête dans un pays pourtant conquis après le 11 septembre, la chute
de Mogadiscio le 5 juin aux mains du clan des "tribunaux islamiques",
constitué de chefs religieux, d'extrémistes, dont certains apparentés à
al-Qaida, géographiquement entre les deux, semblait signifier une autre
bataille perdue dans la grande guerre internationale au terrorisme.
Peu
de monde avait vraiment fait attention à cette lutte acharnée de quatre
mois de combat, dans un pays qui n'a connu ni gouvernement ni ordre à
gouverner durant une guerre civile remontant à 1991, tandis que les
caméras étaient plutôt tournées vers la lutte voisine au Darfour.
Alors
que les nouveaux maitres promettent "une nouvelle ère sans les chefs de
guerre" marquée par la paix et le dialogue, la défaite de l'alliance
pour la restauration de la paix et contre le terrorisme, soutenue par
Washington, fait frémir les observateurs qui craignent que ne s'imposent
dorénavant des Talibans version africaine, dans une région déjà minée
par tant de crises.
Les
tribunaux nient toute association à la mouvance de ben Laden, mais le
langage dont ils font usage, dont la déclaration de "guerre sainte"
contre les chefs de guerre qui jadis se disputaient les quartiers de la
capitale, ressemble trop à celui des maitres de l'Afghanistan, évincés
après 2001, mais dont la remontée se fait sentir dans le sud du pays, où
les soldats canadiens ont livré de chaudes disputes.
"Nous
nions et rejetons catégoriquement toute accusation d'éberger des
terroristes ou des sympathisants dans les régions que nous controlons",
écrivait le cheik Cherif Ahmed dans une lettre adressée aux dirigeants
américains. "Nous avons remporté la bataille contre les ennemis de
l'Islam".
A
Washington, ces mots ont été accueillis avec un certain malaise, mais
certains sénateurs avouent que les Etats-Unis sont en partie
responsables de la tournure des événements, n'ayant pas porté assez
d'attention à la région tandis que la guerre fait toujours rage en Irak.
D'autres au Departement d'Etat ont même critiqué le financement des
chefs de guerre par la CIA, accusant cette politique d'avoir créé une
situation contraire à celle qui était désirée.
Le
chef du gouvernement transitoire, Abdullahi Yusuf, regrettait que
Washington ait ainsi divisé son financement en Somalie. "Nous opposons
toute aide américaine aboutissant à l'extérieur du gouvernement",
dit-il. D'autres pays de la région, l'Ethiopie et l'Erythrée, ont
également finance les éclats selon un rapport récent de l'ONU.
La
mainmise des tribunaux sur la capitale pourrait éventuellement mettre
au moins fin à la bataille la plus sanglante de la guerre civile, ayant
fait plus de 300 morts depuis janvier, lorsque les opposants ont
commencé à échanger des tirs d'artillerie lourde. La victoire pourrait
clore un sanglant chapitre d'histoire remontant à la chute de Siad
Barré, qui a été suivie d'une catastrophique intervention américaine
(jumelée à une présence canadienne).
Alors
que cette intervention se poursuivait par moyens financiers, elle
aurait possiblement poussé la population de la capitale à se rallier aux
tribunaux, elle qui a été épuisée par quinze ans d'un état de guerre
quasi-permanent, même si dans les faits on parlait de paix depuis
l'établissement du gouvernement de transition en 2004. Il faut dire que
le pays a connu en moyenne un processus de paix par année depuis le
début de la guerre civile.
Mais
comme il se doit en Somalie, les divisions persistent, si l'on se fie
aux manifestations populaires près de la capitale, contre l'imposition
d'un gouvernement islamique d'une coalition qui prône l'instauration de
la loi de la charia. "Nous poursuivrons notre lutte jusqu'à ce que nous
obtenions un état islamique" déclarait pour sa part le cheik Ahmed, ne
laissant pas entendre qu'il était prêt à négocier avec le gouvernement
transitoire qui siège à Baidoa.
Ce
dernier essaie tant bien que mal de lancer le dialogue avec les
tribunaux, en commençant par renvoyer quatre chefs rebelles siègeant
dans ses rangs. Autre revers pour les Etats-Unis, qui veulent avant tout
éviter que le pays devienne un nid de terroristes, et se disent prêts à
discuter avec les tribunaux.
Pour
l'heure, la fin des tirs est la première préoccupation dans la
capitale. "Les gens de Mogadiscio ont finalement obtenu la paix
aujourd'hui, déclarait Ali Mohammed au New York Times, nous connaissons
la guerre depuis si longtemps que nous en sommes devenus épuisés". Mais
ce n'est pas sans craindre les lendemains. "Nous ne savons pas ce qui va
suivre", dit le jeune instituteur de 32 ans qui n'était pas bien vieux
avant la guerre civile.
Une
mesure du nouveau régime taquine déjà les habitants de la capitale:
l'interdiction de retransmettre les images de la Coupe du monde.
More humble US reflection of Commander in chief
A
year after Iran elected its most controversial leader since the
Ayatollah, a confrontational figure who called for the elimination of
Israel while fiercely seeking to develop the country's own nuclear
program, the U.S. has made a major concession by reversing a diplomatic
stance as old as the Iranian revolution and considering the first direct
talks with Tehran since 1979.
True
to himself, president Ahmedinejad initially refused the overture,
calling it propaganda, but Iranian officials are plainly satisfied
Washington has made the offer, in a week perma- nent members of the
Security Council came together giving Tehran a few weeks to consider a
package of incentives to drop its nuclear program.
Some
of them would have surprised long-time observers of US-Iran relations
considering they included helping Iran build new nuclear power plants,
light water reactors not used to make weapons-grade nuclear fuel,
economic incentives such as allowing Iran to buy US and European planes,
and "guarantees of territorial integrity", if Iran agrees to stop
enriching uranium. But some fear nothing prevents Iran from doing so in
the future.
With
an administration marked by political misfortune and shake-ups, a
president facing record-low levels of support and a military embarrassed
to explain incidents of civilian casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq,
the reversal of policy on Iran is the latest sign of a subduing of the
world's super-power, three years into the Iraq war.
Maybe
it's the presidential lame-duck label or the forecast for a swing of
the pendulum in November's congressional elections, but the U.S. is on a
bad streak reflective of its humbled president, who in a recent meeting
with his old ally Tony Blair displayed nothing of the usual
backslapping bonhomie. Both leaders, staunch defenders of the war on
terror and in Iraq, appeared subdued during their latest Washington
gathering, pressed by critics at home that include dissatisfaction
within their own political ranks.
Quizzed
on the usually ignored questions on the war, they acknowledged
disappointments and mistakes on Iraq. "Not everything since liberation
has turned out as the way we had expected or hoped," Bush ventured.
"We've learned from our mistakes, adjusted our methods," he said, adding
he regretted once using rhetoric calling for Osama bin Laden to be
caught "dead or alive" or defying terrorists to "bring it on," while
Blair regretted underestimating the strength of the Iraqi insurgency.
Trans-Atlantic
political leaders of diverging political persuasions with little in
common other than "using Colgate", Bush once mused, the two became close
partners leading the charge in Afghanistan and Iraq, boasting early
successes before running into hurdles both abroad and at home, where
their leadership is sometimes being conjugated in the past tense.
While
Blair is not facing elections this year, polls have his popularity
numbers below Bush's as he is under pressure within his own party to
step aside before the end of his mandate to make way for Gordon Brown.
Entering a second mandate as recently as a year ago by promising to
spend earned "political capital", Bush seems to have maxxed out his
credit both at home and abroad, where war allies Berlusconi and Aznar
lost political power.
That
security carte blanche of the post 9-11 world seemed to have been
voided recently when a European court struck down an agreement giving
the U.S. passenger data on trans-Atlantic flights.
Signs
the U.S. isn't pulling the weight it used to appeared much closer to
home, in its own backyard, where analysts considered Washington's lack
of response to the rise of hardline leftist Latin American leaders
uniting around Venezuela's Hugo Chavez to counter regional free trade
pacts with the U.S.
On
the other hand the harsh rhetoric and actions used by some of the
leaders, such as the nationalization of energy companies, have riled
neighbors such as Colombia, Peru, Mexico and Ecuador, causing division
in the Latin world. That's little comfort for a super-power which was
glad to leave the talking to Britain's foreign minister when Security
Council members convened to send Tehran a message it could avoid
sanctions by taking their incentives to abandon its nuclear program.
Iran said, it would eventually get back to them on that.
In
the end America's dependence on oil, what some critics say triggered
the war in Iraq, can at least partly explain both stances, the US and
Venezuela having to maintain a relationship despite their dislike of
each other because of the two-way benefits of the oil trade, while the
US would rather not upset oil-producing Iran, which has threatened to
disrupt production, in a tight oil market.
La nouvelle saison de l'immigration
Avec
le retour du beau temps et des fleurs, la chaleur du contact humain,
mais le rendez-vous annuel entre l'Occident et le tiers monde chaque
printemps n'est pas particulièrement agréable. C'est un rendez-vous
tendu qui prend de plus en plus des allures de choc violent.
Des
deux côtés de l'Atlantique ce printemps, le débat sur l'immigration a
connu une ampleur féroce, qu'il s'agisse d'immigrants clandestins
chicanos aux Etats-Unis ou africains en Europe. L'immigration est
devenue la première question interne d'importance aux Etats-Unis en
cette année de législatives, étant le thème de trois interventions
récentes du président George W. Bush, dont une allocution télévisée, la
première sur une question interne, lors de laquelle il a annonçait le
déploiement de 6.000 soldats de la Garde nationale pour renforcer la
sécurité de la frontière américaine avec le Mexique.
Pendant
ce temps le congrès travaillait d'arrache-pied sur un projet de loi
pour renforcer cette sécurité aux frontières tout en autorisant des
nouveaux programmes de travailleurs provisoires, avec possibilité de
régularisation pour la plupart des quelque 12 millions de personnes qui
vivent illégalement aux Etats-Unis, la moitié des Mexicains. Le retour
du temps plus clément était idéal pour l'organisation d'importantes
manifestations d'immigrés à travers le pays, tandis qu'au large du vieux
continent, il signifiait le départ d'une nouvelle saison de
tentatives d'infiltration d'immigrants venus du sud.
Les
autorités en Espagne et en Italie ne savent déjà plus où donner la
tête. Les dirigeants des Iles Canaries parlent d'une "avalanche" venue
des eaux internationales, où se précipitent chaque année en nombre de
plus en plus impressionnant les désespérés du continent noir. La semaine
dernière le Sénégal arrêtait 1500 personnes dans 19 embarcations,
tentant de prendre le large pour les Canaries. Il s'agit là d'un nouveau
point de départ, avec le resserrement de la frontière marocaine.
Sans
cette frontière terrestre où ils auraient pu planifier l'érection d'un
mur semblable à celui de la frontière américano-mexicaine, les autorités
supplient Madrid de fournir les moyens de mieux patrouiller les eaux
territoriales. D'un même souffle ils font appel à l'aide financière de
l'UE, une aide humanitaire pour mieux accueillir les nouveaux venus. Il y
a quelques jours il était question de mobiliser avions, bateaux, et
équipes d'intervention rapide.Cette année quelques 7000 arrivants se
sont déjà rendus sur les îles. L'UE discute également d'aide avec Dakar
afin de contrôler les déplacements au large de ses côtes.
Devant
ce flot sans ressac, Madrid tente désespérément de négocier des accords
de réadmission avec une demi-douzaine de pays ouest-africains. En
Italie, ce même cri au débordement après le retour de la haute saison à
Lampedusa, tremplin insulaire préféré des immigrés pour le continent en
raison de sa proximité: à 182 km seulement des côtes tunisiennes. La
semaine dernière ils n'étaient pas moins de 800... en vingt-quatre
heures.
Pourtant
le nouveau gouvernement italien de centre gauche dévoilait alors ses
projets visant à assouplir la législation sur l'immigration. "Il est
pratiquement impossible d'entrer légalement en Italie avec l'actuelle
législation", estimait le ministre de l'Emploi Paolo Ferrero, agissant
presque en porte-parole aux masses déversées sur les îles italiennes de
la Méditerranée. Le gouvernement de Romano Prodi a promis d'abroger la
plupart des réformes adoptées en la matière par son prédécesseur,
notamment sur le renforcement des contrôles aux frontières, les centres
de rétention et les procédures d'expulsion accélérées.
Pourtant
ailleurs la tendance est au resserrement, une politique qui a valu au
ministre de l'Intérieur français Nicolas Sarkozy un accueil bruyant en
Afrique. Avant son départ l'Assemblée nationale venait d'adopter son
projet de loi sur l'immigration «choisie», dont il niait toute nature
élitiste, même s'il affirme voir là le moyen de former des élites de
pays du tiers-monde dans la perspective d'un retour. «Je vous propose
donc de faciliter la venue d'étudiants et de personnalités qui pourront
apporter à notre pays leurs talents et acquérir en retour une expérience
utile à leur pays d'origine », a-t-il conclu.
Interrogé
sur les manifestations hostiles qui l'ont accueilli au Mali, lors d'une
tournée africaine consacrée à son plan d'immigration, il a lancé: "ne
confondez pas une petite minorité manipulée et un peuple qui espère dans
le développement et comprend bien que l'immigration ne peut être sans
limite". C'est un rappel sans équivoque d'un certain "seuil de
tolérance" qui se glisse annuellement dans le débat sur l'immigration,
alors que les clandestins planifient leur prochain départ sur les eaux
de la Méditerranée.
Politique
d'ouverture ou resserrement, les Etats-Unis et les pays européens sont
confrontés au problème de pauvreté de leurs voisins, des problèmes qui
exigent une aide de développement à la source selon Miguel Becerra,
expert du gouvernement ibère: «C'est l'heure de se rendre compte que ce
qui se passe en Afrique touche l'Europe directement, dit-il. C'est
l'heure d'une politique africaine sérieuse, une politique qui exigera
des ressources militaires, médicales et socio-économiques. »
Le
temps presse selon une étude du Royal Elcano Institute selon laquelle
l'Europe est à l'aube de flots migratoires sans précédent des pays au
sud du Sahara, un phénomène démographique lié à la maturité d'une
population en âge de travailler mais dont les possibilités d'emploi sont
minimes chez elle.
Une Turquie surveillée à la loupe
Presque
70 ans après le décès de Kemal Ataturk le débat sur la laïcité reste
d'actualité en Turquie, et chaque argument est scruté à la loupe par les
capitales européennes qui voient se pointer le moment de trancher sur
le sort du pays qui pourrait devenir la frontière orientale de l'UE.
L'assassinat
d'un juge du Conseil d'Etat par un tueur se proclamant "soldat de
dieu", outré par une décision portant sur le voile, a donc retenu
l'attention du vieux continent. Le juge Mustafa Ozbilgin a été abattu
par un jeune avocat islamiste qui a fait irruption dans une salle du
Conseil d'Etat, blessant quatre autres magistrats, avant d'être
interpellé. La deuxième chambre du Conseil d'Etat traite de dossiers
concernant l'éducation et avait déjà été l'objet de vives critiques de
la part des milieux islamistes pour la rigueur avec laquelle elle
applique l'interdiction du port du foulard dans les lieux publics.
En
février elle avait débouté une enseignante portant le voile qui
contestait le rejet de sa demande de promotion. La tuerie a aussitôt
orienté le débat sur la situation de la laïcité, dans un pays dont le
gouvernement islamiste modéré de Tayyip Erdogan est soupçonné de vouloir
la remettre en cause.
Sujet
d'actualité en Occident également, celle-ci n'est pas l'unique question
turque matière à discussion à Bruxelles. Le traitement des communautés
kurdes, dont Ankara rejette l'autonomie, fait également partie des
sujets préoccupants. Récemment l'attaque d'un oléoduc dans l'est du pays
par des rebelles kurdes rappelait la persistence des tensions deux ans
après la fin du cessez-le-feu rebelle.
La
reprise des violences dans la région est en partie due aux politiques
d'Ankara, s'il faut croire une partie de la presse turque, qui accuse le
gouvernement d'indifférence face au marasme économique qui rend les
partis comme le PKK populaires. L'UE a également exigé de la Turquie
qu'elle protège mieux les droits de cette minorité, tout en aidant son
développement économique. En mars les tensions atteignaient Istamboul,
suite à l'explosion d'une bombe par un autre groupe kurde protestant les
violences dans la partie orientale. Ironie du sort, Ankara étudie
pendant ce temps une plus grande ouverture de la frontière irakienne
pour développer le commerce avec le kurdistan, possible soupape pour
oxygéner une région de la Turquie traditionnellement proie à la guerre
civile et au chômage.
Espérant
sans doute calmer les tensions, deux paramilitaires turcs responsables
d'excès contre un membre du PKK l'automne dernier doivent se défendre ce
mois-ci lors d'un procès sans précédent. Pays de minorités, de
frontières difficiles et d'histoire lourde, la Turquie reste également
intraitable sur "la question arménienne", rappelant récemment ses
ambassadeurs en France et au Canada pour consultation afin de protester
contre des mesures prises dans ces deux pays qui reconnaissent le
massacre des Arméniens comme un génocide.
L'ambassade
de Turquie à Paris estimait que cette qualification était "complètement
erronée", Ankara protestant que le nombre de morts est exagéré tout en
insistant sur le fait que les Arméniens ont été tués ou déplacés alors
que l'empire ottoman essayait de défendre sa frontière avec la Russie et
mettre un terme aux attaques de militants arméniens. De leur côté les
Arméniens affirment que 1,5 million des leurs ont été tués entre 1915 et
1923, et qu'il s'agissait à l'époque d'un génocide organisé par les
dirigeants ottomans.
L’UE
pour sa part fait pression sur le gouvernement turc pour la
reconnaissance du génocide arménien. Rien que sur ce point, on voir mal
comment les choses pourraient aboutir.
Last time Montenegro gets kicked around
There
could be something historic about the June 21 World Cup game between
Serbia-Montenegro and the Ivory Coast. If the former fail to make the
second round of the tournament, it will be one of the last times the
hyphernated team takes to the pitch. Perhaps the last time we see
Montenegro on the World Cup circuit for awhile, owing to the Serb
talent.
That's
one drawback the supporters of unity with Serbia see in the recent vote
for independence by the autonomous republic of the south. But their
complaints were mostly drowned by the enthusiasm of the masses who
celebrated a referendum win giving 55.4% percent in favor of
Montenegro's independence.
"I
congratulate you on your state," said the pro-independence prime
minister, Milo Djukanovic. "Today, the citizens of Montenegro voted to
restore their statehood." Supporters of a unified Serbia and Montenegro
didn't hesitate to demand a recount however, bearing in mind the score
was so finely over the EU-imposed threshold of 55% needed to validate
the vote. After recount, support was 55.5%.
"I
don't expect anyone to object to Montenegrin independence," Vladeta
Jankovic, an adviser to Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica told
the BBC. "In Serbia proper there is nearly a million people who are
either of Montenegrin origin or in other ways very closely collected to
Montenegro, but there is certainly no bad blood about it."
The
ties, especially economic and social bonds, are expected to remain and
survive the split. Unlike the initial breakup of the old Yugoslav
federation, which sparked the violent war of the 1990s after Bosnia
announced its decision to go it alone, the final breakup is expected to
be a rather amicable one, even if it ended a special relationship with
Serbia established at the end of the first world war (which had been
ignited in the Balkans) and denies Belgrade a precious coastline.
The
two share the same language, culture and religion, Orthodox
Christianity, a point made by the anti-independence camp, made up of a
Serb minority that represents 30% of Montenegro's 700,000 people. But
the bloody wars of independence and ensuing war crimes accusations
bolstered arguments for the separation of the mountainous region
extending inland from the Adriatic Sea.
While
congratulating Montenegro for the result and praising an incident-free
vote which drew 86% of electors, EU officials scratched their heads at
the prospect of yet another small independent state within their future
borders, joining the likes of Malta and Luxemburg. But Montenegro is
already one step ahead, using the Euro as currency, and by severing its
ties with Serbia, it avoids being slowed by the roadblock halting EU
pre-accession talks, after Belgrade failed to hand over those wanted for
war crimes.
Where
the outcome in Montenegro carries weight is in the explosive region of
Kosovo, a UN protectorate with its own independence ambitions and a much
larger population, but also home to an important Serb minority and a
number of sites of historical importance for Serbs. It once was the seat
of the medieval Serbian state and the Serbian Orthodox Church, and is
cherished as the cradle of Serb history and culture.
In
Kosovo, Montenegro's vote is welcomed as a confirmation its time will
come. "The international community should not apply two different
standards when it comes to countries of the same region" one Kosovo
newspaper wrote. For nearly two decades Kosovo's ethnic Albanian
majority has wanted independence from Serbia. "The concept of keeping
Kosovo in Serbia is untenable. Montenegro's independence creates a
precedent that is undeniable, and Kosovo's independence is now
inevitable," said Dukagjin Gorani, an ethnic Albanian analyst.
Kosovo's
leader seemed to be mapping his own road to independence. "Before the
end of the year, Kosovo, too, will join Montenegro as a new state and
these new countries will be an important factor for stability of the
whole region," Prime Minister Agim Ceku said. Already the vote is about
much more than Montenegro.
Un huard dopé?
Ces
derniers temps les Américains ne se sentent plus tellement chez eux.
Quand ils ne voient pas des milliers de Latino-américains envahir leurs
rues, brandissant des étendards vert blanc rouge ou bleu blanc rouge,
ils se battent pour les rares places de stationnement dans leurs centres
commerciaux avec des véhicules portant des plaques canadiennes.
Plus
discrets que leurs confrères latins, les Canadiens des villes
frontalières ne se promènent pas moins avec un certain air hautain ces
derniers temps, une démarche un peu prétentieuse, presque moqueuse.
Depuis l'envolée du huard, qui a atteint 90 cents américains ce mois-ci,
et que certains voient atteindre la parité avec le greenback dans un
peu plus d'un an, les visiteurs d'un jour du grand nord se pensent tout
permis.
Leurs
pétro-dollars achètent nettement plus, même, ironiquement, l'essence
meilleur marché des stations des états du nord, alors qu'il s'agit
parfois des Husky et Pétro-Canada du Vermont. Ironique, car les
richesses énergétiques du pays, très en demande, expliquent en partie
cet essor du huard. Les surplus fédéraux, qui n'ont pas fait défaut lors
du dernier budget, et la faiblesse du dollar américain, fournissent
d'autres explications, en plus d'une politique internationale de
réalignement des devises.
Pour
les consommateurs qui se déplacent ou les importateurs au pays, les
affaires sont bonnes; pour les exportateurs, notamment manufacturiers,
moins sûr. Certains économistes craignent que la situation au Canada ne
creuse davantage un clivage est-ouest si la parité, inconnue depuis
trente ans, était éventuellement atteinte. De manière générale, le
Canada sort gagnant avec son pouvoir d'achat accru, qui facilite les
investissements, et ses richesses naturelles, mais alors que l'ouest vit
un essor à l'image de son énergie, les provinces manufacturières de
l'Ontario et du Québec essuient des pertes d'emploi importantes. L'engin
économique ontarien est d'autant plus touché qu'il vit les déboires des
manufactures automobiles américaines, que leurs propres citoyens
échangeraient bien pour des modèles plus économiques.
Après
des années d'un genre d'aide à l'exportation sous forme de monnaie
faible, le dollar, qui a grimpé de 45% en quelques années, exigera
davantage d'effort de productivité au Canada, qui malgré les
améliorations récentes connait une productivité inférieure à celle des
Etats-Unis.
Selon
les dernières données officielles la hausse rapide du dollar canadien
aurait causé la perte de 200 000 emplois au pays, mais le taux de
chômage n'a pas pour autant grimpé. Car fort heureusement, l'économie
roule au plein-emploi et adoucit le choc en proposant d'autres
possibilités de carrière, mais à court-terme, l'industrie du tourisme ne
semble pas la plus prometteuse.
Alors
que les Canadiens gambadent de strip mall à strip mall aux Etats-Unis,
les Américains, déjà incertains des documents qu'il leur faudra
présenter à la frontière, savent que leur dollar achète moins de ces
étranges billets colorés. Il faut dire que cette dernière hausse parait
un peu déplacée: juste avant le début de la saison touristique mais trop
tard pour les snowbirds.
Pour
ce qui est de l'avenir, en fait, plusieurs analystes résistent à la
thèse du dollar au pair avec la devise américaine. Pour le gouverneur de
la banque du Canada David Dodge, le dollar n'atteindra sans doute pas
ce plateau, les cambistes ont tendance à exagérer, dit-il. Pour une
première fois depuis longtemps, le huard semble sur-évalué dans le
discours de certains. Le Fonds monétaire international place son niveau
naturel plus près des 82 cents US, ce qui laisserait présager une
certaine rechute.
D'ici
là, plusieurs consommateurs comptent bien faire quelques bonnes
affaires. Ce n'est pas pour rien que la dernière version de la pièce
d'un dollar montre un huard en plein envol au lieu de patauger dans la
mare.
Nash ré-édite l'exploit
Wilt
Chamberlain, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, et maintenant
Steve Nash, des Suns de Phoenix. Le garde de six pieds Canadien de 32
ans fait partie de l'élite du ballon-rond en décrochant le titre de
joueur par excellence de la NBA pour une seconde année consécutive.
"Je
dois admettre que c'est un peu gênant de me retrouver parmi ces grands
joueurs de l'histoire deux années de suite, a précisé Nash en conférence
de presse, je dois me pincer. Je n'arrivais pas à y croire l'année
dernière et le fait de gagner ce titre encore une fois est encore plus
difficile à saisir pour moi."
Pourtant
voilà quelques jours que la rumeur courait. Ce qui était nettement plus
inattendu était le revirement de situation dans la série Suns-Lakers,
que ces derniers menaient 3 à 1. Il ne suffisait pas de remporter trois
parties de suite, les Suns ont éliminé les Lakers en les ridiculisant
chez eux 121-90 et Nash a marqué 13 points, 9 passes malgré une blessure
légère en première moitié, la veille de son couronnement.
D'une
certaine façon cette série en disait long sur les exploits de Nash, qui
le distinguent nettement de l'étoile de ses rivaux, Kobe Bryant. Car
les Lakers n'ont pu poursuivre leur rêve de championnat malgré les 50
points de Kobe, lors du 6e match.
Pour
les grands de ce sport de géants, comme Charles Barkley, rien
d'étonnant, Nash sait relever le niveau de son club, en plus d'être un
type d'une rare générosité: "Je suis chanceux de vivre à Phoenix: le
soleil, le golf, et j'ai l'occasion de voir Nash jouer au magicien sur
le court," écrit-il dans le magazine Time, ou Nash figurait parmi les
100 personnes les plus influentes du magazine, toutes catégories
confondues.
Un
gros prix, une grosse victoire, une presse conquise, que reste-t-il? Ah
oui, un titre de la NBA, son plus profond désir. L'elimination des
Lakers poursuit ce rêve malgré l'absence d'Amare Stoudemire. Et voilà
qui illustre le mieux les exploits de Nash. Comme l'an dernier, le
capitaine des revirements inattendus mène la charge, avec une moyenne de
18.8 points par match et 10.5 passes; c'est son talent, c'est ce qui
lui vaut ces rares honneurs et d'une certaine facon rappelle les
origines du sport. C'est une célébration qui sait même faire jaser dans
la forteresse hockey appellée Canada, ou Nash a été sacré athlète
masculin par excellence en 2005.
Making Washington unhappy?
When
Brazilian president Lula da Silva came into power in 2002 he ushered in
a revolution that swept his continent with left-wing leaders. Last week
the red tide threatened to sweep away even the former revolutionary
union leader that sits in Brasilia.
The
Americas have indeed veered left since he took over the mantle of the
region's largest country, marking popular disappointment with years of
failed free-market policies, but some nations espoused such a hard line
that they came to form an anti-American alliance, called Alba, tied to
Fidel Castro's Cuba, and promoted the sort of nationalization of foreign
companies that clearly makes the old revolutionary proud. Back when
Castro rose to power they were fruit companies, this time they are
resources-related, and even include Canadian mining companies.
When
Bolivian President Evo Morales took control of the natural gas industry
in his country and told foreign firms to leave if they did not comply
this sparked quite an outcry, not only among Western companies but those
based in the region as well. Last week da Silva was accused of
passively looking on, possibly with some admiration, as his country's
companies in Bolivia faced the same treatment, troops taking position
outside Petrobras' installations.
In
no time domestic pressures forced him to convene an emergency meeting
of the region's countries that included Argentina, and Venezuela, home
of Morales' closest ally, and Washington's local foe, Hugo Chavez. The
two wealthy countries eventually accepted Bolivia's nationalization of
its gas industry but wanted input on future prices and foreign
involvement.
The
man who got the leftist ball rolling across the continent was relieved
he could still have a say about arrangements that provide cheap energy
to his country, but he was one of few. "The important thing is that gas
supplies for the countries needing them have been guaranteed and that
prices will be discussed in the most democratic form possible between
all parties involved," da Silva said following the meeting.
But
Petrobras is already scrambling to find alternative sources of gas
outside Bolivia while halting investments to the country, all the while
contesting Bolivia's intentions to raise the price of the natural gas
that the company imports beyond. As a big importer of Bolivian gas
Brazil sees nuclear energy as a possible strategic alternative, and
announced last week that it would start enriching uranium to fuel its
two nuclear plants.
Bolivia's
bold move is supported by Venezuela, where state oil company Petróleos
de Venezuela is investing to help make Bolivia a small energy player.
Venezuela meanwhile is caressing broad goals of developing a pipeline
across the region to Argentina. But few others are supportive of
Morales' actions. In fact Bolivia's plan to exert state control over all
its natural resources has North American companies fretting about their
prospects there.
Peter
Munk of Barrick Gold Corp., one of the world's largest gold producers,
said in fact that even Pakistan appears to be a much more palatable
alterative after Bolivia's announcement. Bolivia's control would extend
into other sectors such as mining and forestry, two areas where Canadian
companies are involved. While some company heads see Morales' move as
temporary grandstanding, others are more concerned: "I think one has to
be nervous," said Newmont Mining's Pierre Lassonde. "This is an
investor's nightmare."
Making Washington happy?
In
its rush to end Canada's most contentious issue with its biggest
trading partner did the new conservative government cave in for the sake
of good relations? That is one version circulating after last month's
agreement over softwood lumber, an issue causing cross-border tensions
with the U.S. for years.
Mobilizing
officials at the highest levels on both sides of the border, the matter
was resolved by returning 80% of the $5 billion in trade duties
collected by the U.S. since the row started and slapping export taxes if
prices drop below a certain level all the while leaving Canada with a
34% share of the US market.
Because
Stephen Harper did not obtain the full return of duties he vowed he
would seek when he was campaigning, some claim the deal, reached a mere
few months into the new administration, was caving in to settle the
issue in the name of neighborly relations. For others it was being
realistic about reaching a much-needed compromise.
The
deal was "a good deal" that "resolves a long-standing dispute and
allows us to move on," Harper said. The NDP's Jack Layton meanwhile
called the move bowing to U.S. rather than Canadian interests. Some
feared that nothing less than the next few years of US-Canada relations
were hanging in the balance, and that the outcome heralds a series of
cross-border high-level visits, keeping one major campaign promise of
improving ties with the U.S.
"I
can tell you that at the highest levels in Washington, U.S. leaders and
officials are eager to come to Canada to meet their counterparts," the
U.S. ambassador recently said. This was a change of tone from six months
ago when, in the heat of the softwood debate, he stressed "Friends
negotiate, they don't retaliate."
While
Harper went out of his way just days after his election in January to
reassure he was no lap-dog of the U.S. and would fight for Canada's
interests, Tory policies and reviews of previous policy are indeed
espousing a conservative stance more in tune with the Bush
administration. From banning the broadcast of images of the returning
war dead to arming border guards, critics say the new measures have a
distinctly south-of-the-border feel.
Whether
or not that is the case, there is no doubt that from reconsidering
decriminalization of small amounts of drugs and same-sex marriage to
Canada's view on Kyoto, the minority government isn't shy to reverse
sweeping policies of the previous liberal administration, especially as
poll numbers show Canadians are warming up to the conservatives and
would probably give them a majority if elections were held today.
Even
in Quebec, a province Harper has repeatedly courted as of late, Tories
are reaching historic levels of support unseen since Mulroney despite
the conservative agenda to sacrifice the Kyoto accord, which is strongly
supported there, after a budget cutting spending on the environment.
Months
after an accord on Kyoto reached in Montreal and quarterbacked by
former cabinet minister Stephane Dion, Ottawa's position has turned on a
dime on the issue and never seemed closer to Washington's. The Tories
have never hidden their skepticism over Kyoto and instead back a small
breakaway US-led group of nations that favor a voluntary approach to
cutting emissions of greenhouse gases, stressing Canada cannot meet its
Kyoto targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, targets it has in
fact moved further away from since the agreement took effect.
The
Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, which groups
the United States, Australia, Japan, China, India and South Korea,
prefers looking at how to develop technologies to reduce emissions
rather than trying to respect specific reduction targets. One thing not
helping Canada reaching its target is the potential for added emissions
as a result of the developing oil sands in northern Alberta, the
energy-rich province that is a Tory power base.
Environmentalists
don't know what to be more upset about, a budget cutting funds
earmarked for Kyoto or preferring a US-led alternative to the deal.
"Canada is being enthusiastic about a meaningless public relations stunt
by the U.S. government when it should be talking about the importance
of working ... on a program that has real targets," one group told
Reuters.
Last
week a scientific report commissioned by the US government, which
itself is skeptical about global warming, concluded there is "clear
evidence" of climate change caused by human activities and trends seen
over the last 50 years "cannot be explained by natural processes alone".
This week, Environment Canada was predicting a long hot summer after
the mild winter, its climatologists hinting that climate change can't be
ignored as a factor.
Other
policy shifts mark a break with progressive policies under the
Liberals. Although they tend to be less vocal, supporters of cannabis
decriminalization didn't take very long to notice the government's
360-degree turn-around on pot use. Harper has been unequivocal in his
get-tough stance on drug crimes, and crimes in general, proposing
mandatory minimum sentences.
He
told the Canadian Professional Police Association that his government
would not reintroduce legislation to legalize small amounts of
marijuana. Alan Young, a law professor at York University and
marijuana-legalization activist, said it's all about trying to mend
fences in the U.S. "I think there's enormous pressure from the United
States and I think Stephen Harper wants to mend fences with George Bush,
and is quite willing to give up this issue," Young told CTV News.
South
of the border, the scene is familiar as Mexican President Vicente Fox
refused to sign a drug decriminalization bill just hours after U.S.
officials warned the plan could encourage "drug tourism."
These
two countries have their own contentious issues. Ottawa and Washington
have had theirs for years, but now detente is in the air in everything
from trade to drug laws, judging by the reaction of an international
drug enforcement conference in Montreal this week, and the lumber deal
may have just been the first silencing of the guns.
The rising Afghan toll
Until
now, barring a now infamous friendly fire incident, Canadian casualties
in Afghanistan came one at a time and were often the result of
accidents. The death of four troops, two of them reservists, in a
roadside bomb last week was no accident and became the single deadliest
military loss since the Korean War.
Thousands
of coalition troops gave Cpl. Matthew Dinning, Bombardier Myles
Mansell, Lieut. William Turner and Cpl. Randy Payne a sombre send-off
this week, as Canada's death count reached 16, including one diplomat,
since 2002 when Canada first became involved in the country.
For
weeks the Taleban had been warning they would seek to intimidate
coalition troops in the country as they launched a Spring offensive
which has left Canadians and other troops under repeated attacks. The
day after the four died when their G-Wagon hit a buried explosive,
Canada's base in Kandahar came under rocket fire. Days later Taleban
insurgents told the BBC they would target and kill British troops
starting a tour of duty in Afghanistan.
Meanwhile,
as if taunting from his lair which intelligence officials say is
located somewhere on the Afghan-Pakistani border, al-Qaida head Osama
bin Laden reminded the West he was still on the loose, issuing an audio
tape that urged Islamist militants to "prepare for a long war against
the crusader plunderers in Western Sudan," where he was once based.
While the government in Khartoum quickly distanced itself from the
world's most sought-after terrorist, intelligence officials suspect the
tape may have been a message to supporters to carry out attacks under
preparation.
The
following day over twenty people were killed when coordinated bombings
rocked the Egyptian holiday resort of Dahab, the third time in 18 months
deadly attacks were carried out in the Sinai peninsula. While no one
claimed responsibility for the blast and the Egyptian government, an
ally of the U.S., is reluctant to concede al-Qaida may have operatives
within its borders, Islamic terrorists are widely suspected of being
behind the blasts.
Israeli
analysts say the bombings bore the hallmark of al-Qaida due to the
magnitude and sophistication of the devices, which were believed to
have been triggered by remote-control.
In
the Sinai or in Afghanistan, the bloodshed is a reminder of the
continuing war on terror, at a time the Bush administration is coming
under repeated fire for committing resources once used to put terrorists
on the run to launch an offensive against Iraq.
Recently
a phalanx of retired top generals questioned whether the U.S.
administration had taken the right course of action in Iraq, and called
for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, accusing him
of bungling war planning and the execution of its aftermath. Bush
admitted that mistakes were made in the war planning, including the fact
that the insurgency was grossly underestimated, but defended the troop
levels he ordered in the initial strike, which was largely seen as
successful.
Bush
has seen his popularity plummet to historic lows in the 30s one month
after the U.S. marked the 3rd anniversary of the beginning of the war in
Iraq. Canada largely sent troops to Afghanistan to avoid involvement in
Iraq while supporting coalition efforts against terrorism, but after
years Taleban insurgents who used to run Afghanistan were said of being
on the run there are reports they may be reorganizing and are no longer
intimidated by the protracted foreign military presence in the country.
Increasingly bold threats and attacks against coalition troops in
Afghanistan seem to corroborate this.
And
as Canada's death toll increases a fresh controversy has erupted over
how to mourn and commemorate the dead after Prime minister Stephen
Harper decided to halt flying the flag at half-staff for troops killed
and blocked news coverage of the return of the flag-draped coffins. "I
was told this is usually done for VIPs," Dinning's father wrote to
Harper. "I would suggest to you that there is no more important VIP than
a Canadian soldier who gave his life."
Népal: le roi plie
Déjà
isolé par sa géographie et sa topographie à couper le souffle, le
royaume himalayen du Népal comptait peu d'amis alors qu'il cherchait à
faire taire la contestation des rues de plus en plus violentes de
Katmandou.
Isolé
au niveau international par la condamnation des émissaires qui
regrettaient les morts causées par les soldats cherchant à faire
respecter le couvre-feu, le roi Gyanendra comptait encore moins d'amis à
l'intérieur de son royaume, où l'insurrection maoïste rejoignait un
mouvement de contestation populaire depuis qu'il a limogé sont dernier
premier ministre l'an dernier, supprimé les libertés individuelles tout
en s'octroyant les pleins pouvoirs.
Vendredi
Gyanendra a enfin plié devant l'opposition après des semaines de
manifestations parfois violentes et de grève générale, mais sa décision
de rendre aux partis les pouvoirs confisqués en février 2005 ne
suffisait plus aux masses rassemblées dans les rues de la capitale.
La
semaine précédente le roi, dont l'ascension au pouvoir était elle-même
contestée après un massacre sanglant au palais en 2001, avait une
nouvelle fois promis de tenir des élections d'ici avril 2007 mais
l'opposition réclamait, d'une voix avec la rébellion maoïste, la
création immédiate d'un gouvernement multipartite intérimaire, afin de
préparer l'élection d'une assemblée constituante.
En
fin de compte cette semaine Gyanendra a dû promettre le rétablissement
du parlement dissous, une revendication clé des manifestants. Pour une
rare fois, ces derniers ont accueilli une déclaration du roi par des
cris de joie et annulé une grève générale prévue le lendemain.
Voilà
des semaines que la fronde antimonarchique multipliait les
manifestations importantes, dans certains cas de véritables marées
humaines défilant des journées entières aux cris de «Vive la République!
A bas la monarchie!» malgré le couvre-feu. Au nom de la menace maoïste,
les autorités cherchaient à interdire les manifestations, même si elles
étaient plutôt d'ordre pacifique:
«Quiconque
violera le couvre-feu sera cible de tirs à vue», avertissait un
administrateur. Dans certains cas des manifestants ont assisté à de
véritables bains de sang. Selon des témoins, soldats et policiers ont
déchargé leurs armes lorsque des dizaines de milliers de manifestants
ont tenté de pénétrer dans le centre ville de Chandragadhi la semaine
dernière, où les rassemblements publics étaient interdits, tuant trois
personnes et faisait des dizaines de blessés.
L'opposition
était généralement plus violente dans ses propos que par ses actes,
appelant à la désobéissance civile en demandant à la population de ne
plus payer ni impôts ni factures relatives aux services publics tout en
poursuivant une grève générale responsable de pénuries dans la capitale.
Pour
le roi, les cris de la rue étaient indissociables des refrains
maoïstes, les manifestants réclamant parfois la fin de la monarchie.
"C'est ce que les manifestants veulent, estime Brigitte Steinmann du
CNRS à Libération. Les maoïstes bien sûr, mais, bientôt les classes
moyennes aussi, qui réclamaient avec insistance la démocratie. Même les
fonctionnaires participaient aux manifestations de masse contre le
pouvoir."
Selon
elle l'alliance entre sept principaux partis et les maoïstes est
totalement conjoncturelle mais a permis de rapprocher la guérilla de
Katmandou, dernier bastion du roi. Une certaine division s'emparait
d'ailleurs de la rue après la victoire, la guérilla estimant les gains
insuffisants en un premier temps. Par la suite elle a modéré ses propos,
mettant un terme au blocus des régions et proclamant une trêve.
Alors
que les maoïstes conservent une image assez négative qui pourrait les
empêcher de prendre le pouvoir, une mainmise de l'armée, pas plus
populaire en raison des victimes récentes, reste à craindre.
Mais
certains sont d'avis que l'heure de la république a simplement sonné.
"Finalement, le roi Gyanendra est à la merci du peuple, estime Ameet
Dhakal, rédacteur du Kathmandu Post dans son éditorial de vendredi.
Alors que le monde fait de la spéculation à propos du verdict, les
Népalais attendent tout juste que l'inévitable se produise; pour eux le
verdict ne tarde pas à se faire attendre. Il ne peut y avoir d'autre
dénouement que celui de la république. Désolé monsieur le roi, votre
heure a sonné."
Oil catches fire
Drivers
had barely changed their Winter tires that they were seeing gas prices
fit for the height of the driving season. There were no lack of reasons
for the new surge in the price of oil, reaching $75 a barrel last week:
From America's stretched refining capacity and infrastructure woes,
which haven't recovered from hurricane Katrina, to its war of words over
Iran's nuclear ambitions.
China's
roaring economy is also maintaining a strong thirst for oil. Observers
noticed that Chinese president Hu Jintao's recent visit to the U.S. had
been preceded by his visit to Canada and followed by trips to Nigeria
and the Mideast, where the rising power wants to secure much-needed fuel
for its economic growth.
In
Africa continuing shortages in Nigeria, where the oil industry is
threatened by armed groups, were also raising fears.In the midst of all
this another, usually more quiet, African nation also temporarily waved
the threat of increased pressure on the oil market.
To
this day Chad remains out of mind if not in the context of the
contentious 2000 presidential elections, but the country sandwiched
between Sudan and Niger has been going through a rough period only
brought to light in the midst of the latest oil crunch.
Last
week the government of President Idriss Deby waved the threat of
halting oil production as rebels Chad accuses Sudan of supporting
carried a failed attack on the capital Ndjamena. The declaration was an
attempt to raise international awareness on the problems facing Chad,
which has seen thousands of refugees pour in from the neighboring
bloodied province of Darfur, sometimes chased by their Janjawid
persecutors.
Khartoum
has denied any involvement in the attacks, as it denies it backs the
Janjawid's charge against Darfur's mainly black population. In the midst
of fears of a worldwide squeeze on oil markets Chad's relatively puny
production of 160,000 barrels a day commanded international attention as
U.S. and other backers sought to mediate discussions between Chad and
the World Bank after it froze millions in oil loyalties.
The
Bank protested a parliament vote that would have cut oil revenues
destined for health, education and infrastructure so they could be
allocated to the country's growing security problems. The U.S. refuses
to call its role mediation but is nonetheless sending its Deputy
Assistant Secretary of State to bring government leaders closer to the
political opposition and help resolve the oil dispute, which was
reportedly the subject of an interim deal.
France
meanwhile, the old colonial power, had received a request from the
rebels of the United Front for Change to discuss the role of French
troops in the country. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned that
the fighting could have a domino effect in the region. "If you have
another escalation in Chad you risk destabilizing the whole region, not
just Chad but also the Central African Republic, a sort of domino effect
that we have seen in the Great Lakes region," Annan said, referring to a
recent and dark chapter in African history.
The
Central African Republic closed its border with Sudan after the rebel
attack, protesting what it called Khartoum's "aggression" on
neighbouring Chad, but stopped short of cutting diplomatic ties with
Khartoum. Triggering the latest rebel attack was the coming May 3
presidential election in which Deby, whom the Front wants to unseat
after 16 years in power, is standing for re-election.
Meanwhile
Chad severed relations with Sudan and pulled out of peace talks over
Darfur, accusing Khartoum-backed mercenaries of trying to overthrow the
government in Ndjamena. Khartoum in return accuses Chad of backing
rebels in Darfur, where some 180,000 have died from three years of
fighting and famine threatens 700,000 people there and in Eastern Chad
according to the UN.
Critics
of the government in Ndjamena stress that Deby is exaggerating the
Khartoum connection to deflect attention from the many problems plaguing
one of the poorest countries in the world. Oil-rich Chad does not have
running water or electricity outside the capital or even a public
education system, and more than half the population is illiterate.
Déby,
a onetime rebel leader now fending off a rebellion, is fighting more
than a faceless armed opposition, but members of his own family who have
defected to the rebels to protest his lack of support for Sudanese
rebels fighting the regime in nearby Khartoum. The land-locked country
and region's internal struggles are weighing in on oil prices in their
own way despite their modest relative size in the oil market.
The
high prices may be making disgruntled drivers but oil prospectors are
delirious, seeing once unaffordable exploitation projects come to life,
from the oil sands of Alberta to the North Atlantic. But the times
aren't without their highly criticized excesses. Among them Exxon Mobil
Corp.'s just retired chief executive, Lee Raymond, came under fore and
quickly became the new face of executive greed after securities
regulators revealed the 67-year-old will receive a retirement package of
nearly US$400-million.
Governments
both in Canada and the U.S. warned of a "tough summer" ahead and
conceded little could be done to ease pains at the pump, but Bush said
he would support investigations into possible price-gounging. Adding
stress to the usual transfer to Summer gas production are new
regulations changing additives to gasoline in the U.S. this year.
Bush
did manage to bring a little relief to the oil markets by saying
Washington would delay the usual summertime deposits of oil into the
U.S. Strategic Petroleum reserves while encouraging conservation and the
development of energy alternatives. But it is the lack of alternatives
that is leaving consumers fired up, as the Summer driving season comes
up the road.
Prodi, dans les temps d'arrêts
Ce
n'est pas pour rien que la formation politique de Silvio Berlusconi a
pris son nom dans les estrades italiennes. Quand elles ne diffusaient
pas les derniers propos du milliardaire-premier ministre, les chaines de
télévision milanaises, dont il est le propriétaire, suivaient avec
attention les derniers exploits de son club, l'AC Milan.
Lors
d'un match récent de la ligue des champions, celui-ci luttait avec
acharnement contre l'Olympique de Lyon. Tout roulait sur des billes pour
les Français, jusqu'aux dernières minutes, lorsque l'AC a inscrit deux
buts plutôt inespérés, mettant un terme aux espoirs lyonnais.
Traînant
la patte dans les sondages, il faut penser que l'enfant terrible de
l'Europe méditerranéenne a tout fait pour ré-éditer l'exploit lors des
législatives de cette fin de semaine, y compris en faisant des beaux
yeux à l'arbitre.
Vieux
truc remontant à la dolce vita en Italie, où le mode de scrutin faisait
tomber des gouvernements avec le changement de saison, Berlusconi avait
récemment ré-instauré le mode à la proportionnelle de façon à limiter
l'ampleur d'une éventuelle défaite. Ce n'est pas pour rien que
Berlusconi, qui avait largement profité du système majoritaire mis en
place après une période d'instabilité intenable à la fin des années 90,
avait été le premier à terminer son mandat de cinq ans depuis la Seconde
guerre mondiale.
En
voilà un qui avait des coglioni, diront certains, mais après toutes ces
années et multes coup d'éclats, autant de malversations et encore plus
de gaffes, les Italiens ont décidé de se départir du Buffone de Rome et
d’élire un homme qui ne pourrait, à première vue, être plus différent de
lui. Mais il ne manquait pas grand chose pour marquer dans les temps
d'arrêts.
La
coalition centre-gauche de l’ancien premier ministre et président de
la Commission européenne Romano Prodi, dit “il Professore”, a tout juste
esquissé une victoire en chambre des députés, remportant 49,8% des
votes contre 49,7%. Mais au sénat, une institution qui détient un
certain pouvoir de blocage en Italie, la coalition de Berlusconi
détenait un siège d'avance, en attendant le vote des expatriés de la rue
St-Laurent au New Jersey. Ce n'est que le lendemain que Prodi a
remporté la chambre haute.
Comme
il se doit, il Cavaliere, qui avait traité de tous les noms ceux qui
voteraient contre lui, n'avait pas dit son dernier mot, contestant les
résultats. Voilà un résultat qui avait quelquechose de décevant pour les
opposants de Berlusconi, dont le règne avait mis en relief le contraste
entre l’enrichis- sement personnel du premier ministre, le plus
important magnat au pays, avec les déboires économiques de la péninsule
italienne.
Peu
d'éloges semblaient surgir de la bouche de gens qui d'ordinaire se
seraient rangés avec le patron de Forza Italia: «Ce qu’a fait
Berlusconi? Pratiquement rien de ce qu’il aurait dû faire, estimait un
diplomate américain. La dette vertigineuse est repartie à la hausse et
sera à 108 % du PIB à la fin de 2006. Le déficit budgétaire sera à 4 %.
Aucune vraie mesure économique n’a été prise pour préparer l’Italie à la
mondialisation. Mis à part le fait que le “Cavaliere” a fait voter des
lois qui le protègent des poursuites judiciaires, il n’y a presque rien.
Son principal exploit a consisté à être le premier chef de gouvernement
italien depuis l’après-guerre à avoir complété son mandat de cinq
ans...» Etonnants propos quand on pense aux relations assez cordiales
entre Washington et Rome, notamment sur l'Irak, que veut éventuellement
quitter Prodi.
C’est
peut-être le désir d'en finir avec l'hystérie berlusconienne plutôt que
le désir d'élire le terne eurocrate qui a motivé une partie du vote
contre Forza, un manque d'entrain qui a failli se traduire par le
premier cas de majorité contradictoire dans la pénible histoire
politique italienne.
Mais
ils étaient plus unanimes sur le besoin de mettre un terme à une
campagne aussi désagréable, truffée d’insultes et d’invectives les unes
plus cinglantes que les autres. Estimant que l’élection donnait lieu à
“un choix fondamental entre l’Italie de la gauche, des taxes, du
pessimisme, des insultes et des mensonges, et l’Italie des droits, de la
tolérance, cette Italie qui sait par-dessus tout aimer” lors d’un des
derniers rassemblement électoraux, Berlusconi n’a encore une fois
renoncé à aucun cout d’éclat en lançant: “Allez vous confier votre
avenir aux complices de la pire tyrannie de l’histoire, à ceux qui ont
eu pour idoles Lénine, Staline, Mao et Pol Pot?”
S'agit-il des derniers propos dérangeants du Buffone?
Place à la Cour
Le
décès de l’ancien homme fort Slobodan Milosevic était un coup dur au
tribunal international de la Haye. Pourtant entre Saddam Hussein et
Charles Taylor, on n’est pas à court d’anciens despotes devant faire
face à la justice, seulement on a tout fait pour tenir le TPI hors du
coup.
Récemment
le Haut tribunal irakien a annoncé que des accusations pour génocide
avaient été transmises au parquet, ouvrant la voie à un nouveau procès
de l’ancien président irakien. Evidemment, sur une terre conquise par
Washington, il n’est pas question de traduire quoi que ce soit en cour
internationale, que rejette l’administration Bush. Officiellement, la
raison invoquée est qu’il est nécessaire de faire juger Saddam par son
propre peuple.
Aussi
le cas étudié n’est pas banal puisqu’il s’agit pour les Etats-Unis de
l’exemple qui illustrait bien l’intention du dictateur irakien de faire
usage d’armes de destruction massives: en l’occurrence le gazage du
Kurdistan irakien de mars à septembre 1988, qui aurait fait plusieurs
milliers de morts. Saddam comparaît déjà depuis octobre dernier dans un
premier procès pour la mort de 148 chiites en 1982 à Doudjaïl. Il est
passible de la peine de mort.
Pour
Charles Taylor, l’ancien dictateur du pays fondé par d’ancien esclaves
américains, le procès passera par le Haye mais non pas le TPI. C’est
devant le Tribunal spécial pour le Sierra Leone que sa comparution
initiale avait lieu avant que le procès soit «dépaysé» à La Haye, après
une résolution de l’ONU. Une fois le verdict rendu Taylor devra
cependant être détenu dans un autre pays.
Pourtant
le TPI ne chôme pas. 161 individus y ont été jugés, et la cour se
penche actuellement sur les crimes en cours au Soudan dans la région du
Darfour, pas une mince tache. Surtout quand on pense que Saddam Hussein a
dû attendre 18 ans avant d’être accusé de génocide, soit 10 ans avant
la création de la cour de la Haye, alors que les crimes au Soudan sont
vieux que de quelques mois, sinon de quelques heures dans cette région
encore proie aux atrocités.
L’Afrique
est d’ailleurs le premier continent où des dirigeants ont été tenus
coupables de génocide, lors du massacre des grands Lacs. Une liste de 51
Soudanais a été recommandée aux membres de la commission pour enquête.
Mais certaines de ces personnes sont jugées “utiles” par Washington dans
sa lutte au terrorisme dans la région, et les enquêtes du TPI font
craigner l’avenir des efforts de paix dans la région, notamment celui
qui a été conclu au sud Soudan.
Pourtant
les enquêtes du tribunal de la Haye font de plus en plus fuir les
criminels de haut niveau et sont toutes aussi efficaces pour faire
pression sur les régimes recalcitrants. De plus en plus, éviter la Haye
ne constitue non pas un revers pour le tribunal, mais devient signe de
respect.
Justice for 9-11
With
the 5th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks less than six months away
the families of the victims may soon start feeling justice is being
served after a Virginia jury ruled that the lone man held in connection
with the attack could face execution.
But
it may not be his direct proven connection to the attack that may leave
him a dead man walking _an event which took place while he was in
prison but on which he claims to have withheld key information_ but
rather his reaction to it and outbursts in court undermining his own
defense.
Truly
the mark of a delirious man, some agreed, perhaps a rare insight into
the deranged psyche of a terror bomber who missed his chance. Instead
the man once called the “20th hijacker”, arrested for having raised red
flags by taking incomplete flying lessons that did not include take-off
or landing a plane, could meet his maker following a lethal injection,
hardly worthy of the usual flock of virgins promised to martyrs.
The
Virginia jury found that Zacarias Moussaoui could be subject to the
death penalty after concluding unanimously that the Moroccan-born French
national had lied to federal agents after his arrest in August 2001 and
that at least one victim of the Sept. 11 attacks died as a direct
result of his deception.
Legal
analysts say this puts to rest the toughest part of the government’s
case against Moussaoui, as the jury of nine men and three women now
moves into the next phase of the sentencing trial, a more emotional
phase which will involve dozens of witnesses and graphic footage of the
attacks, some never publicly shown before.
But
the U.S. is aware there is often more to open and shut cases,
especially in sensitive trials where critics, such as Moussaoui’s
mother, charge a scape-goat is being made of him.
French
authorities meanwhile have been watching the case closely, justice
minister Pascal Clement reminding U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
that France opposes the death penalty.
While
hardly bringing an end to the proceedings, the decision is a milestone
in a protracted case which saw its share of upheavals. Initially
Moussaoui refused to enter a plea and regularly insulted his own defense
attorney. Moussaoui eventually pleaded guilty to six conspiracy
charges, three of which exposed him to the death penalty.
The
government’s case faltered, reaching its low point when the judge
considered a mistrial after a government lawyer was shown to have
improperly coached several aviation officials who were to be key
witnesses, a threat which still loomed over the case as the jury
prepared to hand its verdict. There were indications the government
could seek a mistrial if the jury voted against the death penalty.
Moussaoui’s
ultimate undoing was entirely his own, acting against his own counsel
in an outburst it later sought to dismiss. Taking the stand Moussaoui
said he rejoyced at the news of the terror attacks and claimed he should
have taken part in them by crashing a 5th plane into the White House.
This was disputed by other accounts which referred to him as a
participant in an eventual second wave of terror strikes. The outburst
saved a government case which remarkably was on the verge of collapse.
In
a watershed case, Moussaoui in fact could be executed for inaction
rather than action: not telling, or lying to investigators about his
knowledge of Al-Qaida plans to fly planes into buildings when he was
arrested a month before the attacks, even if he said he didn’t know when
and where this would take place. Had Moussaoui told the truth, the
prosecutors charged, U.S. authorities would have taken quick action to
thwart the plot.
Of
course this assumes preventive measures would have been effective, a
view in part undermined as the failure of senior FBI officials to act on
requests to investigate Moussaoui were reiterated in vivid detail. True
to himself, the unrepentant terrorist left the court-room vowing
authorities “would never get my blood, God curse you all.”
Audience
members, who included families of the 9-11 victims, were left relieved
but speechless. “This man has no soul, has no conscience,” said Rosemary
Dillard, whose husband Eddie died in the attacks. “What else could we
ask for but this?” Some actually felt sorry, “But not enough to drop the
possibility of him getting the death penalty,” said Abraham Scott, who
lost his wife Janice Marie. “I describe him like a dog with rabies, one
that cannot be cured. The only cure is to put him or her to death,” he
said.
“No
penalty or verdict could reverse the pain and horror inflicted by the
9/11 hijackers and their collaborators,” US Senate majority leader Bill
Frist said in a statement. “However, Mr Moussaoui’s punishment is proof
that our society is grounded in the liberating power of justice and the
rule of law, which are our most valuable weapons in the War on Terror.”
In Spain meanwhile a judge charged 29 men a mere two years after its bloody March 11 attacks.
America's immigration woes
With
thousands of Latino protesters taking to the streets in the U.S.
against a bill that would make illegal immigrants “criminals” as North
America’s leaders gathered for their annual summit recently, you could
be forgiven for thinking the U.S. had only one international border.
While
protocol and politeness sought to avoid leaving the meeting dominated
by a single issue, there is no doubt the immigration debacle dominated
the event, which was the first and last to include Harper, Bush and Fox.
Flag-waving
marchers have been taking to America’s streets in a show of Latino
people power as support was being mobilized against tough legislation
that passed the House in December, sponsored by Representative James
Sensenbrenner, that would turn undocumented immigrants - estimated to
exceed 11 million - into felons and make it a federal crime to assist
them.
This
is not the immigration reform many had expected. A compromise bill,
authored by Sen. John McCain and Sen. Ted Kennedy, sought to legalize
the very same people in addition to opening the way for 400,000
temporary essential workers every year while beefing up border security,
but it eventually collapsed. The bill would have toughened workplace
rules for immigrants but created a “guest worker” programme favoured by
President Bush.
The
Senate bill had not been without its critics, branding the move as
granting “amnesty”, a notion that got a bad name twenty years ago when
some 3 million undocumented people were legalized, and to many sent the
wrong signal about America’s tolerance for illegals. Illegal immigration
has doubled every decade since, from nearly 6 million in 1996 to nearly
12 million today, 78 percent of it from Mexico.
Even
if the numbers are nowhere close to the ones in the U.S., an increasing
number of Mexicans are fleeing to Canada as well, more than any other
nationality according to 2005 numbers, but relatively few of them are
allowed to remain. Last year for the first time they surpassed Chinese,
Colombians, Sri Lankans and Indians as refugee claimants to Canada, but
only 19 percent of the 3,541 Mexican refugee-seekers who applied for
refugee-status in Canada were accepted.
The
rift among lawmakers in the U.S. meanwhile, so divided that they have
even split republicans during a year the issue could dominate the
elections, is reflected among Americans, 53 percent of whom said
illegals should be sent home while 40 percent say they should be granted
some sort of legal status. A great majority agreed the Bush
administration wasn’t doing enough about securing the border.
Nor
are all Hispanics rushing to the streets in protest, sizeable
minorities of them believing illegal aliens hurt the economy by driving
down wages. But 76 percent of them told one pollster they believed
anti-immigrant sentiment was on the rise and growing, a sentiment
perhaps exacerbated by an increasingly influential Latino media, one
practically the size of Canada’s, a reflection of the growing
demographic and political weight of what is now America’s largest
minority. Religious groups have also spurred mobilization in the midst
of this largely Catholic population. This reality is not lost on
Republicans worried of losing crucial votes in the coming congressional
elections.
All
of the three North American amigos will have held elections by the time
the year is over, Mexico possibly looking at a left-wing successor to
Vicente Fox who could be far less accomodating on the border issue.
Often accused of not doing enough to halt the northward flow of
illegals, Fox said his country would seek to curb illegal immigration by
promoting opportunity at home and making useless a wall he has often
condemned, a long-term solution that lacks the necessary short-term
political fix to some.
He
reminded that the country was dealing with its own illegal immigration
as clandestine migrants from Central America infiltrated Mexico’s
southern border to head north toward the Rio Grande. Following his term
this year the constitution dictates that Fox must step down and is
prevented from running again, and polls are giving the leftist leader of
the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD), former Mexico City mayor
Andrés Manuel López Obrador, consistent leads.
“If
you hurt immigrants you are hurting America,” read a sign during one
recent New York protest march. “We are your economy” said another.
Perhaps this is truest in the country’s most populous state, California,
which is one-third Hispanic.
In
2004 the movie “Day without a Mexican” spoofed the overnight
disappearance of the state’s 12 million Latinos, leaving Californians
scrambling for basic necessities and making the state consider their
return a top priority after declaring a state of emergency. A comical
b-movie Latinos would argue reveals some truth about how America
operates, even all the way across the country.
“Talk
to employers, owners of factories. What would be the impact of having
these people become criminals? It would be very detrimental for
individuals and also the economy,” said Sergio Paez, a Boston-area
public school language program director. “How many Americans do you
think are crouched on the ground cutting tomatoes?” Jorge de Leon, the
owner of a Boston pizzeria asked rhetorically during a recent march.
“Most immigrants are doing work that Americans don’t want. They’re
working in plastic factories, painting, construction. We are an
important source of labor.”
So
it turns out, not only Europe has trouble with the integration of its
immigrants, but in a country built by immigration, the debate is also a
source of frustration for other newcomers who feel slighted despite
using the legal route. “What Americans are saying is ‘Yes, come here.
But come here legally.’ And I think that’s the big problem,” one
counter-protester said as hundreds of thousands of Latinos poured into
the streets across the U.S. again this week in what some are comparing
to a Latino march for civil rights. "We don't have a leader like Martin
Luther King or Chavez, but this is now a national immigrants rights
movement."
Getting hot in here
It
may after all just be the year that's unusual. Looking over the sparse
floes if the St Lawrence river from 1,000 feet up, helicopter pilot
Martin Dufour is stunned by the lack of ice on the first weekend of
Spring. "There's no ice, it's crazy," he says. "In some areas the snow
cover is maybe 10 percent what it was last year." Humane Society member
Kathy Milani puts it in perspective. "Last year you could walk for hours
uninterrupted over the St Lawrence, now they're small drifting ice
pans, you can't take two steps".
That's
a bigger problem for Dufour who must set his chopper down on the ice to
pick up passengers of a ship. There's a reason why there's so much
traffic over and on the ice floes of the mighty Gulf, it's the first day
of the contentious seal hunt season and those who are particularly
miffed are the sealers, who rely on the hunt to make up for the failure
of the coastal fisheries but considered waiting a bit, managing to get
just 3,000 seals on the first day, whereas 5,000 would qualify more like
a good day's work. One of the reasons why the seals are so scarce is
because they fall through the ice before they have a chance to learn how
to swim.
Maybe
global warming isn't behind all this, but the evidence is becoming hard
to ignore. As Canada recorded its warmest Winter since modern
record-keeping began, warming waters were being blamed for a lack of ice
in the Sea of Okhotsk off the coast of world's other large Arctic
power. At the other end of the Earth, an iceberg shedding large masses
of ice off the coast of Pantagonia was the cause of amazement and
concern, while Sagarmatha National Park in the Himalayas and the Belize
Barrier Reef were being listed by UNESCO as World Heritage Sites
threatened by climate change.
Of
course it wasn't necessary to stray very far from home to note the
unusual Winter, which saw average temperatures 3.9 degrees above normal
and all regions of the country, the biggest departure from typical
winter weather being recorded up North where Alberta, Saskatchewan and
the Northwest Territories converge, sometimes averaging eight degrees
warmer than normal.
The
temperatures were also warm further south where the Great Lakes
remained ice-free in the middle of the winter. "Statistically, this is a
one-in-a-100-years kind of event," said one climatologist with
Environment Canada in Toronto, repeating what seems to be a growing
refrain. The cold air that normally makes Canadian winters so
character-building instead hurtled down to northern Europe and Russia,
conjuring images of doomsday scenarios in usually temperate Europe,
which is warmed by currents that keep it from freezing as badly as
Canada despite being situated further up North.
While
this may not be enough to convince the skeptics, the weird phenomenon
is coupled with reports of record CO2 levels and fresh evidence that the
enormous ice sheets covering both Greenland and Antarctica are showing a
net loss of ice to the seas. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration says that scientists have recorded a significant rise in
the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, pushing it to a
new record level. The chief carbon dioxide analyst for NOAA says the
latest data confirms a worrying trend that recent years have, on
average, recorded double the rate of increase from just 30 years ago.
"We don't see any sign of a decrease; in fact, we're seeing the
opposite, the rate of increase is accelerating," Dr Pieter Tans told the
BBC.
The
U.S. government may not be that worried about global warming, judging
from its views on Kyoto, but Americans are. According to a recent survey
85 percent of them think there's something larger happening. That may
be because America's own agencies, such as NOAA, are spotting the
trends.
The
U.S. Geological Survey says eastern North America is having snow melt
and runoff into rivers earlier than it did in the first half of the 20th
century. The study says flows in many rivers in the northern United
States and Canada, like the St Lawrence, are occurring earlier by 5-10
days. NASA for its part has surveyed a net loss of ice from the combined
polar ice sheets of both Greenland and Antarctica between 1992 and
2002, and a corresponding rise in sea level. According to reports some
20 billion tons of water melted into the oceans in each of those 10
years, which was accompanied by extensive thinning of Antarctica ice
shelves. Eventually entire cities such as London, New York, Bombay and
Tokyo could go the way of New Orleans.
Marco
Fania, a Canadian sound recorder on a 10-month expedition to the frozen
continent tells the NPU from the Southern pole that the warm weather
and rising water has not been lost on the team working on various
documentaries. "Apparently water levels have risen here drastically in
the past five years and most of it is being dumped into the Atlantic.
It's still raining here which is not usual.. We are not even sure if the
Bay that we are anchored in will freeze over. Where has winter gone?"
In
fact Earth could be headed for dramatic increases in sea levels in the
next few centuries according to Science magazine. If greenhouse gases
continue to rise at present rates Greenland could be as warm by 2100 as
it was 130,000 years ago, when melting ice raised sea levels by 3-4m, it
says. And while industrial countries account for a majority of
emissions believed to fuel global warming poor countries that receive
aid could face the brunt of mother nature down the road according to a
UK government report.
It
says droughts and floods fuelled partly by carbon emissions from
countries such as the UK and Canada will hurt the world's poorest in
Africa and Asia. Global warming, it forecasts, threatens to reduce
India's farm output by as much as a quarter and undo more than half the
development work in Bangladesh. In Africa, a continent with no shortage
of difficulties, the report says the number of people at risk from
coastal flooding could rise from one million to 70 million by 2080.
Closer
in Canada's great north, the thinner cover on ice highways is
threatening to isolate communities that rely on them to get around. The
world may not agree what to do about this, if anything can be done, but
it increasingly agrees there's a problem. Of course it may just be a bad
year.
Nouveau chapitre en Israel
Presque
trois mois après son hospitalisation Ariel Sharon reste dans le coma et
son sort parait plus incertain que jamais, mais la formation politique
qu'il a fait naitre, chamboulant la politique israélienne de manière
considérable, se porte plutôt bien après l'élection de son protégé Ehud
Olmert et du parti Kadima.
Ce
dernier a ravi 28 des 120 sièges du XVII Knesset dans une période ou
les tensions qui persistent entre Israel et ses voisins arabes,
notamment la formation terroriste qui vient de former un gouvernement à
Gaza, reste plutôt élevée, sans parler de l'Iran, qui souhaite toujours
aussi ouvertement l'annihilation de l'Etat hebreu.
Pourtant
avec cette élection Israel dictait, quoique timidement, son intention
de poursuivre la politique unilatérale d'évacuation des colonies, cette
fois en Cisjordanie, ou la grande majorité des colons a pignon sur rue.
Pas moins de 31 listes se disputaient les suffrages, mais pour les
partis traditionnels comme le Likoud, privé de son hégémonie, et le
Parti travailliste qui, en portant à sa tête l'ancien chef syndicaliste
Amir Peretz, a pris le risque de faire fuir nombre de ses fidèles,
l'élection était un dur moment à passer.
Comme
si on vivait en permanence l'enterrement de l'ancien soldat, la
campagne a été plutôt terne, sans débats braillards à la télévision ou
manifestations monstre des partis orthodoxes. Il faut dire que
l'élection s'est distinguée par un taux élevé d'indécis et
d'abstentionnistes, donnant davantage de place aux petites formations.
En
déclarant que «les élections sont déjà tranchées» au courant de la
campagne, Olmert a peut-être perdu un peu d'appui ou démotivé une partie
de l'électorat. Mais la nature fracturée de l'électorat en Israel
promet presque en permanence un gouvernement de coalition sur cette
terre ou tous se considèrent "heureux élus".
Sous
d'imposants portraits d'Ariel Sharon, le pragmatique Olmert a déclaré
ouvert un nouveau chapitre dans l'histoire d'Israel, un chapitre qui
devrait fixer les frontières de l'Etat hebreu d'ici 2010, après une
pénible période d'évacuation de la Cisjordanie. "Durant la période qui
s'ouvre, nous allons mettre en place les frontières définitives de
l'Etat d'Israël, un Etat juif avec une majorité juive", a déclaré
Olmert.
"Nous
essaierons d'y parvenir par le biais d'un accord avec les
Palestiniens", a-t-il ajouté en estimant qu'il était temps que la
Palestine reconnaisse l'existence du pays hebreu. "Nous sommes prêts au
compromis, à abandonner certaines parties de notre terre chérie
d'Israël, à retirer la peine dans l'âme les juifs qui y vivent, à vous
offrir les conditions pour réaliser vos espoirs et vivre dans un Etat en
paix", a-t-il assuré en s'adressant au président de l'Autorité
palestinienne Mahmoud Abbas.
Mais
si les Palestiniens ne font pas les efforts réclamés par les Israéliens
pour progresser vers la paix, "Israël prendra son destin en main", un
avertissement pas passé inaperçu.
La tourmente du sous-emploi
Les
manifestations qui ont viré à l'émeute et au remplissage de panier à
salade, c'est du déjà vu à Paris, pourtant les mesures controversées qui
devaient encourager l'emploi étaient en partie nées dans les cendres
des automobiles incendiées dans les banlieues l'automne dernier. Drôle
de manière de boucler la boucle.
Mais
encore une fois, qu'une politique française avec but de créer des
emplois en arrive là, c'est presque du déjà vu également. Mais après
l'échec des 35 heures, qui à la fin des années 1990s promettaient
presque le plein-emploi, peut-on déjà dire que le projet de CPE (contrat
première embauche) soit voué à l'échec également?
L'intention,
encore une fois, est louable, et a tout de suite été reconnue à la NPU,
où un projet passé a, malgré son échec, clairement fait état de la
situation de l'emploi dans l'hexagone. Il y a deux ans, lorsque la NPU a
été approchée pour lancer un projet de magazine international dont le
marché allait être en France, on n'a pas tardé à comprendre comment le
projet avait rebondi sur nos berges. "Ici lorsqu'on embauche quelqu'un,
c'est un mariage, expliquait le chef du projet à Paris, ça manque de
flexibilité."
En
gros, voilà les arguments du gouvernement français, en pleine crise de
jeunes pour la seconde fois en moins de six mois. Le CPE, un contrat de
durée indéterminée pendant lequel l'employeur a deux ans pour se décider
sur l'embauche d'un employé, devait permettre une telle flexibilité.
"Je pense que c'est la seule solution, entonnait le ministre des
affaires extérieures français Philippe Douste-Blazy lors d'une visite
récente au Canada, les jeunes doivent comprendre que c'est pour eux pas
contre eux".
Ces
jeunes, ce sont curieusement, non pas directement les étudiants qui
manifestent dans les rues, mais les jeunes qui sont dores et déjà à la
recherche d'un emploi. Autrement dit, ce sont plus les jeunes
défavorisés des banlieues calcinées de l'an dernier que les grévistes
des facs, vite soutenus par les syndicats et leurs appels à la grève
générale. Une solution qui ne rassure pas plus certains économistes.
Ce
n'est peut-être pas Mai 68, il n'y a qu'à voir le nombre de femmes au
front qui n'a rien à voir avec la révolution machiste d'il y a presque
quarante ans, mais ça brasse autant que durant la crise de la loi Monory
il y a vingt ans.
Le
rapprochement était d'ailleurs bien triste lorsqu'un des manifestants
est mort et un autre a été plongé dans le coma lors des violences, le
rappel du malheureux sort de Malik Oussekine à l'automne 1986, brutalisé
par les forces de l'ordre. L'incident avait tout de suite fait plié le
gouvernement, qui pour l'heure refuse encore de céder.
Le
premier ministre Dominique de Villepin, dont les projets présidentiels
pourraient se jouer au coeur de la crise, s'est pour sa part félicité du
«vrai dialogue» lancé avec trois organisations étudiantes espérant
pouvoir «très rapidement» développer le débat avec l'ensemble des
partenaires sociaux. C'était il y a maintenant quelques semaines et
avant plusieurs manifestations monstre.
Même
si le gouvernement ne plie pas, une possibilité semble se dessiner:
celle de conserver la loi, mais avec des modifications capables de
plaire à tous. Du côté manifestant, flexibilité financière doit en
partie accompagner flexibilité d'embauche, puisqu'ils constatent avec
regret que plusieurs institutions financières ne sont pas à l'aise de
couvrir le risque de prêter à des jeunes en situation de CPE.
Encore
une fois, la crise n'a pas épargné le chef de l'Etat, Jacques Chirac,
qui a de son côté appelé à maintes reprises les partenaires sociaux à
«ouvrir un dialogue constructif et confiant» afin d'«améliorer» le CPE.
Le gouvernement se penche semble-t-il sur une possible réduction à un an
de la période d'essai. Mais rien qu'à ce niveau des différences se
dessinent, le ministre de l'intérieur pronant une période encore plus
courte.
Mais
les Français restent pessimistes puisqu'ils estiment à 71% qu'il s'agit
d'«une crise sociale profonde qui peut prendre de l'ampleur au cours
des semaines qui viennent». Une pensée presque corroborée par les
massifs mouvements sociaux dans les rues. Ils n'ont peut-être pas tort,
la précarité du CPE c'est une faille dans l'édifice de l'emploi
permanent, lourdement défendu par les intérêts publics et syndicaux dans
certains cas, et la société chouchoutée des cinq semaines de loisirs.
De
l'autre côté du Rhin l'allongement de la période d'essai des nouveaux
embauchés est au coeur de la controverse également. L'accord de «grande
coalition» du 11 novembre entre la droite (CDU) et la gauche (SPD)
allemande, alors même que les banlieues flambaient en France, doit faire
passer la période d'essai de six mois à deux ans maximum.
Il
s'agit d'un premier grand défi également pour la chancelière
conservatrice Angela Merkel, un autre coup contre le monolithe de
l'emploi en Europe. Car le débat s'est embrasé en Allemagne notamment à
cause de l'actualité française. Certains, comme le ministre de
l'Economie, Michael Glos, estiment même que l'accord «ne va pas assez
loin» pour faire baisser un chômage qui s'élève à 12,2% dans une
économie germanique stagnante. Autant dire qu'à la confédération des
syndicats allemands, on se dit «totalement solidaire avec les collègues
français» selon Libération.
«L'Allemagne
a déjà assoupli les conditions de licenciement pour les plus de 50 ans,
et cela n'a pas créé un seul emploi supplémentaire. Nous sommes
radicalement opposés à cette mesure», commente Hilmar Höhn, porte-parole
du DGB. Bientôt les mêmes scènes à Berlin? Ce n'est pas la coutume,
mais sur l'emploi il y a bien des habitudes qu'on se voit porté à
changer.
Fortress Belarus
He's
the last dictator of Europe and proud of it, and it seemed that he
would get the last laugh again, for now. But while Belarus President
Aleksandr Lukashenko ignored international obser-vers casting doubts
about his Soviet-style 83-percent win as well as thousands of protesters
in the streets of Minsk rallying behind an opposition leader's call for
new elections, he may find it increasingly hard to ignore the chorus of
condemnation which has followed an election widely considered as flawed
and international calls for sanctions following a series of arrests.
Despite
earlier arrests and a constant campaign of intimidation, protesters
repeatedly demonstrated in the streets of Europe's harshest regime. The
gatherings were the biggest the opposition had mustered in years,
reaching at 10,000 according to reports, a victory in itself that many
consider a "crack" in fortress Belarus.
While
protesters had the immediate support of the U.S., calling the election
results invalid, Lukashenko only had ears for long-time ally Vladimir
Putin, a rare supportive voice that praised the strongman's re-election,
adding that "Russia and Belarus are joined by the sturdy bonds of
friendship." Sturdy for some but stubborn for others, for whom
Lukashenko remains the continent's eyesore.
But
like Lukashenko, the Russian president has been feeling rather
isolated, increasingly surrounded by former Soviet republics more
comfortable with Washington as partner than Moscow. Soviet-style
intimidation and repression had marked the campaign, some 400 European
observers said, making the few protests in the capital a victory of
sorts for an opposition completely shut out of the campaign's political
coverage.
"We
will never recognise this election. It's not an election but an
anti-constitutional seizure of power," the main opposition leader,
Aleksandr Milinkevich, told crowds waving Belarus and Ukrainian flags.
But despite scenes of protest reminiscent of the orange revolution,
complete with tents set up in below-freezing temperatures, music and
supporters who brought food and blankets, Ukraine's revolution has yet
to breach Lukashenko's fortress.
"The
revolution so many have talked about has failed," he said, alleging
that the protesters were "children" who had been paid to show up, when
he wasn't calling them outright "terrorists". The opposition is clinging
to the slim hope international outrage and perhaps sanction will foster
change.
Canada
reacted rather quickly and strongly to the arrests of protesters,
including a Canadian reported covering the demonstrations, putting
diplomatic relations on the line. The risks of speaking out are not lost
on Milinkevich who notes that 10 of his 30 campaign managers had been
arrested and remained in jail during the campaign. But the EU said it
would not use economic sanctions against the country, which was given
some 17 million Euro in aid last year, by fear of hurting its people.
Not
all of Lukashenko's support is fraudulent however, in a country where
he can count on the support of poorly educated rural communities, or
labor workers that like standing up to outsiders and consider an
omnipotent State-run system better than many of the spun horror stories
they have heard from neighboring republics. But observers noted a number
of irregularities, including ballot-stuffing and vote-rigging.
That
would hardly seem surprising since Lukashenko has orchestrated not only
presidential and parliamentary elections, but also a constitutional
referendum in 2004 that lifted the limits of him seeking a third term
ever since he was elected in 1994, what is viewed as the last fair
election in the country.
"The
arbitrary abuse of state power, obviously designed to protect the
incumbent president, went far beyond acceptable practice," observers
reported. The White House meanwhile supported the protests and
increasingly considered sanctions. "We applaud democrats in Belarus for
their courage and peaceful stand to reclaim their freedom. We support
their call for a new election."
Emboldened
by foreign reactions, protesters promise the next round isn't far away.
"There will be a second storming, but we won't wait five years for it,"
Milinkevich said, planning for a future protest in April and future
elections he has officially been barred from participating in.
But
as the Ukrainian revolution showed, even revolutionaries can be fickle.
In the latest elections Ukraine's main opposition party, the
pro-Russian Regions Party, was comfortably leading parliamentary
results. Perhaps too early for a swing of the pendulum political
scientists love.
No justice in death
For
a man who kept defying the international community and thumbed his nose
at a human rights tribunal he did not recognise his was a fitting exit.
In death as in life, where he spent the last four years facing charges
of war crimes and human rights violations, Slobodan Milosevic, remains
the bete noire of prosecutors, evading justice one final time.
The
"the butcher of the Balkans" who orchestrated a decade of wars that
shattered his country, one that was still being dismantled as he sat in a
Hague cell, would be judged by history rather than the international
criminal court which saw in him its first great case.
Milosevic,
who suffered chronic heart ailments and high blood pressure, apparently
died of a heart attack according to his autopsy. Following his death
his lawyer made public a letter in which Milosevic expressed fears of
being poisoned.
Back
in his country of Serbia, where the jury was still out on how good or
bad he had been for the country, the news of his death was met with
sarcasm and claims by the usually nationalist press that he had been
"murdered" by the tribunal.
Fueling
suspicions was that Milosevic's death came less than a week after the
star witness in his trial, former Croatian Serb leader Milan Babic, was
found dead in the same prison, where he had committed suicide. Babic's
testimony in 2002 described a political and military command structure
headed by Milosevic in Belgrade that operated behind the scenes.
Milosevic made it three times detainees held in the Hague died in
prison.
The
former strongman's death at times seemed to be as great a blow to Chief
UN war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte, who said she regretted
Milosevic's death because she believed she would have won his
conviction, than family members or Milosevic loyalists."I also regret it
for the victims, the thousands of victims, who have been waiting for
justice," Del Ponte said.
In
the regions where he had made so many victims, including Kosovo and
Bosnia, where he was accused of orchestrating a brutal campaign of
ethnic cleansing against non-Serbs during the collapse of the Yugoslav
federation while planning to create a Greater Serbia, his death was met
with relief. "Finally, we have some reason to smile. God is fair," said
Hajra Catic, who heads an association of women that lost their loved
ones in the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslims in the eastern Srebrenica
enclave by Serb troops.
"Justice
was late," grumbled Hashim Thaci, the leader of ethnic Albanian
insurgents against Milosevic's forces in 1998-1999 in Kosovo's capital,
Pristina. "God took him." Before the conflict ended, the UN tribunal,
under Canadian Louise Arbour, indicted Milosevic and four of his top
aides for war crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly committed in
Kosovo.
Milosevic
became the first sitting head of state ever to be indicted for such
crimes and charges against him later included that of genocide.
Separately Bosnia also has sued Serbia, accusing it of genocide in the
first case of a country standing trial for humanity's worst crime.
But
his passing does not absolve Serbia of responsibility to hand over
other war crimes suspects, the EU said after his death. It is now "more
urgent than ever" to arrest and extradite Radovan Karadzic, the wartime
Bosnian Serb leader, and Ratko Mladic, wanted in connection with the
massacre of nearly 8,000 Muslims at Srebrenica and the siege of
Sarajevo, Del Ponte said.
The
EU had recently upped the ante on the need to see him handed over as it
told Serbia and Montenegro that talks on closer ties will be put on
hold unless this happened. Reactions to Milosevic's death and the
refusal by hard-liners to hand over war crimes suspects in the Balkans
still showed the lingering divisions ten years after the conflict raged.
Afghan Canadian mission not your regular blue-helmet drill
It
all happened within a few days. Canada's prime minister raised the
troops' spirits in a surprise visit to Afghanistan, his first foreign
visit since the January election, as Canada's military mission entered a
dangerous stage of taking the fight to the Taleban in a region of the
south where they have killed foreign troops.
A
few days before Canada's top general was evacuated during an attack
which caused no injuries, while a soldier recently returned home was
being buried with full military honors.
From
the early days of Canada's mission in Afghanistan there was a sense of
entering unfamiliar and inhospitable territory. Canadian soldiers were
after all involved in their largest combat operation since the Korean
war, or in familiar terms, roughly the last time Canada had won gold in
Olympic hockey.
The
idea of Canadian casualties and fatalities, absent during the Gulf war
despite a heavy military presence, were as foreign as Kandahar, let
alone successive reports of incidents. Perhaps the perception was flawed
to begin with because most Canadian fatalities since Korea occurred
under the UN banner. According to UN figures between 1948 and 2006,
Canada is the second country after India to have suffered the most
casualties under the UN banner, 113 in all, twice the US number, showing
its commitment to international roles.
But
from the onset the Afghan mission, in the south of this country where
normality barely exists inside the capital, Canadians were warned there
would be casualties the likes of which they hadn't seen in generations.
In just a few days of early March, the warning took all its meaning.
Two
Canadians were killed and a dozen injured in repeat incidents of
different and sometimes troubling nature. On March 2nd Cpl. Paul James
Davis of Bridgewater NS was killed and six others injured, one later not
surviving his wounds, when their 21-tonne armed vehicle smashed into a
car and flipped over. Tragically the convoy carried investigators
looking into the death of a Canadian diplomat in an earlier attack this
year, a first in diplomatic memory.
The
incident was the first deadly accident since the 2,200 troop contingent
reached full strength in Afghanistan, leading a reconstruction mission
in the volatile south. Davis was in the passenger cabin of the LAV III
vehicle, the pride and current warhorse of the military, at the time of
the accident. "I'm extremely proud of my saul Paul, very, very proud and
100 percent supportive of the military and what they're trying to
accomplish," said his father Jim, adding his prayers were with the other
families and soldiers of Canada's mission in Afghanistan.
A
few days later Mast. Cpl. Timothy Wilson, also injured in the accident,
died of his wounds in a military hospital in Germany. It was the
eleventh Canadian fatality since operations started in Afghanistan in
2002 and many have been the result of accidents or friendly fire and not
from combat operations. But others were attacks that showed how
tough-skinned the troops would have to be during this operation.
The
two days following the accident were marked by attacks that caused
casualties, five from a suicide-attack against a convoy, and another
from more disturbing circumstances. On March 4 Lt Trevor Greene was
badly injured after he was attacked by a man wielding an axe during a
meeting of elders north of Kandahar.
In
the ensuing firefight the attacker was killed by return fire but
another threw a grenade at the Canadians, missing them. "Lieutenant
Greene had removed his helmet as a sign of respect, as is common
practice for military personnel involved in shuras (meetings)," the
Forces statement read.
Canadian
military officials soon concluded that the axe-wielding terrorist was a
Taleban agent kicking off an orchestrated ambush, but other reports
surfaced contradicting that claim. A village elder was quoted giving the
attacker a name, Abdul Karim, 16, and stressing he was not a member of
the Taleban, nor anyone in his family, but just helped his brothers
working on their farm. "He was a very quiet boy and not talkative," the
New York Times was told. None of his relatives had been arrested or
killed, but American troops had searched the village several times,
which could have caused him to resent them.
Earlier
that week two soldiers injured in a suicide attack on Jan. 15 were
finally released from hospital in Edmonton. And all this was just the
first week Canada took over command of the multilateral mission in
Kandahar. The news never looked so grim so often, every day bringing
dread of more awful news from the distant Afghan front.
One
newspaper assessed that Canada's presence had already cost over $2
billion in Afghanistan since 2002, and the country's top soldier,
general Rick Hillier, warned that the reconstruction effort in
Afghanistan could require a military presence of some ten years.
Polls
showed Canadians were divided about the deployment. One survey by
Strategic Counsel indicated 62 per cent of respondents were against the
deployment. Another poll by Ipsos-Reid, with questions framed
differently, found 52 per cent support for the mission, but that was
down from 66 per cent in 2002. Many supported the idea their elected
officials should debate Canada's mission in Afghanistan but during his
flash visit Harper said this would only happen when the matter of
extending it would arise.
Once
in battle however, Canadians showed their support. Davis' death was
marked with full honors before a nationally-televised hockey game.
National coffee-maker Tim Horton's said it would consider regularly
supplying troops hungry for a little taste of home. Even the Canadian
Dental Assistants' Association sent care packages to the troops
including words of support. "By supporting our military personnel in
Afghanistan, dental assistants are reinforcing our commitment to oral
health care," its president stated.
Few
times in its history has Canada been at war like this and Foreign
Affairs Minister Peter MacKay, part of a government which has pledged
billions in extra funds for the military, reiterated the importance of
Canada's mission in Afghanistan. "This is the type of mission that is
demanded in this day and age," MacKay said. "Terrorism, which has its
roots in Afghanistan, is something that we have committed to fight with
our allies."
Some
politicians dreaded the type of mission Canada was getting itself into.
"We certainly don't want to become involved in a protracted war," the
NDP's Jack Layton said. "The goal of Canadians being in Afghanistan was
in our more traditional role of peacekeeping, peacemaking." But this is
proving to be much more pro-active than traditional peace-keeping from
the onset.
These
notions are outdated, Hillier told the Globe & Mail, stressing the
Canadian public needs to gird itself for a long mission, one that will
probably involve development work beyond the military's current mandate
to post troops there until 2007. Also outdated however are some of the
training techniques, soldiers told the Toronto Star, saying they had to
do their own research on counter-insurgency techniques because they had
been trained by old Cold war models of no use in these parts.
Sometimes
the rhetoric of the general, who once pledged that his forces would
kill terrorist "scumbags", matches that of the an Iraqi front that
Canada had done everything to avoid, including committing to Afghanistan
instead. Harper's flash visit itself was more reminiscent of so many
visits by the American president to Iraq. "These are a great bunch of
men and women who are doing a tough job and I'm going to make sure they
understand their government (supports them)," Harper said.
"Your
work is about more than just defending Canada's interests," Harper told
about 1,000 military personnel on his second day of a surprise visit.
"It's also about demonstrating an international leadership role for our
country." Harper added Canada would not "cut and run" or shy away from
its responsibilities in the war-torn country.
In
further echoes of Iraq Hillier said there was no need to discuss an
exit strategy because "That communicates a message to the Taleban, and
the terrorists who want to wait out activities, that they could."
Brig.-Gen. David Fraser, the head of Canada's Task Force Afghanistan,
told reporters Canada was undeniably being "tested" in the last weeks
but that its troops remained resilient and refused to be bullied by the
insurgents. After just a few weeks of taking over command, this could
only bring limited comfort.
Une Europe unie dans la division
Vieille
Europe, nouvelle Europe, ancien débat: celui de la décentralisation, de
l'autonomie régionale, et dans les cas extrêmes, la séparation. De la
Catalogne jusqu'aux rives de l'Adriatique, cette Europe qui a subi tant
de changements géopolitiques depuis quelques dizaines d'années, de
l'éclatement du mur à celui de la Yougoslavie, poursuit la révision de
ses frontières alors même que son unification reste le grand projet
continental. Contradiction?
Alors
que cet état des choses parait bien étranger à la réalité
nord-Américaine, cela n'empêche pas quelques formules du discours
politique canadien de surgir ça et là. La Catalogne en est le parfait
exemple: les liens entre le Québec et celle-ci ont fait l'objet de
multes analyses, mais si elle poursuit sa poussée autonomiste en Espagne
elle n'est pas seule depuis l'initiative du gouvernement central de
repenser les liens entre le centre et la périphérie.
En
effet nul autre que président socialiste José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero,
petit-fils d'un officier républicain tué durant la guerre civile, a
lancé ce projet d'"Espagne plurielle", avec l'encouragement d'un Pays
basque dans la voie de la pacification et de la Catalogne. Pas moins que
trois régions partagent ces rêves de dissolution si l'on compte la
Galicie. Et les manifestations de cette mouvance ne sont pas si rares.
Le
18 février, une centaine de milliers de personnes, un nombre que l'on
ne retrouve plus au Québec, défilaient dans les rues de Barcelone en
scandant : "Nous sommes une nation, nous avons le droit de décider."
C'est profondément remettre en question l'"Espagne des autonomies"
datant de la Constitution de 1978, cet assemblage de dix-sept régions
dirigées par des gouvernements et des parlements régionaux aux degrés
d'autonomie variés.
Pourtant
s'il est question de nouvelle division des pouvoirs on est bien loin
des discours sécessionnistes. En Catalogne la coalition de gauche qui a
supplanté l'ancien ordre nationaliste de droite, sans être moins
nationaliste, cherche à augmenter les compétences et les ressources
propres de cette région orientale, en renforçant son identité politique
autant à l'intérieur de l'Espagne qu'à l'extérieur, notamment au sein de
l'Union européenne.
La
Catalogne aura le contrôle de 50% de l'impôt sur le revenu et une part
de certaines taxes allant jusqu'à concurrence de 58 %. Mais reste à voir
si au sein d'une Constitution qui réserve ce terme à l'Espagne, la
Catalogne pourrait être considérée "nation".
A
l'autre bout de la Méditerranée européenne on n'en est plus là car une
frontière assez nette sépare la Serbie même de l'ancienne république la
plus fidèle, le Monténégro, qui en mai tient un scrutin sur
l'indépendance. Même si celle-ci a été plus discrète que le Kosovo, pour
des raisons ethniques et religieuses surtout, elle n'est pas moins sur
la voie du déchirement de ce qui reste du coeur de l'ancienne
Yougoslavie.
Avec
sa monnaie distincte et ses douanes, on est presque à parler du
Monténégro en tant que pays, ce que voudrait une mince majorité qui
devra se plier aux exigences européennes lors du référendum: une
quasi-loi sur la clarté exigeant 50 pourcent de participation, et
surtout, une majorité de 55% des voix pour l'indépendance, plus dur si
l'on constate que celle-ci a l'appui de 43 pourcent de la population.
Il
faut dire que la Serbie-Monténégro avait été créée en 2003 à
l'instigation de l'Union européenne (UE) pour maintenir provisoirement
les liens entre les deux, et une certaine stabilité dans une région qui
en avait tant besoin. Quinze fois plus petite que son voisin, cette
république de 650 000 hab. qui a à peine le double de la taille de l'Ile
du Prince Edouard, se façonne des projets d'abri fiscal un peu à la
manière d'un Liechtenstein de l'Adriatique.
Du
coup, si la Serbie se voyait également privée du Kosovo, qui caresse
des rêves d'indépendance moins bien tolérés à Belgrade, pour des raisons
historiques, la Serbie perdrait cette chère côte d'orée. A peine élu au
poste de premier ministre du Kosovo, l'ancien commandant de guérilla
Agim Ceku a décrit ses rêves d'indépendance.
Mais
on est encore loin de là car dans les deux cas la minorité serbe
résiste aux discours indépendantistes. Les règles référendaires de l'UE
sont d'ailleurs désignées à la protéger. Si celles-ci font penser au
débat sur la séparation du Québec, que penser de la question
référendaire, un exemple de clarté comme on en voudrait à Ottawa:
«Voulez-vous que le Monténégro soit un Etat indépendant avec une totale
légitimité internationale et légale?»
Ces
rapprochements ne sont pas étrangers au vice-président du parlement
monténégrin, Dragan Kujovic, récemment interviewé par le Globe &
Mail: «Je porte une attention particulière au Québec, disait-il, et pas
seulement parce que ma femme est professeur qui enseigne l'histoire du
Québec, mais parce que nous sommes sur la même voie.»
C'est
à se demander ce qu'il y a de plus invraisemblable, ces forces
centrifuges au coeur de l'UE, les rêves d'indépendance d'une république
d'un demi-million d'âmes... ou qu'on y enseigne l'histoire du Québec.
Canada brings in record haul... till Vancouver!
Perhaps
Wednesday Feb. 22 summed up Canada's performance at the Games best: A
mixed bag of emotions as Canada had both a banner day on the podium and
shook its head in disbelief after Team Canada's early ouster.
A
medal-filled day nevertheless, for a Winter Games that brought in a
record amount of hardware for Canada, but one thing was particularly
striking: The day's two gold-medal and two silver-medal performances
were all won by women. Again and again Canada's girls raised the
nation's spirit, as it stubbornly struggled to deal with the weakness of
the defending champion men's hockey team.
Not
only did the women's team come through by repeating as gold-medal
winners, the girls in red would time and again meet and even surpass
expectations, while their male counterparts often disappointed. In all
only a third of Canada's 24 medals were won by men, that's just a few
more than the girl with the golden skate, Cindy Klassen, who became
Canada's most successful athlete in history at the Olympic games, and
the most successful period of all athletes in Turin.
"Hey,
can she play hockey?" mused the Toronto Sun on a cover that celebrated
Klassen's latest medal, and mourned the ousting of Team Canada in the
quarterfinals. Indeed everything she touched turned to gold, while
Canada's hockey spirits reached the bottom. Canada's roster of $94
million hockey players couldn't buy a goal for all their riches, having
been shut-out in 11 of their last 12 periods, by teams as unlikely as
Switzerland.
It
was Canada's worse showing since the pros started playing in Nagano. In
stark contrast, Canada's perfect women's team was accused early in the
competition for running up the score against its opponents,
wo-manhandling the host team 16-0 for starters. The truth is hockey did
generate its share of surprises and upsets at these Games, but the one
comforting consistency was certainly the dominance of Canada's women's
team.
Canada
maintained that dominance heading into the gold-medal game against
unexpected finalist Sweden as Gillian Apps and Caroline Ouellette scored
in the first period while Cherie Piper and Jayna Hefford added two in
the second on the way to a 4-1 win, their lowest score at the Games,
where they outscored their opposition 46-2, missing a perfect record
only in victories over Sweden (they haven't given up an even-strength
goal in international competition since the 2004 world championships).
The
top three scorers in the tournament, and four of the top five, were
Canadian. As testimony to their strength the IOC will be making two
changes: no longer making host nations automatically qualified unless
they are within the top 10, and no longer considering goal differences
for tie-breakers.
The
IOC was busy busting cheats meanwhile as Austria's former nordic coach,
Walter Mayer, was taken into custody after a car slammed into an
Austrian police roadblock following a brief chase. Mayer had been banned
from the Olympics under suspicion of performing blood transfusions at
the 2002 Salt Lake City Games and his presence at the Turin Games
sparked raids by police on unsuspecting Austrian athletes on two
occasions.
While
next-day performances were obviously affected, Austria fared rather
well at the Games, taking in 23 medals, and ending just under Canada
overall. Canada met its expectations of improving on its previous medal
count, ending 3rd overall with 13 4th place finishes, an important
stepping stone to doing better than getting its first gold medal on home
turf in Vancouver: ending n.1 overall.
As
Hockey Canada ponders what went wrong in Turin, where its performance
made Nagano seem like a relatively pleasant experience, and as even the
Great One ponders his future with the sports program, it will be trying
just as hard to regain the glitter of Salt Lake City, at a time it
seemed Canada had regained its hockey supremacy. In the mean time the
team is instructed to take it like a man, but play more like a woman.
La menace aviaire
La
santé publique au Canada cherche quelques bons volontaires en cas de
pandémie. Pourtant la grippe aviaire qui gagne de plus en plus de
terrain, récemment dans le pays du foie gras et du pâté au canard, n'a
pas encore débarqué chez nous, mais cet assaut de nos côtes semble aussi
imminent que la pandémie elle-même, qui selon les estimés au Québec
pourrait atteindre le tiers des effectifs de la santé, d'où l'appel aux
renforts.
Il
faut dire que les autorités sanitaires, de Québec à Bratislava, ne
cherchent plus à stopper la progression constante du virus, mais à
adapter leurs institutions afin de l'affronter. Evidemment on redoute
encore le premier cas de transmission du H5N1 d'homme à homme, qui
devient de plus en plus probable avec chaque nouveau foyer de contagion
des volailles du Vieux-continent.
Bien
que celui-ci ait été gagné par le virus ces dernières semaines,
provocant un appel à la vigilance assez généralisé de ce côté de l'océan
pour les voyageurs séjourneant entre Moscou et Brest, il n'est pas le
seul à être visé par un virus qui se propage en Inde et en Egypte et
compte dorénavant plus de 19 victimes humaines et Indonésie, sans parler
de millions d'oiseaux et de poulets massacrés.
En
fait si le tout a commencé il y a deux ans au sommet de la crise
aviaire en Asie, il n'empêche que l'on redoute les cas de propagation
dans les parties plus pauvres, notamment en Afrique, d'où pourraient
provenir les premiers cas redoutés de transmission d'homme à homme.
L'absence
d'un tel cas justifie pour l'heure les appels au calme alors que l'on
redouble les mesures d'urgence de chaque côté de l'Atlantique, notamment
en vue des migrations du printemps. Ainsi il faudra crainte bien plus
que la propagation du virus du Nil occidental à la vue d'oiseaux morts
dans nos parages lors des prochains mois.
Pourtant
la propagation ne suit pas toujours les courants migratoires
traditionnels, une constatation qui a été faite en France ces derniers
temps. Près de Lyon, le premier cas de contamination de volaille sur une
ferme, plus garve que celui des oiseaux migrateurs, a été acceuilli
avec une grande inquiétude.
Ainsi
l'élimination des oiseaux potentiellement infectés devra être
accompagnée de compensations monétaires, soulignent les autorités
sanitaires de Bruxelles à Jakarta, où l'on redoute que les plus pauvres
éleveurs qui ne peuvent se le permettre tenteront de monnayer leurs
bêtes au marché noir.
En
Indonésie certains seront compensés de l'ordre de $1 la bête, tandis
qu'à Bruxelles l'UE songe à payer une partie des frais des éleveurs
atteints, alors que l'Allemagne devenait la semaine dernière un des pays
les plus touchés d'Europe par la grippe aviaire après la découverte de
18 nouveaux cas d'oiseaux sauvages morts en une seule journée, portant à
plus de 60 le nombre total de cas avérés dans ce pays.
A
Bruxelles, les ministres européens de l'Agriculture se réunissaient pour
étudier comment indemniser la filière volaille : «Nous sommes
compatissants, mais, en terme de budget européen, il y a vraiment très
peu de choses que l'on peut faire», a fait savoir Mariann Fischer Boel,
commissaire européenne à l'Agriculture, surtout si une chute des prix
suit la multiplication des nouveaux foyers.
En
fait c'est à chaque Etat membre de l'UE de financer son programme de
vaccination: rien que pour la France, où la contamination d'un élevage
de dindes près de Lyon la semaine dernière fait craindre le pire, la
note prévisible monte à 1,6 million d'euros.
L'hexagone
a beaucoup à perdre, étant le premier pays de la volaille en Europe
avec ses 50 000 personnes qui travaillent à l'élevage, à l'abattage et à
la transformation des volailles pour un chiffre d'affaires de quelque 6
milliards d'euros. Déjà les appétits pour la volaille ne sont plus ce
qu'ils étaient, enregistrant une chute de 10 à 20% depuis 2004 et les
premiers grands cas asiatiques.
En
novembre, la chute s'accélérait dans les grandes surfaces, par 30 % en
moyenne, et ce malgré les appels aux calme des autorités sanitaires
européennes. En Italie certains chiffres enregistrent une chute de 70%.
La progression de la grippe n'a rien pour décourager ce phénomène, dont
l'aggravation pourrait avoir des effets catastrophiques au niveau de la
santé comme celui de l'économie mondiale, rappelle l'OMS.
Depuis
2003 près de 150 personnes ont été infectées, la moitié ayant connu la
mort. Au Québec les pires scénarios envisagent quelques 50 000 morts et
des dizaines de milliers d'infections, d'où les mesures pour remplacer
le tiers du personnel de la santé qui pourrait tomber malade.
Mais
le premier choc pour les pays atteints sera celui des exportations,
alors que le plus grand marché du monde, la Chine, fermait sa frontière
aux pays touchés par la grippe aviaire. Pourtant le pays est lui-même
infecté, et reste susceptible même s'il a vacciné plus de la moitié du
14 milliard de volailles sur son territoire; comme si la perte de la
raison devait précéder celle du sang froid.
Mais
ces mesures, tout comme l'élimination des oiseaux contaminés ou les
vaccinations massives, ne peuvent que retarder l'inévitable selon les
autorités sanitaires, qui redoutent un seul cas de transmission d'homme à
homme, qui engendrerait une pandémie généralisée. La planification
d'urgence est par conséquent pleine de bon sens pour faire face à la
crise redoutée.
Is West being bullied?
What
do the aftermath of Haiti's election, the continuing Muhammad cartoons
controversy and criticism that companies are collaborating with China
have in common? Perhaps they reveal how democracies can be intimidated
in the face of either fear of violence, or disapproval by a major power.
It shows that everybody can be bullied, and that includes large
corporations and international organizations one could argue.
In
Haiti the aftermath of the elections held to replace ousted leader
Jean-Bertrand Aristide yielded violence in the streets as supporters of
front-runner Rene Preval rioted because they saw his lead slip under 50
percent as the vote count was taking place. Anything over that benchmark
avoided a run-off in March.
Preval
supporters took to the streets in massive numbers as the results
slipped under 49 percent, and instead of calling for calm, Preval broke
his silence and condemned electoral fraud. While one could be critical
of election officials for gradually releasing the results instead of
waiting for the final tally, and incidents of fraud were reported, fear
of violence in a country where it has become only too familiar pressed
international observers, including the Organization of American States,
to foster an agreement that would retabulate the votes so as to avoid a
run-off and declare Preval a winner after the first round.
While
arguments at first pointed for the need to respect the electoral
process, the need to avoid violence soon took over, as OAS officials
looked at loopholes in Haitian electoral law to allow the government to
discard an estimated 85,000 blank ballots included in the original
tally. By excluding them, Mr. Preval's lead increased from 48.7 percent
of the votes to slightly more than 51 percent, avoiding a run-off.
Irregularities
were becoming obvious despite the initial assesment of elections
officials, some of whom eventually fled the country. Authorities
recovered a large number of missing ballots that were believed destroyed
or stolen, some 8 percent of ballots in all, largely in Preval's favor,
but the latter's unhelpful comments and fears of more violence have no
doubt played a part to rush an alternative to holding a second round of
voting, which initially had been widely expected.
Leslie
Manigat, the runner-up in the election, was the most outspoken critic
of the agreement that brought Preval to power. Manigat said he had
looked forward to a second round, despite gathering just 12% of the
vote, and his supporters deserved it. He described the agreement to
declare Preval the winner as a "Machiavellian maneuver," and an
"electoral coup," comparing it to the military takeover that ended his
1988 presidency only four months after he was himself elected, and added
that Preval's presidency would be tarnished by a stain of illegitimacy.
"Violence
has been rewarded," Mr. Manigat said during a news conference at his
home Thursday morning. "As we did in the 1988 coup against us, we say
good luck to the country."
The
need for a rapid solution was first and foremost promoted by fear of
violence, as the chief foreign relations adviser to Brazilian President
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva conceded to the New York Times: "Considering
the existing climate in the country, that would be the best solution."
Were
the means justified to avoid necessary violence? The same question
oddly reverberates in the aftermath of the cartoon controversy which
evolved into a debate on self-censorship and freedom of the press. Few
publications in North America decided to reprint the drawings lampooning
the Prophet Muhammad which have inflamed the Muslim world, and when the
Western Standard decided to do so it was even criticized by prime
minister Stephen Harper.
Some
said the decision was irresponsible, going so far as putting Canadian
troops in danger in places such as Afghanistan. The magazine said the
decision to print was justified in order to illustrate a story which has
been splashed across cover pages the world over for weeks, a sentiment
shared at the NPU which printed select images the previous week. One
Montreal tabloid newspaper chose not to run the images, in the words of
its news director, to avoid "adding fuel to the fire" as violent protest
resumed across the world.
Last
week the European Union's chief executive said that the EU now had to
fight for its core European values, including freedom of speech. "We
have to stick very much to these values," said José Manuel Barroso, the
president of the European Commission. "If not, we are accepting fear in
this society."
Not
for the first time fear was referred-to as a form of censorship on the
issue which has ignited passions, not to mention foreign embassies in
Arab countries, as well as provoked deaths, since it grabbed headlines
in February. Barroso referred to his youth when he grew up under a
totalitarian regime in Portugal when he stressed that Europe had to
defend its right to publish the cartoons, decried by many as being a
provocation against the Muslim world.
"I
understand that it offended many people in the Muslim world, but is it
better to have a system where some excesses are allowed or be in some
countries where they don't even have the right to say this?" he said.
"This reminds me of my own country up to 1974. I defend the democratic
system."
Yet
sometimes even the product of democratic systems, such as large U.S.
corporations, can be bullied into submission by less than democratic
regimes. Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Cisco Systems have all come under
fire in Washington for their "sickening collaboration" with China's
communist regime.
At
a House human rights hearing a subcommittee chairman said their
agreement to bar access to certain sites and give user information to
authorities, sometimes leading to arrests, was "decapitating the voice
of the dissidents" in the country. The statements by New Jersey
Republican Christopher Smith launched a much-anticipated session aimed
at looking into the companies' dealings in China, where they are
suspected of trading off human rights for the sake of scoring business
in the world's biggest market.
Lawmakers
are looking into the alteration of some of the companies' online
services to conform with the requirements of the regime, changing
anything from search engines to blogging tools, thus enabling
authorities to improve their surveillance of citizens. This left Google
in an uncomfortable stance because it had made these allowances to China
while denying its own U.S. government the right to user information in
its fight to deter pedophiles from using the internet. "I do not
understand how your corporate leadership sleeps at night," said
California Democrat Tom Lantos.
While
the companies argued that their services created more outlets for
freedom of expression and that conforming with government regulations
represented an acceptable compromise, this is something they did
reluctantly explained Google's Elliot Schrage "This was not something we
did enthusiastically, or not something that we're proud of at all."
In
the end perhaps the best hopes for democracy lie in its invisible hand,
argued one lawmaker. "China is not going to be any more successful at
filtering and firewalling everything than we are. If you have them
there, people will get through those firewalls and get information that
they otherwise wouldn't, and I think we have to be mindful of that."
Appropriately, his name was Adam Smith.
Haiti aux urnes
Le
jour où la plupart des 3,5 millions d'électeurs haitiens se sont
présentés aux urnes n'était pas de tout repos, mais pour plusieurs les
heures d'attente dans le désordre étaient un mal nécessaire pour
redonner de l'espoir dans un des pays les plus pauvres du globe.
Il
y a 202 ans Jean-Jacques Dessaline, un ancien esclave, s'était proclamé
empereur d'un Haiti indépen-dant. Ces jours-ci certains diront que
c'est bien ce dont Haiti a besoin, un empereur pour faire régner
l'ordre, mais lors de cette longue et peu reluisante histoire, le chef
revêtait souvent des allures de despote.
Même
Jean-Bertrand Aristide, le petit prêtre du peuple, premier dirigeant
élu démo-cratiquement porté par les urnes presque deux siècles après
l'indépendance, n'a pas échappé à cette triste tradition politique
haitienne.
Ce
manque d'ordre explique que l'on ai repoussé à quatre reprises ces
élections promises en octobre, période durant laquelle un ancien
policier canadien venu entrainer les forces de l'ordre a été assassiné,
suivi par le suicide du commandant brésilien de la MINUSTAH le 7
janvier. La mission de l'ONU a perdu neuf de ses soldats depuis son
arrivée en juin 2004, dont deux Jordaniens tués dans Cité Soleil trois
semaines avant l'élection.
Si
celle-ci a bien lieu c'est notamment en raison d'une injonction du
Conseil de sécurité de l'ONU et du Conseil permanent de l'Organisation
des États américains (OEA) demandant au gouvernement d'organiser le
scrutin pas plus tard que le 7 février. Les 9000 soldats et policiers de
l'ONU ne suffisent pas à rétablir l'ordre deux ans après l'expulsion
d'Aristide, d'autant plus qu'une bonne partie des policiers locaux sont
corrompus, tandis que les soldats sont accusés de faire bien peu pour
rétablir le calme.
Le
Brésil a conservé le commandement de la mission malgré le choc du
suicide, mais les soldats sous son commandement manquent parfois de sang
froid ou de connaissances linguistiques et peuvent avoir la gachette
facile. Ce qu'il faudrait, expliquait le chef de mission de l'ONU au
Globe & Mail, c'est quelques soldats canadiens qui ont comme atouts
l'expérience et la langue.
Pour
l'heure l'ONU tente toujours de rétablir l'ordre et d'affaiblir les
gangs dans un pays où les armes peuvent être plus accessibles que
l'emploi. Même le candidat choyé de Cité-Soleil, le bidonville de 200000
âmes qu'évitent aussi les forces de l'ONU, le protégé d'Aristide, René
Préval, favori au scrutin, a dû annuler des événements de campagne après
avoir été la cible de tirs lors d'un événement prédécent.
Le
seul président récent à avoir complété son mandat de 5 ans (1996-2001)
estime qu'il faut de l'investissement et des emplois, mais avant tout,
la paix. Les résultats préliminaires confirmaient son statut de favori
des sondages pré-électoraux, du moins dans la capitale. Son adversaire,
le riche homme d'affaires Charles-Henri Baker, obtenait 10% des
intentions selon un sondage précédent. Le vainqueur n'aura pas vraiment
une position enviable, étant à la tête d'un bien pauvre pays où 80% de
la population est au chômage et où l'enlèvement contre rançon semble
être la seule activité prospère.
Etant
donné le nombre de candidats et de partis en lice, les vainqueurs
auront probablement du mal à former une majorité stable. Des centaines
de candidats se disputaient les 129 sièges du Parlement, dont Dany
Toussaint, un garde-du-corps d'Aristide impliqué dans l'assassinat d'un
journaliste selon des groupes humanitaires, et 33 personnes, dont un
trafiquant d'armes présumé et un ancien chef de la rébellion qui a
chassé Artistide en février 2004, briguent la magistrature suprême.
Après
une journée électorale mouvementée, le lendemain, jour de décompte,
paraissait beaucoup plus paisible alors que les organisateurs
transportaient les urnes par hélicoptère, camion ou mulet, vers les
centres de décompte. Quelques jours seraient sans doute nécessaires
avant d'obtenir les résultats tant attendus par les candidats. Préval
n'a pas perdu de temps avant de se faire voir en train de danser dans un
village dès le 8 février.
Aristide
lui-même, en exil en Afrique du sud, n'est sur aucune liste mais il
reste dans le coeur de plusieurs Haitiens, notamment des classes
défavorisées, dont il était le champion. Si Préval l'emporte, la
question du retour d'Aristide, qui en est à son second exil depuis son
élection en 1991, ne saurait tarder à s'imposer, et à diviser davantage
cette ile partagée par deux pays.
Pour
un bien petit pays, une bien grande polémique. La sirène de Copenhague
qui jadis attirait les navigateurs de la Baltique s'attire désormais la
fureur des Musulmans. La crise à retardement qui a suivi la publication
de douze caricatures de Mahomet dans le journal danois Jyllands-Posten
remontant à septembre a attisé une colère considérable dans le monde
musulman, provocant des réactions allant de l'appel au boycott et du
rappel des diplomates en poste aux menaces de mort, jusqu'à l'attaque
des ambassades danoises au Moyen-Orient.
Alors
que les Vikings voguaient jadis les mer indomptées sans l'ombre d'un
doute, leur ministère des affaires étrangères recommande de ne pas
visiter une douzaine de pays en raison des manifestations. Des
Scandinaves interdits de séjour, du jamais vu depuis Eric le Rouge!
Plusieurs personnes sont mortes lors de manifestations contre les
caricatures en Afghanistan tandis que le ministre de l'intérieur
libanais rendait sa démission après le saccage et l'incendie de
l'ambassade danoise à Beyrouth.
Il
faut dire que depuis la publication originale des caricatures, pourtant
en général pas particulièrement réussies et de fort mauvais goût,
celles-ci ont été reprises par plusieurs journaux occidentaux à la suite
des colères suscitées par la reproduction des images dans un magazine
norvégien le mois dernier. Les virulents appels dans le monde arabe à la
rétractation et à la condamnation des publications concernées ont à
leur tour provoqué le soulèvement de la presse européenne courant à la
défense de ses droits.
Le
Premier ministre danois croyait avoir mis fin à la crise avant qu'elle
n'éclate véritablement lorsqu'il a fait circuler une lettre condamnant
"toute action ou propos qui essaie de diaboliser certains groupes en
raison de leur religion ou appartenance ethnique" par l'entremise de la
Ligue arabe en janvier. Mais la tournée de certains imams danois munis
des douze caricatures, et apparemment aussi de dessins plus insultants
qui n'avaient jamais été publiés, a ravivé les flammes. Depuis de
fausses rumeurs de destruction de Coran au Danemark se sont ajoutées au
lot.
Les
dessins furents repris dans plusieurs journaux d'Espagne, d'Italie et
d'Allemagne, mais la décision du quotidien France Soir d'emboiter le
pas, dans le pays européen qui compte le plus de Musulmans, a augmenté
les tensions d'un cran, notamment au sein du quotidien dont le
propriétaire, Raymond Lakah, a limogé son directeur "en signe fort de
respect des croyances religieuses et des convictions intimes de chaque
individu". Le geste de M. Lakah, un franco-égyptien catholique
anciennement associé à la NPU lors d'un projet de magazine, a suscité un
tollé au sein du quotidien ainsi que la réprobation de la classe
politique.
Mais
si certains politiciens s'avouaient "très choqués" par ce renvoi il
n'empêche que des missions françaises dans le monde arabe ont redoublé
leurs excuses, l'ambassade à Alger allant jusqu'à condamner la
publication des caricatures. Il faut dire que les réactions du monde
arabe, où la France se veut un interlocuteur, notamment dans les
anciennes colonies, ont atteint un niveau qui dépasse l'interdit de
distribution des quotidiens français.
Alors
que des hommes armés s'en prenaient à la mission de l'UE à Gaza tout en
menaçant les ressortissants européens de représailles, des Musulmans se
sont attaqués aux ambassades du Danemark à Djakarta, pays musulman le
plus peuplé de la planête, ainsi qu'en Syrie, au Liban et en Iran. En
Turquie les autorités ne savaient pas encore s'il fallait relier
l'assassinat d'un prêtre catholique aux images. En Jordanie un rédacteur
qui avait choisi de reproduire les images et avait été limogé a ensuite
été arrêté tandis que des enquêtes étaient ouvertes sur d'autres
journaux qui avaient publié dans le monde arabe. Evidemment on ne compte
plus les manifestations qui se sont emparées des rues de Kaboul à
Rabat.
Pour
certains l'écart entre la date initiale de publication et les
manifestations démontre une certaine manipulation et récupération des
mouvements islamiques. Certains proposaient d'ailleurs un concours pour
dénicher la meilleure caricature sur l'holocauste, autre signe que les
appels au calme de certains imams occidentaux sont tombés sur des
oreilles de sourds.
Les
incidents ne sont pas sans rappeler les violences entrainées par la
publication d'un article de Newsweek qui avait faussement laissé croire
qu'un Coran avait été détruit lors d'un interrogatoire à Guantanamo, ou
encore les Versets Sataniques de Salman Rushdie en 1989, l'objet d'une
fatwa contre l'auteur.
Pour
certains en Europe, les incidents démontrent davantage les excès que
dénonçaient les caricatures, des gestes d'intolérance qui dans le passé
avaient mené à l'assassinat en 2004 du cinéaste néerlandais Theo Van
Gogh. Ironie du sort, le suspect principal, également accusé d'être un
leader terroriste, Mohammed Bouyeri, évoquait la semaine dernière le
Coran et la théologie pour tenter de justifier l'exercice de la violence
par les Musulmans lors de son plaidoyer.
La
crise exacerbe les tensions entre Musulmans et Européens de souche sur
le vieux continent où le port du voile, la question d'immigration, les
attaques terroristes et la guerre en Irak ont créé des divisions allant
aux affrontements. La polémique a atteint un niveau tel qu'une médiation
internationale a été jugée nécessaire en quelque sorte. Le secrétaire
général de l'Onu, Kofi Annan, a lui-même réagi à la controverse en
estimant que la liberté de la presse doit s'exercer dans le respect des
religions mais en appelant aussi à résoudre le problème par un dialogue
pacifique.
En
Amérique Le Devoir a repris une caricature pour fin d'illustration mais
"non pas de se lancer dans une guerre avec le monde musulman" selon son
rédacteur en chef, un rare cas. Le département d'État américain a de
son côté déploré la publication des dessins dans la presse européenne,
la caractérisant d'"offensive aux croyances des Musulmans". La chaine
CNN a diffusé certaines images mais en brouillant leurs parties
offensives. La BBC quant à elle l'a fait plus ouvertement mais en
reproduisant des images des pages de journaux où elles avaient été
publiées. Londres considère la reprise des images par la presse
insultant.
Curieusement
les deux pays ne manquaient pas d'ennemis musulmans quant ils ont lancé
l'offensive en Irak. Les Etats-Unis ne sont pas restés spectateurs
longtemps. Alors qu'ils donnaient leur appui au Danemark et qu'ils
accusaient la Syrie et l'Iran d'encourager les manifestants, ceux-ci se
sont tournés vers des intérêts américains.
Le
Premier ministre du pays à l'origine de la querelle, le Danois Anders
Fogh Rasmussen, estime de son côté que les enjeux sont désormais la
liberté d'expression en Occident et les tabous de l'islam, la deuxième
religion dans de nombreux pays européens. "Il s'agit d'une affaire d'une
importance fondamentale concernant la façon dont fonctionnent les
démocraties", a-t-il déclaré au quotidien danois Politiken. Il a refusé
de s'excuser pour la publication d'images dans une presse libre et
indépendante mais a redoublé les efforts diplomatiques pour encourager
le dialogue avec le monde arabe.
La
fureur des Musulmans, dont la religion juge blasphématoire toute
représentation du prophète, s'est répandue dans plusieurs capitales,
allant de l'indignation du président égyptien, Hosni Moubarak, à la
justification d'imposer des limites à la liberté de la presse du Premier
ministre turc Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Tandis
que les caricaturistes à l'origine des dessins se sont barricadés et
craignent pour leur vie, les autres 5 millions et demie de
ressortissants danois ne pouvaient que regarder avec consternation le
spectacle de leur drapeau incendié, dont la croix rappelle d'ailleurs
ses origines de croisade. Un des plus vieux étendards au monde, le
danneborg remonte en effet, ironiquement, au 13ème siècle, période où
les croisades danoises cherchaient à christianiser l'Estonie.
Le
monde arabe a-t-il pris ces illustration trop au sérieux? Comme pour
rappeler que le christianisme avait rencontré de pareilles controverses,
les Britanniques ont choisi cette semaine le pastiche de la vie du
Christ, Life of Bryan de Monty Python, comme meilleure comédie jamais
produite selon un sondage de Channel 4. Le film avait créé tout un tollé
à l'époque, tout comme le numéro 2 au palmarès: the Holy Grail.
Even worse than you think
The
gunmen left their weapons at the door and entered the Gaza strip
polling station to cast their vote but judging by the international
reaction to Hamas' victory in the Palestinian election they may as well
have walked straight in.
For
weeks the international community has urged the warring factions in the
recently evacuated territories to drop their weapons and hold elections
but when it got its wish it got a nasty surprise as well as militant
group Hamas, better known for its hatred of Israel and terror attacks,
won a majority of the votes. Earlier fears were it would form a large
opposition, that proved just wishful thinking.
Hamas
won 76 of the assembly's 132 seats in a vote seen by many as a protest
vote to end four decades of rule by the corruption-riddled Fatah, but
dealing the peace process a serious blow as well. Hamas initially said
it wasn't interested in discussing its relations with Israel.
Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Qureia and his cabinet resigned to make
room for the incoming government but international leaders reacted with
shock and rejection, starting with Israel.
Acting
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel would not negotiate with
a Palestinian government that includes Hamas members, as senior Cabinet
officials held an emergency meeting to discuss the repercussions of the
vote. Acting Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni asked the EU not to deal with
a "terror government."
"If
your platform is the destruction of Israel, it means you're not a
partner in peace, and we're interested in peace," U.S. President George
Bush said in Washington while Prime minister Steven Harper said Canada
would not deal with Hamas. The victory seemed to catch Hamas by surprise
as well, offering to share power with President Mahmoud Abbas, of
Fatah, and going on the air to urge international observers not to "be
afraid". The Arab world greeted the victory more enthusiastically.
But
in the days following victory protesters urged Abbas to resign, while
other demonstrations painted a worrisome image of post-electoral
Palestine as political rivals battled in the streets. Hamas leader
Mahmoud Zahar said the group would extend its year-old truce with Israel
if it reciprocates. "If not, then I think we will have no option but to
protect our people and our land," he said. But another leader also
vowed to "complete the liberation of other parts of Palestine." He did
not say which territories he was referring to or how he would go about
it. A division leaving a very troubling picture in Palestine.
While
some optimistically point to the PLO of Yasser Arafat, which dropped
the armed struggle before it gained political power, others fear Hamas'
victory will embolden it to be more aggressive rather than moderate its
tone.
The
election was praised by controversial Iranian president Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, who has also called for Israel's destruction. The election
of Hamas and Ahmadinejad are a blow to Bush's goal of spreading
democracy to the Mideast, say critics who point to other extremists
gaining power by the ballot box, from Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, to
Lebanon's Hizbollah or Iraq's more radical Shiite candidates. Not that
the alternative is appealing. After Algeria cancelled elections won by
Islamists in 1991 the country plunged into a civil war which killed
100,000.
Palestine
gets hundreds of millions of its budget from foreign aid, and Hamas
rejected threats the aid could be halted unless it changed its stance on
Israel and renounced violence. It decried "unfair conditions" that
would hurt Palestinians. Earlier it had hoped to woo the US, EU and
other countries not to halt the funds by promising they would not be
used for weapons.
But
after the initial shock positions started to soften. Israel reluctantly
handed its latest tax payments to the Palestinians but warned future
payments would be handled on a case by case basis forcing the
Palestinian Authority to seek the financial assistance of Arab
countries. Then in a change of tone Hamas leaders said the group may
talk to Israel, but without changing its policy. Not ground-breaking,
but a start.
Martin to resign as party leader after tories win minority
The
winds of change that swept through Canada on a rather balmy Jan. 23
were hardly gale-force phenomenon. Perhaps all the ingredients for a
violent overthrow of the liberals were gathered: an outrage of liberal
mishandling of funds , the growing popularity of Tory leader Stephen
Harper and a participation rate well above that of the last few
elections, nearly 65%. But the nearly 15 million Canadians who did drop
their ballot across some 60,000 voting stations nationwide barely gave
Harper the cautious go-ahead they had denied him 18 months earlier.
The
liberals had lost an opportunity to prove a wrong right, and so the
conservatives would get their chance. "We will honor your trust and we
will deliver on our commitments," he declared in his victory speech. The
results of the election were true to polls showing the conservatives
with a
36.3%
to 30% lead, but the 124 seats, 21 more than the liberals, showed
Canadians wanted a sample of a leader whose views many still consider
extreme, rather than sweeping him into power.
The
Tory win put an end to 13 years of liberal politics but secured less
seats than the grits had managed to salvage in 2004 despite Harper's
lucrative move to the center during the campaign. Harper sought to
reassure Canadians and foreign viewers about the extent of the change
ushered in. "The results tonight signal a change in government not a
change in country. We will stay the course of balanced budgets, low
inflation, economic stability. We will continue to defend our values and
democratic ideals around the globe," he said.
The
change for the liberals, who had suffered a loss less stinging than
many would have imagined a week ago, but one hardly contemplated a month
ago, was no less dramatic. The liberals maintained much of their
support in the Atlantic provinces but it was all downhill from there.
They suffered their worse score ever in Quebec, winning just 13 seats,
while the Tories, substituting as new federalists, made enough inroads
to deny the separatist Bloc either more seats or over 50% of the popular
vote, a record endorsement for any sovereigntist option that seemed
within reach.
While
the Tories made some inroads into Ontario, they failed to make the
break in Toronto that could have given them a majority, an were shut out
of the other major urban centers of Montreal and Vancouver. Their
expected sweep of the West, including Calgary and Edmonton, showed that
the shift of economic power which had materialised in the last few years
had finally translated into political power. "The West has wanted in,
the West is in now," said the Toronto-born leader whose riding is in
Calgary.
The
liberals lost their only seat in that city, a loss Super Annie, Deputy
Prime Minister Anne McLellan, would attribute to a need to back a
national campaign gone terribly wrong. At the beginning of the long
56-day campaign which officially started when the liberals lost a vote
of no-confidence in the commons in late November, polls indicated
Canadians would probably re-elect a liberal minority government,
possibly ending Harper's short tenure as party leader. Instead Harper's
smart and discliplined campaign, limited to one announcement per day,
starting with the appealing prospect of reducing the GST, clashed with a
liberal campaign going from sand trap to sand trap.
On
election night, Martin ended a 17-year drive for the leadership of the
country when he announced he would be stepping down as party leader but
would stay on as re-elected MP of Lasalle. "I will not lead the party in
the next election," Martin declared. "In the coming days I will consult
caucus and the party's leadership in order to come across with a good
transition and ensure efficient leadership in the House of Commons."
Liberal
strategists said the party would be a formidable opponent in the
Commons and would rebuild, putting an end to Chretien-Martin internal
squabbles that had marked the beginning of the end of the long reign of a
party which has dominated Canadian politics since the second world war.
Perhaps
a measure of how things had turned sour was signs of supporters and
local candidates getting out of their way to distance themselves from
the national campaign, and early talk of a successor to Paul Martin.
Last week Buzz Hargrove, the labor leader who threw his support behind
Martin instead of the usual NDP, became a liability when he urged people
to stop Harper "any way they can" - even if that means supporting the
separatist Bloc Quebecois, a statement he later retracted but not before
embarras-sing Martin.
The
daily snafus went deep into the party as well as McLellan's admission
showed. She complained that having to play defense left little time to
get out a positive message in the latter stages of the campaign. In fact
little positive came out of the liberal campaign. The last-ditch
massive ad campaign to recapture some of the support lost since the new
year backfired when one of the ads had to be pulled, casting doubts on
the others. One Western Liberal official heavily criticized the ad,
which claimed Harper wanted to put troops in Canada's streets.
With
a critical book on Martin's administration coming out the day of the
final round of the televised debates, which Martin needed to win
convincingly, there had been little room for error. Canadians even
started to prefer Harper to Martin as leader, no longer seeing him as
the bogeyman once painted out to be. What a difference a few weeks had
made.
The
holiday period which was supposed to signal a truce for the candidates
during this extended campaign saw the liberals pile on the
condemnations, led by a finance minister tied to accusations of leaks
ahead of a major and now controversial announcement about income trusts.
Within days of the new year the RCMP announced two investigations into
affairs related to the Liberals. In addition to the income trust
investigation the Mounties were looking into Option Canada which
received $4.8 million from Heritage Canada in 1995 to defend federalism
in Quebec.
The
new charges, after a year of combatting the fall-out of the Gomery
report, were too much for the spin doctors of the red machine to work
around, handing the conservatives their first leads in the polls, and
their leader the image of Mr Clean. Despite being exonerated by Gomery
the charges perpetuated the stigma of backroom deals and corruption.
The
liberals tried to run on their record, stressing budget surpluses that
they insist will disappear under the Tories. But their record has also
been tarnished by the scandals of millions of misspent public funds.
Martin warned voters that Harper would renege on the Kyoto climate
change accord, reopen a recent $5-billion deal with natives, scrap
liberal plans for a national child-care program and stressed the
election came down to one question: "Who do I think reflects my values?"
Harper
is against gay marriage, which is legal in Canada, and is less critical
of the U.S. ballistic missile program but would also seek to
re-establish ties with the U.S. strained by Canada's refusal to send
soldiers to Iraq. His election was greeted favorably in Washington, as
the White House rushed to congratulate Harper on his victory.
Perhaps
Harper's only campaign slip was trying to reassure voters there would
be nothing to fear from a Tory majority government and that would be
kept well in check. "The reality is we will have, for some time to come,
a Liberal Senate, Liberal civil service - at least senior levels have
been appointed by the Liberals - and courts that have been appointed by
the Liberals."
The
election results are another check, preventing the Tories from reading
too much into their victory which was far from being a revolution or an
endorsement of neo-conservative policies. But they at least get their
chance to show their stuff.
Canadians increasingly targeted in Afghanistan
Another
week another attack against Canada's soldiers in Afghanistan as the
military presence there steadily increases to some 2,000 troops. After
troops discovered and dismantled a major truck bomb last week another
bomb went off this Monday, injuring none. Meanwhile the health of one of
the soldiers injured two weeks ago was said of deteriorating.
Defense
Department officials had been warning for months that Canada's
rebuilding mission in Southern Afghanistan would be dangerous. Prime
minister Paul Martin confirmed earlier this month one Canadian diplomat
was killed and three soldiers injured in a suicide attack.
Defence
Department officials say Foreign Affairs political veteran Glyn Berry
was travelling near Kandahar when a vehicle-borne bomb exploded near the
convoy of military G-wagons in which he was travelling. Three Canadian
soldiers were also wounded in the blast — Pte. William Edward Salikin,
Cpl. Jeffrey Bailey and Master Cpl. Paul Franklin. Afghan civilians were
also killed.
"On
behalf of all Canadians, I want to express my condolences to the family
of the individual who was killed, and our prayers and best wishes to
the family of the deceased and to the families of the injured," Martin
said. "Our participation in the mission in Kandahar is essentially
establishing peace and security. It's in a nation that is struggling to
find its way."
The
new G-wagons replaced the ageing Iltis military vehicles whose lack of
armor were blamed for past military deaths in the past. So far no
Canadian soldier has been killed in the reinforced vehicle despite a
number of bomb attacks against troops in Afghanistan.
The
attack came a few days after US forces conducted air strikes against
Pakistani positions suspected of harboring al-Qaida members. Pakistan
condemned on Saturday the deadly airstrike on a village near the Afghan
border, which reportedly targeted al Qaeda's deputy leader, and left at
least 18 people dead.
The
south of the country remains the battle-ground of warlords and Taleban,
whom the government in Kabul invited to take part in talks to stabilize
the country.
A
purported Taliban spokesman, Qari Mohammed Yousaf, claimed
responsibility, warning that "these attacks will continue for a long
time. We have many more suicide attackers ready to go."
"We will continue this strategy until all foreign forces leave Afghanistan," he said.
There
have been about 25 suicide bombings in the past four months in
Afghanistan — a relatively new tactic for militants here and one that
has reinforced fears that this country may see more assaults modeled on
those in Iraq.
Canada
has about about 650 troops in Afghanistan, nearly all in Kandahar.
Ottawa plans to increase the Canadian military presence in Kandahar to
2,000 next month.
Violence across southern and eastern Afghanistan had spiked last year, leaving about 1,600 people dead, the most since 2001.
Under
a multinational brigade led by a Canadian general, about half of the
troops arriving next month will change Canada's role in the country,
taking their fight to the enemy in remote villages and mountains.
They
will venture far from the airfield base where a monument fashioned
after an Inuit Inukshuk memorializes Canadians killed in Afghanistan.
Una mujer pas comme les autres
Le
Chili a peut-être réussi à enterrer son passé martial, il lui restait
néanmois à mettre fin à la dictature masculine au poste de président.
L'élection de Michelle Bachelet avec 53 % des voix représente alors une
révolution en soi dans un pays traditionellement très conservateur où
l'avortement est encore un délit et où le divorce a été légalisé il y a
seulement deux ans.
La
socialiste anciennement exilée semble voguer sur le véritable tsunami
gauchiste qui balaye l'Amerique latine depuis l'élection de Luiz Lula da
Silva au Bresil en 2002, mais incarne une vision toute autre que la
ligne dure du vénézuélien Hugo Chavez ou du bolivien Evo Morales,
récemment élu. Elle se retrouve en revanche dans les propos plus modérés
de Néstor Kirchner en Argentine et Tabaré Vasquez en Uruguay.
Bachelet
aura certainement l'intention de corriger les inégalités qui sévissent
dans ce pays relativement prospère du continent, mais sans pour autant
renier le modèle libéral qui distingue le Chili depuis des années dans
la région. Le parcours de cette mère célibataire et agnostique, dans un
pays majoritairement catholique, n'a pas été facile. "Femme, divorcée,
socialiste, agnostique: tous les péchés réunis", plaisantait-elle.
La
pédiatre fait son entrée en tant que ministre de la Santé en 2000 avant
de devenir la première femme au ministère de la Défense. L'époque était
significative en raison des poursuites judiciaires lancées contre
Pinochet. Alors qu'elle ne constitue pas la première femme présidente
d'Amérique latine, elle se distingue en se faisant élire sans profiter
du sillage politique d'un mari, comme Violeta Chamorro au Nicaragua ou
encore Maria Peron en Argentine, qui a dans son cas succédé son mari
après sa mort.
Si
une vague de gauche balaye l'Amerique latine, il faut noter que cette
vague au féminin fait des siennes sur l'échiquier international.
Remportant son élection alors que la libérienne Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf
prêtait serment lors de son investiture à la presidence, Bachelet
perpétue en ce moment un mouvement de féminisation important qui a l'air
de gambader de continent en continent.
En
effet Sirleaf avait elle-même remporté son élection l'automne dernier
alors que l'on procédait à l'investiture d'Angela Merkel en Allemagne. A
quoi faut-il s'attendre d'ici l'investiture de Bachelet, à son tour
prevue le 11 mars?
Même
les Français se sont mis à rêver, depuis que Ségolène Royal s'est
déplacé au Chili pour soutenir son amie Michelle Bachelet. En effet
pourquoi n'éliraient-ils pas eux aussi une femme à la tête de l'État? Le
«phénomène Ségolène» est une première puisque la présidente socialiste
de la région de Poitou-Charentes caracole en tête des sondages en
France. C'est peut-être pour plus tard.
Devant
une foule en liesse rassemblée le soir de son élection Bachelet a pris
le titre de «la présidente des citoyens» et promis de mener «un nouveau
style de politique nationale, plus participative». «Mon engagement est
qu'au terme du mandat de mon gouvernement, en 2010, nous ayons un
système de protection sociale consolidé qui assurera aux Chiliens et à
leurs familles la tranquillité d'avoir un emploi décent», a-t-elle
déclaré dans un hôtel de Santiago.
Son
adversaire Sebastian Pinera reconnut la signification historique de sa
défaite. «Je tiens à féliciter mon adversaire, non seulement parce
qu'elle devient la première présidente du Chili mais je veux aussi
rendre hommage aux millions de femmes qui ont lutté pour parvenir à la
place qui leur revient», a-t-il déclaré.
Rumble over Iran
While
the U.S. may have led the charge against Baghdad, countries vocally
opposed to the war in Iraq are recommending that Iran be referred to the
U.N. Security council and are drafting document to reverse Tehran's
decision to do research that could develop the technology to create
nuclear weapons. Israel meanwhile says it will never accept Iran to
develop nuclear weapons.
Admitting
failure in trying to reach a negotiated settlement with Iran, France
and Germany, joined by Britain, made the announcement hours before the
U.S. called on the United Nations to confront Iran's "defiance" and
demand that Tehran halt its nuclear program.
"From
our point of view, the time has come for the UN Security Council to
become involved," Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany
said in reaction to Iran's decision to resume experiments at a nuclear
enrichment plant in Natanz.
France,
Britain and Germany began circulating a draft resolution that asks the
U.N. nuclear watchdog to report Iran's nuclear programme to the Security
Council, opening the door to possible U.N. sanctions. The draft has
been distributed to key members of the U.N. International Atomic Energy
Agency, whose board of governors will vote on it at an emergency meeting
of the 35-nation body.
Meanwhile
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice did not rule out military options
in dealing with Iran but declined to say whether the United States has
the necessary votes at the Security Council to punish Iran.
Rice
stressed "a very important threshold has been crossed" adding Iran was
now in "dangerous defiance of the entire international community."
Seeking
to reassure the U.N., which stresses that negotiations are still
ongoing, Rice later underlined that immediate sanctions were not yet an
option at the Security Council. "Everybody wants to give the Iranians a
chance to show us -- to reconsider their position," she said.
Long-time
ally Russia meanwhile stressed it was counting on Iran's compliance
with international regulations on nuclear development and said it would
take part in a meeting with three European Union countries, the United
States and China in London to discuss the situation surrounding Iranian
nuclear development. China and Russia are reluctant to let the case get
to the Security Council.
Moscow
previously offered to enrich Iranian uranium re-exported it to Iran, a
compromise which was rejected. It still hoped to use this as a solution
to the escalating crisis but the UK in turn rejected the initiative.
"Iran
has removed the seals from a uranium enrichment plant and therefore
urgent consultations are needed," Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told
Interfax.
"Canada
deeply regrets that Iran’s confrontational actions have led to an
impasse in the European trio’s diplomatic efforts and urges Iran to
fully suspend all uranium enrichment activities, including conversion,"
Ottawa weighed in. "The involvement of the UNSC is now necessary in
order to reinforce the authority of the IAEA and the credibility of the
multilateral nuclear non-proliferation system, and to help facilitate a
diplomatic solution."
Concealing
a weapons of mass destruction program from inspectors in the
Middle-east is becoming a familiar scenario. Iran says that its nuclear
activities are aimed only at generating electricity, a claim some find
surprising in an energy-rich country.
The
claim is disputed by Americans and Europeans who point to years of
clandestine nuclear activity by Iran later an unwillingness to
accomodate IAEA inspectors.
Iran
remained defiant, promising to stay the course in the face of
international pressure. "Colonial taboos" will not keep Iran from
developing its nuclear abilities, former President Hashemi Rafsanjani
said, stressing the standoff with the West "has reached its climax."
Rafsanjani
has rallied to the side of Iran's controversial president Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad who has made a number of controversial gestures and
statements, some widely condemned, since taking over the presidency last
year.
The
morning after the ultra-conservative mayor of Tehran was elected
president in June, he made a pilgrimage to the tomb of Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini, to some heralding a new period of defiance with the
West. Next he banned Western music from Iran's radio and television
stations, reviving a cultural decree from the early days of the 1979
revolution.
He
was just warming up. Ahmadinejad then caught everybody's attention
calling for Israel to be "to be wiped off the map" or moved to Europe of
North America, and referred to the Holocaust as a myth.
In
a reversal of years of trying to end Iran's international isolation
under former President Mohammad Khatami, Ahmadinejad fired some 40
diplomats who looked favorably on ties with the West, while reformists
were bumped in the regions.
While
some argue the president is trying to consolidate his power internally
by trying to isolate Iran again, many in the country are a bit worried
by the rhetoric voiced by Tehran. Others fear a fundamentalist has taken
the helm, believing in the return of the 12th imam that will herald the
apocalypse, not in the distant future, but in a matter of years. This
has brought Iran's dabbling in the nuclear industry under a blinding new
light.
On
Friday Iran said it would end voluntary cooperation with the United
Nations over its nuclear program, including snap checks of atomic sites,
if it is referred to the Security Council for possible sanctions, a
move sure to ratchet the up pressure.
In
the past it hinted it could wreak havoc on the oil markets if such a
threat came forward. Present tensions have already returned oil prices
well over $60. Iran's importance in the energy markets is causing
concern sanctions may squeeze the industry and keep prices elevated.
World
capitals brace for an international showdown on weapons of mass
destruction. The U.S. designated intelligence managers for two world hot
spots, North Korea and Iran, clearly indicating where the priorities
lay in Washington.
Sharon sombre dans le coma
Il
suffisait de voir l'embonpoint du premier ministre Ariel Sharon, à
presque 78 ans le dirigeant israélien en exercice le plus âgé, pour se
douter, malgré les rapports de santé reluisants, que les menaces qui le
guettaient n'étaient pas uniquement politiques.
La
deuxième hospitalisation du chef israélien suite à une attaque
cardiaque en autant de semaines, plus grâve celle-là car marquée pas une
importante hémorragie cérébrale, remet tout en question sur la scène
politique nationale et régionale, à près de deux mois du scrutin qui
devait mettre à l'épreuve la nouvelle formation politique du dénommé
"bull-dozer". Dans la nuit du 4 au 5 janvier, l'ex-général n'était
jamais paru si dépourvu de moyens, une légion de neurophysiciens
s'acharnant sur son sort dans le bloc opératoire de l'hôpital Hadassah.
Après
un bref retour en chirurgie vendredi pour stopper une nouvelle
hémorragie les docteurs du premiers ministre constatent une
stabilisation encourageante de son état de santé. Les efforts de
réanimation graduelle lundi, en limitant l'anesthésie qui le préservait
dans le coma, ont permis de constater que le cerveau du premier ministre
était fonctionnel et que Sharon préservait une certaine motricité selon
ses docteurs.
Après
des années de relative stabilité sur l'eccentrique scène politique
israélienne, la crise au plus haut niveau du pouvoir plonge dans une
zone inconnue l'Etat hébreu, dirigé dans l'intérim par le vice-premier
ministre Ehoud Olmert, sans parler du processus de paix
israélo-palestinien. Car la formation politique lancée par Sharon après
son abandon du Likoud repose largement sur ses épaules et la popularité
personnelle du premier ministre à elle seule explique l'avance du Kadima
dans les sondages face à Benjamin Netanyahu, solidement opposé au
retrait israélien des territoires occupés entamé l'an dernier.
Déjà
les signes semblaient moins prometteurs dans la bande de Gaza, où le
report des élections prévues pour le 25 janvier n'est pas exclu étant
donné les violences qui opposent les différentes factions
palestiniennes, minant l'autorité du président Mahmoud Abbas au risque
de plonger les territoires dans l'anarchie. Les réactions palestiniennes
à l'arrêt cardiaque du président ont fait état de ces divisions, Abbas
lui souhaitant un prompt rétablissement, redoutant même les "dangers" de
la situation actuelle, tandis que la ligne dure palestinienne fêtait
son malheur.
Quoiqu'il
advienne peu d'observateurs estiment un retour en politique possible
pour Sharon s'il sort éventuellement de son coma médicamenteux,
remettant en question le processus de la paix qu'il s'engageait à suivre
ces derniers temps. Alors que son éventuel successeur devrait suivre la
même voie, il parviendrait difficilement à rallier un pareil appui.
La fronde contre Washington
Pour
déplaire aux Etats-Unis, Evo Morales ne pouvait guère faire mieux que
de choisir Cuba pour effectuer sa première visite officielle en tant que
président Bolivien. En fait l'ancien cultivateur de coca, élu lors d'un
raz-de-marée inhabituel le 18 décembre, n'a même pas attendu son
investiture, prévue le 22 janvier, avant de visiter l'île interdite.
Sans
encore d'avion présidentiel, Morales a commencé une tournée qui devrait
l'emmener sur les quatre continents à bord d'un aéronef de Cubana de
Aviacion pour le transporter à La Havane. Qualifiée de rencontre de
"deux révolutions", celle-ci réunissait le pire des mondes pour
Washington dans l'hémisphère: le dernier ennemi communiste du pré-carré
et un dirigeant risquant de compromettre les efforts boliviens contre le
trafic de la drogue.
"Il
semble que la carte (politique en Amérique latine) soit en train de
changer, a déclaré Castro. Il faut réfléchir, beaucoup observer et bien
s'informer." L'étape cubaine ne durant pas plus que quelques heures, le
geste posé était néanmoins fort. Il ne manquait plus qu'aller dire
bonjour à Hugo Chavez au Vénézuéla, dirigeant qui partage avec Morales
une vision plus radicale de cette gauche qui depuis quelques années
balaye le continent latino-américain au grand dam de Washington.
L'absence
initiale de Chavez de la liste des premières visites étonnait
d'ailleurs les observateurs, même si les deux pays connaissaient
plusieurs différends. Le nouveau maître de La Paz modifia son emploi du
temps en conséquent, ajoutant à sa tournée inaugurale la capitale de cet
autre mentor également honni par les Etats-Unis.
"Nous
adhérons à ce combat anti-libéral et anti-impérialiste," s'est lancé
Morales à Caracas. Chavez ne pouvait être en meilleure compagnie,
retournant une des formules de Bush contre lui: "C'est Washington, ce
sont eux qui sont l'axe du mal". Le spectacle ne pouvait être plus
alarmant à la maison Blanche, où l'élection de Morales par voie
démocratique, et par raz-de-marée électoral de surcroît, constitue un
double cauchemar.
Troisième
producteur mondial de cocaïne, après la Colombie et le Pérou, la
Bolivie prône sous ce nouveau chef la dépénalisation internationale de
la feuille de coca et la mise en valeur des plantations existantes.
Morales cherche également à retirer la tutelle des Etats-Unis, qui
contrôlent la police chargée de la lutte au narcotrafic, tout en
travaillant avec les principaux destinataires de la cocaïne bolivienne,
le Brésil et l'UE.
L'élection
mettait tout de même un terme à des années d'instabilité en Bolivie, où
l'on ne compte plus les changements de président depuis quelque temps.
Avec 54% des suffrages, Morales, premier président indigène de
l'histoire, a remporté la victoire la plus convaincante en Bolivie
depuis le retour de la démocratie en 1980.
Sa
visite pré-inaugurale inclut plusieurs pays, à l'exception des
Etats-Unis, qu'il a récemment accusé de terrorisme en Irak et dont il a
reproché une "sale campagne" pour empêcher son élection. Les adversaires
de Morales affirment quant à eux que Morales a bénéficié du soutient
financier de Caracas, ce qu'il nie.
En
quête de solution afin de résoudre les problèmes socio-économiques de
son pays, la tournée est surtout portée sur l'avenir des réserves
d'hydrocarbures, dont il a annoncé la nationalisation. Une autre notion à
faire frémir le camp Bush.
Toronto dreads new year as 1st homicide ushers in 2006
A
stretch of one of Toronto's busiest commercial streets stood empty on
usually crowd-packed boxing week, cordoned off by yellow police tape as
investigators poured over possible clues on the city's 52nd shooting
death of the year. While the 78 homicides in Canada's largest city in
2005 were still well short of its record 88 over a decade ago, the
number of gun deaths is nearly double the 27 in 2004, sparking outrage
rather than fear in a city that prides itself as being North America's
safest large city.
Now
police officials tragically deplore incidents of "babies killing
babies" in Ontario's metropolis. Soon a makeshift flower memorial marked
the spot where 15 year old Jane Creba died after being shot in the head
when a gunfight broke out between as many as 15 youngsters outside a
Foot Locker store near Yonge and Gould. Six other people were injured on
a day one police officials said "Toronto has finally lost its
innocence". "It was a tragic loss and tragic day," Detective Sgt. Savas
Kyriacou said. Judging by the political reaction you would think the
same can be said of the country in general.
"What
we saw yesterday is a stark reminder of the challenge that governments,
police forces and communities face to ensure that Canadian cities do
not descend into the kind of rampant gun violence we have seen
elsewhere," prime minister Paul Martin said after giving his
condolences.
In
a year which saw four RCMP officers killed in Alberta by a lone gunman
and more recently a young Quebec policewoman killed answering a routine
call of public disturbance, politicians including Martin and Toronto's
mayor have blamed the rising number of cases on weapons smuggled in
illegally from the United States.
Others
point to a growing gang problem in Canada's largest city, where some 73
street gangs are said of embracing gun culture, 25 of them related to
organized crime. The crisis quickly became a campaign issue, following
Martin's vow earlier in December to ban handguns if his Liberals win
re-election in the Jan. 23 parliamentary elections. But ownership of
such weapons is already severely restricted, and critics accused him of
playing politics with the violence spree.
Paul
Martin later supported a call by the mayor and Ontario's premier to
keep those arrested for gun-related crimes behind bars until trial. This
week the Conservatives, now neck and neck with the Liberals in the
polls, launched their official campaign platform also promising to crack
down on crime. "What happened yesterday was appalling. You just don't
expect it in a Canadian city," said Toronto Mayor David Miller, who
stresses that while almost every other type of crime is down in Toronto,
the supply of guns has increased and half of them come from the United
States. "The U.S. is exporting its problem of violence to the streets of
Toronto," he charged.
But
governments are looking into creating new opportunities and programs
for youngsters, an admission the problem may lie in urban and social
problems related to poverty, lack of opportunity and funding cutbacks.
"There are neighborhoods in Toronto where young people face barriers of
poverty, discrimination, and don't have real hope and opportunity,"
Miller conceded. "The kind of programs that we once took for granted in
Canada, that would reach out to young people, have systematically
disappeared over the past decade and I think that gun violence is a
symptom of a much bigger problem."
Canada
had 172 gun-related homicides in 2004, but for all the outcry the
national numbers are drastically down from 271 in 1990. Toronto beat out
Montreal's homicide rate years ago, now with 1.8 cases per 100,000
people, versus Montreal's 1.74. But the cities could not be more
different as last year Montreal saw a record-level drop of cases to 35
homicides.
Now
some Torontonians dread a new year which could see a surge in
gun-related violence. They didn't have to wait very long, Toronto saw
its first homicide of the year 2006 on new year's day.
Bush spooked at year's end
Tough
times and slipping polls for the Bush administration have led to a
humbler tone at year's end, but nothing has been as scathing as
security-related, specifically intelligence-related issues. First the
administration came under attack in November for CIA flights ferrying
prisoners of the war on terror to secret bases across the world,
sparking concerns they were being tortured.
Next
the U.S. president, in a rare back-to-back address to the American
people, admitted for the first time last month that the U.S. had invaded
Iraq based on faulty intelligence, but still justified the removal of
strongman Saddam Hussein.
Just
days before, a New York Times story which had been held up for a year
for security reasons disclosed a change of policy since Sept. 11
allowing eavesdropping on internal communications without the required
warrants. That was the last straw for U.S. lawmakers who initially
refused to renew the controversial Patriot Act, also passed after Sept.
11, allowing law enforcement more tools and leverage to fight terrorism.
In the aftermath of the WMD and Abu Ghraib controversies, fears grew
that the administration was oversepping its bounds by regularly flouting
legal conventions at home and abroad.
Bush
was critical of the NYT report as well as reluctance to renew the
Patriot Act. "Congress has a responsibility to give our law enforcement
and intelligence officials the tools they need to protect the American
people," he said, arguing that it "helps us connect the dots" of
terrorist plots, tying together clues in a manner not possible before
the Sept. 11 attacks. After 9-11 America's intelligence agencies were
accused of failing to collect and translate intercepts aggressively
enough to catch the plotters.
While
the Patriot Act was eventually extended for a month, much less than
what the administration sought, the controversy over the snooping would
not go away. As congressmen called for an inquiry, a Justice Department
probe was launched into the NYT leak by the end of December.
The
wire-tapping warrants are a requirement going much further back than
Sept. 11., to a 1978 federal law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act, which provides for domestic surveillance under extreme situations,
but only with court approval. It followed recommendations of the Church
committee which investigated abuses by US intelligence agencies in the
1970s and the scandals of the Nixon administration.
Some
intelligence observers point out that it was perhaps unnecessary to
conduct wire-taps without warrants simply because the body that allows
them hardly questions the requests. "The FISA court is as big a rubber
stamp as you can possibly get within the federal judiciary," says James
Bamford, who wrote two books on the National Security Agency, America's
top eavesdropping agency. Indeed, according to USA Today, brief annual
reports of the activities of the secret court show that from 1979
through 2004 it granted 18,761 warrants and rejected five. Fewer than
100 had to be modified.
Of
course there were other ways not to break the law and still wire-tap
Americans, a former Canadian spook wrote in a 1994 book that revealed
Canada's role in the Anglo-saxon international snooping network known as
Echelon. While Canada's eavesdroppers had long ago been outed, in a
1974 Fifth Estate program of the CBC entitled "The Espionage
Establishment" suggesting that the Communications Branch of the National
Research Council was engaged in Signals Intelligence (largely for use
by the CIA), Frost, a former eavesdropper, shared juicy details on the
workings of Canada's most secretive agency, especially its missions
conducted outside the country.
Before
the 1978 U.S. legislation but not long after the Nixon scandals, the
NSA requested Canada's equivalent, the then nascent Communications
Security Establishment recently placed under the Department of National
Defense, to conduct operations on U.S. soil to monitor an American
citizen suspected of spying for the Soviets, Frost says in Spyworld.
"What NSA asked Canada to do, though, did not conform to what American
idealists would consider the democratic way. But it appears all's fair
if the referee is looking the other way."
Echelon
involves the eavesdropping agencies of Britain, the U.S., Canada,
Australia and New-Zealand. While the U.S. request came before the 1978
law and seemed out of the ordinary judging by the reaction of Frost's
superiors, this sort of agencies doing each others' dirty work to avoid
breaking national laws seemed to be more than an isolated case.
What
really caused a stir surrounding the release of "Spyworld" were claims
that CSE also monitored two of former British prime minister Margaret
Thatcher's dissenting cabinet ministers in London on behalf of Britain's
secret service. More recently, in 2003 a translator in Britain's GCHQ
eavesdropping agency was sacked for leaking memos in which the NSA asked
British officers to tap phones of nations voting on war against Iraq at
the United Nations, in New York.
Although
bound by its own domestic laws, including the Criminal Code, the
Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and the Privacy Act, the CSE has, as the
NSA, seen its powers expanded after Sept. 11 to allow the interception
of foreign communications that begin or end in Canada, as long as the
other party is outside the border.
Some
fear this too may in turn become a casualty of increased intelligence
activity, at the behest of U.S. agencies that give Canada much more data
under their agreements than they get in return. Frost also noted
occasional cases of internal eavesdropping, including the accidental
recording of a conversation by a former U.S. ambassador, detailing
secret trade negotiation strategies over the phone, and purposeful
monitoring of Margaret Trudeau, to find out if she smoked marijuana.
This
was hardly Canada's lone incident according to reporter Andrew
Mitrovica whose more recent disclosure that CSE had illegally
intercepted the communications of Canadians - including discussions
between a woman and her gynecologist - rushed the appointment of retired
chief justice Antonio Lamer as watchdog over CSE. Unlike the NSA, the
CSE does not need to go to a court to get authorization to eavesdrop, it
only needs the approval of the Minister of Defense.
In
recent years the CSE has increased staffing and extended operations to a
new building, and is mentioned as possible launching pad for
intelligence capabilities that would have an international outreach.
"Accidental" eaves-dropping of internal communications have also
occurred south of the border due to technical difficulties in
establishing whether one end of a phone call was, as regulations require
it, truly international. In some cases people the NSA thought were
outside the United States were actually on American soil.
The
new U.S. eavesdropping policy, which officially only targets
communications international in nature, with or without a warrant, was
enough to incense one of the federal judges usually giving warrants a
green light. U.S. District Judge James Robertson, one of 11 members of
the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, resigned after he
expressed deep concern that the warrantless surveillance program
authorized by the president in 2001 was legally questionable and may
have tainted the FISA court's work.
Meanwhile
three Democratic and two Republican senators have sent a letter to the
leaders of the Senate's Judiciary and Intelligence committees, asking
for an "immediate inquiry" into President Bush's authorization of a
secret wiretapping program. "In your public statements to date, you have
not made a convincing legal argument for the authority to do so," the
senators said.
Then
again the NSA may not have waited for Bush's green light, some reports
suggest.More trouble may be in the wings as a former NSA spook, Russ
Tice, promises to come clean on "probable unlawful constitutional acts
conducted while I was an intelligence officer".