Selves and Others

Although the Iraqi people should be applauded for voting, the Bush administration should not construe the election as a guarantee that Iraq will form a democracy.

The Bush administration was understandably happy with the Iraqi election. Despite the death of approximately 50 people, 57 percent of the population voted. President Bush declared that “The people of Iraq have spoken to the world, and the world is hearing the voice of freedom.” However, a quick glance at recent history easily dispels the myth that elections lead to democracy and freedom. (...)

From a Lynne Truss work: "A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air. ’Why?’ asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. the panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder. ’I’m a panda,’ he says, at the door. ’Look it up.’ The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough finds an explanation. ’Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

The Devil, God and how a panda behaves...are all in the details.

How to recruit citizens for action? If you can get past the high number of depressing responses you’re likely to get in canvassing for solidarity, I offer you some crucial details to consider. You ignore them at your peril...peril to your progress. (...)

The film Seven Days In May is one of my all-time favourites. The gripping 1964 drama, starring Burt Lancaster, depicts an attempted coup by far rightists in Washington using a top-secret Pentagon anti-terrorist unit called something like "Contelinpro."

Life imitates art. This week, former military intelligence analyst William Arkin revealed a hitherto unknown directive, with the Orwellian name "JCS Conplan 0300-97," authorizing the Pentagon to employ special, ultra-secret "anti-terrorist" military units on American soil for what the author claims are "extra-legal missions."

In other words, using U.S. soldiers to kill or arrest Americans, acts that have been illegal since the U.S. Civil War. (...)

Berta Rabelo remembers the day her life changed forever. It was March 14, 2004, when a neighbour dropped by her tin-roofed shack to tell her that a doctor had opened a clinic a few doors from her home in Barrio La Esperanza, a shantytown in the southern hills high above the glass skyscrapers of downtown Caracas. In her 72 years in the barrio, Ms. Rabelo had never seen a doctor venture into this zone of open sewers, dirt pathways and armed drug lords, even in an emergency. "I could not believe it," she says.

And the man wasn’t even Venezuelan. Dr. Eliecer Hernandez, 32, had come to one of the country’s poor- est neighbourhoods from Cuba. He made daily house calls - for example, visiting Ms. Rabelo every two weeks to take her blood pressure and check on her hypertension. The treatment and medication were absolutely free. (...)

Far too early to tell what the Iraqi elections mean and what the outcome will be - hopefully good. To be sure, the US has developed to a high art the management of opinion in electoral systems, and when necessary, flat out manipulation and cheating to get the desired result. Boris Yeltin’s 1996 election perfectly illustrated that, and what the Bush forces they pulled at home in 2000 represents a more nuanced example. Indeed, the whole process represents nothing more than a continuation of employing Edward Bernays’ and Walter Lippmann’s application of public relations to democracy. Bernays began the task in WW I, when Wilson wanted to get the US in that war despite public opinion against it. Bernays wrote that most Americans were “dumb Jacks” (a reference to his reputedly dim chauffer) lacking the sophistication to form their own opinions and so had their views had to be “manufactured” (to use the vernacular of the day when the US still made things) by their betters. Bernays accomplished this by first setting agendas with the media, whom he held to be only marginally smarter than his driver. This contempt for the public was not new, however, unfortunately it extends back to many, perhaps most, of the nation’s founding fathers, who held a John Locke conception of democracy that intended self-rule only for a small minority of talented property owners. Indeed, owning private property, conveniently, was seen as a reflection of possessing talent. (...)

The Israel Defense Forces must disengage from the settlers now. This process of disengagement will be difficult - the IDF is deeply invested in the settlement enterprise - but it is obligated by reality. Even before a single settler family is evacuated, the army must untie its Gordian knot with the settlers, which has bound it for many years. The time has come for it to again be the Israel Defense Forces, as intended, rather than the Settler Defense Forces, as it has been throughout the long years of occupation.

For the sake of Israeli society and also for the sake of the IDF, this disengagement is no less important than the disengagement from Gaza. Without it, it is difficult to see how the IDF will be able to fulfill its role in evacuating settlements to which it is umbilically linked. The good news is that the settlers themselves have begun to disengage. Another few incidents of employing violence against the IDF, another few humiliations of officers and soldiers, another few calls for refusing to obey orders, and the IDF will understand, the hard way, what it should have realized long ago: It must not be part of this dubious enterprise. (...)

The United States government is examining reports on the intensified role of state censorship in Israeli media.

American officials have begun collecting information on the activities of the military censor, in preparation of the annual State Department report on human rights in various countries.

The report is expected to include a section on the limits to the freedom of expression in Israel. (...)

There were many "signs" immediately following the announcement that U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was planning a visit to Israel and the Palestinian Authority, during her inaugural trip abroad in her new role in the Bush administration.

"It is not certain she will actually come," the reporters were told in a whisper by government officials. This is a blatant sign that Israel is not happy with the visit. The whole thing became more puzzling as these same officials spoke with excitement at the increased involvement of Egypt in the talks between Israel and the PA, and the invitation to attend a summit at Sharm el-Sheikh. (...)

In the absence of any real definition, there will be no strategic, historic or ideological significance in Sharon’s readiness to withdraw from Gaza - or in the flags waving at Sharm.

The flags of Israel, Palestine, Jordan and Egypt are very familiar with the routine. Once every few months or years, when a historic event is held at Sharm el-Sheikh, they are pulled out of old boxes and hung for several hours on metal poles to mark the convening of another summit. When the meeting ends, they are folded up again and smeared with another layer of cynicism that preserves them well - until the next event. (...)

in Katmandu

Nepalese soldiers have arrested two leaders of a media rights group after authorities in Katmandu suspended press freedom and warned it would take action against its critics .

Taranath Dahal, president of the Federation of Nepalese Journalists, was detained yesterday while Bishnu Nisthuri, the group’s general secretary, was detained on Friday . Officials refused to comment on the arrests.

The two men had been critical of the suspension of press freedoms, which followed the dismissal on Tuesday of Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba’s government by King Gyanendra. (...)

in Baghdad

Bowing to the increasing likelihood that a Shia-Kurdish alliance will take control in Iraq after last week’s elections, a group of mostly Sunni Arab parties announced yesterday they had decided "in principle" to take part in drafting a new constitution, even though they boycotted the poll.

Iraq’s election commission failed to release new vote tallies yesterday, but said the final result would be out by Thursday. There would then be a nine-day period allowed to resolve complaints about the count before the results were certified. (...)

Floods, storms and droughts. Melting Arctic ice, shrinking glaciers, oceans turning to acid. The world’s top scientists warned last week that dangerous climate change is taking place today, not the day after tomorrow. You don’t believe it? Then, says Geoffrey Lean, read this...

Future historians, looking back from a much hotter and less hospitable world, are likely to play special attention to the first few weeks of 2005. As they puzzle over how a whole generation could have sleepwalked into disaster - destroying the climate that has allowed human civilisation to flourish over the past 11,000 years - they may well identify the past weeks as the time when the last alarms sounded. (...)

in Basra

The attack had been threatened for a while, but it was still a deadly surprise when it came - men covered in blood limping away on a road strewn with twisted metal, glass shards and charred bodies.

A motorcycle parked on the roadside with a hidden bomb had exploded as a patrol of National Guards were passing by yesterday, killing four guardsmen and critically injuring two others. The convoy’s four-wheel drive vehicles had been thrown across the road, and, along with the smell of burning, the screams and the sirens, there were rumours that other bombs were due to go off. (...)

Martin Mubanga went on holiday to Zambia, but ended up spending 33 months in Guantanamo Bay, some of the time in the feared Camp Echo. Free at last and still protesting his innocence, he tells the full story to David Rose

Martin Mubanga can date the low point of his 33 months at Guantánamo Bay: 15 June, 2004. That sweltering Cuban morning, he was taken from the cellblock he was sharing with speakers of the Afghan language Pashto, none of whom knew English, for what had become his almost daily interrogation. As usual, his hands were shackled in rigid, metal cuffs attached to a body belt; another set of chains ran to his ankles, severely restricting his ability to move his legs. Trussed in this fashion, he was lying on the interrogation booth floor. (...)

[pages 4 - 5]

British intelligence officials played a crucial part in the secret abduction of UK citizen Martin Mubanga to Guantanamo Bay. There, he reveals today in an exclusive interview, he endured 33 months of ill-treatment and often abusive interrogation.

Documents seen by The Observer disclose that even the Pentagon’s own lawyers now accept that the intelligence that consigned him to Guantanamo may have been deeply flawed. Mubanga, who was released without charge after his return to Britain on 25 January, now plans to sue the British government.

In his interview today, the first by any of the four Britons who returned from Guantanamo last month, Mubanga, 32, describes a horrifying catalogue of abuse (...)

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The constitutional court in Guatemala has halted the trial of 16 soldiers charged over one of the worst massacres during the country’s civil war.

The court went against legal precedent in Guatemala by ruling that a 1996 amnesty law covered massacre cases.

Human rights groups have called the decision disastrous.

More than 200 people died in 1982 when a commando unit from Guatemala’s army burst into the village of Dos Erres, searching for guerrilla sympathisers. (...)

[5 February, 2005]

Martin Mubanga, the British Guantanamo Bay detainee released a fortnight ago, is to sue the Government after alleging that UK intelligence officials colluded in his arrest and transportation to the American-run camp for suspected terrorists.

Mr Mubanga claims the reasons given for his 33-month detention - that he was travelling to Zambia on false documents and was involved in planning terrorist attacks - were fabricated after intelligence officers failed to link him with a suspected Taliban fighter who had assumed his identity. (...)

Baghdad

Silence enveloped Baghdad’s police academy last week as 2000 cadets filed into classes to sit a mid-term exam of multiple-choice questions.

Brows crinkled over ticklish selections, such as how to respond to bombs. You should:

a) run away as fast as possible;

b) evacuate the citizens;

c) let the multinational forces handle the situation, it is not your job;

d) all of the above. (...)

Seoul, The US will send about 690,000 troops and 2000 warplanes if war breaks out on the Korean Peninsula, South Korea said yesterday.

Details of the reinforcements were released in South Korea’s new defence policy paper, updated for the first time in four years.

The US is seeking to transform the 33,000 troops in South Korea from a trip-wire defensive role against invasion by the North into a regional rapid reaction force. (...)