The Periscope

Abughraibgate ...

From Slate ...

Locked in Abu Ghraib

The prison scandal keeps getting worse for the Bush administration.

By Fred Kaplan

The White House is about to get hit by the biggest tsunami since the Iran-Contra affair, maybe since Watergate. President George W. Bush is trapped inside the compound, immobilized by his own stay-the-course campaign strategy. Can he escape the massive tidal waves? Maybe. But at this point, it's not clear how.

If today's investigative shockers—Seymour Hersh's latest article in The New Yorker and a three-part piece in Newsweek—are true, it's hard to avoid concluding that responsibility for the Abu Ghraib atrocities goes straight to the top, both in the Pentagon and the White House, and that varying degrees of blame can be ascribed to officials up and down the chain of command.

Both stories are worth reading in full. The gist is that last year, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld put in place a secret operation that, in Hersh's words, "encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq."

And from the New Yorker, Seymour Hersh ... The Gray Zone ...

The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists but in a decision, approved last year by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secret operation, which had been focussed on the hunt for Al Qaeda, to the interrogation of prisoners in Iraq. Rumsfeld’s decision embittered the American intelligence community, damaged the effectiveness of élite combat units, and hurt America’s prospects in the war on terror.

According to interviews with several past and present American intelligence officials, the Pentagon’s operation, known inside the intelligence community by several code words, including Copper Green, encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq. A senior C.I.A. official, in confirming the details of this account last week, said that the operation stemmed from Rumsfeld’s long-standing desire to wrest control of America’s clandestine and paramilitary operations from the C.I.A.

D-Day Tourism Upsets French Village Life

D-day tourism is getting out of hand in the villages of Normandy that were the first to be liberated as the Allies advanced in 1944. Emilie Boyer King reports from Sainte-Mère-Eglise in advanced of the D-day 60th anniversary celebration in June. This article was originally published in the South China Morning Post.

SAINTE-MERE-EGLISE -- When allied forces landed on the Normandy beaches sixty years ago, most of the villages in this luxuriant coastal region in North-western France relied on farming for a living. Today, D-day tourism has become a booming industry in the area.

But for the locals, historical notoriety comes at a cost. At Sainte-Mère-Eglise, the first village to be liberated on the western front, traditional businesses are being pushed out in favour of D-day souvenir shops and tourist facilities. The village counts six souvenir shops for less than 2000 inhabitants.

"This is definitely becoming a problem," said Joseph Leprieur, general secretary at the village town hall. "When I came here in 1977, there were no souvenir shops at all but they have been multiplying ever since. We cannot let it go too far."

Another small step...

From Stephen Gardner... Another small step in my quest to become Britain's leading media and political commentator. I had the lead letter in the Independent on Sunday yesterday. It concerned an article by John Rentoul. He was writing following comments from Geoff Mulgan of Tony Blair's policy strategy unit, to the effect that it is the media's fault that the public is cynical about politics and politicians. Rentoul wrote that the media may be partly to blame, but it is also to do with problems with the UK government's media and information management strategy. In response to this, I said:

John Rentoul is right to criticise Geoff Mulgan's self-serving 'shoot the messenger' comments about the media spoiling the work of politicians (9 May 2004). However, unfortunately, Mr Rentoul himself then goes on to miss the point. He talks about a problem that 'cannot merely be a systematic failure of the media. It must also be a failure on Labour's part to get its message across.' In other words, he seems to say, it's a failure of Labour spin.

In fact the problem is far more simple: basic dishonesty at the heart of government. Politicians may achieve many positive things, but they undermine their credibility through lies, evasions and omissions in other areas. The most recent example is the scandal of prisoner abuse in Iraq. Can we really believe significant action to address this issue would be taken without the media exposing it? Unfortunately for politicians, it only takes one lie to overshadow 100 jobs well done.

In the UK, there is fundamental lack of transparency in government decision-making. In Sweden, all the prime minister's correspondence is considered public property and may be accessed by all. In Estonia, cabinet meetings are conducted online so that decision-making is transparent. The British government makes its decisions in the shadows then attempts to spin the outcome depending on whatever objectives it may have at the time. It is this that creates distrust. If political decision making processes could be clearly seen and understood, it would be far harder for the British press to distort and dissemble.

Observatory on EU Constitution ...

Statewatch has a huge archive collection of documents relating to the EU constitution ...

For other items, go directly to the Statewatch front page. They go a great job if you haven't checked them out.

Beckett goes to China

From China Daily, no longer waiting for Godot in Beijing ...

So here in the spotlight was Dublin's highly esteemed Gate Theatre in Beijing in 2004, staging this complex, difficult and occasionally incomprehensible drama to a pretty full house with a mix of Chinese and foreign onlookers.

The set, designed by Louis le Brocquy, is stark and simple, dominated by a spindly tree bare in the first act, in the second sprouting three leaves. There is a rock and occasionally a pair of boots, set against a burnished copper backdrop. The set is speared by a brilliant full moon as it darkens at the end of each act.

The ensuing performance - a version true to the playwright's intentions, married to sublime technique and skill - was one that needed a dictionary of superlatives to praise adequately. Seldom in a theatre-going career does a cast scale such heights.

An English Monk in Thailand

Reviews at Spike ...

What would possess a middle aged English businessman to give up his wealthy, comfortable lifestyle in London and become a Buddhist monk living in one of the poorest districts of Thailand? In Phra Farang (Thai for "Western monk"), Phra Peter Pannapadipo, formerly Mr Peter Robinson, tries to explain what led him to such a radical change and what life as a Buddist monk is Thailand is like.

Given that Phra Peter is one of only a handful of Westerners who have become ordained monks within Thailand, Phra Farang would be an interesting document purely as a historical record - but Phra Peter's measured prose and lack of pomposity makes Phra Farang a fascinating read, not only for his own life's transformation but as an insight into Thai culture and Buddhist religion in general. Given that both are so traditionally alien to the West, Phra Peter makes them distinctly more comprehensible by charting his own path through his understanding of the teachings of the Buddha and coming to terms with living within the very different precepts of Thai monk life.

Anthropology's Dynamic Duo

From the Common Review ...

In the fall of 1922, Margaret Mead took her first course in anthropology at Barnard College. Her teaching assistant for that course was an older graduate student, Ruth Benedict. Benedict was a shy, withdrawn woman, while Mead was a ball of energy, and yet these two very distinct personalities forged a professional relationship and personal friendship that lasted for twenty-two years. Together they also shaped the development of anthropology in the United States; the public knows about anthropology because of Mead's unflagging public enthusiasm for the discipline, and both Mead and Benedict were instrumental in making the notion of cultural relativity the foundation of anthropological thought.

Solana remarks from EU defense minister's meeting

From a Commission press release, in pdf.

AGENCY ON THE FIELD OF DEFENCE CAPABILITIES DEVELOPMENT,
RESEARCH, ACQUISITION AND ARMAMENTS
1. I am extremely pleased with the progress that we have made so far, since the launching of the
Agency Establishment Team, under the outstanding leadership of Nick Whitney.
2. It is important to make the necessary efforts to have an Agency with a flexible scope, in order to
be fully effective.
3. The European defence industry is emphatic about the need for this Agency.
4. I believe there are three crucial requirements to achieve our goals as planned:
1.1 Your personal engagement and commitment in the Steering Board - ultimately, it is all about
how you choose to spend your budgets;
1.2 Flexible internal decision-making, i.e. maximum use of Qualified Majority Voting (QMV);
1.3 Enough room for the Agency to do its job. The Agency should not be seen as another Council
working group. It is important that we provide it with the appropriate level of autonomy. This
is crucial for it to be able to produce results.
5. Of course, we must respect the competence of the Council and its bodies. Steering Board must
stick to what is within the competence of Defence Ministers. As Secretary General of the
Council, as well as Head of the Agency, I must have the Council's interests at heart.
BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA (BiH), POSSIBLE EU MILITARY DEPLOYMENT
1. Work is ongoing in accordance with the time schedule initially envisaged. The general concept
was welcomed and approved by the Council last April, the directive for the development of the
strategic options (both police and military) has been issued and these two documents have been
discussed by the relevant Council bodies.
2. We maintain fruitful consultations with the BiH authorities. A visit was conducted at the end of
last month to keep those authorities up-to-date with our work, in particular the General Concept,
in BiH. As you will be aware of, the Minister of Defence, Mr Radovanovic, visited Brussels on
12 May. On the occasion of that visit he and I had a good discussion.
3. Regular consultations are taking place with NATO. The next EU Political Security Committee /
North Atlantic Council meeting will take place next week. EU Military Staff (EUMS) sent
officers to Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) three weeks ago to ensure
close co-operation with the Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe (DSACEUR), while
the EU Staff Group is being trained. EUMS will send a Liaison Officer to Sarajevo shortly.
4. There are some issues that we will have to address:
• It is critical that Member States generate sufficient and appropriate forces for this operation.
• We must also ensure that the EU has the authority to conduct this mission successfully, to
accompany the responsibility that we will take.
CIVIL/MILITARY PLANNING CELL
1. Since the informal meeting of 5-6 April, I have presented formal proposals to implement the
different elements contained in the document entitled "European Defence; NATO/EU
consultation, planning and operations".
2. Let me draw your attention to a few points on the Civil/Military Cell:
• We should do our best to carry work forward with a certain speed. The European Council
indicated that these measures should enter into force as early as possible in 2004. I think we
should aim to have these proposals adopted in June by the EU Foreign Ministers and
endorsed later by the European Council.
• The “balance” between the military and civilian elements in the Cell. The experience of the
last decade, and even more recent examples, clearly demonstrate the need for a
comprehensive approach to crisis management. We should ensure that the Cell enhances the
EU’s capability to do this.
• The Cell and Operation Centre facilities will take into account the need to respect the level
of ambition of this project.

Belgium to extradite ETA suspects

From Expatica.com ...

BRUSSELS – Two Spanish men arrested in Belgium on suspicion of belonging to the Basque separatist organisation ETA are to be extradited to Spain.

The two men, Jon Lopez Gomez and Diego Ugarte Lopez de Arkaute, were arrested at the end of March in the Belgian town of Bossu.

The Belgian authorities initially refused to send the two men back for trial in Spain, despite an official extradition request from Madrid.

Remembering the Battle of the Bulge

At the Financial Times ...

"Nuts!" Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe's blunt, one-worded reply to a German surrender offer has come to symbolise the awesome determination of American forces to hold onto Bastogne, in what has become known as the Battle of the Bulge.

Today, that determination is commemorated by museums, monuments and military cemeteries scattered across the Ardennes, the region in southern Belgium which saw Hitler's final attempt to stop the Allied advance, six months after the D-Day landing, with a surprise counter-attack involving 240,000 German soldiers.

However, after failing to reach the Meuse river and capture the encircled Bastogne, Hitler was forced to order the withdrawal of the remaining troops to Germany.

The Garlic Press

From the City Journal ... bashing the French press.

The French journalists who work for the leftwing Libération, the conservative Le Figaro, or the liberal Le Monde may not agree on much. But they share the assumptions that inform a French sense of nationhood, including the firmly held conviction that to be anti-American is to be pro-France—especially when it comes to the Middle East, where Israel is seen as a bad patsy of the U.S. “Our history has taught us not to like tanks,” one French journalist sniffed, “especially when they are used against children throwing rocks.”

So much has anti-Americanism become an undisputed expression of truth for the French press that, when veteran journalist Alain Hertoghe documented in his recent book La guerre à outrances (the “all-out war”) how the big French papers, because of their hatred of the U.S., reported the Iraq conflict with wild inaccuracy, the media response, right and left, was . . . silence. Well, except at Hertoghe’s own paper, the Catholic daily La Croix. There, his boss accused him of committing “an act of treason” and fired him (just as the BBC yanked journalist Robert Kilroy-Silk’s radio show off the air after he penned an angry column in the Sunday Express praising the U.S. and harshly criticizing “despotic, barbarous, and corrupt” Arab states).

Who'll be Chechnya's new bullseye?

From Radio Free Europe - Radio Liberty ...

Five days after the death of pro-Moscow Chechen administration head Akhmed-hadji Kadyrov, there are still no clear indications who was responsible for planting the bomb that killed him and five others on 9 May. Nor is it clear whom Moscow plans to co-opt and install as Kadyrov's successor.

Israel threatens to destroy hundreds of Gaza homes

From Reuters ...

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel's top general threatened Sunday to destroy hundreds of Palestinian refugee homes after the Supreme Court cleared the way for demolitions in a flashpoint Israeli-held corridor on the Gaza-Egypt border.

Secretary of State Colin Powell said the United States opposed the destruction of homes in Rafah refugee camp, adjacent to the "Philadelphi" buffer zone in the southern Gaza Strip, and urged an end to a cycle of violence.

"Hundreds of houses have been marked for destruction," a senior official quoted Israeli army chief Moshe Yaalon as telling the cabinet at its weekly meeting, without giving any timeframe for their demolition.

Czech FC Synot soccer club reels from bribery charges

At the Prague Post ...

Standing at a gas station near the south Moravian town of Vyskov, the sports director of the FC Synot soccer club says he felt like he was in an action movie.

FC Synot's Jaroslav Hastik was strolling to his car with soccer referee Stanislav Hruska when plainclothes police officers toting machine guns stopped them.

"It looked like a classic mugging," Hastik said of the April 30 incident. "I was walking away from the gas station when some civilians stepped in our way. ... I expected to get a bullet in my head at any time."

More fighting in Karbala

At the Guardian ...

KARBALA, Iraq (AP) - U.S. forces fought militiamen loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr on Saturday in Karbala, while insurgents in the northern city of Mosul attacked an Iraqi army recruiting center, killing four people and wounding 19.

In Najaf, gunmen from al-Sadr's militia, the al-Mahdi Army, controlled the city center and bands of fighters stood at almost every street corner around the Shrine of Imam Ali, one of Shia Islam's holiest sites.

Limited clashes erupted Saturday when al-Mahdi fighters fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a U.S. tank stationed in the local police directorate building. The rocket missed the tank and U.S. soldiers exchanged fire with al-Sadr followers.

The anti-Semitism of Alexander Solzhenitsyn

At Reason Magazine ...

Controversy rages as charges of anti-Semitism dog a beloved cultural icon. No, not Mel Gibson: The man at the center of this debate is the Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

Solzhenitsyn, author of The Gulag Archipelago, was once a revered symbol of moral resistance to the Soviet state. He probably deserves more credit than any other person for stripping away communism’s moral prestige among Western intellectuals.

Exiled from the Soviet Union in 1974, Solzhenitsyn alienated some erstwhile admirers with his Russian nationalism and his antipathy toward Western-style democracy; after his return to Russia 20 years later, the public’s reverence soon faded to polite indifference. Still, he retains his special status among the older intelligentsia and many Western anti-communists.

East German Gold Rush?

No, not the Olympics ... it's in the streams.

From the National Post.

Eastern Germany expecting a new gold rush after man plucks nugget from stream It could well be the wild, wild east in Germany this summer. The province of Thuringia in eastern Germany is bracing itself for a gold rush after a pensioner found a nugget in a stream. The 9.64-gram nugget picked up by Heinz Martin, 64, while he was out for a walk near Katzhuette, 350 kilometres south of Berlin, proved to be the country's biggest find for 200 years. ABC News says news of the C$2,500 find has spread rapidly across Germany, aided by hordes of TV crews who have converged on the former gold-mining area. Hundreds of fortune-hunters pan the region's streams each year, and Mr. Martin's nugget should draw more. Already, tourism officials are confidently predicting a gold rush and say hotel bookings are picking up. "People finally believe us that gold can be found in this area and want to have a go themselves," said Elisabeth Pauli, head of the tourist office in Limbach.

Montenegro backs off seperation vote

At the Intitute for War and Peace Reporting ...

Montenegro's referendum on independence will probably be postponed indefinitely, as the EU increases pressure on the republic to remain in the state union with Serbia, support for separation falls and cracks widen in the pro-independence camp, local analysts say.

Lack of any agreement over conditions for a valid ballot is another major obstacle to a referendum going ahead.

The leadership's first attempt to call a referendum fell through in March 2002. At that time, under pressure from the EU and its foreign policy chief Javier Solana, Milo Djukanovic, Montenegro's president and head of the ruling Democratic Socialist Party, DPS, signed the Belgrade Agreement.

Vlaams Blok backs down over 'snitch phone'

From Expatica.com ...

BRUSSELS – Belgium's far right Flemish party, the Vlaams Blok, has scrapped plans to set up a controversial telephone hotline that would have allowed people to denounce suspected illegal immigrants.

On Thursday evening the Blok announced that it was withdrawing its plan to introduce the anonymous telephone service, which would initially have been put in place in Antwerp, one of the far right party's political strongholds.

The Blok's U-turn followed widespread criticism of its plan from all sides of the political spectrum in Belgium.

Reconstruction of the Bosnian National Museum

Cultural heritage in Bosnia is being restored under foriegn mandate, writes Mike Standaert in an excerpt from an article for Maisonneuve magazine.

On a main thoroughfare in Sarajevo, on what was once known as Snipers' Alley, sits the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina - the Zemaljski Muzej. Throughout the four-year siege of the city during the Bosnian War (1992-1995), this building suffered a great deal: shelled by mortars, shot up by rifle fire and soaked by leaking rainwater. Nearly a decade later, the slow reconstruction process has only just begun.

Photo from the Bosnian National Museum, Mirsad Sijaric.

More ill-informed rubbish

A little contribution from Stephen Gardner:

I've been letting off some steam. Here's what I wrote:

Yet another pisspoor article about the EU, full of all the normal ill-informed prejudices. Chief amongst these is the idea that the EU is some kind of space ship hovering overhead and imposing draconian regulations on the hapless, innocent member states. In fact decision-making in the EU takes place in the Council of Ministers – in other words it is the governments of the member states that agree to impose regulations on themselves. The new member states were perfectly aware of what they would have to do before they signed up for membership, so it’s hard to see how it can all have been such an ‘unpleasant surprise’.

The ‘good governance’ initiatives related to enlargement mainly concern financial assistance for the administrations in the new member states to build up capacity to absorb and implement the acquis communautaire – the body of EU legislation. Post-Communism, public sector corruption has been a serious problem for former Soviet and Soviet-dominated states. OECD and World Bank studies confirm that corruption has declined hugely in the new EU member states as a result of the hard work done to fulfil the conditions of membership. Also governance is something separate from electoral processes – get your terminology right.

Of course it’s a process involving pros and cons. New member states – just like current member states – have made a judgement that they stand to gain more than they lose through EU membership. However, undoubtedly there will be losers as well as winners. But no country has been forced to join. The political elites in the new member states have made the decisions in full knowledge of the implications.

The article also reflects the view that the EU is something imposed on the east by the west. In fact, enlargement fundamentally changes the character of the EU and it is difficult to see at this point what the eventual results of this will be.

It’s also lazy to selectively quote statistics rather than making a sound argument (e.g. low turnouts in Hungary and Slovakia in EU membership referenda). In Latvia turnout was 73 percent with 67 percent in favour, in Malta it was 91 percent, with 54 percent in favour – two can play at the statistics game.

What could have provoked this response? It was a rather silly article on Spiked Online about how the new EU members 'have fallen under the dead hand of bureaucracy'. Now you can read both sides of the argument and make up your own mind. By the way, I did submit it to Spiked, let's see if they publish it.

Vonnegut

At In These Times ...

Many years ago, I was so innocent I still considered it possible that we could become the humane and reasonable America so many members of my generation used to dream of. We dreamed of such an America during the Great Depression, when there were no jobs. And then we fought and often died for that dream during the Second World War, when there was no peace.

But I know now that there is not a chance in hell of America’s becoming humane and reasonable. Because power corrupts us, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power. By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas.

WTO smoking volcano

A speech by EU trade commish, Pascal Lamy ...

Trade negotiations are like volcanoes: there are three phases they can be sleeping smoking or erupting

After a period of relative calm - with only some underground activity - the WTO volcano is "smoking" again, and the smoke is pretty dense;

What do I mean? concrete progress is being made to narrow the differences; Mood is positive and constructive

Clearly a lot of technical work still needs to be done and we should not underestimate the task but the interventions this morning clearly show a desire from all present to work hard, move and make compromises so that by July we can complete 50% of the Doha Agenda. We will have an opportunity to discuss in more detail this afternoon at a meeting of WTO trade ministers

Where is the EU on this one?

UK army demands photo apology

At CNN.com ...

LONDON, England -- The Queen's Lancashire Regiment has demanded an apology from Britain's Daily Mirror tabloid over photographs of alleged abuse of Iraqis that had "unjustly sullied" its reputation.

Regimental commander Brigadier Geoff Sheldon said the regiment had proved that the photos alleging abuse of Iraqi prisoners were fake.

Commenting on a front page picture in the Daily Mirror depicting a British soldier allegedly urinating on an Iraqi prisoner, Brig. Sheldon said: "It wasn't a British soldier degrading an Iraqi.

Huntington and the Mask of Racism

From National Perspective Quarterly ...

Carlos Fuentes, the Mexican novelist, is a member of NPQ’s advisory board. Translation by Thomas D. Morin, Professor of Hispanic Studies, University of Rhode Island, Kingston.

Mexico City—“The best Indian is a dead Indian.” “The best nigger is a nigger slave.” “The yellow threat.” “The red threat.” The Puritanism one finds at the base of WASP culture (White, Anglo Saxon, and Protestant) in the United States of America expresses itself, from time to time, with shocking color. Now, another of these forceful and freely expressed simplistic ideas can be added to the colorful expressions already mentioned: “The Brown Menace.”

The proponent of this idea is Professor Samuel P. Huntington, the tireless voice of alarm with respect to the menace that the idea of the “other” represents for the foundational soul of white, protestant, Anglo-Saxon United States of America. That there existed (and, still, exists) an indigenous-“America” (Huntington uses the United States as a name for the entire continent) prior to the European colonization is of no concern to him. That besides Anglo-America, there existed a prior French-“America” (Louisiana) and, even, a Russian-America (Alaska) is of no interest to Huntington. What worries him is Hispanic-America, the America of Ruben Dario, the America that speaks Spanish and believes in God. For Huntington, this brown danger is an indispensable danger for a nation that requires, in order to exist, an identifiable external menace. Moby Dick, the white whale, is a symbol of this attitude which, fortunately, not all North Americans share, including John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of the North American nation, who warned his countrymen: “Let us not go out into the world in search of monsters to destroy.”

Huntington, in his Clash of Civilizations, discovers his necessary external monster (once the USSR and “the red danger” disappeared) in an Islam poised to assault the borders of Western Civilization, in an attempt to outdo the feats of Saladino, the Sultan, who captured Jerusalem in 1187. As a result, Huntington outdoes the Christian Crusade of Richard the Lion Hearted in the Holy Land. Huntington the Lion Hearted’s anti-Islamic Crusade expresses the profound racism in his heart and, in similar manner, his profound ignorance of the true kulturkampf evident in the Islamic world. Islam is not poised to invade the West. Islam is living, from Algeria to Iran, its own cultural and political battle between conservatives and Islamic liberals. It is a vertical battle, deep within, not a horizontal one of expansion.

Geneva conventions were violated admits U.S. general

From the International Herald Tribune ...

WASHINGTON A top U.S. general acknowledged Thursday during a long and often angry Senate hearing that interrogation techniques used by American guards in an Iraq prison violated the Geneva conventions and that he did not know who had approved them.

The remark by General Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, appeared to place him in direct contradiction of a comment a day earlier by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who has insisted that approved procedures called for humane treatment under recognized international standards.

.

AI - EU arms exports threaten global security

From Amnesty International ...

EU ARMS EXPORTS THREATENING GLOBAL SECURITY NEW REPORT FROM AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

(Brussels 14 May 2004) Arms export controls in the expanded European
Union are dangerously ineffective and stringent new regulations are
urgently needed to protect human rights and safeguard people's security,
Amnesty International said today.

In a comprehensive report released today (Friday 14 May) in Brussels and
London - "Undermining Global Security: the European Union's arms
exports" - Amnesty International highlights serious flaws in the
European Union's key arms control agreements, especially the 1998 EU
Code of Conduct on Arms Exports.

(Note to correspondents: the report will be available online at 0001 GMT
or 0301 Brussels time Friday 14 May 2004 on http://www.amnesty-eu.org
and http://news.amnesty.org For a strictly embargoed advance copy,
please contact the Amnesty International EU Office - details below).

The EU has this year promised a complete review of its Code of Conduct
on Arms Exports and a meeting today (Friday 14 May) of the EU arms
control committee COARM is the latest part of that process.

EU arms, security equipment and services are contributing to grave human
rights abuses and the scale of potential abuse is now enormous,
according to the Amnesty International report.

The major EU arms exporting countries - France, Germany, Italy, Sweden
and the United Kingdom - account for one third of the world's arms
deals. With ten new Member States, the EU now has over 400 small arms
companies in 23 countries, almost as many as the USA.

The report calls for a toughening and widening of the EU Code to prevent
the irresponsible export of surplus arms, arms components and security
equipment used for repression as well as licensed arms production in
third countries, arms brokering and transporting of arms.

"The enlarged EU now has an opportunity to become a more coherent and
effective international voice for positive change. But in order to do
this, the EU must put its own house in order." said Amnesty
International.

The report identifies major weaknesses, omissions and loopholes in the
existing EU arms export controls, including:

- The involvement of an Italian joint venture company in the manufacture
of vehicles used as mobile execution chambers in China;
- UK export of components for Chinese military aero engines despite an
EU arms embargo on China;
- A failure to control the huge "transit trade" of arms through the
Netherlands allowing the export of armoured vehicles to Israel despite
their use against civilians;
- The transfer of Czech and Polish surplus weapons to governments such
as Yemen with a history of diverting weapons to third countries;
- Spanish satellite intelligence, military equipment and training have
been promised to Columbia despite concerns that the Colombian
government's polices are exacerbating the human rights disaster there;
- The supply by a German technology company of surveillance equipment to
Turkmenistan despite a history of the government there using such
methods for political repression;
- French helicopters and parts manufactured under licence in India,
delivered to Nepal where armed forces have used helicopters to shoot and
kill civilians.

Amnesty International is concerned that the review will not be wide or
deep enough to address the serious flaws which allow the abuse of human
rights. The organization is also calling for the European Union to
promote a legally binding global arms trade treaty to underpin a
strengthened EU Code.

For further comment/background and interviews:
Amnesty International EU Office (Brussels):
Tel: 32-2-5021499
Fax: 32-2-5025686
Email: amnesty-eu@aieu.be
Web-site: www.amnesty-eu.org

Who is to blame?

A note from a reader in Greece ...

Who is to blame?

Numerous articles have been written about the security of the Athens 2004 Olympic Games. The majority of them, in the Anglo-Saxon press, point out (or are they desperate to prove) the fact that Greece will not be a secure place during the summer Olympics.

Now let’s try and write down all the secure places around the world: hmm… let’s see … the Antarctic ... Fiji Islands, oh no that’s not right, there are atomic bombs tested there,…hmm… the Amazon forest,… oh wrong again there are cocaine cartels roaming the place,… hmm… Britain? The US? Let’s not mention Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Bosnia etc.

Do you remember a very interesting book written some years ago about the end of history and how, now that the Cold War was over, the world would be a peaceful place? I wonder what the “philosopher” is thinking now.

Greece, on the other hand, maintains neutral relations with the Arab world, had the extremist Group “November 17” arrested and imprisoned, is establishing a relationship with its neighbors based on friendship and economic cooperation, and is reducing its arsenal. No Greek was beheaded recently, no Greek is fighting anywhere in the globe.

What we all have to have in mind is, that if during the Olympics, a bomb explodes killing people, ruining what should be a celebration of cultures, then this will not be due to Greece’s inability to provide adequate security for the Games. This will be due to the on going “democratization” of the whole world

So, paraphrasing Jesus, before the Anglo-Saxon press judges Greece, it should first judge itself and the support it provides to its governments (although I have nothing to do with religion I have to admit that some of His sayings were on the right track). Or, as Greeks say, “he who seeds the wind collects tornados”.

Kostas

P.S. Democracy is not something that someone can impose on people or nations (if you look back in time, you will see that the Athenian Democracy failed just because it was imposed on other nations). Anyone who finds himself oppressed is bound to react and this is what is happening in the world now that history ended.

Interview with Yan Li

My interview with Chinese poet and painter Yan Li is up at the Modern Chinese Language and Culture center at Ohio State University.

Here is a selection ...

Standaert – Can you talk about living in New York at the time of the terrorist attacks on 9/11?

Yan Li – I was painting there at the time, and it suddenly happened. After a couple of weeks, I was always thinking about how, about why people could care so little about life that they could commit suicide and destroy another human being. One reason is people still don’t have enough knowledge about life. Also, under the reason of nationalism, racialism, religion – people are blinded. They think they are doing something for the nation, the race, or the religion, but I think those things are what make people blind because they don’t have independent thinking. After that, I have thought that the answer is living life with passion. Passion. You have to love life, otherwise you can sacrifice for nations, states and religion. Those things are not the highest level for human beings, just a period. Maybe the period will be longer. In my mind there is another goal for human beings. We only have one earth, one humanity. What divides people is the nationalism, religion, race – also culture and language. Now we also communicate better through computers and many people use English, and much of the material life around the world is relatively the same. When we experience emotions, we use many of the same words. Many of the words are the same. We have computers, TV, Coca Cola. Sometimes Chinese people say, "Look at the furniture in the Forbidden City" –yes, it’s beautiful, but I wouldn’t want to sit in it. It would be uncomfortable.

Painting from Yan Li's Patches series.

Lies told by and about immigrants ...

At EuroZine ...

The world of immigration is surrounded by lies: the necessary lies would-be migrants feel compelled to tell in hope of a safe haven; the falsehoods and misinformation of newspaper headlines warning of an impending flood of "bogus" asylum seekers.

On the night of Saturday 14 September 2002, a freak storm hit the southern coast of Sicily. Hailstones the size of tennis balls made dents in parked cars, and locals said later that they had never seen or known anything like it. At about 11pm, while tourists were still dancing in a cafe on the beach at Realmonte, just along the coast from Agrigento, cries were heard coming from the sea. A few minutes later, a number of young Africans pulled themselves up on to the beach. When they could speak, they told the dancers that their boat had sunk on a reef about 100 yards off shore, and the tourists, looking out to sea, saw a boat tipped on its side among the waves, with people clinging to its sides.

Local fishing boats were too small to make much headway against the surf, and by the time the police had been called, and Agrigento had sent out naval boats and a powerful searchlight, the boat had sunk further into the water. During flashes of lightning, onlookers watched horrified as first one and then another of those clinging to its sides slipped under the water. Over the next few hours, 95 of the Africans on board were rescued and brought to shore. Some 30 others drowned. By morning, when the storm had passed, and the beach was again peaceful and sunny, there was not much left for anyone to see, except for fragments of clothing washed up at the water's edge, and bits of a lifejacket, soon taken away by those who collect the rubbish at Realmonte. Capsized boats, the carrette di mare or sea chariots as the Italians call them, 10-12 meters long and painted in bright blues and yellows with Arabic writing, are not new along Sicily's coasts, where over the last few years tens of thousands of asylum seekers have arrived in search of new lives. Boats built for a dozen passengers arrive laden with 100 or more and even without a storm many founder.

American Empire, Debated

At Slate.com ... an exchange between Niall Ferguson and Robert Kagan on American power.

From: Niall Ferguson To: Robert Kagan Subject: The "E" Word Tuesday, May 4, 2004, at 9:20 AM PT Dear Robert,

I know from a debate we had last year that you don't much care for it, but—like it or not—the "e" word now permeates all serious discussion of American foreign policy. In his new book, Power, Terror, Peace, and War: America's Grand Strategy in a World at Risk, Council on Foreign Relations scholar Walter Russell Mead puts the question starkly: "Is this a world order in which all states have an equal stake, or is it an American empire that the United States imposes on others?"

In the same vein, Yale historian John Lewis Gaddis concedes in Surprise, Security, and the American Experience that one "time-tested solution" to the difficulties inherent in the project to democratize the world is "empire," which he defines—presumably for the benefit of American readers unfamiliar with the concept—as "a situation in which a single state shapes the behaviour of others, whether directly or indirectly, partially or completely, by means that can range from the outright use of force through intimidation, dependency, inducements, and even inspiration."

Watching the English

At the Social Issues Research Center ...

In Watching the English, Kate Fox takes a revealing look at the quirks, habits and foibles of the English people. She puts the English national character under her anthropological microscope, and finds a strange and fascinating culture, governed by complex sets of unspoken rules and Byzantine codes of behaviour. Her minute observation of the way we talk, dress, eat, drink, work, play, shop, drive, flirt, fight, queue - and moan about it all - exposes the hidden rules that we all unconsciously obey.

The rules of weather-speak. The Importance of Not Being Earnest rule. The ironic-gnome rule. The reflex-apology rule. The paranoid-pantomime rule. Class indicators and class-anxiety tests. The money-talk taboo. Humour rules. Pub etiquette. Table manners. The rules of bogside reading. The dangers of excessive moderation. The eccentric-sheep rule. The English 'social dis-ease'.

The Dangers of Family Life

From the Chicago Tribune books section ...

The English are rather unsentimental about family when compared to Americans. After all, in England children are meant to be seen but not heard. Baby Gaps do not lurk brightly on street corners; there is no ritualized annual family jaunt in the station wagon. Indeed, traveling through England, one gets the sense of a country curiously unsmitten by its young ones. Somehow, the English simply arrive at adulthood full grown, occasionally tasting the bitter backwash poet Philip Larkin expressed in his famous poem "This Be the Verse." "They [mess] you up, your mum and dad," Larkin wrote. "They may not mean to, but they do."

Not surprisingly, then, the English family novel is a different animal from the goliaths that lumber through our bookstores. It is leaner, more flexible--unburdened by the warping power of the American Dream. Without this burden of bringing everyone back together, the English family novel is allowed to end badly, and it often does. Think about Andrew Miller's recent Booker Prize finalist, "Oxygen," the story of a family unmoored by the slow death of its matron, or Pat Barker's previous three books. These are not happy stories.

Changes coming slowly for new EU members

At the Chicago Tribune ...

The first thing the traveler should know about the expansion of the European Union, which happened officially on May 1, is that, contrary to a widespread expectation, not much will actually change, at least in the short term.

True, 10 countries, eight of them from the former East Bloc, are becoming members of the union, and that certainly is a major historic event, signaling the disappearance of the old, almost insurmountable barrier between East and West. But it does not mean that going from, say, Germany to Poland will be like going from Germany to France, where there are no border formalities, no passports to show, no customs declarations to fill out. The tourist boards of the new member states do promise that procedures will be streamlined--and the customs forms will be eliminated --but the borders will not vanish, and you'll know it.

Some confusion is unavoid-able, Pietro Petrucci of the European Commission recently told The Associated Press, referring to the new border-crossing situation and the fact that it might be different for different new member states. "That's why the advice to take a passport is probably very reason-able," he added.

Joe Borg on Enlargement

From a speech by Joe Borg, Member of the European Commission Enlargement and the European Neighbourhood Policy to Friends of Europe in Brussels, on the 13th of May 2004.

Fourteen years ago, the face of the world changed. The EU had to rediscover Eastern neighbours that history had isolated for fifty years. The EU leaders of the time perceived the historic opportunity to reunify Europe, they felt the obligation to fulfil the great goal of the fathers of Europe. History will pay tribute to their vision. It led the EU to invest heavily in the economic restructuring and political stabilisation of its Eastern neighbours. In doing so, the EU was also recognising an important truth: that our destiny and that of our neighbours are closely linked. Now that the EU has completed the biggest step ever in the reunification of Europe, we would be well advised not to forget this lesson. It is with this awareness that the European Commission has proposed and is developing a new neighbourhood policy.

The current enlargement brings us new neighbours to the east, and decreases the distance to our neighbours on the other side of the Mediterranean. In both directions the EU and its neighbours face common challenges - such as illegal immigration and the threat of terrorism that are often rooted in political instability, poverty and conflict. Overcoming these problems and their root causes is clearly of critical importance to our common interests. The question, then, is not whether we should do our utmost to cooperate with our neighbours in promoting economic growth and the development of political institutions based on the values of democracy and the rule of law. The question is how best to do it. Our partners and neighbours, in the East and in the South, need to be reassured that we are fully committed to widening and deepening our relationship with them to mutual benefit, on the basis of shared values and interests. And our southern neighbours, particularly, need to be reassured that our enlargement to the East will not result in a diversion of Europe's interest away from its Mediterranean neighbours. These are some important issues on which I would like to share my views with you today.

With many of its neighbours, the EU already has a strong established framework of relations, based on the Euromed partnership and a series of Association Agreements in the South, and the Partnership and Cooperation Agreements with its partners to the East.

EU Ambassador proposes to take Romani children away from their parents

A press release from the European Roma Information Office ...

Brussels, 13 May 2004 (ERIO): In an interview broadcasted on Dutch TV on 1 May, Eric Van der Linden, EU Commission’s Ambassador to Slovakia, proposed to remove Romani children from their parents and put them into boarding schools: “It may sound simplistic,” the Head of the EU Delegation said, “but it is, I think in the root of the cause that we need to strengthen education and organise the educational system in a way that we may have to start to, I’ll say it in quotation marks, force Romani children to stay in a kind of boarding schools from Monday morning until Friday afternoon, where they will continuously be subjected to a system of values which is dominant (“vigerend”) in our society.”

When the journalist objected that Roma might be opposed to such a measure, Van der Linden proposed to utilise financial incentives as to break an initial resistance. He agreed that, “we do live here in a democracy, so you can force it, but you can of course try to let it develop more smoothly through giving financial incentives.” He expected that families would as a result send their children to school and that “the generation that will be educated then and at the same time raised, will fit better in the dominant society, they will be able to cooperate in a productive way to the growth of the economy.”

Practices of forcibly separating Romani children from their parents as a means to assimilate the Romani communities have a long tradition. Under the reign of Empress Maria-Theresa Romani children were removed from their families and brought up by non-Romani families as a means to eradicate Romani culture and identity. In Switzerland similar practices were introduced after the first World War and persisted until the early 1970s.

In an open letter to the President of the European Commission the European Roma Information Office, a Brussels-based NGO advocating the rights of the Roma, asked for Van der Linden’s removal from his post arguing that his statements stand in contradicting with the Commission’s efforts to promote the safeguard and respect of Human Rights and the rights of the Roma minority.

Reason and Terror

At the Boston Review ...

How do you go about finding a buyer for eight bars of enriched uranium on the black market? In the late 1990s this question taxed the brains of 11 Italian mobsters, a coalition of Sicilian, Roman and Calabrian criminals. The bars in question were steel cylinders, 90 centimeters long. Each contained 200 grams of uranium. They were produced in the labs of General Atomic in San Diego and in 1971 were sent as a gift to Kinshasa, to be used as nuclear fuel in a program ironically known as Atoms for Peace. According to Captain Roberto Ferroni of the Rome custom police, "If they were blown up in Villa Borghese the center of Rome would become uninhabitable for a century." The bars disappeared from Kinshasa in 1997, when Mobutu's regime was overturned, and they probably traveled with him to France. They resurfaced a year later in the Italian mobsters' hands.

In the spring of 1998 the gang thought they had at last found a buyer: someone known as "the accountant," who introduced himself as the emissary of an Arab country and the Islamic Jihad. The accountant was in reality an undercover agent. The Italian police, while investigating the mobsters for other crimes, had intercepted their telephone conversations, heard them talking about "nuclear stuff," and decided to investigate the matter. The agent succeeded in persuading the mobsters that his credentials were genuine. "In fact," says Captain Ferroni, "our sellers did not lose their composure. On the contrary, the credibility of the Arab world, which is always hunting for nuclear material, convinced them that [our man] was not a trap." The agent brought with him an engineer who tested one of the bars and found that it did indeed contain uranium. The police then pretended to transfer a sum of 12 million dollars to a Swiss bank account after bargaining down the asking price by half. On the day they had agreed to complete the transaction, the mafiosi showed up-but they cheated. They came with a bar that was not the tested one, and failed to deliver the other seven bars. But the agent's cover was blown, and the police had to arrest them. The current location of the seven bars remains unknown.1 They may be hidden in a stable in the mountains of Calabria or Sicily, which should perhaps be added to the axis of evil.

EU to join convention on conservation of tuna

At EuropaWorld ...

European Commissioner Franz Fischler, responsible for Agriculture, Rural Development and Fisheries, has welcomed the decision by the Council of Ministers permitting the accession of the European Union to the Convention on the Conservation and Management of Highly Migratory Fish Stocks (i.e. tuna stocks) in the Western Central Pacific Ocean (WCPTC).

Blair and other leaders condemn killing of US hostage in Iraq

From Xinhuanet.

LONDON, May 12 -- British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Wednesday condemned the "barbaric" beheading of an American hostage by an alleged al-Qaida group in Iraq.

"This was a truly barbaric act and there is no justification for this kind of act in a civilized world," Blair's official spokesman told reporters, referring to the killing of Nick Berg that was shown in a video released on the Internet on Tuesday.

Reports said Berg, 26, was a self-employed communications engineer from West Chester, Pennsylvania, and was planning to return from his second unsuccessful search for work in Iraq just before he disappeared on April 9.

Repression in Belarus

A few items on repressive measures in Belarus from Radio Free Europe - Radio Liberty.

OPPOSITION ACTIVIST TO BE TRIED FOR DEFAMING BELARUSIAN PRESIDENT... Opposition activist Aksana Novikava on 10 May received a notification from the Minsk Transport Prosecutor's Office that she is to stand trial on a charge of libeling Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka, Belapan reported. Prosecutors claim that Novikava on 5 April handed out leaflets that "contained knowingly libelous, i.e. false, information that defamed the president of the Republic of Belarus and accused him of serious crimes." Novikava, an unemployed single mother of a three-year-old daughter, could face up to five years in prison, considering that she was convicted of the same offense and received a two-year suspended prison sentence in April 2003. Moreover, Novikava was fined 3.5 million rubles ($1,620) in January for staging an unauthorized demonstration in front of the Supreme Court's building in December. She has also previously received three fines totaling thousands of U.S. dollars for similar offenses. JM

...AS KGB IN HRODNA LOOKS FOR ANOTHER TARGET
The State Security Committee (KGB) in Hrodna has opened a criminal case against the unknown author of a satirical poem that allegedly libels President Lukashenka, RFE/RL's Belarusian Service reported on 10 May. KGB officers searched dwellings of Valery Levaneuski, head of a strike committee of Belarusian vendors, and his family, who reportedly possessed leaflets with the allegedly libelous verse. "The poem in no place mentions the name of Alyaksandr Lukashenka or 'our president,'" Alyaksandr Vasilyeu, deputy head of a strike committee of Belarusian vendors, told RFE/RL. "Therefore, they are rather fantasizing when they allege that the poem libels the president." JM

U.S. CONCERNED OVER ARREST OF BELARUSIAN OPPOSITION FIGURE
The U.S. Embassy in Minsk on 7 May released a statement expressing its concern over the recent arrest of Mikhail Marynich, a former Belarusian ambassador to Latvia, Estonia, and Finland and former foreign-trade minister (see "RFE/RL Belarus and Ukraine Report," 11 May 2004). "We call upon Belarus's authorities, especially its legal and judicial organs, to respect and uphold the legal rights and freedoms of Mr. Marynich and all Belarusians," read the statement posted on the embassy's website (http://minsk.usembassy.gov). JM

Muzzling Moore and Palast

From Greg Palast, author of the New York Times bestseller, “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.”
Palast is currently in LA to receive the ACLU's Freedom of Expression award. ... 'Hands off the fat guy in the chicken suit, Mr. Mogul.'

WHEN the fattened cats at Disney put the kibosh on Michael Moore's new film, “Fahrenheit 9-11,” they did more than censor an artist. Gagging Moore is only the latest maneuver in suppressing some most uncomfortable facts: the Bush Administration's killing off investigations of Saudi Arabian funding of terror including evidence involving a few members of the bin Laden family in the USA.

I know, because, with my investigative team at BBC television and The Guardian of Britain, I wrote and filmed the original reports on which Moore's new documentary are based.

On November 11, 2001, just two months after the attack, BBC Television's Newsnight displayed documents indicating that FBI agents were held back from investigating two members of the bin Laden family who were fronting for a "suspected terrorist organization" out of Falls Church, Virginia - that is, until September 13, 2001. By that time, these birds had flown.

When editing becomes illegal

Hat tip to Nicky at TranslationExchange for pointing out this article from New York Press.

finally someone's actually concerned enough about the whole trade embargo/publishing fiasco to write an opinion piece about it. this is an issue which, of course, directly affects not only literary translators but publishers and editors as well. for a while there, it looked like we could be facing up to ten years in jail just for correcting a spelling mistake in a translation from farsi. sigh.

for those who might not know about this, here's a taster from the office of foreign assets control archives: "Activities such as the reordering of paragraphs and sentences, correction of syntax, grammar, and replacement of inappropriate words by U.S. persons, prior to publication, may result in a substantively altered or enhanced product, and is therefore prohibited."

And from the article ...

IT WAS A free-speech battle that brought together unlikely bedfellows. On one side, the enforcement arm of U.S. trade sanctions, the Treasury Dept.'s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). On the other, the left-brained Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineers, the biggest supporters of which included the eclectic vanguard of New York publishers and editors who serve as the collective clearing house for the world's best fiction, poetry and nonfiction.

It made sense for the literary publishing world to pay attention to issues affecting the tech business. The rights of American publishers to freely translate, edit and publish work from all countries, not just those approved by Congress, were at stake. At its end, OFAC wanted to ensure that works edited and published from Iran, Sudan, Libya and Cuba—countries under U.S. economic sanctions—didn't violate the laws the government agency was obligated to uphold; namely those that prohibit U.S. companies from providing "services" for such countries.

EU may end farm export aid, boosts trade talks

At ENN.com ...

KILLARNEY, Ireland / BRUSSELS, Belgium — The E.U. said Monday it wanted to boost world trade talks by offering to end billions of dollars of aid for agricultural exports, a move welcomed by Washington but greeted more cautiously by others.

France, a major beneficiary of the E.U.'s 43 billion euros (US$50.89 billion) of farm handouts, came out against the initiative, but Germany and the Netherlands backed it. The initiative is conditional on other big farm spenders taking similar steps.

Scottish factory blast kills 2, 60 trapped

From Bloomberg ...

May 11 (Bloomberg) -- An explosion today at a Glasgow, Scotland, plastics factory killed two people and left 60 trapped in the rubble of the collapsed building, the fire brigade said.

The explosion occurred at about noon at a Stockline Plastics plant on Grovepark Street near the center of the Scottish city, Strathclyde Police said. The area is a ``busy'' part of the city, Strathclyde Fire Brigade spokesman Alan Forbes said by telephone from the city.

Exiles in a small world

At The Guardian ...

Vladimir Nabokov was a literary genius. There is no other word with which to describe a writer who, in mid-life, became a stylistic virtuoso in a language that was not his mother tongue. Circumstances - which is to say, the convulsions of 20th-century European politics - impelled him to achieve this feat, exchanging Russian for English as the medium of his art (as well as acquiring an enviable fluency in French along the way).

St. Petersburg's Wax Hitler irks Berlin

At the St. Petersburg Times ...

A wax figure of Adolf Hitler made in St. Petersburg has caused an uproar in Berlin to the dismay of former Leningrader Inna Vollstaedt, who displayed the model of the German dictator in her waxworks gallery Artel.

Vollstaedt has had to take sedatives, move her exhibition to a different venue and prove to the world that she hates Hitler as much as any normal person does.

"It turned into a real nightmare to suddenly find myself at the center of an international scandal that followed the publication of a Reuters [news agency] story about Hitler's figure in my gallery," Vollstaedt said Friday in a telephone interview from Berlin.

Amnesty report slams London over soldiers killings

From EuroNews ...

For British forces in Iraq, allegations of misconduct are growing by the day. Amnesty International has accused the UK government of failing to properly investigate complaints that civilians who posed no threat were unlawfully killed by its troops. The claims come on top of a flood of damaging accusations and photos of prisoner abuse in the media.

Amnesty spokeswoman Lesley Warner said it was important to make sure the Geneva Conventions were upheld. She also said there should be an independent and public inquiry into the claims of abuse, saying investigations by the Military Police were not enough.

Marchers Reach Frontline, Are Stopped By Azerbaijani Army

At Baku Today ...

Nearly 220 marchers, 120 of the from the Karabakh Liberation Organization (KLO) and 100 from local residents, have already reached the frontline, a KLO official told the Baku Today in a telephone interview from Susanli village of Aghdam District.

Kazim Salimi, deputy head of KLO, said after the police prevented them from starting the march in Baku early the day, the KLO members left the capital in cars and reached Barda District.

Then they marched to the frontline form Barda, but stopped there by the Azerbaijani army and were not allowed to cross to the territories occupied by Armenians, Salimi said.

Cyprus: Saying No to the Future

At LeMonde Diplomatique ...

THERE was a lump in President Tassos Papadopoulos’s throat as he addressed Greek Cypriots on television on the evening of 7 April: "I call on you to reject the [United Nations] Annan plan. I call on you to say a resounding no on 24 April. I call upon you to defend your dignity, your history and what is right. I urge you to defend the Republic of Cyprus, saying no to its abolition."

The Greek Cypriot president then removed his spectacles to make sure everyone could see his tears and wished his compatriots a happy Easter. The melodrama was designed to make Greek Cypriots see the UN plan as a dangerous trap. Papadopoulos spent 55 minutes outlining its flaws and barely five seconds on its advantages. The state television station RYK then split its screen - on one side a nationalist crowd noisily saluted its hero in front of the presidential palace; on the other, party representatives debated the pros and cons of the deal. Then, in a telephone poll, 81.2% of viewers declared they would give Papadopoulos his hoped-for resounding oxi (1).

Hollow Words and Lost Moral Authority

The case of the Bulgarian medics in Libya serves to illustrate how America and Britain have lost their moral authority in the field of democracy and human rights as a result of events in Iraq, writes Euro-correspondent.com's Stephen Gardner for Newropeans Magazine.

Trust Gaddhafi to put a spanner in the works. At the end of April, the maverick Libyan leader made waves in Brussels. His visit came in the wake of rapprochement with the west and a visit to Tripoli by Tony Blair. But now that rapprochement has been made to look hollow, with the sentencing to death in Libya of a group of Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor.

The medics have been accused of deliberately infecting children with the HIV virus. The verdict raises serious concerns. The case had already been dismissed for lack of evidence before being resubmitted by the prosecutor. Other evidence suggests HIV infection was a problem in Libyan hospitals – caused by poor hygiene – even before the Bulgarian team arrived in the country.