"A Cultura ‘Oficial‘ da União Europeia" in Público, 29 de Setembro de 2007

por Pacheco Pereira

A reunião em Lisboa do Fórum Cultural para a Europa foi mais um passo para definir uma política da União Europeia da "cultura", ou seja, como hoje se diz em burocratês, definir uma "agenda para a cultura". A seu tempo, como é habitual na UE, as "agendas" transformar-se-ão em "agências", embriões de ministérios europeus. No caso da "cultura", isso deve corresponder à institucionalização do modelo francês Malraux-Lang como norma europeia de "cultura". É natural que assim seja, porque os países mais dirigistas em matéria de cultura, França, Portugal, Bélgica, Espanha, adoptaram-no há muito em detrimento do modelo anglo-saxónico, menos intervencionista.

É natural que os governos, desde a direita à esquerda, dos socialistas ao PPE, estimem esse modelo construído para a glória da França de De Gaulle e Mitterrand, e que assenta na utilização da "cultura" como mecanismo de propaganda do poder, com a enorme vantagem de usar como instrumento uma realidade considerada intangível, intocável e aparentemente incontroversa, eficaz por isso mesmo. Este modelo tem duas consequências, ambas com muito "boa imprensa" e inúmeros e activos defensores com fácil acesso aos media. Uma é criar um establishment cultural dependente do Estado, muito para além da gestão patrimonial, com uma rede de "casas de cultura", animadores, agentes, produtores, "artistas", "trabalhadores" do cinema, do teatro, do circo, das marionetes, da "animação de rua", etc., etc. e toda uma "economia" à sua volta. Outra, e igualmente importante nos tempos que correm, é, através desses agentes, definir uma versão liofilizada politicamente da "cultura europeia" conforme com os paradigmas da UE.

A lógica dessa "economia" fortemente subsidiada não será a prazo muito diferente da "política agrícola comum", de quem toma, mesmo sem o saber, a linguagem que serve para o trigo, a manteiga e as batatas. A lógica é a protecção do emprego em nome da identidade "cultural" da Europa e, a nível mais vasto, o proteccionismo dos mercados europeus dos produtos alienígenas, em particular essa sinistra produção vinda de Hollywood de filmes populares que ameaçam matar a "cultura europeia". Do mesmo modo que os tenebrosos OGM servem de pretexto para proteger os agricultores principescamente subsidiados pela PAC da competição dos produtos agrícolas americanos, a "agenda cultural europeia" deve proteger uma miríade de produtos sem público e de qualidade duvidosa, subsidiados pelos contribuintes europeus das multidões que querem ver A Guerra das Estrelas. A reunião de Lisboa quer mais dinheiro para esta função.

O segundo aspecto, o de definir, por inclusão e exclusão, a "cultura europeia", é mais complicado e mexe em muito mais do que a economia. Tornar "europeia" a cultura das nações da Europa é uma tarefa difícil de levar a cabo, não muito diferente da de fazer um manual de "história europeia" que sirva de norma educativa nas escolas da Europa, também desejado pelos eurocratas. O problema é que, entendida nos seus genuínos factores de "unidade", a cultura europeia está bem longe de ser a versão iluminista, "progressista" e multicultural que a UE precisa para legitimar a sua cosmovisão olímpica. Como se viu com a discussão do Preâmbulo da defunta Constituição europeia, a definição de uma "cultura europeia", se for coerente com a história identitária da Europa (e não há outra, nem se decreta a identidade), ou está em choque com o islão, ou dá origem a sucessivas falsificações históricas para a moldar ao "politicamente correcto". Claro que este problema só existe, quando se quer ter uma "cultura" oficial que sirva uma "agenda".

É verdade que há uma herança greco-latina como factor de unidade, mas não se pode dar o salto do século de Augusto - a Roma que a UE gosta - para as Luzes - a filosofia que a UE gosta -, porque foi exactamente neste intervalo que a Europa se fez e essa Europa foi feita por uma religião que veio do Oriente, o cristianismo. Paulo trouxe o cristianismo do mundo dos judeus para o dos gentios, o que significou primeiro para os gregos e a filosofia grega, e depois para os romanos, para o direito romano. Desde que Constantino fez do cristianismo a religião do império, da Irlanda à Moscóvia, foi a religião que fez a Europa e essa religião defrontou desde cedo uma religião combatente, o islão.

Se o factor religioso na identidade europeia parece atenuado, isso se deve a um conjunto de factores que prolongam, mais do que se pensa, a "guerra" que antes se fazia nos mares de Lepanto (ao lado Nossa Senhora de Lepanto de Veronese) ou nos arredores de Viena. Na verdade, o crescimento da descrença, o imperialismo e o colonialismo, e a decadência do império otomano apagaram a fractura pela religião, embora na realidade a tivessem apenas mudado - ou seja, o cristianismo só deixou de ser um factor forte de identidade da "cultura europeia" quando o islão perdeu o poder militar, abrindo caminho dentro de si a ideias oriundas da Europa, como o nacionalismo (com os "jovens turcos" e Atatürk), ou o "socialismo pan-árabe" (de Nasser, Assad e Saddam Hussein). Mas, como se vê, todas essas ideias, ocidentais na sua génese, estão em crise com o ascenso do islão fundamentalista. Indo ainda mais longe, uma parte do conflito que opõe a Europa ao islão, como seja a necessidade da secularização do Estado, a condição feminina, ou a valorização da liberdade religiosa, são frutos da história europeia que incorporam a capacidade de instituições como a Igreja coexistirem com um mundo laico.

Ora este interregno dos factores da identidade clássica da Europa, que leva os burocratas europeus a acreditarem no sucesso do "multiculturalismo", está a acabar pelo retorno de um islão combatente e fundamentalista. Por tudo isto, a tentativa de fundar uma "agenda cultural" inócua só pode ser feita por exclusão, com a mesma atitude que levou a UNESCO a não querer publicar a Peregrinação de Fernão Mendes Pinto, porque não correspondia ao "diálogo de civilizações" mítico da culpa do homem branco.
http://abrupto.blogspot.com/
JPTF 2007/29

Cartoon de Kal na revista The Economist

"Previsão de um futuro problemático para os generais birmaneses" in Times, 27 de Setembro de 2007

por Ben Macintyre

The fate of the Burmese junta is written in the stars. That, at least, is what the Burmese junta believes. For one of the odder and most revealing aspects of the brutal military gang that rules Burma is its faith in astrology.

When the junta moved the capital from Rangoon to a malarial town deep in the jungle, it did so because an astrologer employed by Senior General Than Shwe had warned him of an impending catastrophe that could only be averted by moving the seat of government. The same astrologer asserted that the most auspicious moment for the move would be November 6, 2005, at 6.37 in the morning. Sure enough, at that precise hour on the ordained day, the bullet-proof limousines of Burma’s generals started to roll towards their new home on the road to Mandalay.

Burma’s intensely superstitious rulers have long been guided by a belief in portents and prophecies, cosmology, numerology and magic. The time and date of the ceremony marking independence from Britain was also chosen according to astrological dictates: 4.20am on January 4, 1948. General Ne Win was the mysticism-obsessed dictator who seized power in 1962 and steered Burma from prosperity to penury; in 1989 he introduced the 45-kyat and 90-kyat banknotes, for the simple but mind-bending reason that these were divisible by and added up to nine, his lucky number. He believed this move would also ensure he would live to the lucky age of 90. Ne Win, who insisted on walking backwards over bridges at night and other rituals to avoid bad luck, died in 2002, at the age of 92, which was either good luck or bad luck, depending on how you look at it. Even the decision to change the name of Burma to Myanmar was prompted by Ne Win’s soothsayer, and announced on May 27 (since 2 + 7 = 9).

Kipling once wrote: “This is Burma, and it will be quite unlike any land you know.” In its enduring fascination with superstition, Burma’s dictators seem like a throwback to another age. Each of the leading clans in the junta has a family astrologer. The army has its own zodiacal experts, but it is a dangerous job: astrologers who make negative predictions are liable to arrest and imprisonment.

The junta’s belief in astrology in part reflects the capricious weirdness of a peculiarly nasty regime, insulated from the rest of the world and divorced from reality. But the generals also follow a long tyrannical tradition: throughout history dictators have tended to put their faith in the occult, with unpredictable outcomes. An excessive belief in the supernatural is often the hallmark of a dying dictatorship.

Politicians in general have a peculiar weakness for astrology – Ronald and Nancy Reagan famously consulted an astrologer, as did both Charles de Gaulle and François Mitterrand. President Roosevelt would never travel on a Friday. Unelected politicians are more susceptible to superstition than democratic ones and, as a rule of thumb, the more authoritarian the regime, the more likely it is to seek explanations and omens in the stars.

Napoleon was said to fear black cats, and believed that a meal of chicken and crayfish would bring victory (and, presumably, indigestion). Leonid Brezhnev conferred with an astrologer named Dzhuna at key moments in the Cold War and was treated by a Georgian faith healer in his later years; Catherine de’ Medici consulted Nostradamus himself, while the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II had his horoscope cast by Johannes Kepler, the great German astronomer.

From the Roman emperors to the Nazis to the Burmese generals, tyrants need to feel that fate, rather then accident, has brought them to power and will keep them there. Since their own eminence is preordained, they seek to shape and predict the future. For most of us, the daily horoscope is a harmless, if pointless, pastime, but in the hands of a dictator it feeds easily into paranoia and megalomania.

Of no despot is this truer than Hitler, whose fascination with the occult shaped a regime that deliberately rejected rationalism in favour of mystical determinism. “We stand at the edge of the age of reason,” declared Hitler. “A new era of the magical explanation of the world is rising.”

In July 1933, Berlin’s most famous clairvoyant. Erik Jan Hanussen, was summoned to read Hitler’s palm at the Hotel Kaiserhof. Like most mystics, he foretold exactly what the customer wanted to hear. “I see victory for you. It cannot be stopped,” he said. It did him no good, for the Jewish Hanussen could not predict his own unhappy fate: to be murdered by the SS, and dumped in a field.

During the war, British Intelligence tried to exploit Hitler’s fixation with astrology by planting fake predictions of his imminent death in newspapers around the globe, in the hope that this would destabilise him and the regime. The intelligence officer in charge of the plan wrote: “This is probably the most curious thing I have ever been asked to arrange, but nonetheless most important.”

He was right on both counts: like the Burmese junta, Hitler’s obsession with the supernatural was a mark of instability and vulnerability, and a window into his strange and tyrannical regime. Gilbert Murray once wrote: “The best seed ground for superstition is a society in which the fortunes of men seem to bear practically no relation to their merits or effort.” That was true of Nazi Germany and it is equally true of modern Burma, where the good suffer and only the oppressors flourish.

Two sets of beliefs are colliding today in Burma today. On one side the monks, devotees to an ancient creed, demanding democratic freedom and modern economic reform, and on the other a vicious modern military machine, adhering to a medieval code of prophecies, astral omens and superstitious symbolism.

You do not have to be clairvoyant to be able to predict which of these beliefs will triumph in the end.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/ben_macintyre/article2547120.ece
JPTF 2007/09/27

"Face a um Irão nuclear miliar o que fazer?" in Libération, 26 de Setembro de 2007

Une certitude: selon tous les experts, au rythme actuel, dan deux ans, Téhéran aura la maîtrise du nucléaire. Face à ce danger Washington avance des options militaires si les sanctions de l’ON ne font pas plier un pouvoir iranien désuni. Six questions-réponse pour examiner cette alternative
L’Iran continue de construire des «cascades» de centrifugeuses nécessaires à la production d’uranium enrichi - elle en disposerait d’une dizaine, pour un total de 1 640 machines. De son côté, Téhéran prétend disposer de 3 000 centrifugeuses, ce qui, en théorie, lui permettrait de fabriquer une bombe par an. Mais, pour cela, il lui faut enrichir l’U-235 (destiné au réacteur nucléaire) à 90 %, et non à 4 % comme actuellement.
Existe-t-il une «solution militaire» à la crise nucléaire iranienne ?
C’est ce que laisse entendre l’administration américaine, et, récemment, Sarkozy et Kouchner. Si attaque il devait y avoir, il s’agirait essentiellement de frappes aériennes conjuguées à des actions menées par les forces spéciales. Une «invasion» terrestre de l’Iran, comme celle de l’Irak en 2003, semble totalement exclue. Deux pays sont militairement capables de conduire ces frappes aériennes : les Etats-Unis et Israël - la France et la Grande-Bretagne possèdent des capacités offensives nettement plus réduites.
La première difficulté est d’identifier clairement les cibles: lesquelles faut-il détruire pour stopper le programme nucléaire iranien ou pour déstabiliser le régime, en particulier les Gardiens de la révolution qui constituent son bras armé ? Il existe aussi un risque de contamination radioactive en cas de frappes directes de matériel fissible. Dans toutes les hypothèses, une seule frappe ne serait pas suffisante : il ne s’agit donc pas de rééditer le bombardement de la centrale nucléaire irakienne de Tamouz, conduit par l’aviation israélienne en juin 1981.
Autre difficulté : les Iraniens se préparent à une telle attaque. Ils ont donc dispersé leurs sites, les ont renforcés en les enfouissant, parfois sous des tonnes de béton. Enfin, ils ont développé des défenses sol-air. Dernier problème: si des frappes aériennes anéantissent ou réduisent les capacités nucléaires de l’Iran, Téhéran ne restera pas sans réagir. Les cibles potentielles sont nombreuses: l’US Army est en Irak, en Afghanistan et dans le Golfe. En cas d’implication d’Israël, c’est le front du Liban qui pourrait se «rallumer» via le Hezbollah. Comme en Irak, le déroulement des premières heures d’une opération militaire est assez prévisible. Pour les suivantes, c’est beaucoup moins sûr…
Où se situe la «ligne rouge» ?
Il y a plusieurs lignes : diplomatique, technologique, militaire… La plus communément admise par les experts, c’est lorsque l’Iran aura accumulé assez de matière fissile pour fabriquer une bombe. Un horizon qui devrait être atteint en 2009 si Téhéran poursuit son programme au rythme actuel.
Les sanctions du Conseil de sécurité sont-elles efficaces ?
Même si elles ont une portée limitée, les deux résolutions du Conseil de sécurité, la 1737 et la 1747, adoptées à l’unanimité en décembre 2006 et mars 2007, ont déjà sérieusement affecté l’économie iranienne, comme le soulignait un rapport du FMI publié en mars. C’est le secteur financier qui est le plus touché. Parallèlement, la réduction des investissements étrangers dans le secteur pétrolier va aggraver la baisse de la production - estimée à 5 % par an, selon Akbar Torkan, directeur de la compagnie iranienne Pars Oil and Gas. Le secteur du raffinage, capable de ne répondre qu’à 60 % de la demande intérieure, est, lui aussi, affecté. Fin juin, un plan de rationnement de l’essence a été instauré, provoquant des émeutes à Téhéran. Par ailleurs, l’augmentation des primes d’assurance à l’exportation a entraîné le renchérissement des produits importés par Téhéran. D’où une hausse de l’inflation, estimée à présent à 40%. Une troisième résolution pourrait encore aggraver la situation, mais ni la Russie ni la Chine n’y sont favorables. D’où la volonté de Paris de contourner l’ONU par des sanctions prises dans un cadre européen.
Face aux sanctions et aux menaces, le régime iranien serre-t-il les rangs ?
Il apparaît au contraire divisé, même s’il maintient une unité de façade. Ainsi, les ex-présidents Rafsandjani et Khatami sont soucieux d’éviter l’isolement de l’Iran. Dans l’ensemble, le régime craint une intervention militaire que ne semble pas redouter, en revanche, le président Ahmadinejad. C’est dans ce contexte qu’il faut replacer la déclaration de Kouchner, dont on peut imaginer qu’elle était destinée à inquiéter le pouvoir iranien.
http://www.liberation.fr/actualite/monde/280834.FR.php
JPTF 2007/09/26

"Presidente do Irão afirma que dossier nuclear está ‘encerrado‘" in Público, 25 de Setembro de 2007

O Presidente iraniano, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, declarou hoje, perante a Assembleia-Geral das Nações Unidas, que considera "encerrado" o assunto sobre o dossier nuclear iraniano.

"Anuncio oficialmente que, para nós, a questão nuclear está encerrada e que passou a ser gerida pela Agência [Internacional de Energia Atómica]", declarou Ahmadinejad.

"Todas as nossas actividades nucleares têm sido completamente pacíficas e transparentes", acrescentou, acusando as potências ocidentais, "arrogantes", de tentarem privar o Irão "do seu direito à energia nuclear".

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad disse que, apesar das ameaças militares e das sanções "ilegais", o "Irão avançou, passo a passo, e hoje é reconhecido como um país com capacidade para a produção de energia em larga escala, para fins pacíficos".
http://ultimahora.publico.clix.pt/noticia.aspx?id=1305777
2007/09/26

"Entre protestos, o Presidente do Irão fala em Columbia" in New York Times, 24 de Setembro de 2007

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, facing a hostile reception at Columbia University this afternoon, said that Palestinians were suffering because of the Holocaust, proclaimed that there are no homosexuals in his country and said he wanted to visit the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan during his trip to New York “to show my respect.”

In accepting an invitation to speak at Columbia while in New York for a meeting of the United Nations, Mr. Ahmadinejad subjected himself to protests from scores of students, faculty and others, and to a harsh critique from even the university’s president, Lee C. Bollinger.

In introductory remarks that ran more than 10 minutes, Mr. Bollinger defended the university’s right to invite Mr. Ahmadinejad to speak but moments later accused the Iranian leader of behaving like “a petty and cruel dictator.”

Earlier today, the university had been the scene of growing protests from hundreds of students and others who did not believe Columbia should have extended Mr. Ahmadinejad a platform. The lawn on campus was crowded with students and others who could not get into the forum, who watched him from a live telecast that had been set up by university officials.

Mr. Bollinger set the tone for what became a tense exchange between the Iranian leader and his hosts, who did not let him stray too far afield when he delivered a rambling speech by insisting that he stick to a time limit and putting direct questions to him about his country’s policies.

Throughout it all, Mr. Ahmadinjad tried to maintain a smile on his face, even when he began his remarks by complaining about his treatment at the hands of his hosts, saying that guests would not be treated in such a manner in Iran.

He described some of Mr. Bollinger’s remarks as an “insult” and “incorrect, regretfully.”

“In Iran, tradition requires that when we invite a person to be a speaker,” he said through a translator, “we actually respect our students and the professors by allowing them to make their own judgment and we don’t think it’s necessary before the speech is even given to come in with a series of claims and to attempt to provide a vaccination of sorts to our faculty and students.”

Mr. Ahmadinejad then meandered from science and religion, to the creation of human beings and the misuse of wisdom. But it was during the question-and-answer session that he was confronted about some of his most controversial positions.

He said that as an academic he questioned whether there was “sufficient research” about what happened after World War II, referring to the Holocaust. “We know quite well that Palestine is an old wound” for 60 years, he said at one point.

“We need to still question whether the Palestinian people should be paying for it or not.”

He was asked to answer directly whether he or his government seeks the destruction of Israel. He did not. But to solve the “60-year-old problem,” he said, “we must allow the Palestinian people to decide on its future itself.”

Someone from the audience asked Mr. Ahmadinejad if he was calling for the destruction of the State of Israel.

The Iranian president did not provide a yes or no answer, but spoke instead about the issue of Palestininian self-determination: “We love all nations. We love the Jewish people. There are many Jews living in Iran, with peace and security.”

When John H. Coatsworth, the acting dean of Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, challenged Mr. Ahmadinejad to give a yes or no answer, the president responded:

“ Where’s the free expression in that?” he asked.

He called for a “free referendum” in Palestine. “Let the people of Palestine freely chose what they want for their future,”

In answer to criticism Mr. Bollinger had made about Iran’s treatment of women and gays, Mr. Ahmadinejad had much to say.

“In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals like in your country. We don’t have that in our country,” he said to boos and hisses and even some laughter from the audience.

“In Iran, we do not have this phenomenon,” Mr. Ahmadinejad continued, undeterred. “I do not know who has told you that we have it. But as for women, maybe you think that maybe being a woman is a crime.

“It’s not a crime to be a woman. Women are the best creatures created by God. They represent the kindness, the beauty that God instills in them. Women are respected in Iran.”

Mr. Ahmadinejad also said he hoped to visit the site of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan, although police had forbidden him to do so. Mr. Ahmadinejad said he wanted to “show my respect.”

He added: “Regretfully, some groups had very strong reactions, very bad reactions. It’s bad to prevent someone from showing sympathy to the families of the victims of the 9/11 event, a tragic event.”

Mr. Ahmadinejad has been trying to cast a positive light on his policies during his visit to a country where they have been criticized. Iran has been accused by the Bush administration of arming Shiite militias in Iraq as well as developing a nuclear weapons program, charges that the Iranian government denies.

Earlier today, he spoke at the National Press Club at midday in Washington via videolink from New York.

At the National Press Club event, Mr. Ahmadinejad said that Iran sought only peace and security for Iraq; he appeared to deny that Iran was providing weapons for Iraqi insurgents, and he said any talk of war with the United States was “a propaganda tool” by the West.

But Mr. Ahmadinejad, in his first real dialogue with the Washington press corps, expressed no great admiration for the United States. “We oppose the way the U.S. government tries to manage the world,” he said. “We believe it’s wrong; we believe it leads to war, discrimination and bloodshed.”

And he defended or repeated his earlier comments about the Holocaust, saying Iran could not recognize Israel “because it is based on ethnic discrimination, occupation and usurpation, and it consistently threatens its neighbors.”

At Columbia Mr. Ahmadinejad was asked to participate in the World Leader’s Forum. He is also scheduled to address the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday.

This morning, protesters, including students bused in from other schools, gathered at the university grounds ahead of the speech. Student groups and individuals started covering the campus with fliers. Columbia security guards closed off the grounds to anyone without a campus identification card, and the police set up barriers outside of campus.

“The events in Iran are disturbing,” said Lauren Steinberg, a political science major who was hanging up signs. “We don’t want to turn a blind eye to them. I personally don’t think he should have been invited to campus, but now that he’s here, I see it as an important opportunity for free speech and for us to denounce his views.”

“With the amount of people we will have, we will most likely stretch down a couple of blocks,” said Dani Klein, the campus director for StandWithUs, one of the sponsors of the protests.

“We felt that this went above and beyond the issues of free speech,” Mr. Klein said, adding that his objections included the lack of human rights in Iran and the fact that the university had given Mr. Ahmadinejad a platform. “You can criticize his views without honoring him the way they are.”

Other protests against the Iranian president were expected in the streets outside the United Nations in New York.

“We have today an extraordinary opportunity to directly engage” Mr. Ahmadinejad, said John Coatsworth, a dean at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, in an atmosphere of “civility and restraint,” the audience was told. Mr. Ahmadinejad arrived in the United States on Sunday and addressed people invited by the Iranian mission in a closed event at the New York Hilton.

The university was a scene of divergent views today: A group of Iranian-Americans taped a large Iranian flag in the middle of campus and taped up printed and hand-written fliers focusing on positive aspects of the Iranian government.

“There are Muslim, Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian representatives in Iran’s Parliament,” said a pink hand-written sign that was hanging on the side of Lerner Hall, where Mr. Ahmadinejad will be speaking.

“We want to show some of the positive things about Iran because we think there are a lot of the pictures in the past days that just create hatred and bigotry,” said Maryam Jazini, 23, who graduated from Columbia last year.

Another unsigned flier read: “Bollinger, too bad Bin Laden is not available. You could have presented him with some tough questions too.”

Mr. Ahmadinejad is allowed under international law and diplomatic protocols to travel freely within a 25-mile radius of Columbus Circle. But the police said last week that Mr. Ahmadinejad would not be allowed anywhere near Ground Zero during his trip.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/24/world/worldspecial/24cnd-iran.html?hp=&pagewanted=print
JPTF 24/09/2007

"Irão exibe poder militar" in Guardian, 22 de Setembro de 2007

The Iranian president was talking on the eve of his departure from Tehran, amid a storm of opposition to his visit to New York and growing international alarm over his country's nuclear ambitions. He is poised to deliver a defiant address to the UN General Assembly this week.
The Iranian military showed off a new long-range ballistic missile called the Ghadr - Farsi for 'power'. In a speech marking the event, Ahmadinejad shrugged off US and regional concerns about Iran's more assertive role, saying: 'Iran is an influential power in the region and the world should know that this power has always served peace, stability, brotherhood and justice.'

But with the Iranian leader expected to arrive in New York on Sunday for the annual meeting of the 192-member assembly, diplomats said his visit was likely to raise the temperature further surrounding international moves to curb Iran's nuclear enrichment programme.
Members of the UN Security Council have been informally consulting on the possibility of a new and tougher resolution in the wake of the Iranians' refusal to abandon its uranium-enrichment.

Last week, the French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner warned the Iranians that if diplomatic efforts failed to halt Iran from becoming a nuclear power, war was a possibility.

Speaking to The Observer, the British foreign secretary, David Miliband, played down that prospect, and interpreted Kouchner's remarks as a move to convey to Iran 'the depth of feelings' about 'the dangers of setting off a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.'

He said both Britain and its EU allies were '100 per cent committed to a diplomatic solution.' But when asked whether he thought the issue 'will be solved by diplomatic means,' he stopped short of saying yes. He replied instead: 'I think it can be solved by diplomatic means.'

Ahmadinejad's visit has already sparked bitter opposition in New York.

He has been forced to cancel plans to 'pay respects to the American nation' at the 'Ground Zero' site of the September 11 terror attack on the World Trade Center amid protests from relatives of some of the victims.

On Friday, the president of Columbia University, Lee Bollinger, overruled its School of International and Public Affairs and rescinded an invitation for Ahmadinejad to speak at its World Leader's Forum. The invitation had prompted widespread criticism in the light of Ahmadinejad's remarks calling for Israel's destruction and questioning the facts of the Nazi Holocaust.

Bollinger said the school could still have Ahmadinejad speak to faculty and students in a less formal and high-profile forum, but there appeared no immediate plans to revive the invitation
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,2174956,00.html
JPTF 22/09/2007

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"O direito de ridicularizar uma religião" por Lars Ströman editor do Nerikes Allehanda

Artist Lars Vilks has made three drawings which ridicule the prophet Mohammed. The right to freedom of religion and the right to blaspheme go together. Three art galleries have declined to display Lars Vilks’ drawings of Mohammed. We publish one of them here, with the permission of the artist. Artist Lars Vilks has made three drawings ridiculing the prophet Mohammed. The prophet is portrayed as a “roundabout dog”. So far three art exhibitions have declined to publish his pictures. The Art Association in Tällerud said no. Then the school Gerlesborgsskolan in the county of Bohuslän said no. Now the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm has also said no. This is unacceptable self-censorship. A liberal society must be able to do two things at the same time. On the one hand, it must be able to defend Muslims’ right to freedom of religion and their right to build mosques. However, on the other hand, it is also permissible to ridicule Islam’s most foremost symbols – just like all other religions’ symbols. There is no opposition between these two goals. In fact, it is even the case that they presuppose each other. Therefore it is quite logical that the Muslim newspaper Minaret, together with the association Secular Muslims in Sweden, is planning an exhibition displaying Lars Vilks’ drawings. Religion is a more sensitive area than politics. Religious belief is more personal and therefore if a religious symbol is violated or ridiculed, this can be felt to be a personal insult. This does not only apply to Muslims. In 1979, the Monty Python team made the film “Life of Brian”. It is not about Jesus but about Brian, a young man who was born and who lived contemporarily with the founder of Christianity. “Life of Brian” was forbidden in Norway under the law forbidding blaspheme. In the USA, there were voices calling for the film to be forbidden. John Cleese pointed out that God no doubt can take care of himself. I am a practicing Christian myself and I think “Life of Brian” is a very funny film.
The background to Lars Vilks having problems getting his drawings exhibited is the so-called caricature crisis which Denmark was subjected to in January 2006. There were riots outside embassies in Muslim countries. The dairy giant Arla’s sales in the Muslim world plummeted. There were diplomatic consequences. On the surface, the issue was the newspaper Jyllands-Posten publishing a series of caricatures of Mohammed. Of course it was correct of Denmark to assert its freedom of the press. But the caricatures were rotten. They had similarities to anti-Semitic drawings done by pro-Nazi drawers during the 1930s and 1940s. For a number of years now, xenophobic forces in Danish politics have had too much space to manoeuvre. For instance, the sister party of the Swedish Democrat party has gained direct influence. For many Muslims in Denmark, the drawings in Jyllands-Posten were an expression of increased intolerance. It is somewhat more difficult to see through the political game that has been going on in the countries where embassy buildings were subjected to riots. But it would seem to be the case that the riots – at least in some instances – were not as spontaneous as it would appear. It could have been a way of directing attention towards an external enemy.
The Danish government was not able to do two things at the same time. Right from the start, the government should have said that the caricatures in Jyllands-Posten were poor and of bad taste, while at the same time making it clear that in a democracy, it is permissible to make caricatures that are rude and of bad taste. Now, some really lousy caricatures published in Denmark, have resulted in one art gallery after another refusing to display Lars Vilks’ three drawings. People are afraid that something unpleasant is going to happen. “I think the drawings are good. But there is also a sense of fear here at the local heritage centre that it will lead to problems and conflict,” says Märtha Wennerström, responsible for the art exhibition in Tällberg (SvD 21/7). So art galleries are allowing themselves to be frightened by a diffuse threat. They are giving the message that it is easy to be frightened into silence. The right to freedom of religion and the right to blaspheme religions go together. They presuppose one another. What happens if a fundamentalist Muslim wants to express his faith through pictorial art? Quite clearly, it will be easy to persuade art galleries that the pictures are unsuitable, that they may lead to conflict. So the restriction of Lars Vilks’ possibilities to express himself may also negatively affect Muslims’ right to express themselves.
http://www.na.se/artikel.asp?intId=1209676
JPTF 2007/09/17

"Cartoonista sueco ameçado de morte pela Al-Qaeda escondido sob protecção policial" in BBC News 17 de Setembro de 2007

The Swedish cartoonist at the centre of a row over drawings of the Prophet Muhammad says police have taken him to a secret location for his own safety. Lars Vilks said he was only able to pick up a few things when he returned from Germany at the weekend before police escorted him from his home. The purported head of al-Qaeda in Iraq has offered $100,000 (£49,310) to anyone killing Mr Vilks. Muslims regard visual representation of the Prophet as blasphemous. Several Muslim countries have protested against the cartoon. Mr Vilks said the Swedish secret services considered the threat against him as "very serious". "The police guard was non-existent before this. It's 100% now," Mr Vilks said in a telephone interview with Associated Press agency."I can't live in my home, I've only been allowed to pick up some things."

Local laws
A man said to be the head of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, offered a reward for the murder of Mr Vilks in an audio message aired on the internet. Nerikes Allehanda newspaper defended publishing the cartoon The $100,000 (£49,310) reward would be raised by 50% if Mr Vilks was "slaughtered like a lamb", he said. The cartoon showed the Prophet Muhammad's head on a dog's body and was published by Nerikes Allehanda newspaper on 18 August. Many Muslims regard the dog as an impure animal. But Ibrahim el-Zayat, of the Federation of Islamic Organisations in Europe, told the BBC that Muslims in the West had to live with the local laws on freedom of expression. He said there were much more important issues to worry about, and praised the Swedish government for trying to defuse tensions. This month, Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt met ambassadors from 22 Muslim countries over the issue. Last year there were riots over Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, first published in September 2005 by the newspaper Jyllands-Posten.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6999652.stm
JPTF 2007/09/17

"Al Qaeda pede aos seus seguidores que 'limpem' o Magrebe dos 'filhos de Espanha e França’ in El Mundo, 20 de Setembro de 2007

EL CAIRO.- El número dos de la red terrorista Al Qaeda, Ayman al Zawahiri, ha instado a sus seguidores a "limpiar" el Magreb de los "hijos de España y Francia", al tiempo que ha asegurado, en un nuevo vídeo dado a conocer este jueves, que Estados Unidos está siendo derrotado en Afganistán e Irak, seis años después de los ataques terroristas del 11 de septiembre en Washington y Nueva York. En un vídeo en el que también pidió que se ataque a las fuerzas de paz de la ONU y africanas que sean desplegadas en la región sudanesa de Darfur, Al Zawahiri instó a sus partidarios a "limpiar el Magreb de los hijos de Francia y España", aunque las alusiones a España son muy breves."Apoyad con vuestros hijos a los muyahidines que luchan contra los cruzados y sus hijos", proclama Zawahiri, un médico egipcio nacido en 1951 al que se supone escondido, como el mismo Bin Laden, en las montañas de Afganistán o Pakistán. Al Zawahiri se incorporó a Al Qaeda en 1995, dos años después de haber sido expulsado de Pakistán y tras vivir varios meses en Sudán. No es esta la primera vez que Al Qaeda alude a España, aunque en otras ocasiones las referencias eran exclusivamente a Al Andalus, tierra que según Al Qaeda había que recuperar para el Islam. También el vídeo hace referencia a la presencia islámica en España (entre los siglos VIII y XV), y el prófugo egipcio dice que "es un deber recuperar Al Andalus para la nación (islámica) en general y vosotros (muyahidín) en particular". Sin embargo, es la primera vez en que hacen alusión a la presencia de España en el norte de África, donde efectivamente hay importantes intereses comerciales y culturales y donde, en el caso de Marruecos, vive una numerosa comunidad española. En el vídeo de Zawahiri, el lugarteniente de Osama bin Laden dedica la mayor parte de su discurso a criticar el régimen paquistaní de Pervez Musharraf y califica al ejército de Pakistán de "perros de presa bajo el crucifijo de (el presidente de EEUU, George) Bush". La grabación fue transmitida días después de que el máximo líder de Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, divulgara dos mensajes con motivo del 11-S que incluyeron su primera presentación en vídeo en casi tres años. El nuevo vídeo de Al Zawahiri, de 80 minutos, fue colgado en páginas islamistas y tiene el formato de documental. En él, se presentan actividades de Al Qaeda en varios lugares, como Irak, Afganistán, Somalia y el norte de África. "La que dicen que es la potencia más poderosa en la historia de la Humanidad (en referencia a Estados Unidos) está siendo hoy en día derrotada frente a las vanguardias musulmanas de la yihad (guerra santa), seis años después de las dos incursiones sobre Nueva York y Washington", dijo Al Zawahiri, mientras sostenía un fusil automático apoyado en su cuerpo, en lo que parecía una oficina provista de estanterías con libros religiosos. "Los cruzados han sido testigos de su derrota en Afganistán, a manos de los leones de los talibanes", aseguró. "Los cruzados han sido testigos de su propia derrota en Irak a manos de los muyahidines, que han llevado la batalla del Islam al corazón del mundo islámico", continuó.

Reacción de Argelia
Un portavoz de la Dirección Nacional de seguridad argelina dijo que las amenazas de Al Qaeda contra españoles y franceses residentes en el Magreb deben ser "tomadas en serio". Este portavoz señaló que, después de los atentados perpetrados este mes en las ciudades argelinas de Batna y Dellys, se han extremado las medidas de protección de dependencias oficiales y, en el caso de la capital, de las misiones diplomáticas establecidas en ellas. La 'islamización' de España es una hipótesis radical que defiende Al Qaeda aludiendo a la presencia musulmana en la península ibérica, y en particular en Andalucía desde el año 711 hasta la caída de Granada en enero de 1492.
http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2007/09/20/internacional/1190282664.html?a=51c836b78f4af9342ccb0820a7675d5d&t=1190305747
JPTF 2007/09/20

"Mulheres sauditas querem conduzir" in El Pais, 20 de Setembro de 2007

Se admiten apuestas, pero la mayoría de los observadores firmaría dos contra uno a que no van a conseguirlo. Las mujeres saudíes vuelven a la carga para reclamar su derecho a conducir. Al menos, una parte de ellas. Porque todavía hay en el Reino de Arabia Saudí, el único país del mundo que prohíbe ponerse al volante a sus ciudadanas, muchas que apoyan tan peculiar restricción. Quienes desean dejarla atrás planean entregar una petición al rey Abdalá el próximo domingo, coincidiendo con la fiesta nacional.

Por primera vez, las interesadas se han organizado en un Comité de Demandantes del Derecho de las Mujeres a Conducir Coches. El grupo busca el apoyo no sólo de los saudíes, sino de gente de todo el mundo, ya que la prohibición de conducir se extiende a todas las extranjeras que viven en Arabia Saudí o visitan el país.

"Pedimos que se devuelva a las mujeres el derecho de conducir", exige la carta colgada en varios sitios de Internet saudíes. "Es un derecho que disfrutaron nuestras madres y nuestras abuelas, que tuvieron total libertad para utilizar los medios de transporte de su tiempo".

Las fuentes consultadas coinciden en señalar que la prohibición no está ni en el islam ni en las leyes. Son edictos religiosos de destacados ulemas los que afirman que las mujeres al volante pueden crear "situaciones de tentación pecaminosa", en referencia a la eventualidad de que las conductoras tengan que interactuar con policías o mecánicos, en un país donde se practica la segregación sexual en la esfera pública. Nadie parece reparar en la contradicción que supone compartir el pequeño espacio de un coche con un hombre ajeno a tu familia al tener que recurrir a los servicios de un chófer.

"La prohibición emana de una interpretación estricta de la necesidad de que las mujeres estén siempre acompañadas en público por un mehram [custodio legal]", afirma la periodista Ebtihal Mubarak. Tal requerimiento, como muchos otros que constriñen las libertades individuales en Arabia Saudí, muestra el peso de los sectores más conservadores de la sociedad.

Un primer intento de conducir llevó una noche a la cárcel en 1990 a las 47 mujeres que osaron manifestarse al volante por el centro de Riad. Las autoridades les requisaron los pasaportes y quienes tenían empleos gubernamentales los perdieron. Hace dos años, cuando un miembro de la Asamblea Consultiva, Mohamed al Zalfa, planteó el asunto en ese foro de designación real, hubo quien propuso que se le despojara de la nacionalidad saudí.

Y eso que Al Zalfa no entraba en consideraciones morales. Simplemente calculó que el coste anual del cerca de millón de conductores extranjeros que trasladan a las saudíes al trabajo, al dentista o a la peluquería suponía el equivalente a 2.600 millones de euros al año. Eso para las familias que pueden costear los 300 euros mensuales que de media cuesta el servicio. En muchos otros casos, los hombres de recursos más modestos terminan pluriempleados como chóferes de las mujeres de su familia.

Esas dificultades han sido materia prima para uno de los típicos culebrones de Ramadán de este año. En Amsha bint Ammash, la protagonista se queda huérfana de padre y, ante la imposibilidad de encontrar empleo, se disfraza de hombre para emplearse como taxista. El tabú se ha roto y desde hace meses existe un debate público en el reino.

"Las mujeres necesitan conducir, es una necesidad básica", ha declarado a la prensa local Fauziya al Oyuni, una de las organizadoras de la recogida de firmas y conocida activista de los derechos humanos. Al Oyuni recordó que el rey Abdalá ha reconocido con anterioridad que no se trata de una cuestión política, sino social. Sin embargo, el monarca difícilmente tomará una decisión tan simbólica sin un consenso previo de la sociedad.
http://www.elpais.com/articulo/ultima/mujeres/saudies/quieren/conducir/elpepuint/20070920elpepiult_1/Tes
JPTF 2007/09/20

"Detenção canadiana ligada a suspeitos de terrorismo na Áustria" in Der Spiegel on line, 14 de Setembro de 2007

Police in Quebec have arrested a terrorist suspect on charges of conspiracy to set off bombs in Austria and Germany. He is accused of helping to run a jihadist Web site in Canada and of having links with a cell of al-Qaida propagandists in Vienna.

While Austrian police arrested three suspected operators of a jihadist Web site on Wednesday in Vienna, Royal Canadian Mounted Police closed in on one of their colleagues, Said Namouh, in a town in the Canadian province of Quebec.

He was accused of conspiracy to bomb targets outside Canada. The 35-year-old man, reportedly Moroccan by descent, lived near Maskinongé, Quebec, and was allegedly involved in procuring explosives and making online threats against the governments of Austria and Germany last spring. Canada was reportedly not a target.

The Vienna group (more...) consisted of a married couple and a friend who are all accused of producing a video which threatened attacks on Germany and Austria last March. The six-minute film warned of violence if the governments of both countries failed to pull troops out of Afghanistan.

In March, Austria had a total of five officers in Afghanistan.

The video appeared on the German-language home page of the Global Islamic Media Front, a propaganda Web site for al-Qaida. Its producers seem to have taken inspiration from a cell in Canada, possibly from Namouh himself. The English-language edition of GIMF has been based in Canada since 2002, and authorities say the alleged head of the Vienna cell, Mohammed M., approached the Canadians by e-mail to volunteer help on a German-language site. "He more or less asked how you set something like that up," said a German security official.
The German-language site went online in 2005.

GIMF is an organizational tool for al-Qaida sympathizers, who communicate in discussion forums, trade information and radicalize new recruits. But German security official say the cell arrested in Vienna was not actively planning an attack. "They were more like armchair jihadists," said one official.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,505801,00.html
JPTF 2007/09/17

"Al-Qaeda e os seus aliados: uma ameça mundial" in The Guardian, 13 de Setembro de 2007

The IISS survey claims al-Qaida is resurgent and capable of "carrying out large-scale attacks in the western world". It also points out that the organisation has acquired a string of affiliates in Iraq, northern Africa and elsewhere prepared to carry out attacks to further Osama bin Laden's objectives. Meanwhile, the war in Iraq has provided both a recruiting tool for al-Qaida and a "crucible" for producing "hardened jihadists", the IISS argues.

There is no dispute that al-Qaida is recovering from its apparent near-extinction in the mountains of Afghanistan in late 2001. But terrorism experts question whether Bin Laden's followers have regained their pre-2001 capacity.

"As an absolute fact they are not back at their 9/11 strength," said Peter Bergen, an authority on Bin Laden and al-Qaida at the New America Foundation in Washington. He pointed out that in 2001, al-Qaida had the run of most of Afghanistan for bases and training camps. Its current room for manoeuvre in Pakistan's tribal areas is more limited.

Mr Bergen also expressed doubt that al-Qaida had the same capacity to mount a spectacular attack on US territory. "If there are sleeper cells still in America, they must be comatose. And the American-Muslim community do not seem susceptible to al-Qaida ideology."

However, he said Bin Laden's organisation had shown a clear capacity to launch coordinated and large-scale assaults in Europe, particularly in Britain, and could be capable of a "7/7 attack every year" - a reference to the coordinated London bombings in July 2005.

Steven Monblatt, a former counter-terrorism coordinator at the US state department now at the British American Security Information Council, said: "There is no doubt al-Qaida has strengthened its capability in the last year and a half." But he added: "Most western countries that are potential targets have also reconstituted their defence capacity."

Iran

The survey says that Iran has installed 3,000 gas centrifuges for enriching uranium at its plant in Natanz, in central Iran, and the IISS authors estimate a worst-case scenario that Iran would be able to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a bomb by 2009 or 2010.

Iran insists it has the right to enrich uranium, which it says is exclusively for generating electricity, and it has defied UN security resolutions calling for it to suspend enrichment. Tehran claims it now has 3,000 centrifuges at Natanz. If dedicated to producing highly enriched weapons grade uranium and if working perfectly, that would be enough to produce enough fissile material for a bomb in about a year. But the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) believes the true figure is nearer 2,000. The IAEA's environmental samples also suggested that Iran had not yet reached the 4.8% enrichment level it is claiming, let alone 90% weapons grade enrichment.

"Their machines are operating inefficiently, partly because of technical problems and because of political self-constraint," said David Albright, a former UN weapons inspector and nuclear expert, who now runs the Institute for Science and International Security. However, he agrees with the IISS estimate that Iran could have enough fissile material for a bomb by 2009, particularly as there is no way of knowing, with the current limits on IAEA's investigative capacity in Iran, whether the Iranian military has a secret enrichment programme running in parallel with the visible programme in Natanz.

Climate Change

The IISS report highlights the security implications of climate change, warning that it could inflict catastrophic damage "on the level of a nuclear war". Apart from direct impact on sea levels, weather and agriculture, it would trigger mass migration and conflicts over ever-scarcer resources. "Climate change is at the heart of both national and collective security," the report says.

Some experts question the comparison with nuclear war. Global warming is setting in more gradually and with more warning than a nuclear exchange. But the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the authority on the subject, does suggest the cumulative effects could be equally devastating.

Daniel Mittler, a climate change expert at Greenpeace, said the comparison was "perfectly reasonable".

"It's clear that climate change is the most dramatic challenge humanity faces today. We can't say every one of these disasters will hit, but it's clear that these kind of events will become more frequent and more severe. It is a sad indictment of the politicians who have known about the problem for a number of years," he said.

Iraq

The survey delivers a pessimistic outlook for Iraq. It is sceptical about the strength and integrity of Iraqi forces, and about the capacity or willingness of Nuri al-Maliki's government to forge a national consensus. The cabinet is crippled by corruption, it says. Faced with the continued failure of the Maliki government to strengthen its hold, it argues that the Bush administration has "two stark choices": to carry on as before in the face of continuing troop losses or make a radical change, probably involving a new prime minister.

Claire Spencer, the head of the Middle East programme at the Chatham House thinktank, agreed the Iraqi government had failed to exert any control outside the "green zone" in Baghdad. However, she suggested that there was a growing realisation in Washington that the parliament and cabinet were so hopelessly split along sectarian lines that it would be better to support local self-government to rebuild "from the bottom up".

"Things are stabilising at the periphery much faster than they are at the centre," she said.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/alqaida/story/0,,2167870,00.html
JPTF 2007/09/13

"A guerra por ‘procuração‘: tropas britânicas enviadas para a fronteira iraniana" in The Independent, 12 de Setembro de 2007

British forces have been sent from Basra to the volatile border with Iran amid warnings from the senior US commander in Iraq that Tehran is fomenting a "proxy war".

In signs of a fast-developing confrontation, the Iranians have threatened military action in response to attacks launched from Iraqi territory while the Pentagon has announced the building of a US base and fortified checkpoints at the frontier.

The UK operation, in which up to 350 troops are involved, has come at the request of the Americans, who say that elements close to the Iranian regime have stepped up supplies of weapons to Shia militias in recent weeks in preparation for attacks inside Iraq.

The deployment came within a week of British forces leaving Basra Palace, their last remaining base inside Basra city, and withdrawing to the airport for a widely expected final departure from Iraq. Brigadier James Bashall, commander of 1 Mechanised Brigade, based at Basra said: "We have been asked to help at the Iranian border to stop the flow of weapons and I am willing to do so. We know the points of entry and I am sure we can do what needs to be done. The US forces are, as we know, engaged in the 'surge' and the border is of particular concern to them."

The mission will include the King's Royal Hussars battle group, 250 of whom were told at the weekend that they would be returning to the UK as part of a drawdown of forces in Iraq.

The operation is regarded as a high-risk strategy which could lead to clashes with Iranian-backed Shia militias or even Iranian forces and also leaves open the possibility of Iranian retaliation in the form of attacks against British forces at the Basra air base or inciting violence to draw them back into Basra city. Relations between the two countries are already fraught after the Iranian Revolutionary Guards seized a British naval party in the Gulf earlier this year.

The move came as General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, the US ambassador to Iraq, made some of the strongest accusations yet by US officials about Iranian activity. General Petraeus spoke on Monday of a "proxy war" in Iraq, while Mr Crocker accused the Iranian government of "providing lethal capabilities to the enemies of the Iraqi state".

In an interview after his appearance before a congressional panel on Monday, General Petraeus strongly implied that it would soon be necessary to obtain authorisation to take action against Iran within its own borders, rather than just inside Iraq. "There is a pretty hard look ongoing at that particular situation" he said.

The Royal Welsh battle group, with Challenger tanks and Warrior armoured vehicles, is conducting out regular exercises at the Basra air base in preparation for any re-entry into the city. No formal handover of Basra to the Iraqi government has yet taken place and the UK remains responsible for maintaining security in the region.

The Iraqi commander in charge of the southern part of the country, General Mohan al-Furayji, said he would not hesitate to call for British help if there was an emergency.

While previous US military action has been primarily directed against Sunni insurgents, it is Shia fighters, which the US accuses Iran of backing, who now account for 80 per cent of US casualties.

For the British military the move to the border is a change of policy. They had stopped patrols along the long border at Maysan despite US concerns at the time that the area would become a conduit for weapons into Iraq.

The decision to return to the frontier has been heavily influenced by the highly charged and very public dispute with the United States. British commanders feel that they cannot turn down the fresh American request for help after refusing to delay the withdrawal from Basra Palace. They also maintain that the operation will stop Iranian arms entering Basra.

Brigadier Bashall said: "We are not sitting here idly at the air bridge. The security of Basra is still our responsibility and we shall act where necessary. We are also prepared to restore order in Basra City if asked to do so."

The US decision to build fortifications at the Iranian border, after four years of presence in Iraq, shows, say American commanders, that the "Iranian threat" is now one of their main concerns.

Maj-Gen Rick Lynch, commander of the US Army's 3rd Infantry Division, said 48 Iranian-supplied roadside bombs had been used against his forces killing nine soldiers. "We've got a major problem with Iranian munitions streaming into Iraq. This Iranian interference is troubling and we have to stop it," he told The Wall Street Journal this week.

Meanwhile at a conference in Baghdad on regional co-operation, Iran claimed the US was supporting groups mounting attacks from Iraqi territory in the Kurdish north.

Said Jalili , Iran's deputy foreign minister, last night said: "I think [the US and its allies] are going to prevaricate with the truth because they know they have been defeated in Iraq and they have not been successful. And so they are going to put the blame on us, on the other side."
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2953462.ece
JPTF 2007/09/12

"Bin Laden diz que os EUA se deviam converter" in BBC News, 8 de Setembro de 2007

A video tape which US experts believe is from al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden has been released just days before the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Below are excerpts from a transcript of the tape obtained by several news organisations.
"Praise to Allah and from his law is retaliation in kind - an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth and the killer is killed... I am talking to you about important matters that concern you [Americans], so give me your ears. I start these matters by talking about the war between us and you and some of its repercussions on us and on you. As a prelude, I say that the USA has the biggest economic power and has the most powerful and most modern military arsenal and spends on this war and its army more than the world spends on its armies. And it is the major country that influences the policies of the world as if the unjust veto right is exclusive to it. In spite of all that, with the help of God, 19 young men managed to take its compass off-course. The talk about the mujahideen has even become an indivisible part of your leader's talk. The effects and implications of this are no secret... You permitted Bush to complete his first term, and stranger still, chose him for a second term, which gave him a clear mandate from you - with your full knowledge and consent - to continue to murder our people in Iraq and Afghanistan... Bush is talking about his co-operation with [Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri] Maliki and his government to spread democracy, but he is, in fact, co-operating with the leaders of one sect against another, in the belief that he will settle the war in his favour quickly. Thus what is called civil war has taken place and the situation has become worse because of him and slipped out of his control. He has become like someone who is cultivating in the sea, reaping nothing but failure... There are two solutions to stopping it. One is from our side, and it is to escalate the fighting and killing against you. This is our duty, and our brothers are carrying it out. The second solution is from your side. I invite you to embrace Islam".
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6984560.stm
JPTF 2007/09/08

"A sombra do terrorismo islamista paira sobre a Europa" in Courrier International, 6 de Setembro de 2007

DOSSIER
L'ombre du terrorisme islamiste plane sur l'Europe

Trois terroristes présumés qui avaient planifié des attaques de grande envergure ont été arrêtés en Allemagne. Peu de temps auparavant, huit terroristes présumés en contact avec Al Qaïda avaient été arrêtés au Danemark. Le terrorisme islamiste prend-t-il une nouvelle dimension en Europe ? Cette dernière est-elle capable d'y faire face ?

Die Welt (Allemagne)
Selon Jacques Schuster, l'Allemagne constitue une cible terroriste pour musulmans établis depuis longtemps dans le pays. "Pas de malentendu : la majorité de la population islamique n'a rien à voir avec les extrémistes. Il convient toutefois de faire la constatation suivante : les musulmans radicaux prennent principalement l'Europe pour cible parce qu'ils peuvent s'y déplacer en toute liberté et trouver facilement de nouvelles recrues. (...) C'est précisément pour cette raison que ces personnes ne doivent plus avoir le droit de circuler librement. Les activités des services secrets et une pression sociale exercée par l'environnement musulman peuvent permettre d'affaiblir le milieu des sympathisants. Pour cela, le gouvernement doit instaurer des contraintes d'intégration plus sévères. Les sociétés parallèles, même pacifiques, ne sont pas tolérables."

Politiken (Danemark)
L'arrestation de terroristes présumés au Danemark montre une nouvelle fois que le terrorisme est un phénomène idéologique qui ne disparaît pas automatiquement lorsque l'intégration économique et sociale s'améliore, écrit le journal. "Que faut-il donc faire ? Une réponse appropriée au terrorisme implique une stratégie d'attaque et de défense. La stratégie d'attaque nécessite un travail efficace de la police au plus haut niveau, en collaboration étroite avec l'UE et d'autres partenaires internationaux. La défense est plus compliquée : il s'agit surtout de ne pas concéder aux terroristes la victoire à laquelle ils aspirent. (...) Ils ne pourront sortir vainqueurs que si nous nous laissons intimider et que nous accordons du crédit à leur idée d'un combat à mort entre les civilisations, en abandonnant les principes de l'Etat de droit, par exemple."

Der Standard (Autriche)
Alexandra Föderl-Schmid regrette l'absence d'une stratégie de lutte contre le terrorisme à l'échelle européenne. Elle revient sur la démission de Gijs de Vries, coordinateur antiterroriste de l'UE, en mars dernier. "Le manque de moyens était très frustrant. En effet, le coordinateur n'avait pas accès aux informations de la police européenne. (...) Voilà qui révèle un problème fondamental : les pays de l'UE ne sont pas vraiment emballés par une collaboration étroite dans ce domaine. Le seul élément concret est le mandat d'arrêt européen. Ce sont surtout les services secrets qui ne veulent pas partager leurs informations, et la situation n'est pas prête de changer. Car les renseignements, c'est le pouvoir. Tant qu'il en sera ainsi, les terroristes pourront tirer parti de cette situation pour se déplacer de pays en pays, voire monter les Etats les uns contre les autres."

HVG (Hongrie)
Imre Keresztes constate que l'organisation terroriste Al Qaïda a certes été affaiblie, mais que ses organisations satellites et ses sympathisants sont plus actifs que jamais. "Le combat sans merci livré par le monde contre Al Qaïda, la véritable chasse aux sorcières menée contre ses dirigeants et l'élimination de ses sources de financement ont considérablement affaibli l'organisation. Il y a six ans, Al Qaïda était directement à l'origine des attaques terroristes. Aujourd'hui, c'est plutôt une sorte de secte qui donne des directives idéologiques à des organisations satellites plus ou moins indépendantes. Selon les experts de sécurité arabes, la communication ne se fait plus par l'intermédiaire des mosquées ou des écoles coraniques, mais par Internet."
http://europe.courrierinternational.com/eurotopics/article.asp?langue=fr&publication=06/09/2007&cat=DOSSIER
JPTF 7/09/2007

"Muçulmanos convertidos visavam atacar na Alemanha" in Times, 6 de Setembro de 2007

White Muslim converts have brought the Islamic holy war into the heart of Europe with a narrowly thwarted plot to blow up hundreds of people in German airports, discotheques and restaurants. Three men — two Germans and a Turk who are believed to have received explosives training at a terrorist camp in Pakistan — were arraigned by the federal prosecutor yesterday after a nine-month police operation. Undercover agents using US intelligence followed and eavesdropped on the young men as they collected 750 kilos (1,650 pounds) of hydrogen peroxide and military detonators to be used in simultaneous suicide truck bomb attacks on American installations and meeting places. Hydrogen peroxide was a key ingredient in the London Tube bombs, but experts said that the explosives being prepared in a villa in the Black Forest would have wrought destruction on an even greater scale than the attacks on July 7, 2005. Conversations between the suspected terrorists mentioned the Ramstein airbase, Frankfurt airport and clubs used by American families as possible targets. “They were motivated by hatred of America and this influenced their choice of targets,” said Jörg Ziercke, president of the Federal Criminal Investigation Agency (BKA), the German equivalent of Scotland Yard. Several terrorist plots have been uncovered in Germany since September 11, 2001, but this one has shocked Germans more than any other: it has exposed the existence of a home-grown terrorist potential. The features of 28-year-old Fritz G were blanked out in his arrest photographs yesterday but there was no doubt about it: he was white and, for his neighbours in Ulm, quite unmistakably “our Fritz”. Like his accomplice, 22-year-old Daniel S. from the Saarland, he was a Muslim convert. “Converts tend to be more radical and fanatical than those who have been Muslims since they were in the cradle,” Hans Joachim Giessmann, a terrorism expert at the Hamburg Institute for Peace Research, said. “They are driven either by politics or the fervour of their new faith rather than any cultural tradition.” All three — the third man has been identified as Adem Y, 29, a Turk — met in Pakistan, where investigators believe that they received explosives training at a Taleban-linked camp. The three are believed to be members of the Islamic Jihad Union, an Uzbek-based group with close links to al-Qaeda. The group has branched out into Pakistan after organising attacks on Israeli and US diplomatic missions in Uzbekistan. After returning from Pakistan, Fritz G became an active member of a mosque in Ulm that has played host to radical preachers. But he was spotted by the police only by accident: his car was observed driving around the US military base at Hanau, near Frankfurt, on New Year’s Day. From that moment an intensive investigation began, drawing in 300 undercover agents. The purchase of huge quantities of hydrogen peroxide was the clinching sign that the group was potetentially dangerous. Mixed correctly, the chemicals were capable of triggering explosions equivalent to 500 kilos of TNT. By contrast, the bombers in London carried no more than three to four kilos of explosive. The potential blast would have been bigger than the Madrid and London bombings combined. The chemicals were stored in three containers. The watching police became so nervous that they broke cover, waiting until all three men were in different parts of Germany before swapping the contents for a diluted version. That task alone involved hundreds of detectives across the country. The turning point came on Tuesday. The chemicals had been transferred from the holiday home in the Black Forest to a rented house on the borders of the state of Hesse. The chemicals were starting to deteriorate, the location was near US air bases, the detonators had been acquired: it looked as if the group was ready to strike. The police were sceptical yesterday that the three men could have primed the explosives in time for a strike on the September 11 anniversary, but Monika Harms, the state prosecutor, did not want to take the risk. Members of the GSG 9 anti-terrorism unit broke down the door of the house and grabbed two of the suspects. A third wriggled through the bathroom window but was overpowered 300 metres away. He snatched the policeman’s pistol as they wrestled on the road and the gun went off. The officer was wounded in the hand. The group is thought to have had generous external funding. They had crisscrossed the country buying chemicals, rented houses under false names and used several cars. “These were not amateurs,” an investigator said. Immediately after the arrests, police began a search of 41 apartments across Germany. The police have 890 potentially dangerous Muslim German residents on their lists. Wolfgang Schäuble, the Interior Minister, emphasised, however, that German Muslims would not become automatic suspects.

The British connection
— German police copied tactics used by British anti-terrorist investigators to render the bomb plot impotent
— In 2004 Scotland Yard detectives watching a group of terrorists planning a bomb attack in London switched their hoard of fertiliser for a container of cat litter. Similarly, German officers removed high-strength hydrogen peroxide from their suspects’ hideout and replaced it with a weaker solution
— Britain has faced more al-Qaeda plots than any other Western European nation since 2001. British tactics, legislation and mistakes are therefore carefully studied by other police forces
— The plot uncovered by German police bears similarities to terrorist activity in Britain. Like many British terrorists, the men arrested in Germany are reported to have received training in Pakistani tribal areas, where al-Qaeda now has its camps
— Hydrogen peroxide-based explosives are a common al-Qaeda weapon and formed the basis of the 7/7 suicide bombs and 21/7 failed bombs. Since then hydrogen peroxide has been made much more difficult to obtain in Britain. Similar restrictions are not, however, in place elsewhere.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article2390127.ece
JPTF 2007/09/06

"Terroristas islamistas planeavam ataque massivo na Alemanha" in Spiegel online, 5 de Setembro de 2007

The scenarios which the highest representatives of the German security forces were describing on Wednesday morning were horrific: "Massive bomb attacks," simultaneous attacks using several car bombs and huge numbers of people killed right in the middle of Germany. Only a bold raid foiled the plans of the Islamist terrorists, according to statements made in Karlsruhe by German Federal Prosecutor Monika Harms and Jörg Ziercke, the head of Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA). According to Harms, the three men arrested Tuesday afternoon belong to a German cell of the terror group "Islamic Jihad Union" (IJU). They are accused of preparing terror attacks against US facilities in Germany. It would have been an inferno. The explosive material the men had would have sufficed to make bombs with a higher explosive power that those used in the attacks in Madrid and London, according to Ziercke. The three men had planned on mixing the explosive material so as to produce a bomb with the power of 550 kilograms (1,200 pounds) of TNT. The federal prosecutor's office ordered all three men arrested Tuesday afternoon. The police forces struck in a spontaneous raid because the men, who were already under observation, intended to begin preparing chemicals to make a bomb and to leave their hideout. Fearing that the men might disappear, BKA investigators and Germany's elite GSG-9 anti-terrorist unit arrested the whole group in Medebach-Oberschledorn in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Later, the BKA conducted searches, in which hundreds of officers took part, of another 40 buildings in several German states.

Deadly Experiments
The three suspects were arrested in a holiday apartment where they had chemicals based on hydrogen peroxide, a substance that can be transformed into explosives using a complicated procedure. Security sources have told SPIEGEL ONLINE that this is exactly what the men had attempted to do. Similar concoctions have already been used in other terror attacks. It was when the men began to process the legally obtained 730 kilograms of chemicals that the authorities became alarmed. A few days ago, police experts secretly swapped the 35-percent solution of hydrogen peroxide contained in 12 barrels for a diluted liquid that only contained 3 percent of the chemical. "Concrete preparations had begun, so we had to act," said one official.
They were still far from having a finished bomb, however. "It wasn't a case of coitus interruptus," commented one official. However, according to information obtained by SPIEGEL ONLINE, the men had all the necessary components ready -- they had even already procured a military ignition mechanism for the explosive device. "An attack was imminent -- it was only a question of time," said one high-ranking security expert. Probably the men wanted to place the bombs in one or more cars and explode them in front of the target.
The goal of the men was clear. "The intention was to commit an attack and cause as many deaths as possible," said the official. The investigators were mainly concerned that the three men had been acting conspiratorially in the last few weeks and possibly were planning to split up after the meeting in Oberschledorn and work further on their plan even more inconspicuously. Out of fear of losing track of the group and their activities, the police decided to strike. One of the men attempted to escape through the bathroom window during the raid. He tore the gun out of the hand of a police officer who challenged him. In the following scuffle, a shot was fired and the police officer was lightly injured on the hand. The arrests came after an extensive investigation carried out by federal prosecutors. Agents had been on the heels of the group surrounding 28-year-old Fritz G. -- one of those taken into custody on Tuesday -- since the end of 2006. Together with Daniel S. -- likewise a German who had converted to Islam -- and a 22-year-old Turkish man from Hesse named Adem Y., Fritz G. is thought to have founded an Islamist group that was even prepared to carry out suicide attacks in Germany. Since then, authorities have been watching the group around the clock. Help was provided by local authorities, and US officials also turned over material to the investigation. "Thankfully, collaboration worked well in this case," an official said. Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble said the plans never reached a stage where they posed a danger, partly because all the relevant authorities were actively investigating the case.

In the Crosshairs
Members of the group first came to the authorities' attention on New Year's Day 2006. Fritz G. was in a car seen driving around the US military base in Hanau conspicuously often. Officials suspected that he and the other suspects were casing the facility for a possible attack. Soon after, the investigation was stepped up, and in March of this year, an official file was opened by federal prosecutors. Authorities were shocked, though, when the group continued working on their plan even after the investigation was started. After all, they must surely have known that they were under observation. "That they nevertheless continued shows how determined they were," one investigator said. "We are dealing here with perpetrators who believe devoutly in what they were doing." The investigator also says that the men were prepared to sacrifice their lives to make their attacks a success. The case also provides still more evidence, officials say, that Germany has become a target of international terrorism. All three of the men had intensive contacts with Pakistan, likely to the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU) which is active there. According to authorities, Daniel S. visited a terrorist training camp in Pakistan in March 2006. According to information obtained by SPIEGEL ONLINE, the other two were likewise in Pakistan at the end of 2006 and it is thought that they too spent some time in a training camp. Since then, investigators have intercepted numerous phone calls between the suspects and contacts in Pakistan. The IJU was responsible for a deadly 2006 attack in Uzbekistan but is now primarily active in Pakistan. It is still not clear which targets the group actually wanted to attack in Germany. In wiretapped conversations, the men spoke again and again about possible targets. Frankfurt airport and other airports were discussed, as was the US airbase at Ramstein and other possible locations such as a nightclub. "There was still no concrete plan," one of the investigators said. "Nevertheless, the intention was clearly recognizable." One of the suspects is said to have clearly stated that he was ready to die a martyr's death. The results of the investigation against the group gave the government cause for concern for months. Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble repeatedly spoke of a clearly increased danger of terror attacks in Germany, referring to the undercover investigation against the group. The US also had evidence relating to the men's connections to Pakistan and warned the German authorities. In addition, the US increased safety precautions at their facilities after the investigations yielded their first results. The group's radical tendencies are well documented. The investigators have known about Fritz G., who is a well-known member of the radical Islamist scene in Ulm, for a long time. G. is considered a prominent member of a group of radicalized Islamists who settled in Ulm. The other two suspects also obviously had close contacts to this group. The radical activities in Ulm were already known about before the 9/11 attacks, and the authorities kept a close eye on developments there. The investigators are not yet aware of a schedule for the possible attacks. According to a statement by top officials, it is possible that the attacks could have been planned to coincide either with the anniversary of 9/11 or with the decision to extend the mandate for Germany's deployment in Afghanistan, which is expected in the autumn. The chemicals which the group obtained have a short shelf-life -- hence time was of the essence. However it is questionable whether the group could have completely finished the complex process of building the bombs by either of those dates. The authorities are now hoping for further information to come out of the interrogations of the suspects. Further arrests cannot be ruled out, according to the Federal Prosecutor's Office. First, however, the three men are to be presented to the judge handling the case. He has already issued an arrest warrant.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,druck-504037,00.html
JPTF 5/09/2007