‘A Rússia reconheceu a independência da Ossétia do Sul e da Abkhazia‘ in Guardian, 27 de Agosto de 2008

Russia's relations with the west plunged to their most critical point in a generation today when the Kremlin built on its military rout of Georgia by recognising the breakaway provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states.

Declaring that if his decision meant a new cold war, then so be it, President Dmitri Medvedev signed a decree conferring Russian recognition on Georgia's two secessionist regions. The move flouted UN Security Council resolutions and dismissed western insistence during the crisis of the past three weeks on respecting Georgia's territorial integrity and international borders.

Tonight, Medvedev accused Washington of shipping arms to Georgia under the guise of humanitarian aid.

The Kremlin's unilateral decision to redraw the map of the strategically vital region on the Black Sea surprised and alarmed the west, and raised the stakes in the Caucasus crisis. Moscow challenged Europe and the US to respond, while calculating that western divisions over policy towards Russia would dilute any damage.

Washington condemned the move. Britain called for a European coalition against Russian "aggression". Sweden said Russia had opted for a path of confrontation with the west, and international organisations denounced Medvedev's move as illegitimate and unacceptable.

"We are not afraid of anything, including the prospect of a new cold war," Medvedev said. "Russia is a state which has to ensure its interests along the whole length of its border. This is absolutely clear."

While Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, accused the US, a strong backer of President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia, of gunboat diplomacy by using its air force and naval vessels to deliver humanitarian aid to Georgia, Medvedev tonight went further.

He said Russian forces were not blockading Georgia's Black Sea port of Poti. "There is no blockade. Any ship can get in, American and others are bringing in humanitarian cargoes. And what the Americans call humanitarian cargoes - of course, they are bringing in weapons," he told the BBC.

The Nato secretary-general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, said: "Russia's actions in recent weeks call into question Russia's commitment to peace and stability in the Caucasus."

But Moscow oozed confidence that the western response would be mostly bark and little bite, restricted to sharp words and some tolerable diplomatic sanctions. "I don't think we should be afraid of isolation. I don't believe isolation is looming," said Lavrov. "This should not really be a doomsday scenario."

The Kremlin decision, prepared on Monday by the rubber stamp of the Russian parliament's unanimous vote in favour of independence for South Ossetia and Abkhazia, is widely seen as presaging Russian annexation at least of South Ossetia, a poor, crime-ridden mountain region of only 70,000 people which has little prospect of becoming a viable state.

South Ossetia was the spark that ignited the crisis earlier this month after Saakashvili launched a disastrous attempt to recapture the region and met a Russian invasion which crippled his country.

"Russia's actions are an attempt to militarily annex a sovereign nation ...in direct violation of international law," Saakashvili said tonight. "The Russian Federation is seeking to validate the use of violence, direct military aggression, and ethnic cleansing to forcibly change the borders of a neighbouring state."

But senior Russian officials, from Medvedev down, launched a concerted attack on Saakashvili, accusing him of "genocide", of seeking to "exterminate" the people of South Ossetia, and of leaving Russia no alternative.

"This is not an easy choice to make, but it represents the only possibility to save human lives," said Medvedev. "Saakashvili opted for genocide to accomplish his political objectives. By doing so, he himself dashed all the hopes for the peaceful coexistence of Ossetians, Abkhazians and Georgians in a single state."

Lavrov said Russia's decision was "absolutely inevitable, short of losing our dignity as a nation".

Dmitri Rogozin, Russia's ambassador to Nato, likened the international climate to the summer of 1914 before the first world war, and compared the Georgian leader to Gavrilo Princip, the Balkan assassin who shot the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne in Sarajevo.

Russia's decision to recognise the two regions effectively killed off the ceasefire and peace plan negotiated a fortnight ago by France's President Nicolas Sarkozy on behalf of the European Union.

Exasperated by Russia's refusal to observe the terms of the truce, Sarkozy has already called an emergency EU summit for Monday in Brussels. The meeting was supposed to chart a common EU position on Russia, but is as likely to expose Europe's dilemmas and divisions over how to deal with an increasingly assertive Kremlin.

"The [EU] presidency firmly condemns this decision," a spokesman for Sarkozy said. "It calls for a political solution to the conflicts in Georgia. It will examine the consequences of Russia's decision from this point of view."

David Miliband, Britain's foreign secretary, said he wanted to forge "the widest possible coalition against Russian aggression in Georgia. We fully support Georgia's independence and territorial integrity, which cannot be changed by decree from Moscow."

But Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, while denouncing the Russian move as "absolutely unacceptable", also said she wanted to keep dialogue running with Moscow.

Miliband is due to fly to Kiev today to express British support for the Ukrainian government which fears it could be next in line for Russian pressure aimed at thwarting its efforts to join Nato. Miliband is due to meet Ukraine's president, Viktor Yushchenko, and its prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko, whose government is in a precarious position: seeking membership of Nato and the EU in the face of determined opposition from the country's Russian minority.

Under a lease agreement, Russia's Black Sea fleet is based on Ukraine's Crimean peninsula, increasing Russian sensitivity to Ukraine's westward trajectory and Ukrainian vulnerability to pressure from Moscow.

Miliband will make a speech today to a university audience in Kiev, in which he will laud Ukrainian democracy and warn Russia that its actions will cause long-term harm to its standing on the world stage.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/26/russia.georgia2
JPTF 2008/08/27

‘Em 7 anos o número de mortes ultrapassará os nascimentos na Europa‘ in International Herald Tribune, 26 de Agosto de 2008

Since its historic reunification almost two decades ago, Germany has been easily the European Union's most populous nation, with 20 million more inhabitants than its closest rival.

But by 2050 Britons, who both reproduce more and allow more immigration, are likely to outnumber Germans and within a further 10 years France, too, should have leapfrogged its eastern neighbor in the population rankings.

The findings come in an official EU study, released Tuesday, which concedes for the first time that Europeans will begin their long foreseen demographic decline in just seven years' time - the point at which deaths exceed births.

The report, published by the European Union's statistical agency Eurostat, reveals large variations between the birth rates of member states but paints an overall picture of an aging population.

The document does not explore the reasons for differences in European fertility. But it does hint at the profound economic and social changes likely to unfold during the next half century, as the proportion of older people grows steadily.

The document did not spell out these likely shifts, but they could include reduced funding for schools, heavy burdens on welfare and social security systems, and perhaps even a political push for much larger immigration, which is currently deeply out of favor with most European voters.

According to the document, not only would Germany lose its status as Europe's most populous nation but several East European nations would experience a sharp drop in numbers - with populations shrinking by a quarter or more. By contrast Cyprus, Ireland and Luxembourg would all boost their numbers by at least half.

Immigration would not, on current trends, make up the shortfall in the working age population, the report says.

Now with a combined total of 495 million people, the 27 nations that make up the EU would increase their population to a total of 521 million in 2035 before falling back to 506 million in 2060.

The document deals only with population trends in Europe. According to another report published last year, the United States population will increase from 301 million to 468 million in 2060, including 105 million new immigrants. The study, by Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, an independent research institute, used U.S. Census Bureau data and Census Bureau assumptions about future birth and death rates.

Officials stress that the European projections should be treated with caution because they assume current trends continue and that there is no change of policy to deal with the looming demographic crisis.

But for Europeans the economic implications of an aging population are stark. The Eurostat report says that in 2008, in the EU's 27 nations, "there are four persons of working age (15-64 years old) for every person aged 65 years or over." In 2060 "the ratio is expected to be two to one."

The document also suggests a shifting balance in terms of countries' population size. By 2060 the United Kingdom would have 77 million people; France, 72 million and Germany, 71 million. Italy's population would grow slightly then fall back to its current level of 59 million while Spain would increase from 45 million to 51 million.

But Poland, which currently numbers 38 million, would drop to 31 million, a reduction of 18 per cent.

Meanwhile even bigger decreases would hit Bulgaria (28 percent), Latvia (26 percent, Lithuania (24 percent) and Romania (21 percent).

By contrast the population of Cyprus would grow by 66 percent, Ireland by 53 percent, Luxembourg by 52 percent and the United Kingdom by one-quarter.

"From 2015 onwards," the document says, "deaths would outnumber births and hence population growth due to natural increase would cease. From this point onwards positive net migration would be the only population growth factor.

"However from 2035 this positive net migration would no longer counterbalance the negative natural change and the population is projected to begin to fall."

Amelia Torres, a European Commission spokeswoman, said the EU needed to stabilize its finances, increase employment and make structural reforms related to pensions.

"We are concerned to find out whether member states will be able to pay for the costs linked to this aging and whether future generations will be over-burdened by it," she said.

Last week, German researchers from the Berlin Institute for Population and Development said that without immigration, the EU's population will shrink to 447 million by 2050, Reuters reported from Berlin. The experts predicted that some rural areas - notably in Poland, Bulgaria, Eastern Germany, northern Spain and southern Italy - would empty out completely, Reuters said.

http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=15655392
JPTF 2008/08/26

‘A WEB tornou-se um campo de batalha no conflito entre a Rússia e a Geórgia‘ in International Herald Tribune

Weeks before physical bombs started falling on Georgia, a security researcher in suburban Massachusetts was watching an attack against the country in cyberspace.

Jose Nazario of Arbor Networks in Lexington noticed there was a stream of data directed at Georgian government sites containing the message win+love+in+Rusia.

Other Internet experts in the United States said the attacks against Georgia's Internet infrastructure began as early as July 20, with coordinated barrages of millions of requests - known as distributed denial of service, or D.D.O.S., attacks - that overloaded certain Georgian servers.

Researchers at Shadowserver, a volunteer group that tracks malicious network activity, reported that the Web site of the Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, had been rendered inoperable for 24 hours by multiple D.D.O.S. attacks. The researchers said the command-and-control server that directed the attack, which was based in the United States, had come online several weeks before it began the assault.

As it turns out, the July attack was only a dress rehearsal for an all-out cyberwar once the shooting started between Georgia and Russia.

According to Internet technical experts, it was the first time a cyberattack had coincided with a real war. But it will likely not be the last, said Bill Woodcock, the research director of Packet Clearing House, a nonprofit organization that tracks Internet traffic. He said cyberattacks are so inexpensive and easy to mount, with few fingerprints, that they will almost certainly remain a feature of modern warfare.

"It costs about 4 cents per machine," Woodsock said. "You could fund an entire cyberwarfare campaign for the cost of replacing a tank tread, so you would be foolish not to."

Shadowserver saw the attack against Georgia spread to computers throughout the government after Russian troops invaded the Georgian province of South Ossetia on Sunday.

The Georgian government blamed Russia, but experts said that was not clear.

"Could this somehow be indirect Russian action? Yes, but considering Russia is past playing nice and uses real bombs, they could have attacked more strategic targets or eliminated the infrastructure kinetically," said Gadi Evron, an Israeli network security expert who assisted in pushing back a huge cyberattack on Estonia's Internet infrastructure in May. "The nature of what's going on isn't clear."

Nazario said the attacks appeared to be politically motivated. They were continuing Monday against Georgian news sites, according to Nazario. "I'm watching attacks against apsny.ge and news.ge right now," he said.

The attacks were controlled from a server based at a telecommunications firm in Moscow, he said. In contrast, the attacks last month came from a control computer that was based in the United States. That system was later disabled.

Denial-of-service attacks, aimed at making a Web site unreachable, began in 2001 and have been refined in terms of power and sophistication since then. They are usually performed by hundreds or thousands of commandeered personal computers, making it difficult or impossible to determine who is behind a particular attack.

The Web site of the Georgian president was moved to an Internet operation in the United States run by a Georgian native over the weekend. The company, Tulip Systems, based in Atlanta, is run by Nino Doijashvili, who was in Georgia at the time of the attack. Two Web sites, president.gov.ge and rustavi2.com, the Web site of a prominent Georgian TV station, were moved to Atlanta. Computer security executives said the new sites had also come under attack.

On Monday, executives from Renesys, an Internet monitoring company based in New Hampshire, said that most Georgian networks were unaffected, although individual Web sites might be under attack. Networks appeared and disappeared as power was cut off and restored as a result of the war, they said. A company researcher noted that Georgia is dependent on both Russia and Turkey for connections to the Internet.

As a result of the interference, the Georgian government began posting news dispatches to a Google-run blogging Web site, georgiamfa.blogspot.com. Separately, there were reports that Estonia was sending technical assistance to the Georgian government.

There were indications that both sides in the conflict - or sympathizers - were engaged in attacks aimed at blocking access to Web sites. On Friday, the Russian-language Web site Lenta.ru reported that there had been D.D.O.S. attacks targeted at the official Web site of the government of South Ossetia as well as attacks against RIA Novosti, a Russian news agency.

Internet researchers at Sophos, a computer security firm headquartered in England, said that the National Bank of Georgia's Web site was defaced at one point. Images of 20th-century dictators as well as an image of Saakashvili, were placed on the site.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/08/12/europe/cyber.php
JPTF 2008/08/14

Cartoon de Morland no jornal britânico Times

‘A primeira guerra entre a Rússia e um ex-Estado soviético?‘ in Der Spiegel Online, 10 de Agosto de 2008

The South Ossetian coat of arms depicts a snow leopard raising its paw in a threatening gesture, against a backdrop of impregnable mountains. The warlike South Ossetians' most famous son was a man whose name alone instills fear: Josef Stalin.

But none of this was enough to deter Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili when he ordered his army to invade Tskhinvali, the capital of separatist South Ossetia, a region in the center of Georgia, on Thursday night. Skirmishes had been going on for weeks, and on Thursday evening Saakashvili had even announced a ceasefire. But then, at around midnight, Georgian forces attacked in an effort "to reestablish constitutional order," as a high-ranking Georgian general described it.

Within hours Georgian units, using rockets and fighter jets, had apparently demolished entire streets of Tskhinvali. The "president" of South Ossetia, Eduard Kokoity, a former freestyle wrestler, said on Friday evening that an estimated 1,400 people had died and characterized the Georgian invasion as ethnic cleansing. Saakashvili, however, announced the mobilization of 100,000 reservists.

It didn't take long before the Ossetians' protectors retaliated with the full force of their military machine. Russia sent two tank columns of its 58th Army to Tskhinvali to repel Saakashvili's units, Sukhoi fighter jets bombed Georgian military bases near the capital Tbilisi and the Black Sea port of Poti, far from the actual conflict region. Georgia, for its part, reported that its forces had shot down four fighter jets over its own territory.

Few of the roughly 25,000 residents of the South Ossetian capital were able to flee, with most hiding in the cellars of their meager houses. Doctors performed surgery in the corridors at the city's main hospital, and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, vacationing on the Volga River, flew back to Moscow for a crisis meeting of the National Security Council.

The Russians called the Georgian invasion a "deceitful attack," while the Georgians referred to the Russian incursion as a "war on our own territory." When US President George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin met at the Olympic Games in Beijing, the Russian Prime Minister confirmed that a war had "practically just begun" in the Caucasus and announced, in his typically pithy style, "retaliation." The United Nations Security Council convened in New York, while NATO officials in Brussels expressed "serious concern."

If the prediction Putin made on Chinese soil becomes reality, the world will see the first hot war between Russian and a former Soviet state, a war only 3,000 kilometers (1,875 miles) from the European capital, Brussels.

Even if temporary calm returns to the situation, on the day of the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games a conflict was forced onto the global political agenda that Americans and Russians have long fomented, and yet that neither Washington nor Moscow could have any interest in encouraging. And all of this revolves around an impoverished region about one-and-a-half times the size of Luxembourg.

But the real conflict is not as much about Tskhinvali, but about the former rivals in the Cold War. In no region have they been as hostile toward each other since the fall of the Soviet Union than they are now in the Caucasus. The South Ossetians, supported by Moscow, and the Georgians, who have received US military assistance, are bitter enemies. From the Russian standpoint, Ossetia has been an important strategic base near the Turkish and Iranian frontiers since the days of the czars. The Americans, on the other hand, are courting Georgia, which they see as a way to curb Moscow's influence in the southern Caucasus. Georgia is also an important transit country for oil being pumped from the Caspian Sea to the Turkish port of Ceyhan and a potential base for Washington efforts to encircle Tehran.

Twenty years ago, the Ossetians wouldn't have dreamed that they would ever be in the headlines. They were among the losers when once-oppressed regions received their independence after the breakup of the Soviet Union. The Ossetians were divided, with the north remaining part of Russian and the south counted, under international law, as part of now-independent Georgia since 1992. But the "Republic of South Ossetia," which is not recognized internationally, declared its independence from Tbilisi. In the early 1990s, when Georgian autocrat Zviad Gamsakhurdia attempted to crush all efforts at autonomy in South Ossetia, sending irregular troops into Tskhinvali, tens of thousands of Ossetians, who had previously numbered 160,000, fled to stay with their relatives in the Russian region of North Ossetia.
About 1,000 people died on both sides in the ensuing two-and-a-half-year war, and tens of thousands of Georgians were driven out of South Ossetia. Then former Russian President Boris Yeltsin and Gamsakhurdia's successor, former Russian Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, signed a ceasefire agreement. Although that agreement was occasionally violated, it remained largely intact until last week.

In a November 2006 referendum, 99 percent of South Ossetians voted for independence from Georgia, at a time when most of them had long held Russian passports. This enabled Russian President Medvedev to justify his military's open invasion of neighboring Georgia on Friday as an effort to "protect the lives and dignity of Russian citizens, wherever they may be."

Since Friday, the new man in Moscow's Kremlin finds himself in a delicate situation. Barely three months in office, Medvedev is already being denounced as "soft," and 36 percent of Russians still consider Putin to be the true strong man. And it is Putin, even though he is now only the prime minister, who has managed to score points in foreign policy in the past three months, not Medvedev. A victorious Saakashvili in Tskhinvali would spell Medvedev's premature political demise.

Faced with this prospect, Medvedev will continue what Putin once began. The former Kremlin chief repeatedly stressed that a "precedent" was set when the United States, Great Britain and other NATO states recognized the independence of the former Serbian province of Kosovo. It was at that point that Moscow reasoned that it could claim the same right for the South Ossetians and the Abkhazians, another group seeking independence from Georgia, and it demonstratively expanded its support for the two separatist provinces. At the same time, a speedy conquest of Tskhinvali became even less of a reality for Saakashvili.

The West never knew quite how to approach this game the Kremlin was playing, just as it was taken by surprise by Friday's escalation. Only a few days earlier, both Washington and Moscow had simultaneously announced their strong commitment to preventing war in the region. On the other hand, both the Americans and NATO had repeatedly insisted, in their dealings with the Russians, on "preserving the territorial integrity of Georgia." This essentially meant that South Ossetia and Abkhazia were, in their view, part of Saakashvili's country. Of course, they had also wisely refrained from explaining how the separatist territories were to be brought back into the fold. The conflict in the Caucasus was a sore and divisive issue within both NATO and the European Union.

While the EU's Eastern European members repeatedly called for solidarity with Tbilisi, and the Estonian foreign minister, to the dismay of his Western European counterparts, even suggested sending EU troops to the Caucasus, the French blocked any commitment to support the Georgians. The Germans chose a middle course and attempted to mediate in the embattled region, while at the same time shelving the question of the disputed territories' status.

The conflict came to the fore in early April, at the NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania. When US President Bush proposed accepting Georgia into the Western defense alliance's "Action Plan for Membership," a precursor to NATO membership, 10 member states refused to support his plan, including Germany, France and Italy. They argued that accepting the Georgians was problematic, because of the conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. What they were really saying was that they would not be willing to back Georgia if, under Article 5 of the NATO treaty, they were ever forced to defend the country as part of a joint defense effort.

This may have been sending the wrong signal to the Caucasus, because tensions increased from that point on. Moscow felt emboldened in its position and entered into quasi-official relations with the breakaway separatist provinces -- a de facto annexation as far as the Georgians were concerned.

The then Foreign Minister David Bakradze called the NATO decision a mistake and an angry Tbilisi withdrew its troops from Kosovo. It was time for Europe to finally "show that it stands by its values," Saakashvili said during a visit to Berlin, where he stressed that "what is at stake here is the whole post-Cold War security order in Europe." Russia, Saakashvili argued, is engaging in a policy of redistribution, and Georgia is only the beginning. "Tomorrow it will be Ukraine, the Baltic states and Poland," the Georgian president predicted, returning his focus to the Americans.

The Americans have been closely aligned with Saakashvili since the 40-year-old hothead's days at Columbia University in New York, especially after he assumed power in the 2003 "Rose Revolution." US presidential candidate John McCain (who would like to see Russia ousted from the Group of Eight industrialized nations, or G-8) even traveled to Tbilisi at the time and handed Saakashvili a bulletproof vest. Since then, Saakashvili has considered the Republican a "personal friend."

In recent years, the Americans have provided Georgia with more than $30 million (€19 million) in annual military assistance, including equipment and training for many of the country's soldiers. Today Saakashvili's army consists of 30,000 men, and his military budget is 30 times as large as it was during the term of former President Shevardnadze. In July, 1,000 US soldiers and 600 Georgian infantrymen participated in an exercise dubbed "Immediate Response." The official objective was to prepare for deployment in Afghanistan, but the true goal was to fight Russian volunteers who, in case of a serious conflict, would come to the aid of the separatist regimes in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

This is precisely what could happen now. On Friday evening, there were reports that the first Russian patriots were headed for South Ossetia -- at a time when the world was still puzzled over what could have prompted the Georgian president to launch his military strike.

Did he deploy his troops in the hope of receiving American support for regaining the two lost provinces before the end of US President Bush's term? And could he have miscalculated, not expecting his neighbor to the north to pull out its big guns so quickly?

The reintegration of South Ossetia and Abkhazia was Saakashvili's key campaign promise to Georgian voters. He also knows that his country can only succeed internationally by resolving its conflict with these provinces.

"It's not about Georgia anymore. It's about America, its values," the Georgian president told CNN in a live broadcast on Friday. "We are a freedom-loving nation that is right now under attack. "

But it doesn't appear that Saakashvili is entirely blameless in the matter.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,571079,00.html
JPTF 2008/08/10

‘Random House não vai editar novela sobre Maomé por temer violência‘ in Público.es, 8 de Julho de 2008

La editorial Random House retiró una novela acerca de la niña que fue esposa del profeta Mahoma, por temores de que pudiera "incitar actos de violencia".

The Jewel of Medina, la primera novela escrita por la periodista Sherry Jones, de 46 años, iba a ser publicada el 12 de agosto por Random House, una unidad de Bertelsmann AG, con una gira publictaria por ocho ciudades, comentó el jueves Jones.

La novela expone la vida de Aisha, desde su matrimonio con Mahoma - cuando tenía seis años - hasta la muerte del profeta.

"Me imaginé que mi libro sería un puente"
Jones dice que se indignó al enterarse en mayo de que la publicación sería pospuesta de manera indefinida.

"Escribí deliberada y conscientemente con respeto sobre el Islam y Mahoma (...) Me imaginé que mi libro sería un puente", lamentó la periodista.

Por la seguridad de la autora

El subeditor de Random House, Thomas Perry, señaló en un comunicado que la compañía recibió un "consejo cautelar no sólo de que la publicación de este libro podría ser ofensiva para algunos miembros de la comunidad musulmana, sino que también podría incitar a actos de violencia por parte de un segmento pequeño pero radical".

"En esta instancia decidimos, tras una larga deliberación, posponer la publicación por la seguridad de la autora, de los empleados de Random House, de libreros y de cualquier otra persona que estuviera involucrada con la distribución y seguridad de la novela", explicó Perry.

Segunda parte

Jones, que acaba de terminar la segunda parte de la novela que repasa su posterior vida de heroína, es libre de venderle su libro a cualquier otra editorial, agregó.

La decisión detonó una controversia en blogs en Internet y en círculos académicos. Algunos la compararon con casos anteriores en que descripciones del Islam fueron acogidas con violencia.

Jones, que nunca ha visitado Oriente Medio, pasó varios años estudiando la historia árabe y manifestó que la novela es una síntesis de todo lo que aprendió.

"Ellos tuvieron una gran historia de amor", aseguró la periodista respecto de Mahoma y Aisha, quien con frecuencia es mencionada como la esposa preferida de Mahoma. "Murió con su cabeza sobre el pecho de ella", dijo.
http://www.publico.es/140434/random/house/retira/novela/mahoma/temor/violencia#comentarios
JPTF 2008/08/08

‘Forte crescimento da população árabe faz soar o alarme em Israel‘ in El Pais, 6 de Agosto de 2008

El primer ministro israelí, Ehud Olmert, se va. En pocos meses dejará el Gobierno, derribado por uno de los múltiples escándalos de corrupción que acumula. Olmert se va, pero permanece su creencia de que Israel no será un Estado viable el día que los palestinos pasen a ser mayoría tanto dentro de sus fronteras, como en los territorios ocupados. Los políticos en liza para suceder a Olmert comparten la creencia de que las proyecciones demográficas, que reflejan un fuerte crecimiento de la población árabe junto a una caída del número de emigrantes judíos, dictarán las políticas que se adopten en esta zona del planeta, entre ellas la creación de un Estado palestino.

En demografía, como en casi todo, Israel es un caso único. Es un país que en 60 años ha quintuplicado su población. Cuenta hoy con algo más de siete millones de habitantes, frente a los 650.000 que vivían en 1948 cuando se fundó el Estado. El crecimiento vertiginoso ha sido posible gracias a una alta natalidad y al desembarco de tres millones de inmigrantes judíos.

El cambio que se avecina podría ser igual de rápido, sólo que esta vez contrario a los intereses del proyecto sionista, según advierten los demógrafos y empiezan a mostrar las estadísticas. Por un lado, cada vez son menos los judíos que hacen aliya, o emigran a Israel: 2007 fue el primer año desde 1989 en el que el número de emigrantes judíos no superó los 20.000. Y por otro, la población árabe, tanto dentro de las fronteras del Estado de Israel como en Gaza y Cisjordania, crece al doble de velocidad que la judía, según los datos que maneja Sergio Della Pergola, profesor de la Universidad Hebrea de Jerusalén y toda una autoridad en la materia. Esos datos dicen que mientras los judíos tienen una media de 2,7 hijos, los palestinos rozan los cuatro. "En unos 20 años, la población árabe que viva dentro de Israel alcanzará el 30% [frente al 20% actual]. Una nación con una minoría del 30% ya no es una sociedad unitaria, es binacional", dice Della Pergola.

Pero a los políticos israelíes les preocupan las estadísticas que se refieren no sólo a la evolución demográfica dentro de las fronteras del Estado de Israel, sino en los 28.000 kilómetros cuadrados que separan el Mediterráneo del río Jordán o lo que es lo mismo, la Palestina del mandato británico. "Si sumamos los habitantes de Gaza y Cisjordania al millón y medio de árabes que viven en Israel, y lo comparamos con el número de judíos israelíes, la diferencia resultante es mínima. Pero si tenemos en cuenta lo rápido que crece la población árabe, pronto serán más", añade Della Pergola.

Son esos números los que han hecho saltar todas las alarmas entre la clase política, a izquierda y a derecha, y que ha llevado a muchos, incluido Olmert, a concebir la creación de un Estado palestino no como una dádiva, sino como el salvavidas del proyecto sionista. Porque sostiene Olmert que el día en que el número de árabes supere al de judíos, la existencia misma de Israel estará en peligro. "Si llega el día en que la solución de dos Estados

[uno israelí y uno palestino] fracasa, y nos vemos obligados a hacer frente a una lucha por la igualdad de derechos al estilo surafricano, el día que eso ocurra el Estado de Israel estará acabado", sostuvo Olmert en Washington tras la conferencia de Annapolis que debe desembocar en la creación de un Estado palestino. Yossi Beilin, del izquierdista Meretz, comparte con Olmert esa visión. "Una minoría de judíos dominando a una mayoría palestina, sería como el régimen surafricano. El mundo no lo toleraría".

Los aspirantes a la sucesión de Olmert analizan también el conflicto de Oriente Próximo desde el prisma demográfico, aunque ofrecen muy distintas soluciones. "Para los tres [Tzipi Livni, Benjamín Netanyahu y Shaul Mofaz] constituye una cuestión crucial", asegura Arnon Soffer, el profeta de "la amenaza demográfica árabe", catedrático de Geoestrategia de la Universidad de Haifa. Los tres políticos han desfilado por sus aulas y se han dejado empapar por sus predicciones, indica Soffer.

Netanyahu, al frente del derechista Likud y en cabeza según algunas encuestas, todavía le llama para consultarle sobre el tema, según el catedrático. A Netanyahu, al revés que a Livni o a Olmert, la preocupación demográfica no le lleva a defender la necesidad de la creación de un Estado palestino lo antes posible. Al contrario, fuentes próximas al candidato conservador explican que "a pesar de considerar la demografía una cuestión crítica, considera imposible alcanzar un acuerdo con los palestinos en las actuales circunstancias, con Hamás en el poder en Gaza". Pero barrunta medidas para evitar que los árabes israelíes diluyan la naturaleza judía de su país.

Pero si buena parte de la clase política israelí tiene tanta urgencia por un acuerdo que conduzca a la creación de un Estado palestino, o por fijar al menos unas fronteras definitivas, ¿por qué los hechos sobre el terreno, como la expansión de asentamientos, apuntan en dirección contraria? Porque como dice Calev Ben-Dor, analista de Reut, un think tank de Tel Aviv, una cosa es querer que exista un Estado palestino "y otra que haya consenso en qué fronteras debe tener, qué hacer con Jerusalén o con los refugiados". Y remata Beilin: "Todos sabemos que el statu quo es insostenible y que hay que avanzar hacia la partición, la cuestión es si tenemos líderes dispuestos a hacerlo".
El primer ministro israelí, Ehud Olmert, se va. En pocos meses dejará el Gobierno, derribado por uno de los múltiples escándalos de corrupción que acumula. Olmert se va, pero permanece su creencia de que Israel no será un Estado viable el día que los palestinos pasen a ser mayoría tanto dentro de sus fronteras, como en los territorios ocupados. Los políticos en liza para suceder a Olmert comparten la creencia de que las proyecciones demográficas, que reflejan un fuerte crecimiento de la población árabe junto a una caída del número de emigrantes judíos, dictarán las políticas que se adopten en esta zona del planeta, entre ellas la creación de un Estado palestino.

En demografía, como en casi todo, Israel es un caso único. Es un país que en 60 años ha quintuplicado su población. Cuenta hoy con algo más de siete millones de habitantes, frente a los 650.000 que vivían en 1948 cuando se fundó el Estado. El crecimiento vertiginoso ha sido posible gracias a una alta natalidad y al desembarco de tres millones de inmigrantes judíos.

El cambio que se avecina podría ser igual de rápido, sólo que esta vez contrario a los intereses del proyecto sionista, según advierten los demógrafos y empiezan a mostrar las estadísticas. Por un lado, cada vez son menos los judíos que hacen aliya, o emigran a Israel: 2007 fue el primer año desde 1989 en el que el número de emigrantes judíos no superó los 20.000. Y por otro, la población árabe, tanto dentro de las fronteras del Estado de Israel como en Gaza y Cisjordania, crece al doble de velocidad que la judía, según los datos que maneja Sergio Della Pergola, profesor de la Universidad Hebrea de Jerusalén y toda una autoridad en la materia. Esos datos dicen que mientras los judíos tienen una media de 2,7 hijos, los palestinos rozan los cuatro. "En unos 20 años, la población árabe que viva dentro de Israel alcanzará el 30%

[frente al 20% actual]. Una nación con una minoría del 30% ya no es una sociedad unitaria, es binacional", dice Della Pergola.

Pero a los políticos israelíes les preocupan las estadísticas que se refieren no sólo a la evolución demográfica dentro de las fronteras del Estado de Israel, sino en los 28.000 kilómetros cuadrados que separan el Mediterráneo del río Jordán o lo que es lo mismo, la Palestina del mandato británico. "Si sumamos los habitantes de Gaza y Cisjordania al millón y medio de árabes que viven en Israel, y lo comparamos con el número de judíos israelíes, la diferencia resultante es mínima. Pero si tenemos en cuenta lo rápido que crece la población árabe, pronto serán más", añade Della Pergola.

Son esos números los que han hecho saltar todas las alarmas entre la clase política, a izquierda y a derecha, y que ha llevado a muchos, incluido Olmert, a concebir la creación de un Estado palestino no como una dádiva, sino como el salvavidas del proyecto sionista. Porque sostiene Olmert que el día en que el número de árabes supere al de judíos, la existencia misma de Israel estará en peligro. "Si llega el día en que la solución de dos Estados

[uno israelí y uno palestino] fracasa, y nos vemos obligados a hacer frente a una lucha por la igualdad de derechos al estilo surafricano, el día que eso ocurra el Estado de Israel estará acabado", sostuvo Olmert en Washington tras la conferencia de Annapolis que debe desembocar en la creación de un Estado palestino. Yossi Beilin, del izquierdista Meretz, comparte con Olmert esa visión. "Una minoría de judíos dominando a una mayoría palestina, sería como el régimen surafricano. El mundo no lo toleraría".

Los aspirantes a la sucesión de Olmert analizan también el conflicto de Oriente Próximo desde el prisma demográfico, aunque ofrecen muy distintas soluciones. "Para los tres [Tzipi Livni, Benjamín Netanyahu y Shaul Mofaz] constituye una cuestión crucial", asegura Arnon Soffer, el profeta de "la amenaza demográfica árabe", catedrático de Geoestrategia de la Universidad de Haifa. Los tres políticos han desfilado por sus aulas y se han dejado empapar por sus predicciones, indica Soffer.

Netanyahu, al frente del derechista Likud y en cabeza según algunas encuestas, todavía le llama para consultarle sobre el tema, según el catedrático. A Netanyahu, al revés que a Livni o a Olmert, la preocupación demográfica no le lleva a defender la necesidad de la creación de un Estado palestino lo antes posible. Al contrario, fuentes próximas al candidato conservador explican que "a pesar de considerar la demografía una cuestión crítica, considera imposible alcanzar un acuerdo con los palestinos en las actuales circunstancias, con Hamás en el poder en Gaza". Pero barrunta medidas para evitar que los árabes israelíes diluyan la naturaleza judía de su país.

Pero si buena parte de la clase política israelí tiene tanta urgencia por un acuerdo que conduzca a la creación de un Estado palestino, o por fijar al menos unas fronteras definitivas, ¿por qué los hechos sobre el terreno, como la expansión de asentamientos, apuntan en dirección contraria? Porque como dice Calev Ben-Dor, analista de Reut, un think tank de Tel Aviv, una cosa es querer que exista un Estado palestino "y otra que haya consenso en qué fronteras debe tener, qué hacer con Jerusalén o con los refugiados". Y remata Beilin: "Todos sabemos que el statu quo es insostenible y que hay que avanzar hacia la partición, la cuestión es si tenemos líderes dispuestos a hacerlo".
http://www.elpais.com/articulo/internacional/fuerte/crecimiento/poblacion/arabe/hace/saltar/alarma/Israel/elpepuint/20080806elpepiint_7/Tes
JPTF 2008/08/06

‘A deslocação sinistra da Al-Qaeda para o Norte de Áfica‘ in Times, 30 de Julho de 2007

por Amir Taheri

On Monday the Iraqi Army launched a large-scale offensive in Diyala north of Baghdad to wipe out al-Qaeda's last remaining hideouts in the country. Since the tide of the war turned last winter, thousands of al-Qaeda jihadists have fled Iraq.

Some returned home and resumed normal life. Others, looking for new places to pursue their holy war against “Zionists and Crusaders”, ended up in Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Thailand and helped to reignite the fires of jihad.

However, North Africa appears to have attracted the largest number of returnees. According to the buzz in jihadist circles, confirmed by officials and analysts, a new arc of terror is taking shape in Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Mauritania - the five countries of the so-called Arab Maghreb in North Africa.

Algeria was first struck by Islamic terror in 1986. Seven years of violence were triggered by the Front for the Islamic Salvation (FIS) in 1992, but by 2000, the Army and groups of armed citizens had crushed the FIS and its more violent offshoots. In 2006 Algerian jihadists announced a merger with al-Qaeda to create al-Qaeda in the Maghreb. Since then they have received huge sums of money and quantities of arms from al-Qaeda sympathisers in the Gulf states, enabling them to make a timid - though no less deadly - comeback.

By all accounts, Algeria may be facing a new round of the War against Terror as it faces mounting political and economic problems. In the first phase of the war, Algerian jihadists never used suicide tactics. In recent months they have carried out at least four such operations, indicating total adoption of al-Qaeda tactics. They have also tried to kill President Bouteflika on at least four occasions. The latest plot was uncovered last week, 24 hours before a provincial visit.

Last month the President invited Ahmed Ouyahya, the architect of Algeria's victory against the terrorists, to assume the premiership again. His return acknowledges that the policy of cuddling the Islamists, preached by the former Premier, Abdulaziz Belkhadem, has failed.

While Algeria is well prepared to face a resurgence of jihadism, Morocco, long recognised as one of the most moderate and peaceful countries in the Muslim world, may prove more vulnerable.

Visitors returning after three or four years would be struck by changes in the urban scenery. The number of al-Qaeda-style beards has grown along with the number of neo-hijab headscarves designed to identify women as partisans of jihad. Women in jeans or mini-skirts have all but disappeared from public, along with all females who favoured the colourful dress of the Berber. One sees countless women draped in black that remind one of Hitchcock's The Birds. Jihadist propaganda is sold on the streets in stalls provided by the municipal authorities.

Fewer and fewer places serve alcohol, and parts of the main cities are becoming no-go areas for foreign tourists. Over the past year, almost 1,000 people have been arrested in connection with terrorism after attacks that claimed at least 60 lives.

Few of the jihadists come from the poor and illiterate slum-dwelling masses. Most of those arrested are graduates, often from well-to-do middle-class families.

More disturbing is that dozens were army, police and security officers. According to a senior official, the jihadists used the Army to obtain military training and the Government had to abolish the conscription system that obliged all male Moroccans to join the Army for two years. The Government has also banned military personnel from attending mosque congregations.

Moroccan Islamists use a more sophisticated strategy than their Algerian counterparts. While preparing for armed action and terrorism, they have also created a range of charities offering services that the Government fails to provide, such as interest-free loans, medical care, scholarships, support for newlyweds and subsidised travel to Mecca. All are handled under the umbrella of the Justice and Benevolence foundation, an old branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Moroccan Islamism has its own political facade, the Justice and Development Party ( PJD) copied from the Turkish model known as the AKP. Hundreds of PJD cadres have been trained in Turkey.

In imitation of the AKP, the PJD has participated in elections and presented itself as an Islamic version of European Christian Democratic parties. It has also worked hard to reassure the US. Its leaders have been invited to Washington and its young cadres employed in Congress. Last year when King Muhammad VI wanted to ban the PJD, the US intervened to dissuade him. Last week the king published a cable of congratulations that he had sent the party for the success of its annual conference. But despite the huge sums it spent in last year's election, the PJD ended up with only 47 of the 325 seats in parliament.

Moroccan Islamism operates through what looks like a set of Russian Matryushka dolls. The smallest and the deadliest, hidden in the others, is the Group of Islamic Moroccan Combatants (GICM), an al-Qaeda affiliate and architect of the Madrid terror attack that claimed 191 lives. Another doll is the contraband network that purchases most of Morocco's production of hashish and smuggles it into Europe. The profits are used to finance jihad.

According to Moroccan officials, an unknown number of jihadists from the Gulf states have settled in the North African kingdom over the past decade or so, creating sleeper cells. “We know they are there,” a senior official told me. “Many have married Moroccans and produced offspring. Thanks to their wealth, they have secured a reputation in the communities they settled in. But they constitute an army of moles, a danger to us and to Europe across the Mediterranean.” While al-Qaeda is being crushed in Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, it is building a new life in North Africa without attracting attention from the powers it regards as its ultimate enemies.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article4425820.ece
JPTF 2008/07/30

‘Cerca de três quartos do irlandeses opõem-se a novo referendo‘ in EU Observer, 28 de Julho de 2008

Almost three quarters of Irish voters are opposed to the idea of a second vote on the EU's Lisbon treaty, according to a fresh poll.

The survey, revealed on Sunday (27 July), was commissioned by the London-based eurosceptic think-tank Open Europe, and carried out among 1,000 respondents between 21 and 23 July, shortly after a visit by French president Nicolas Sarkozy in Dublin.

The leader of France, which currently hold the EU's six-month rotating presidency, last week proposed to the Irish prime minister, Brian Cowen, that a second referendum on the Lisbon Treaty be held on the same day as elections to the European Parliament next June.

But the new poll signals that there is currently not much appetite among Irish voters to be asked about the same document again: 71 percent of respondents said they were against the move, compared to 24 percent who were in favour.

The survey also suggested that in the case of a repeated referendum, even more people would vote No than the first time around: 62 percent of those polled now said they would reject the treaty while just 38 percent would vote Yes.

On 12 June, 53.4 percent of the Irish voted against the Treaty and 46.6 percent in favour, on a 53.1 percent turnout.

Of those who had given their blessings to the EU's reform treaty back then, 17 percent now said they would vote against it, while six percent of former opponents would now vote in favour of the document.

The negative sentiment has also significantly grown among the citizens who did not take part in the first referendum: 57 percent would vote No, while 26 percent would vote Yes.

Juncker backs EU-wide message to the Irish

Since taking on his role as a temporary EU president, French president Sarkozy has been suggesting he would press hard for a solution to the current stalemate over the Lisbon treaty by the end of this year.

On his visit last week to Dublin however, he admitted the solution may not be found during his country's EU presidency while also denying that Ireland must vote again.

Luxembourg's prime minister Jean Claude Juncker - who had previously faced a similar situation when French and Dutch voters rejected a European Constitution during his country's presidency in 2005 - has argued the Irish should vote again after they receive a new message of guarantees on national concerns.

"A unanimous decision from the European Council [representing 27 member states] promising not to interfere with the neutrality, abortion laws and taxation of Ireland" could "make the treaty comprehensible to the Irish," Mr Juncker said in an interview for Austrian paper Kurier, published on Saturday (26 July).

Meanwhile, the Irish government has initiated high-level contact with the two main opposition parties - Fine Gael and Labour - to discuss the formation of an all-party body on the Lisbon treaty, according to the Irish Times.

The new body would gather various opinions on how Dublin should proceed concerning the June referendum defeat, with the findings to be presented to other EU leaders at their top-level gatherings under the French helm in October and December.

Ratification map

Twenty out of 27 EU states have definitively ratified the EU treaty. Spain, Germany and Poland's parliaments have approved the text but the respective heads of state must still sign off on the document, with the German constitutional court still considering a legal challenge.

The Italian lower house is expected to back the text this week. Swedish MPs are set to pass the treaty without serious opposition when they begin their autumn session in September. And Czech deputies are planning to hold a vote in autumn, after the verdict of the country's constitutional court on a legal appeal.

The Lisbon treaty aims to reform the EU's decision-making and institutions as agreed in a basic package of changes already included in the European Constitution adopted in 2004.

JPTF 2008/07/08

‘Acção militar contra o Irão não é opção, dizem os ministros dos negócios estrangeiros da UE‘ in EU Observer, 22 de Julho de 2008

European Union foreign ministers on Tuesday (22 July) called for further diplomacy in dealing with concerns over Iran's nuclear programme and ruled out a military strike as an option.

UK foreign secretary David Miliband said following the meeting: "We are 100 percent focussed on a diplomatic resolution to the Iranian issue."

The EU's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, said there was "no other route" apart from diplomacy.

"The position of the European Union is clear," said Mr Solana according to the AP. "We want to find a diplomatic solution to this, in particular to clarify to the fullest the nature of their nuclear programme."

Mr Solana outlined for the ministers the results of a meeting on Saturday between Iran and diplomats from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, China, and Russia, where Tehran was encouraged to halt its uranium enrichment in return for a package of economic and political carrots.

With the US for the first time sending a high-ranking diplomat to the meeting, expectations were high that better relations between the two main antagonists would bear fruit. However, Iran maintained that its nuclear programme had only peaceful purposes.

American secretary of state Condoleeza Rice described Iran's negotiations following the meeting as "not serious."

Mr Solana on Tuesday however said he hoped to have "to have clear and simple answers" from Tehran within two weeks' time.

The six nations and the EU have given Iran a fortnight to reply to the latest offer. If the response is unsatisfactory, further sanctions could be considered.

"The offer that has been made to Iran on the one hand...and the sanctions on the other, if they refuse to engage and reply, is exactly the right approach," said Mr Miliband following the EU ministers' meeting.
http://euobserver.com/9/26526?print=1
JPTF 2008/07/23

Bush e Ahmadinejad num ‘amor impossível‘, cartoon publicado in Telegraph, 18 de julho de 2008

A Sharia no Iémene: menina de 10 anos divorcia-se após maus tratos pelo marido, in CNN 16 de Julho de 2008

Nujood Ali is 10 years old, but she already has been married and divorced. It was an arranged marriage in which she said a husband three times her age routinely beat and raped her.

"When I got married, I was afraid. I didn't want to leave home. I wanted to stay with my brothers and sisters and my mom and dad," she said, speaking to CNN with the permission of her parents.

"I didn't want to sleep with him, but he forced me to. He hit me, insulted me."

As she plays marbles with her brothers and sister, Nujood is a portrait of innocence, with a shy smile and a playful nature.

But what happened evokes anger and shame. Asked if what she went through was torture, she nods quietly. Watch Nujod describe what happened »

Nujood's parents married her off in February to a man in his 30s whom she describes as old and ugly.

Her parents said they thought they were putting her in the care of her husband's family, but Nujood said he would often beat her into submission.

Nujood then turned to her family for mercy.

"When I heard, my heart burned for her; he wasn't supposed to sleep with her," said Nujood's mother, who asked not to be identified.

But, initially, she also told her daughter she could not help her -- that she belonged to her husband now.

Nujood's father, Ali Mohammed Ahdal, said he is angry about what happened to his daughter. "He was a criminal, a criminal. He did hateful things to her," he said. "He didn't keep his promise to me that he wouldn't go near her until she was 20."

When contacted by CNN, the girl's former husband declined to comment.

Nujood's parents, like so many others in Yemen, struck a social bargain when they decided to have their daughter wed. More than half of all Yemeni girls are married off before the age of 18, according to Oxfam International, a nonprofit group that fights global poverty and injustice.

Many times girls are forced to marry older men, including some who already have at least one wife, Oxfam said. According to tribal customs, the girls are no longer viewed as a financial or moral burden to their parents.

"There is always a fear that the girl will do something to dishonor the family: She will run away with a guy, she will have relations with a boy. So this is always the phobia that the families have," said Suha Bashren of Oxfam International.

Bashren calls the tradition of child brides in Yemen a national crisis. She works with young girls to protect them from early marriage, abuse and one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world.

The Yemeni government is holding legal and religious workshops to try to deal with the issue of early marriage. But experts say marrying off a young daughter is generally still seen as the right thing to do.

"A lot of people in the public don't think that this is wrong or that what happened to her was abuse," Bashren said.

In Yemen, there is nothing new or extraordinary about Nujood's story because children have been married off for generations. The country's legal minimum age for marriage was 15 till a decade ago, when the law was changed to allow for children even younger to be wed.

But what is most unusual is that this young girl took such an intensely private dispute and went public with it.

Nujood said she made up her mind to escape from her husband, describing how on a visit to her parents' home she broke free and traveled to the central courthouse across town and demanded to speak to a judge.

"He asked me, 'What do you want?' And I said, 'I want a divorce.' And he said, 'You're married?' And I said, 'Yes,'" she recalled.

What unfolded in those few days in April gripped the country on the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula.

Nujood got her divorce, but based on the principles of Islamic Sharia law, her husband was compensated, not prosecuted. Nujood was ordered to pay him more than $200. The human rights lawyer who represented her donated the money.

But for this determined spirit, it was still a sweet victory.

"I did this so that people would listen and think about not marrying their daughters off as young as I was," she said with a shy smile.

Now back at the family home, she said she won't go outside to play -- that all the attention bothers her. Some still condemn the young girl for speaking out, believing that she shouldn't have challenged convention.

Human rights advocates said it will take more than a generation if this practice is to change in Yemen for other children.

"These girls are living in a misery that no one is talking about," Oxfam's Bashren said.
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/07/15/yemen.childbride/index.html
JPTF 2008/07/16

Irão avisa sobre a sua resposta: ‘Atacaremos a marinha americana e Israel ficará a arder‘ in Guardian, 9 de Julho de 2008

Iran kept up a barrage of conflicting messages over its nuclear programme yesterday, threatening to strike the US navy and "set Israel alight" if it was attacked.

But Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president, dismissed the threat of war as a "silly joke", even as he again rejected the idea that Iran halt uranium enrichment - the key demand of the international community repeated at the G8 summit in Japan.

The strongest language came from Ali Shirazi, an aide to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has ultimate say over the most sensitive issues.

"The first US shot against Iran would set the United States' vital interests in the world on fire," said Shirazi, a cleric who is Khamenei's representative to the elite Revolutionary Guards naval forces.

"Tel Aviv and the US fleet in the Persian Gulf would be the targets that would be set on fire in Iran's crushing response," he said, the Fars news agency reported.

Analysts said that while Iran has often warned of a crushing response to any aggression, specific warnings of this kind are unusual. The phrase echoed threats made by Saddam Hussein against Israel on the eve of the 1991 Gulf war.

It was the latest in a series of now almost daily exchanges over Iran's nuclear programme including signals from Israel and the US that they would not tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran. Washington and its allies accuse Iran of secretly working to develop a nuclear weapon. Tehran says it has no military ambitions and is simply seeking to generate power for civil purposes.

Shirazi's remarks came as Revolutionary Guard missile and naval units began war games - codenamed The Great Prophet III - aimed at "improving the combat capability" of the forces. The Guards are responsible for Iran's most significant ballistic missiles including the Shahab-3, whose range puts Israel and US bases in the Gulf within reach.

Ahmadinejad told a news conference in Malaysia that he hoped to see a fresh approach by the next US administration to make up for the "domineering hegemony" of George Bush. "I assure you that there won't be any war in the future," he said, predicting that Israel's "regime" would collapse without the need for Iranian action. He dismissed the idea of war as "a silly joke." The US was no longer in a position to attack Iran. "In the US, his wise scholars will not allow Mr Bush to commit political suicide and of course the economic, political and military situation will not allow Mr Bush to do that," he said.

Ahmadinejad also told the leaders of the G8 that their policies would "accelerate them along the road to a precipice" and reiterated he would not accept demands to stop enriching uranium, which can be used as fuel for nuclear power plants and to make warheads if refined to a higher degree.

Despite these comments, diplomacy is still being actively pursued. Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy chief, is to return to Iran for talks with its top nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, before the end of the month, Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, told reporters at the G8 summit.

Solana presented Iran with a revised package of economic, technical and political incentives last month on behalf of the five permanent members of the UN security council, plus Germany.

Crucially, the package includes an offer of assistance with civilian nuclear technology that has been widely publicised in the Iranian media and appears to have helped stimulate a lively internal debate among the country's leaders. Solana described Tehran's weekend response as a "complicated and difficult letter that must be thoroughly analysed".

French officials said the Iranian document failed to mention halting uranium enrichment or a reciprocal "freeze for freeze" which would halt sanctions against Iran. "There is no give on the substance whatsoever," said one diplomat.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/09/iran.nuclear
JPTF 2008/07/08

‘Juiz britânico diz que a Sharia islâmica deve ser usada no Reino Unido‘ in Daily Mail, 3 de Julho de 2008

The most senior judge in England tonight gave his blessing to the use of sharia law to resolve disputes among Muslims.

Lord Chief Justice Lord Phillips said that Islamic legal principles could be employed to deal with family and marital arguments and to regulate finance.

He declared: 'It is possible in this country for those who are entering into a contractual agreement to agree that the agreement shall be governed by a law other than English law.'

In his speech in an East London mosque Lord Phillips signalled approval of sharia principles as a means of settling disputes so long as no punishments that conflict with the established law are involved, and as long as divorces are made to comply with the civil law.

He signal of approval for voluntary sharia tribunals brought protests from lawyers who fear that in some Islamic communities women do not have a full and equal say and that they could be disadvantaged in supposedly voluntary sharia arrangements.

Barrister and human rights specialist John Cooper said: 'There should be one law by which everyone is held to account.

'I have considerable concerns that well-crafted and carefully designed laws in this country, drawn up to protect both parties including the weak and vulnerable party in matrimonial break-ups could be compromised.

'I have concerns over a system of law that may cause one party to be disadvantaged.'

Resolution, the organisation of family law solicitors, said people should govern their lives in accordance with religious principles 'provided that those beliefs and traditions do not contradict the fundamental principle of equality on which this country’s laws are based.'

Spokesman Teresa Richardson said religious law 'must be used to find solutions which are consistent with the basic principles of family law in this country and people must always have redress to the civil courts where they so choose.'

Robert Whelan of the Civitas think tank said: 'Everybody is governed by English law and it is not possible to sign away your legal rights.

'That is why guarantees on consumer products always have to tell customers their statutory rights are not affected.

'There is not much doubt that in traditional Islamic communities women do not enjoy the freedoms that women in this country have had for 100 years or more.

'It is very easy to put pressure on young women in a male-dominated household.

'The English law stands to protect people from intimidation in such circumstances.'

Tories warned that principles of equality under the law must be respected.

Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve said: 'The Lord Chief Justice correctly points out that there is a tradition in this country of allowing mediation to take place subject to other legal principles as long as it is voluntary and not subject to coercion, and with outcomes which are not fundamentally incompatible with our own legal principles.

'Any that are incompatible cannot and should never be enforceable.

'One of the key aspects of our free society in Britain is equality under our own laws. It is important that this should be understood and respected by all in our country.'

A spokesman for Jack Straw's Ministry of Justice said: 'English law, which is based on our shared values of equality and a respect for the rule of law, takes precedence over any other legal system.

'The Government has no intention of changing this position. Alongside this it is possible for other dispute resolution systems on matters of civil law to be accommodated, so long as they are not in conflict with the laws of England and Wales and are abided by on a voluntary basis

But his remarks - which give the green light from the highest judicial office to the informal sharia courts already operated by numerous mosques - provoked a storm of criticism.

Lawyers warned that family and marital disputes settled by sharia could leave women or vulnerable people at a serious disadvantage.

Tories said that equality under the law must be respected and warned that outcomes incompatible with English law should never be enforceable.

Lord Phillips spoke five months after Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams surrounded himself in controversy with a lecture in which he suggested Islamic law could have official status and that it could govern marital law, financial transactions and arbitration in disputes.

The Lord Chief Justice said today of the Archbishop's views: 'It was not very radical to advocate embracing sharia law in the context of family disputes.'

He added that there was 'widespread misunderstanding as to the nature of sharia law'.

Lord Phillips said: 'Those who in this country are in dispute as to their respective rights are free to subject that dispute to the mediation of a chosen person, or to agree that the dispute shall be resolved by a chosen arbitrator.

'There is no reason why principles of sharia law or any other religious code should not be the basis for mediation or other forms of alternative dispute resolution.'

Lord Phillips said that any sanctions must be 'drawn from the laws of England and Wales'. Severe physical punishment - he mentioned stoning, flogging or the cutting off of hands - was 'out of the question' in Britain, he said.

'So far as aspects of matrimonial law are concerned, there is a limited precedent for English law to recognise aspects of religious laws, although when it comes to divorce this can only be effected in accordance with the civil law of this country,' he said.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1031611/Sharia-law-SHOULD-used-Britain-says-UKs-judge.html
JPTF 2008/07/03

‘Presidentes da Alemanha e da Polónia recusam assinatura do Tratado de Lisboa‘ in Der Spiegel, 1 de Julho de 2008

Attempts to reform the European Union's institutions, already in disarray following Ireland's rejection of the Lisbon Treaty last month, have suffered fresh blows in the last two days with the refusal of the presidents of Germany and Poland to complete the ratification of the treaty.

The presidents of Germany and Poland have said they won't sign the European Union reform treaty for the time being in a new setback following Ireland's rejection of the accord in a referendum last month.
German President Horst Köhler's office announced on Monday he would not sign the ratification documents until the Federal Constitutional Court, the country's highest court, rules on legal challenges to the treaty, which aims to streamline the bloc's institutions following the 2004 accession of central and eastern European countries.

Köhler's role is largely ceremonial but he still has the power to halt legislation. The court had asked him not to sign the treaty, approved by both houses of the German parliament earlier this year, pending its hearing of two challenges brought by the Left Party and by a politician from Bavaria's conservative Christian Social Union party. There is no date set for a ruling by the court, but it may not come until next year.

Polish President Lech Kaczynski followed suit on Tuesday by saying he will not sign the treaty either for the time being because of Ireland's rejection.

Kaczynski told Polish newspaper Dziennik that it was "pointless" to sign the treaty even though Poland's parliament had ratified it in April.

Asked by the newspaper if he would sign the treaty, Kaczynski said: "This is now pointless. But it is difficult to say how this whole thing will end."

The Lisbon Treaty is intended to ensure that the EU's institutions remain workable following the accession of 12 mainly Central and Eastern European countries to the bloc since 2004 which enlarged it to 27 member countries.

It has to be ratified by all member states but Ireland's rejection of it has thrown the reform plans into disarray. Irish voters rejected the treaty for reasons ranging from the fact the text is incomprehensible to concerns it would bring higher taxes or legalized abortion.

"The Bloc Will Go on Functioning"

Kaczynski likened the situation of the EU to that in 2005 when French and Dutch voters rejected a more ambitious EU constitution, which was later revamped into the Lisbon Treaty.

"The bloc functioned, functions and will go on functioning. It's not perfect but such a complicated structure cannot be perfect," he said.

The fresh setback comes as France takes over the rotating six-month presidency of the European Union from Slovenia on Tuesday with French President Nicholas Sarkozy pledging to restore public faith in the EU and get the treaty, which he helped to broker last year, back on track.

In a live televised interview on Monday, Sarkozy said he would address voters' concerns by pushing for tax breaks on products such as gasoline.

"Things are not going well. Things are not going well at all," Sarkozy told France 3 television. "Europe worries people and, worse than that, I find, little by little our fellow citizens are asking themselves if after all the national level isn't better equipped to protect them than the European level," he said, adding that was not the case.

"We have to think about how we can make this Europe a means to protect Europeans in their daily lives ... We must not be afraid of this word -- 'protection'," he said, adding that citizens wanted to be shielded from the risks of globalization.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,druck-563127,00.html
JPTF 2008/07/01

‘As sanções económicas funcionam com o Irão?‘ in Der Spiegel, 30 de Junho de 2008

The international community is hoping that new sanctions on Iran will turn the country away from its nuclear program. An economic embargo is, perhaps, the last chance for peace. But can it work?

On the one hand, formulaic diplomacy is being strictly adhered to. His Excellency, the High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy of the European Union, Dr. Javier Solana, recently presented to his Iranian counterpart, Manucher Mottaki, the latest offer from the so-called group of six nations, consisting of the three European powers Great Britain, France and Germany, as well as China, Russia and the United States. The goal is international cooperation in determining the true purpose of Iran's nuclear program.

In the letter accompanying the offer, the alliance expressed its deepest respect for Iran as "one of the oldest civilizations in the world." The last of the signatures on the third page belonged to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Mottaki wanted to know whether it is her original signature, and not from a signature machine or a photocopy. Of course Ms. Rice personally signed the document,Solana assured him. Mottaki gathered together his papers, called the assembled journalists and photographers into the room and began the transfer ceremony with apparent pride, as if to say: Here it is, mail from the Great Satan, and signed in person, no less.

On the other hand, the threats are growing increasingly frequent. Just 10 days ago, 100 Israeli planes flew 1,400 kilometers (870 miles) out over the Mediterranean as part of a military exercise. In the flight, they covered exactly the same distance they would have to cover in an attack on the Iranian uranium enrichment plant in Natanz.

Not long later, Israeli experts in the know began commenting publicly on potential links between the secretive nuclear programs of Iran, Syria and North Korea. The facility the Israelis bombed in Syria last September, they said, was believed to have been producing plutonium and passing the weapons-grade material on to Tehran. They further said there is a discrepancy between the amount of plutonium North Korea claims to have produced and the amount the country was in fact capable of producing -- and that the difference could suggest that some of the plutonium was going to Iran. The conclusion? Iran could very well be capable of making a bomb by 2010.

The message these experts have sought to convey is that unless this development is stopped, it won't be long before the next war breaks out in the Middle East.

But what is the alternative? Is there any chance that the talks Solana plans to conduct on behalf of the group of six will result in a breakthrough? Will international sanctions produce the desired effect? The government in Tehran is already paying a high price for its refusal to stop enriching uranium and negotiate [...]

Ver artigo completo na revista Der Spiegel.
JPTF 30/06/2008

Obama versus McCain: ‘That´s ageism‘ in Geopolitics Central