Tagen-Anzeiger, Dienstag, 29. April 2003
MOSKAU - Das erste Treffen zwischen dem russischen Präsidenten Wladimir Putin und dem britischen Premierminister Tony Blair seit Beginn des Irak-Krieges hat eine leichte Annäherung der Positionen gebracht.
Sowohl Putin als auch Blair sprachen sich für eine Beteiligung der UNO an den Ereignissen im Irak aus, wenn auch mit unterschiedlichen Vorstellungen. Putin bekräftigte die Forderung nach einer Führungsrolle der UNO bei der Nachkriegsordnung in Irak, während Blair von einer engen Zusammenarbeit der UNO und der Alliierten sprach.
Der von Blair vorgeschlagene Drei-Stufen-Plan sieht in der ersten Etappe den Wiederaufbau im Lande, die Stabilisierung der Lage und humanitäre Hilfe vor. Danach könne eine Interims-Regierung eingesetzt werden, ehe in der dritten Stufe eine neue Verfassung verabschiedet und eine neue Führung in Bagdad eingesetzt würde.
Putin wertete diesen Vorschlag als "für Russland annehmbar". Er stelle eine gute Grundlage für eine Annäherung der Positionen dar. Er betonte, dass die UNO unbedingt an einer Friedenslösung im Irak beteiligt werden müsste.
Der russische Staatschef forderte eine schnelle Rückkehr der UNO-Waffeninspektoren. Zugleich schlug er vor, die Arbeit der unabhängigen Inspektoren von UNO-Blauhelmen abzusichern.
Gesprächsbereitschaft deutete Putin bei einer Entschuldung des Iraks an, doch müsse diese Frage im Pariser Klub der staatlichen Gläubiger gelöst werden. Die gestürzte irakische Führung von Saddam Hussein schuldet Russland etwa acht Milliarden US-Dollar.
Blair bekräftigte, dass er wie geplant Ende Mai zu dem 300-jährigen Stadtjubiläum von St. Petersburg kommen werde. Dort werden die Befürworter des Irak-Krieges, Bush und Blair, genauso erwartet wie die Kriegsgegner mit dem deutschen Bundeskanzler Gerhard Schröder und dem französischen Staatschef Jacques Chirac. (sda)
ms: das dürfte dann nach dem Zürcher Sechseläuten wirklich ein heisser Sommer werden....
zur gleichen Zeit für unsere Deutschen Freunde auf Yahoo news... scheint der Polit Kachelmann die heisse Zeit oder den Sommer schon schneller herbeizureden....
Dienstag 29. April 2003, 19:10 Uhr
Putin geht auf Konfrontationskurs zu USA
Moskau (AP) Der russische Präsident Wladimir Putin hat sich am Dienstag vom britischen Premierminister Tony Blair nicht von seinem Konfrontationskurs zu den USA abbringen lassen: Vor der von den USA geforderten Aufhebung der UN-Sanktionen gegen Irak müsse der Beweis über die Verschrottung der irakischen Massenvernichtungswaffen her, forderte Putin nach einem zweistündigen Gespräch mit Blair in Moskau. Zudem könne der nachhaltige Wiederaufbau Iraks nur mit einer starken Rolle der UN gelingen.
ms: Welches Schweinderl hättens denn gern? Was soll man nun davon wieder halten? Immer mehr verkommen die news zu einer Sache des Standpunktes und der Zielsetzungen. Die Wahrheit bleibt dabei als erstes auf der Strecke.......Entweder dem Tages-Anzeiger Jurnalisten wurde Honig um den Mund geschmiert oder der Yahoo Schreiberling gehört zur Zunft der Neo-Konservativen Amerikaner.
By Matthew Brophy
Minnesota Daily
September 27, 2002
Freedom is Slavery; War is Peace; Ignorance is Strength. This is the motto heralded by Big Brother in George Orwell’s book, “1984.” This motto might as well be from the George W. Bush administration. Since the tragic Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration has incrementally been seizing power, desecrating the U.S. Constitution and subordinating our civil rights in the name of national security.
We are told that to protect freedom, we must forfeit our liberties. To have peace, we must fight a prolonged war. To be strong, we must be kept ignorant of our government’s actions. In short, to be good Americans we must believe in apparent contradictions and submit to our government entirely.
The parallels between Orwell’s dystopian vision and Bush’s post-Sept. 11 governmental policies are so striking some journalists have facetiously accused Bush of plagiarism. Orwell’s book depicts a society dominated by a totalitarian government in which citizens’ liberties are suppressed on the basis of an endless war. In post-Sept. 11 America, the same reasoning is being used to justify turning our nation into a police state.
In Orwell’s society, a person can be arrested not just for public speech, but for their private thoughts as well. In our nation, this nightmare has come to life through Bush’s USA Patriot Act. This act enables law enforcement departments to spy on citizens and non-citizens alike: To read private e-mail correspondence, monitor Internet usage, tap into phone conversations, delve into computer files and conduct “sneak-and-peak” searches of homes and offices without immediately, if ever, presenting residents with a search warrant. Law enforcement no longer needs judicial oversight or probable cause. So, be careful: Big Brother is watching.
Furthermore, this act states that citizens and non-citizens can be detained on mere suspicion. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, more than 1,100 immigrants have been imprisoned. The charges against them remain undisclosed; even their names and identities remain largely unknown. The Bush administration admits these prisoners are not terrorists. So far, the FBI has racially profiled and interrogated more than 5,000 recent immigrants. Those immigrants Bush deems “terrorists” can be tried before closed military tribunals rather than in open court.
In Orwell’s society, citizens join the government in the suppression of speech and thought; citizens constantly monitor neighbors and coworkers, informing the government if a person seems “suspicious.” Bush’s “Operation TIPS” makes such paranoid spying a reality. This program asks mail deliverers, utility meter readers, truckers and other citizens to spy on their neighbors and customers, and report any suspicious activity that could be related to terrorism. A recent example of TIPS in action occurred just two weeks ago. Three men were detained, searched and interrogated for being overheard apparently joking about Sept. 11 at a restaurant in Georgia. Bush and a federal law enforcement official in Washington eventually exculpated the men, reporting they had no evident ties to terrorism.
Increasingly, it seems we must all be wary of saying or doing anything that could be construed as subversive; after all, your neighbor might turn you in to the thought police. The reach of the thought police has even extended to academia, where certain factions have attempted to stifle the free exchange of ideas. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni, for example, has sought to “blacklist” more than 40 professors who were deemed “anti-American.” One professor, an emeritus from the University of Oregon, was blacklisted for recommending that “we need to understand the reasons behind the terrifying hatred directed against the U.S. and find ways to act that will not foment more hatred for generations to come.” Even one of the Daily columnists has received threatening letters for suggesting that U.S. foreign policy might be somewhat casually responsible for terrorism.
It seems that to be strong and united, we must silence all dissenting voices. Attorney General John Ashcroft has declared that critics of the Bush administration’s post-Sept. 11 measures “only aid terrorists” and “give ammunition to America’s enemies.” For this reason, the Bush administration has explained we need to “suspend” certain liberties for the duration of the war.
The message is clear: To criticize America, right or wrong, is either to be unpatriotic or, worse, to be a terrorist sympathizer (Does anyone smell McCarthyism yet?). It seems ignorant patriotism has become a virtue.
The Bush administration has heavily promoted the idea of ignorance as strength. On this basis, it is making sure the media and American public are kept ignorant. Invoking the excuse of national security, the Bush administration has imposed heavy restrictions on what we can know. For example, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security includes an exemption from the Freedom from Information Act. Additionally, the military has disallowed journalists from accompanying American forces fighting in Afghanistan and even from interviewing military personnel after their missions.
In addition to this governmental censorship, the media has even censored itself. CNN Chairman Walter Isaacson, for instance, ordered his news staff to limit reports of Afghan casualties and to use World Trade Center deaths to justify the killing abroad. Furthermore, the largest U.S. radio station owner, Clear Channel, sent out an internal memo prohibiting certain songs from being played on the air — including “Imagine” by John Lennon.
In Orwell’s society, the duration of the war is never-ending, waged against an enemy that is ever-changing and ambiguous. The same is true of Bush’s declared “war on terrorism.” This war has no fixed, geographical definition. It is directed against an expansive “axis of evil” and a shadowy faction known as al-Qaida. Moreover, this war has been estimated to continue indefinitely (current estimates say at least 10 years).
This ambiguous, protracted crusade is an efficient way to fuel the hatred and fear necessary to justify the Bush administration’s seize of power. With the winds of war behind him, and a 90 percent approval rating, Bush has hurdled the checks and balances of the other two governmental branches and has used “war” as an excuse to increase his dominance and serve his administration’s interests — for example, finishing his dad’s business in Iraq or squelching opposition to NAFTA and the WTO.
To rally the war cry, Bush spews monosyllabic propaganda, simplistically characterizing the terrorists’ purpose to be to “attack our freedom,” and that those individuals and nations who oppose our policies are satanically “evil.” We, of course by contrast, are righteous and good. Disregard our past alliances with these “evil” regimes, our training and financing of radical Islamist terrorists, our forcible replacements of democracies with dictatorships or any instances of our past foreign policy that might be relevant to understanding why the United States is resented in many parts of the world.
Terrorism isn’t what terrifies me. I fear fear itself. As a result of our nation’s fear, our constitution is being desecrated, civil rights are being trampled, and our democratic nation is degenerating into a fascist regime. Disturbingly, it seems the only inaccuracy of Orwell’s prescient book is that it was 17 years off.
Surely we must make some sacrifices in times of war, yet we must not sacrifice the very principles upon which the United States was founded. In the words of one of our founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin, “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
March 13, 2003—With U.S. and British troops poised to invade Iraq, the rest of the world is overwhelmingly opposed. Yet Saddam Hussein is generally seen as a tyrant who must be disarmed and the United Nations Security Council has unanimously demanded that he disclose and destroy his weapons of mass destruction. What has gone wrong?
Iraq is the first instance in which the Bush doctrine is being applied and it is provoking an allergic reaction. The doctrine is built on two pillars: first, the US will do everything in its power to maintain unquestioned military supremacy; second, it arrogates the right to pre-emptive action. These pillars support two classes of sovereignty: American sovereignty, which takes precedence over international treaties; and the sovereignty of all other states, which is subject to the Bush doctrine. This is reminiscent of George Orwell's Animal Farm: all animals are equal but some are more equal than others.
The Bush doctrine is grounded in the belief that international relations are relations of power; legality and legitimacy are decorations. This belief is not entirely false but it exaggerates one aspect of reality—military power—at the exclusion of others.
I see a parallel between the Bush administration's pursuit of American supremacy and a boom-bust process or bubble in the stock market. Bubbles do not grow out of thin air. They have a solid basis in reality but reality is distorted by misconception. In this case, the dominant position of the US is the reality, the pursuit of supremacy the misconception. Reality can reinforce the misconception but eventually the gap between reality and its false interpretation becomes unsustainable. During the self-reinforcing phase, the misconception may be tested and reinforced. This widens the gap leading to an eventual reversal. The later it comes, the more devastating the consequences.
This course of events seems inexorable but a boom-bust process can be aborted at any stage and few of them reach the extremes of the recent stock market bubble. The sooner the process is aborted, the better. This is how I view the Bush administration's pursuit of American supremacy.
President George W. Bush came into office with a coherent strategy based on market fundamentalism and military power. But before September 11 2001 he lacked a clear mandate or a well-defined enemy. The terrorist attack changed all that. Terrorism is the ideal enemy. It is invisible and therefore never disappears. An enemy that poses a genuine and recognized threat can effectively hold a nation together. That is particularly useful when the prevailing ideology is based on the unabashed pursuit of self-interest. Mr. Bush's administration deliberately fosters fear because it helps to keep the nation lined up behind the president. We have come a long way from Franklin D. Roosevelt's dictum that we have nothing to fear but fear itself.
But the war on terrorism cannot be accepted as the guiding principle of US foreign policy. What will happen to the world if the most powerful country on earth is solely preoccupied with self-preservation?
The Bush policies have already caused severe unintended adverse consequences. The Atlantic Alliance is in a shambles and the European Union divided. The US is a fearful giant throwing its weight around. Afghanistan has been liberated but law and order have not been established beyond Kabul. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict festers. Beyond Iraq, an even more dangerous threat looms in North Korea.
The global economy is in recession, stocks are in a bear market and the dollar is in decline. In the US, there has been a dramatic shift from budget surplus to deficit. It is difficult to find a time when political and economic conditions have deteriorated as rapidly.
The game is not yet over. A rapid victory in Iraq with little loss of life could cause a dramatic reversal. The price of oil could fall; the stock market could celebrate; consumers could overcome their anxieties and resume spending; and business could respond by stepping up capital expenditure. America would end its dependency on Saudi Arabian oil, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could become more tractable and negotiations with North Korea could be started without a loss of face. This is what Mr. Bush is counting on.
Military victory in Iraq would be the easy part. It is what follows that should give us pause. In a boom-bust process, passing an early test tends to reinforce the misconception that has given rise to it. That could happen here.
It is not too late to prevent the boom-bust process from getting out of hand. The Security Council could allow more time for weapons inspections. Military presence in the region could be reduced—and bolstered if Iraq balks. An invasion could be mounted at summer's end. The UN would score a victory. That is what the French propose and the British could still make it happen. But the chances are slim; Mr. Bush has practically declared war.
Let us hope that if there is war, it will be swift and claim few lives. Removing Mr. Hussein is a good thing, yet the way Mr. Bush is going about it must be condemned. America must play a more constructive role if humanity is to make any progress.
George Soros is chairman of the Open Society Institute and of Soros Fund Management.
webradio
(deutsch)
michael moore 
Mondlandungs Lüge
Tages-Anzeiger online
the world according to marcosolo
Motorrad-trips in Nord Thailand
