Bento XVI sabe, enquanto teólogo, que as aparições de Fátima nunca existiram. A tese é defendida pelo Padre da Lixa, Mário de Oliveira, que disse ao SAPO que não vai acompanhar a visita do Papa a Portugal.
“Com a sua presença em Fátima o Papa vem dar caução a uma realidade absurda”, afirma o presbítero, defendendo que no domínio da teologia é “objectivamente impossível” que tenham acontecido as aparições de Fátima.
“Depois ter ido para o Vaticano, Bento XVI tornou-se um teólogo muito conservador e reaccionário, quase que se negou a si próprio”, nota o Padre da Lixa. “É interessante que hoje existem teólogos que se dedicam a irem ver as posições deste Papa quando era teólogo há 30 ou 40 anos atrás e o que ele hoje está a ensinar, que é exactamente o contrário”, refere Mário de Oliveira.
Esta posição contraditória adoptada por Bento XVI fez com que o Padre Mário de Oliveira tenha decidido a não acompanhar a visita do Papa a Portugal, que decorre entre 11 a 14 de Maio.
A juntar a isso, o facto de Bento XVI ter sido convidado pelo Presidente da República. “Eu como presbítero da Igreja não me reconheço nisto”, declara o autor de uma extensa obra que reflecte sobre que papel e que modelo a Igreja deve ter nos tempos modernos.
Pastorinhos foram vítimas de uma “farsa”
Numa altura em que a Igreja é assolada por escândalos de pedofilia entre padres católicos, Mário de Oliveira relembra que também as crianças de Aljustrel foram vítimas de uma “montagem” feita pelo clero de Ourém.
A utilização de Jacinta, Francisco e Lúcia numa suposta aparição de Nossa Senhora de Fátima, em 1917, arruinou a vida das três crianças. “Foi um crime pelo menos tão grave quanto o da pedofilia”, considera o autor do livro “Fátima Nunca Mais”, onde apresenta provas que desmentem as aparições de Fátima.
Esta “montagem”, nas palavras do Padre da Lixa, fez com que Fátima seja hoje uma “galinha de ovos de ouro para a Igreja”, defende Mário de Oliveira. “Fátima é uma empresa que dá muito dinheiro à Igreja em Portugal e ao Vaticano”, completa.
De acordo com o director do Jornal Fraternizar, “os interesses em Fátima são muitos” e só com uma mudança radical no modelo institucional da Igreja as aparições seriam reconhecidas como “um grande equívoco”.
Crítico da Igreja enquanto instituição, o Padre Mário de Oliveira defende que este modelo eclesiástico vai acabar por cair. Conhecido por ser um padre sem paróquia, o presbítero não concorda com a hierarquia do clero e defende uma mudança radical na estrutura de poder da Igreja.
Este institucional religioso católico romano existe há muitos séculos mas à revelia do Evangelho. Jesus nunca criou nenhuma instituição nem usou a palavra Igreja”, sentencia o Padre que foi afastado da Paróquia de Macieira da Lixa depois de ter sido preso pela PIDE pela segunda vez em 1973.
Comparando o clero com o antigo Império Romano, Mário de Oliveira defende uma Igreja que tenha pouca visibilidade na sociedade, exercendo uma “acção libertadora”, que ajude os homens a serem cada vez mais conscientes, “tal como o fermento é importante no pão mas não se vê”, explica o Padre.
Igreja mostra pés de barro
O Padre da Lixa considera que a divulgação dos abusos sexuais a menores por padres católicos abriu uma crise sem precedentes na Igreja. Mário de Oliveira até se diz “contente” por estes casos terem chegado ao público, uma vez que sempre soube “que este modelo institucional de Igreja tem pés de barros”.
As mudanças consagradas no Concílio Vaticano II, que decorreu na década de 60, não estão a ser cumpridas pelo poder eclesiástico. Muito pelo contrário, o Padre, que dirige o Jornal Fraternizar, considera que a Igreja tem lutado contra as medidas implementadas pelo Concílio Vaticano II, onde o então cardial Joseph Ratzinger teve uma intervenção importante enquanto teólogo.
Nos dias de hoje, o Papa Bento XVI tem uma postura muito diferente, “quase contrária”, daquela que tinha quando se assumiu como um dos grandes teólogos da Igreja moderna, defende Mário de Oliveira.
Fui aluno deste senhor no 1.º ano da faculdade, corria o ano de 2002. Depois, voltei a apanhá-lo no meu último ano de curso, em 2007. Conheço bem a sua personalidade estranha e as suas ideias retrógradas. Para mim não é nenhuma novidade este exame, pois lembro-me que os exames dele eram sempre assim. Lembro-me bem que nas suas aulas nunca era imparcial, pois adorava demonstrar, ainda que de forma encapotada e em tom de ironia, a sua opinião acerca de tudo. Na época em que o aborto foi aprovado em referendo, raras eram as aulas em que perdia a oportunidade de criticar a IVG. A fixação era tão grande que no fim do ano lectivo levámos todos com um exame parecido com esse, mas em que ridicularizava o aborto, "um acto criminoso contra a vida humana". E aqui d'el rei se alguém discordasse da sua opinião. Nunca foi adepto da democracia e não hesitava, sempre que pudesse, em dar umas ferroadelas a este regime. Salazar era o seu ídolo de infância. Como pessoa, era mesquinho, injusto e radicalmente exigente. Não me deixa saudades. P.S. - Nunca reprovei às suas cadeiras.
"Hoje, na Faculdade de Direito de Lisboa, realizou-se um teste de Direito Constitucional II. O Prof. Doutor Paulo Otero, o regente da cadeira, decidiu que seria este o caso prático que os alunos deveriam resolver, e numa provocação discriminatória e ridícula, fez-se um paralelismo entre a poligamia/bestialidade e a homossexualidade, disfarçando de humor aquilo que é um desrespeito e uma ofensa de proporções maiores do que o Sr. Professor pode imaginar. Até podia ter apresentado o mesmo caso prático sem, no entanto, referir que o diploma era “em complemento à lei sobre o casamento entre pessoas do mesmo sexo”, mas a comparação foi obviamente propositada e consciente. Ridicularizando um passo marcante na história de Portugal e do Mundo – a aprovação no Parlamento da lei que permite o casamento entre pessoas do mesmo sexo – um dos constitucionalistas de renome da casa onde estudo e em quem confio a preparação da minha formação profissional fez uma coisa de tal forma perversa que fez com que eu tivesse, pela primeira vez e espero que última, vergonha de ter sido aluna de um membro do corpo docente da FDL. O que acontece é que o Sr. Professor parece ter-se esquecido do art. 13º e do princípio da igualdade; e com certeza que não pensou no que sentiria um gay ou uma lésbica que se visse confrontado com a obrigatoriedade de fazer este teste. Opiniões à parte, e quer se seja a favor ou contra o casamento entre pessoas do mesmo sexo, qualquer pessoa com o mínimo de discernimento e respeito pela dignidade humana perceberá que isto não é admissível em lado nenhum, muito menos numa instituição do ensino superior, e muito menos naquela que é provavelmente a melhor Faculdade de Direito do nosso país. Esta atitude repulsiva não só é discriminatória em relação a todas as pessoas LGBT como obriga os alunos a tomarem uma posição em relação ao tema que irá influenciar a sua nota. Não me parece justo.
Não é novidade para ninguém que a nossa Faculdade é conservadora e consegue ser muito pouco receptiva a quase tudo o que é diferente, mas isto passou das marcas. Isto foi nojento e atroz e revoltou-me de tal forma que nem eu nem outros colegas conseguimos calar-nos. É um exemplo de como a luta pelos direitos fundamentais é ainda tão necessária e de como é preciso mudar mentalidades e combater preconceitos tão cruéis quanto este.
Partilhem se ficaram tão revoltados quanto eu.
P.S.: Os animais não têm personalidade jurídica, logo não têm capacidade para celebrar negócios jurídicos, como o casamento (art. 66º e seguintes do Código Civil)."
After Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, the United Nations (backed strongly by the US and UK) imposed harsh sanctions on Iraq that lasted for 10 years (1991-2001); the harsh restrictions on imports of everything, including access to key medicines, resulted in over a million deaths, more than half a million of which were women and children. That's more deaths than the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan and 9/11 combined. The purpose was regime change, but it never came. The overwhelming majority of those killed were the poor, elderly, women and children. Empirically, sanctions overwhelmingly punish the poor, the destitute. While the sanctions were in place, the richest people in control of the resources (Saddam Hussein et al.) still had everything they wanted: food, cars, mansions, access to the best medicines, etc. Award-winning journalist John Pilger has documented the reality of UN harsh sanctions in this hard-hitting film.
John Pilger and David Munro go undercover in one of the world's most isolated, and extraordinary countries, Burma, which Amnesty International calls 'a prison without bars'. They discover slave labour preparing for tourism and foreign investment. International Actual Award for Risk Journalism, Barcelona, Spain, 1996; Bronze Plaque in the category of 'Social Issues - International Relations', The Chris Awards, Ohio, 1996; Gold Special Jury Award, 'Film & Video Production division', WorldFest-Charleston, 1996; Award for Best Factual Programme, RTS Midland Centre Awards, Birmingham, 1996; Gold Apple in the category 'Politics: Social organisations in other lands', National Educational Media Network Film & Video Competition at The 1997 NEMN Apple Awards, Oakland, California, 1997; the updated version won a Gold Special Jury Award in the 'Film & Video Production division', WorldFest-Houston, 1999.
On December 7, 1975 Indonesia secretly - but with the complicity of the Western powers including the US, the UK, and Australia - invaded the small nation of East Timor. Two Australian television crews attempting to document the invasion were murdered.
In 1993, with the Indonesian army still occupying the country, John Pilger and his crew including director David Munro, slipped into East Timor and made this film. In the intervening 18 years, an estimated 200,000 East Timorese - 1/3 of the population - had been slaughtered by the Indonesian military. The C.I.A. has described it as one of the worst mass-murders of the 20th century.
Pilger tells the story using clandestine footage of the countryside, internment camps and even Fretlin guerillas, as well as interviews with Timorese exiles, including Jose Ramos Horta and Jose Gusmao, and Australian, British, and Indonesian diplomats.
Nixon had called Indonesia the "greatest prize in southeast Asia" because of its oil reserves and other natural resources. Even though Indonesia had no historic or legal claim to East Timor, it was convenient for diplomats to declare that East Timor, just gaining its independence from Portugal, would not be a viable state.
However the lie was given to this argument when Australia and Indonesia signed the Timor Gap Oil Treaty and carved up the huge oil and gas reserves in the seabed off East Timor.
None of the politicians from that period - President Ford, Henry Kissinger, Daniel Moynihan, Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Gough Whitlam - has clean hands. The Indonesian military used US and British planes to bombard the island, while the defense ministers proclaimed ignorance.
As Pilger gets an Austrlian diplomat to admit, East Timor was considered "expendable."
But no one watching the massacre in the Dili cemetery can excuse the geopolitical machinations that led to this genocide.
In 1975, John Pilger reported the end of the Vietnam War from the American Embassy in Saigon, where the last American troops fled from the roof-top helicopter pad. He was made Journalist of the Year and International Reporter of the Year for his reporting of the Vietnam War over a period of almost ten years. The American invasion of Vietnam marked the last stage of the longest war of the last century, a war in which the greatest tonnage of bombs in history was dropped, in which more than two million Vietnamese were killed and a bountiful land devastated. With the Americans finally gone, Vietnam was made an international pariah. The United States mounted an embargo that covered both trade and aid and other Western governments and international banks soon joined in. Out of thirty years of war came over two decades of isolation - such were the spoils of victory. In 1978 John Pilger and David Munro made the documentary, 'Do You Remember Vietnam?' In 1995's 'Vietnam: The Last Battle', Pilger returned to Vietnam to review these twenty years, seeking to rescue something of Vietnamese past and present from Hollywood images which pitied the invader while overshadowing one of the most epic struggles of the 20th century.
I'm occasionally asked whether I still consider myself a Marxist. Even if my "faith" had lapsed, I wouldn't advertise it, not from shame at having been wrong (although admittedly this would be a factor) but rather from fear of arousing even a faint suspicion of opportunism. To borrow from the lingo of a former academic fad, if, in public life, the "signifier" is "I'm no longer a Marxist," then the "signified" usually is, "I'm selling out." No doubt one can, in light of further study and life experience, come to repudiate past convictions. One might also decide that youthful ideals, especially when the responsibilities of family kick in and the prospects for radical change dim while the certainty of one's finitude sharpens, are too heavy a burden to bear; although it might be hoped that this accommodation, however understandable (if disappointing), were accomplished with candor and an appropriate degree of humility rather than, what's usually the case, scorn for those who keep plugging away. It is when the phenomenon of political apostasy is accompanied by fanfare and fireworks that it becomes truly repellent. Depending on where along the political spectrum power is situated, apostates almost always make their corrective leap in that direction, discovering the virtues of the status quo. "The last thing you can be accused of is having turned your coat," Thomas Mann wrote a convert to National Socialism right after Hitler's seizure of power. "You always wore it the 'right' way around." If apostasy weren't conditioned by power considerations, one would anticipate roughly equal movements in both directions. But that's never been the case. The would-be apostate almost always pulls towards power's magnetic field, rarely away. However elaborate the testimonials on how one came to "see the light," the impetus behind political apostasy is--pardon my cynicism--a fairly straightforward, uncomplicated affair: to cash in, or keep cashing in, on earthly pleasures. Indeed, an apostate can even capitalize on the past to increase his or her current exchange value. Professional ex-radical Todd Gitlin never fails to mention, when denouncing those to his left, that he was a former head of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Never mind that this was four decades ago; although president of my sixth-grade class 40 years ago, I don't keep bringing it up. Shouldn't there be a statute of limitations on the exploitation of one's political past? In any event, it's hard to figure why an acknowledgment of former errors should enhance one's current credibility. If, by a person's own admission, he or she had got it all wrong, why should anyone pay heed to his or her new opinions? Doesn't it make more sense attending to those who got there sooner rather than later? A member of the Flat-Earth Society who suddenly discovers the world is round doesn't get to keynote an astronomers' convention. Indeed, the prudent inference would seem to be, once an idiot, always an idiot. It's child's play to assemble a lengthy list--Roger Garaudy, Boris Yeltsin, David Horowitz, Bernard Henri-Levy--bearing out this commonsensical wisdom. Yet, an apostate is usually astute enough to understand that, in order to catch the public eye and reap the attendant benefits, merely registering this or that doubt about one's prior convictions, or nuanced disagreements with former comrades (which, after all, is how a reasoned change of heart would normally evolve), won't suffice. For, incremental change, or fundamental change by accretion, doesn't get the buzz going: there must be a dramatic rupture with one's past. Conversion and zealotry, just like revelation and apostasy, are flip sides of the same coin, the currency of a political culture having more in common with religion than rational discourse. A rite of passage for apostates peculiar to U.S. political culture is bashing Noam Chomsky. It's the political equivalent of a bar mitzvah, a ritual signaling that one has "grown up"--i.e., grown out of one's "childish" past. It's hard to pick up an article or book by ex-radicals--Gitlin's Letters to a Young Activist, Paul Berman's Terror and Liberalism--that doesn't include a hysterical attack on him. Behind this venom there's also a transparent psychological factor at play. Chomsky mirrors their idealistic past as well as sordid present, an obstinate reminder that they once had principles but no longer do, that they sold out but he didn't. Hating to be reminded, they keep trying to shatter the glass. He's the demon from the past that, after recantation, no amount of incantation can exorcise. Two altogether opposed political stances can each draw an audience's attention. One is to be politically consistent, but nonetheless original in one's insights; the other, an inchoate form of apostasy, is to bank on the shock value of an occasional, wildly inconsistent outburst. The former approach, which Chomsky exemplifies, requires hard work, whereas the latter is a lazy substitute for it. Thus Nat Hentoff, the hip (he loves jazz) left-liberal writer, would jazz up his Village Voice columns by suddenly coming out against abortion or endorsing Clarence Thomas's Supreme Court nomination. The master at this pose of maverick unpredictability used to be Christopher Hitchens. Amidst a fairly typical leftist politics, he would suddenly ambush unsuspecting readers with his opposition to abortion, admiration of the misogynist and juvenile lyrics of Two Live Crew ("I think that's very funny"), or support for Columbus's extermination of Native Americans ("deserving to be celebrated with great vim and gusto"). Immediately the talk of the town became, "Did you read Hitchens this week?" Although a tacit assumption equates unpredictability with independence of mind, it might just as well signal lack of principle. As if to bear out this point, Hitchens has now repackaged himself a full-fledged apostate. For maximum pyrotechnical effect, he knew that the "awakening" had to be as abrupt as it was extreme: if yesterday he counted himself a Trotskyist and Chomsky a comrade, better now to announce that he supports Bush and counts Paul Wolfowitz a comrade. Their fates crossed when Wolfowitz and Hitchens both immediately glimpsed in September 11 the long-awaited opportunity: for Wolfowitz, to get into Iraq, for Hitchens, to get out of the left. While public display of angst doesn't itself prove authenticity of feeling (sometimes it might prove the reverse), a sharp political break must, for one living a political life, be a wrenching emotional experience. The rejection of one's core political beliefs can't but entail a rejection of the person holding them: if the beliefs were wrong, then one's whole being was wrong. Repudiating one's comrades must also be a sorrowful burden. It is not by chance that "fraternity" is a prized value of the left: in the course of political struggle, one forges, if not always literally, then, at any rate, spiritually, blood bonds. Yet, the élan with which Hitchens has shed his past and, spewing venom, the brio with which he savages former comrades is a genuine wonder to behold. No doubt he imagines it is testament to the mettle of his conviction that past loyalties don't in the slightest constrain him; in fact, it's testament to the absence of any conviction at all. Hitchens collects his essays during the months preceding the U.S. attack on Iraq in The Long Short War. He sneers that former comrades organizing the global anti-war demonstrations "do not think that Saddam Hussein is a bad guy at all" (emphasis in original), and the many millions marching in them consist of the "blithering ex-flower child or ranting neo-Stalinist." Similarly, he ridicules activists pooling their meager resources for refreshments at a fundraiser--they are not among the chosen at a Vanity Fair soiree--as "potluck peaceniks" and "potluckistas." Yet, he is at pains to inform readers that all his newly acquired friends are "friends for life." As with the solicitude he keeps expressing for the rights of Arab women, it seems that Hitchens protests too much. The famous aphorism quoted by him that nations have no permanent allies, only permanent interests, might be said to apply, mutatis mutandis, to himself as well. Indeed, his description of a psychopath--"incapable of conceiving an interest other than his own and perhaps genuinely indifferent to the well-being of others"--comes perilously close to a self-portrait. To discover our true human nature, Freud once wrote, just reverse society's moral exhortations: if the Commandment says not to commit adultery, it's because we all want to. This simple game can be played with Hitchens as well: when he avows, "I attempt to write as if I did not care what reviewers said, what peers thought, or what prevailing opinion might be," one should read, "My every word is calculated for its public effect." Hitchens has riotous fun heaping contempt on several of the volunteer "human shields" who left Iraq before the bombing began. They "obviously didn't have the guts," he jeers, hunkered down in his Washington foxhole. Bearing witness to his own bravery, Hitchens reports in March 2003 that, although even the wife of New York Times columnist Tom Friedman is having doubts about going to war, "I am fighting to keep my nerve"--truly a profile in courage, as he exiles himself in the political wilderness, alongside the Bush administration, Congress, a majority of U.S. public opinion, and his employers in the major media. Outraged at the taunt that he who preaches war should perhaps consider fighting it, Hitchens impatiently recalls that, since September 11, "civilians at home are no safer than soldiers abroad," and that, in fact, he's not just a target but the main target: "The whole point of the present phase of conflict is that we are faced with tactics that are directed primarily at civilians. It is amazing that this essential element of the crisis should have taken so long to sink into certain skulls" (emphasis in original). No doubt modesty and tact forbid Hitchens from drawing the obvious comparison: while cowardly American soldiers frantically covered themselves in protective gear and held their weapons at the ready, he patrolled his combat zone in Washington, D.C. unencumbered. Lest we forget, Hitchens recalls that ours is "an all-volunteer army" where soldiers willingly exchange "fairly good pay" for "obedience" to authority: "Who would have this any other way?" For sure, not those who will never have to "volunteer." It's a standing question as to whether the power of words ultimately derives from their truth value or if a sufficiently nimble mind can endow words with comparable force regardless of whether they are bearers of truth or falsity. For those who want to believe that the truth content of words does matter, reading the new Hitchens comes as a signal relief. Although redoubtable as a left-wing polemicist, as a right-wing one he only produces doubt, not least about his own mental poise. Deriding Chomsky's "very vulgar" harnessing of facts, Hitchens wants to go beyond this "empiricism of the crudest kind." His own preferred epistemology is on full display, for all to judge, in Long Short War. To prove that, after supporting dictatorial regimes in the Middle East for 70 years, the U.S. has abruptly reversed itself and now wants to bring democracy there, he cites "conversations I have had on this subject in Washington." To demonstrate the "glaringly apparent" fact that Saddam "infiltrated, or suborned, or both" the U.N. inspection teams in Iraq, he adduces the "incontrovertible case" of an inspector offered a bribe by an Iraqi official: "The man in question refused the money, but perhaps not everybody did." Citing "the brilliant film called Nada," Hitchens proposes this radical redefinition of terrorism: "the tactic of demanding the impossible, and demanding it at gunpoint." Al-Qaida is accordingly terrorist because it posits an impossible world of "clerical absolutism" but, judging by this definition, the Nazi party wasn't terrorist because it posited a possible world without Jews. Claiming that every country will resort to preemptive war, and that preemptive is indistinguishable from preventive war, Hitchens infers that all countries "will invariably decide that violence and first use are justified" and none can be faulted on this account--which makes you wonder why he's so hot under the collar about Saddam's invasion of Kuwait. Hitchens maintains that that "there is a closefit between the democratically minded and the pro-American" in the Middle East--like "President for Life" Hosni Mubarak, King Abdullah of Jordan...; that Washington finally grasped that "there were 'root causes' behind the murder-attacks" (emphasis in original)--but didn't Hitchens ridicule any allusion to "root causes" as totalitarian apologetics?; that "racism" is "anti-American as nearly as possible by definition"; that "evil" can be defined as "the surplus value of the psychopath"--is there a Bartlett's for worst quotations?; that the U.S.'s rejoining of U.N.E.S.C.O. during the Iraq debate proved its commitment to the U.N.; that "empirical proofs have been unearthed" showing that Iraq didn't comply with U.N. resolutions to disarm; that since the U.N. solicits U.S. support for multilateral missions, it's "idle chatter" to accuse the U.S. of acting unilaterally in Iraq; that the likely killing of innocent civilians in "hospitals, schools, mosques and private homes" shouldn't deter the U.S. from attacking Iraq because it is proof of Saddam's iniquity that he put civilians in harm's way; that those questioning billions of dollars in postwar contracts going to Bush administration cronies must prefer them going to "some windmill-power concern run by Naomi Klein"--is this dry or desiccated wit? On one page Hitchens states that the world fundamentally changed after September 11 because "civilians are in the front line as never before," but on another page he states that during the 1970s, "I was more than once within blast or shot range of the IRA and came to understand that the word 'indiscriminate' meant that I was as likely to be killed as any other bystander." On one page he states that, even if the U.S. doesn't attack or threaten to attack, "Saddam Hussein is not going to survive. His regime is on the verge of implosion" (emphasis in original), but on another page he states that "only the force of American arms, or the extremely credible threat of that force, can bring a fresh face to power." On one page he states that the U.S. seems committed to completely overhauling Iraq's political system, but on another page he states that replacing Saddam with "another friendly generalmight be ideal from Washington's point of view." On one page he states that "Of course it's about oil, stupid" (emphasis in original), but on another page he states that "it was not for the sake of oil" that the U.S. went to war. In one paragraph he states that the U.S. must attack Iraq even if it swells the ranks of al-Qaida, but in the next paragraph he states that "the task of statecraft" is not to swell its ranks. In one sentence he claims to be persuaded by the "materialist conception of history," but in the next sentence he states that "a theory that seems to explain everything is just as good at explaining nothing." In the first half of one sentence he argues that, since "one cannot know the future," policy can't be based on likely consequences, but in the second half he concludes that policy should be based on "a reasoned judgment about the evident danger." Writing before the invasion, Hitchens argued that the U.S. must attack even if Saddam offers self-exile in order to capture and punish this heinous criminal. Shouldn't he urge an attack on the U.S. to capture and punish Kissinger? And, it must attack because Saddam started colluding with al-Qaida after the horrific crimes of September 11. Should the U.S. have been attacked for colluding with Saddam's horrific crimes, not after but while they unfolded, before September 11? France is the one "truly 'unilateralist' government on the Security Council," according to Hitchens, a proof being that 20 years ago it sank a Greenpeace vessel--next to which the U.S. wars in Central America apparently pale by comparison. He assails French President Jacques Chirac, in a masterful turn of phrase, as a "balding Joan of Arc in drag," and blasts France with the full arsenal of Berlitz's "most commonly used French expressions." For bowing to popular anti-war sentiment in Germany, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder stands accused of "cheaply" playing "this card," while in the near-unanimous opposition of the Turkish people to war Hitchens detects evidence of "ugly egotism and selfishness." He says that that Wolfowitz wants "democracy and emancipation"--which must be why Wolfowitz rebuked the Turkish military for not stepping in after the Turkish people vetoed participation in the war. A "principled policy cannot be measured," Hitchens sniffs, "by the number of people who endorse it." But for a principled democrat the number of people endorsing a policy does decide whether to implement it. Hitchens's notion of democracy is his "comrade," ex-Trotskyist but ever-opportunist Kanan Makiya, conjuring up a "complex and ambitious plan" to totally remake Iraq in Boston and presenting it for ratification at an émigré conference in London. The invective he hurls at French, German and Turkish leaders for heeding the popular will shows that Hitchens hasn't, at any rate, completely broken faith with his past: contemptuous of "transient polls of opinion," he's still a Trotskyist at heart, guiding the benighted masses to the Promised Land, if through endless wars and safely from the rear. Most of Long Short War is given over to parsing words. According to Hitchens, all the key terms of the debate on Iraq were meaningless. In his hands this is probably true. For many years Hitchens impressed some readers with his verbal facility. Now his ego delights in testing whether, through sheer manipulation of words, he can pass off flatulent emissions as bouquets. It perhaps would be funny watching fatuous readers fawn over gibberish--were not human life at stake. Hitchens can't believe a word he's saying. In contrast to bursting windbags like Vaclav Havel, Hitchens is too smart to take his vaporizings seriously. It's almost an inside joke as he signals each ridiculous point with the assertion that it's "obvious." Hitchens resembles no one so much as the Polish émigré hoaxer, Jerzy Kosinski, who, shrewdly sizing up intellectual culture in America, used to give, before genuflecting Yale undergraduates, lectures on such topics as "The Art of the Self: the theory of 'Le Moi Poetique' (Binswanger)." Translation: for this wanger it's all about moi. Kosinski no doubt had a good time of it until, outed as a fraud, he had enough good grace, which Hitchens plainly lacks, to commit suicide. And for Hitchens it's also lucrative nonsense that he's peddling. It's not exactly a martyr's fate defecting from The Nation, a frills-free liberal magazine, to Atlantic Monthly, the well-heeled house organ of Zionist crazies. Although Kissinger affected to be a "solitary, gaunt hero," Hitchens says, in reality he was just a "corpulent opportunist." It sounds familiar.
The Panama Deception documents the untold story of the December 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama; the events which led to it; the excessive force used; the enormity of the death and destruction; and the devastating aftermath. The Panama Deception uncovers the real reasons for this internationally condemned attack, presenting a view of the invasion which widely differs from that portrayed by the U.S. media and exposes how the U.S. government and the mainstream media suppressed information about this foreign policy disaster. The Panama Deception includes never before seen footage of the invasion and its aftermath, as well as interviews with both invasion proponents like Gen. Maxwell Thurman, Panamanian President Endara and Pentagon spokesperson Pete Williams, and opponents like U.S. Representative Charles Rangel (D-NY.), Panamanian human rights workers Olga Mejia and Isabel Corro and former Panamanian diplomat Humberto Brown. Network news clips and media critics contribute to a staggering analysis of media control and self censorship relevant to any news coverage today, particularly during times of war.
It is futile to try find daylight between the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
All this recent talk that we negotiate with the Taliban is from those with short memory or from those who are intellectually dishonest. No one remembers, it seems, that exactly TWO countries, ONLY two countries, recognized the Taliban regime in Kabul during 1995-2001.
Go research why.
And then convince me why negotiating with, and giving up power to Taliban would be different this time.
General Stanley McChrystal’s proposal for substantial U.S. troop increases in Afghanistan has triggered a major debate about U.S. policy toward the conflict there, both within the Obama administration and without. Behind the dispute over American resources, strategy, and interests, however, lie fundamental questions that rarely get addressed directly: Who is the enemy in Afghanistan, and what do they want? Al Qaeda, die-hard terrorists who seek to continue what they started, is one obvious answer. Fine. But what about the Taliban? Are they so closely linked to al Qaeda as to be indistinguishable from them, or can they be dealt with -- either co-opted or allowed to thrive untouched?
Commentators often distinguish between Afghan Taliban and Pakistani Taliban, but, in terms of ethnicity and location, they are very similar -- both are Pashtun and both enjoy a safe haven in Pakistan’s tribal areas. The main difference is in their leadership structures. In the early 1990s, Mullah Muhammad Omar, the current Afghan Taliban leader, united a group of fellow anti-Soviet mujahideen to combat the chaos that the country had fallen into after the Soviets’ departure. They coined a name for themselves by combining the Arabic prefix “Talib” (meaning “student”) with the Pashto plural suffix “-an” -- seeking to convey their humility and background in Pakistan’s Islamist madrassas. Mullah Omar’s group was able to grow rapidly and take over the country largely because other contenders for power had become so brutal, fragmented, and unattractive to average Afghans. The population did not demand a severe Islamist regime but was willing to accept one as a way to restore order.
The Taliban who governed Afghanistan from 1996–2001 had strong ties to Pakistan, both official and unofficial: they formed their identity in Pakistani schools and refugee camps, received funding and support from Islamabad that enabled their rise, and had close bilateral relations with their patrons after they seized power. Their agenda, however, was primarily a national one, and it remained so even after they were toppled and driven into the wilderness by the United States in 2001–2. Taliban spokesmen claim Mullah Omar has no involvement in militant activities in Pakistan, and that his main goal is to expel American and allied forces from Afghanistan and to reestablish a national Islamic regime. He and his forces aim to outwit, outlast, and outplay yet another alien superpower, replicating the mujahideen’s victory against the Soviets.
The Pakistani Taliban, on the other hand, are largely operationally independent of Mullah Omar and less structured and unified than their Afghan counterparts. Divided among various fiefdoms throughout Pakistan’s restive tribal regions, in recent years they have been loosely connected under umbrella organizations such as the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan. Baitullah Mehsud, TTP’s commander, was killed by a U.S. Predator strike on August 5, but just how much of an impact his death will have on the effectiveness of the Pakistani Taliban is unclear. Mehsud himself rose to prominence after a Predator strike killed South Waziristan’s rising Taliban commander, Nek Mohammed, in 2004, and Mehsud has already been replaced by a deputy, Hakimullah Mehsud (no relation). The targeted killing is thus likely to undermine the Pakistani Taliban’s recent tentative cohesion, but no individual leader is as important to this movement as Mullah Omar is to the Afghan one.
The public mission statements of the Pakistani Taliban emphasize the group’s dedication to helping expel foreign troops from Afghanistan. Since their emergence in 2002, however, the Pakistani Taliban have been increasingly active locally, implementing sharia law, consolidating power in Pakistan’s tribal regions, and challenging the writ of both traditional tribal authority and Islamabad. They clearly seek to govern parts of Pakistan permanently -- but just how much remains unknown. The TTP expanded its activities outside the tribal regions to the Swat and Buner districts in April 2009, provoking a major counteroffensive by a seemingly embarrassed Pakistani army.
Also unknown is the precise relationship between Mullah Omar and the Pakistani Taliban. The latter’s mission statements proclaim loyalty to Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden, and Mullah Omar’s movement relies on Pakistan’s tribal areas for safe haven and support of all kinds. Yet Mullah Omar reportedly attempted to oust Mehsud in January 2008 for fighting the Pakistani army instead of the United States. (Either reports of this incident were false or Mullah Omar failed; Mehsud did not budge.) Certainly the Pakistani Taliban’s strategic decision to challenge Islamabad directly has significant consequences for the fighting in Afghanistan, because it could finally convince Islamabad to help, rather than undermine, Washington’s efforts. (In the past, Pakistan has supported the Afghan Taliban as a tool and an ally in its endless strategic game with India, but now the country may be paying the price. If the Pakistani Taliban remain united and continue to attack within Pakistan, Islamabad will be forced to reconsider its policies.) At the moment, however, it seems that even if Islamabad has the will to conquer the Taliban, the Pakistani army may lack the desire and capacity.
The chief objective of both Taliban groupings is to control territory in Central and South Asia. Al Qaeda’s agenda, meanwhile, is diffuse, global, and inherently anti-American. So what has kept the al Qaeda–Taliban alliance together? The boons al Qaeda receives are obvious -- safe haven, support, and training grounds. Exactly how the Taliban benefits is less clear, especially when one considers the high costs the alliance has carried for them.
Some characterize the al Qaeda–Taliban relationship as a marriage of convenience, in which both sides benefit for the time being but are not inextricably linked. The Taliban support al Qaeda now, the argument goes, because they are united against a common enemy (i.e., the United States), but those ties could be severed if significant elements of the Taliban were offered the right incentives. This cannot explain, however, why the majority of Taliban officials chose to maintain their allegiance with al Qaeda after the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent U.S. invasion, even when it was in their overwhelming self-interest not to do so. If key Taliban officials behaved as representatives of a government seeking to maintain control of their territory, they would have given up al Qaeda in the fall of 2001, just as Pakistan supposedly agreed to give up the Taliban. Why would they turn against al Qaeda now if they didn’t then?
The reason the Taliban have chosen repeatedly not to seek legitimacy through governance or diplomatic compromise has little to do with the incentives offered them and everything to do with how their leaders see the world. The fact is that the Taliban and al Qaeda are neither permanently bound by ideology nor held together merely by a fleeting correspondence of interests. Their relationship is rooted in more complex issues of legitimacy and identity.
The Taliban cannot surrender bin Laden without also surrendering their existing identity as a vessel for an obdurate and uncompromising version of political Islam. Their legitimacy rests not on their governing skills, popular support, or territorial control, but on their claim to represent what they perceive as sharia rule. This means upholding the image that they are guided entirely by Islamic principles; as such, they cannot make concessions to, or earnestly negotiate with, secular states.
Furthermore, both the Taliban and al Qaeda are part of a larger movement of Sunni Salafism, with the former being Deobandis and the latter Wahhabis, and in some ways they compete for the claim to represent uncorrupted political Islam. Coming from an impoverished Central Asian state rather than a traditional hub of Islamic scholarship, the Taliban protect bin Laden partly in order to garner recognition from established Arab Sunni scholars, many of whom are tied to Wahhabi traditions and/or bin Laden himself. Taliban leaders such as Mullah Omar probably also believe they would appear weak and corrupt if they chose to abandon al Qaeda. Asked whether he would give up bin Laden, Mullah Omar explained in a September 21, 2001, interview with the Voice of America that “We cannot do that. If we did, it means we are not Muslims . . . that Islam is finished. If we were afraid of attack, we could have surrendered him the last time we were threatened and attacked. So America can hit us again.”
The type and intensity of Taliban bonds with al Qaeda vary enormously by region and community. Some al Qaeda agents have found a home in Pashtun areas since the Soviet era, becoming part of the social fabric of local tribal communities. Al Qaeda has provided the Taliban with support since their mutual beginnings in the early 1990s, and the organizations have fluid borders and memberships. Further, after years of fighting the United States alongside the relatively more sophisticated members of al Qaeda, the Taliban’s ideological compass has swung even further toward bin Laden and al Qaeda’s anti-American message. And the leaderships have only grown closer over time. Bin Laden assassinated Mullah Omar’s hated rival Ahmed Shah Massoud just two days before 9/11 (for both his own as well as Omar’s political gain), and some intelligence analysts attribute Baitullah Mehsud’s decision to move against Islamabad to his close alliances with Ayman al-Zawahiri and the al Qaeda–connected warlord Sirajuddin Haqqani.
That few Taliban leaders in either branch are likely to betray al Qaeda does not mean that all efforts to peel off or “flip” Taliban members are worthless. Some defections have already occurred, and such efforts can help undermine more obstinate Taliban elements while fostering the development of an inclusive and conciliatory Afghan polity. Nevertheless, trying to isolate al Qaeda by subsuming the Taliban into a federated national Afghan government and/or a semi-autonomous government in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province simply will not work, for a variety of reasons.
The main Taliban leaders will never abandon al Qaeda, and Pakistani intelligence services will not support governments in the tribal areas or in Afghanistan that do not help it in its campaign against India. Many of the important “moderate” Taliban figures who could have been leaders of a more acceptable Taliban (such as Mullah Mohammad Rabbani, Mullah Omar’s former second in command) have already died or been killed, quite a few by Mullah Omar himself. Most Taliban officials know little but war and would fit uncomfortably in a peaceful state. Everybody in the region expects the United States to leave, just like the Soviet Union, and so allying with U.S. forces seems to them like a bad bet.
The core of the Taliban, in short, will not flip against its al Qaeda allies. Moreover, even if some elements gave indications of being willing to do so, they would probably not follow through: the Taliban’s history is littered with promises to adversaries that remain unfulfilled. And there is little reason not to expect flipped Taliban to flip back when it suits their purposes.
Understanding the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban for what they are means recognizing that they will likely continue to protect al Qaeda, whether in exile or in power. The Afghan Taliban will probably remain united against U.S. forces. The Pakistani Taliban are a looser collection of affiliated groups and individuals, and so it might be possible to create or exploit divisions, as the killing of Baitullah Mehsud may already have done. (In fact, Islamabad and the United States are probably pursuing just such a strategy now.) But promoting civil war among militant factions in Pakistan’s tribal regions could lead to even more trouble: after all, it was the chaos and civil war in Afghanistan in the early 1990s, that led the Afghan public into the arms of the Taliban in the first place. And in order to divide Taliban factions, Islamabad would have to give concessions to some militant elements, undermining its resolve to break completely with Islamist groups.
Since the Taliban won’t give al Qaeda up, the United States has little choice but to destroy al Qaeda, and since the Taliban cannot be meaningfully split or co-opted, Washington, unfortunately, has no real option but to prepare itself for a long struggle in the region. Yet there is no reason why it has to be waged by military means alone. In addition to standard counterterrorism and counterinsurgency measures, the Obama administration should do what it can to support a viable alternative to the Taliban, its sources of legitimacy and brand of political Islam. Progress in building effective states and healthy nationalisms in Afghanistan and Pakistan is bound to be maddeningly elusive. Without it, however, it will be difficult to eradicate perceptions that the conflict is one between local heroes (the Taliban) and American puppets (the Afghan and Pakistani national governments). For better or worse, the Afghan and Pakistani states are the critical actors in the battles over their territory and authority.
Nesta altura quem mais sofre na Guerra do Afeganistão são as crianças: em média morrem três crianças por dia.
Desta vez morreram duas crianças ainda por nascer, duas mães, dois pais e uma adolescente. E tudo isso para trazer a paz e liberdade...
Retiraram as balas dos corpos das mulheres com facas para ocultar a culpa deles... Eu nem sei o que dizer disto, a sério que nem sei.
AMY GOODMAN: We move now from a story on the US killing of civilians in Iraq to a story of the US killing of civilians in Afghanistan. US-led forces have admitted for the first time to killing two pregnant Afghan women and a teenage girl during a nighttime raid in eastern Afghanistan on February 12th.
NATO officials initially denied any involvement and claimed that the women had been tied up, gagged and killed hours before the raid. But officials were forced to admit to the killings after the Times of London and other news outlets published accounts of survivors who described how the atrocity was carried out by US-led forces.
One of the women killed was a pregnant mother of ten. Another was a pregnant mother of six. Afghan investigators told the Times of London US Special Forces soldiers tried to cover up the killings. US forces reportedly dug the bullets out of their victims’ bodies, then washed the wounds with alcohol, before lying to their superiors about what happened. Despite admitting to the killings, NATO officials continue to deny there was a cover-up and said that an ongoing legal investigation has found no evidence of inappropriate conduct.
Jerome Starkey is with us now from Kabul. He writes for the Times of London in Afghanistan. He broke the story. NATO singled out Starkey’s reporting in its denial of the cover-up, saying his claims were categorically false. Since then, the United Nations and the New York Times have corroborated his claims.
Jerome Starkey, tell us exactly how you discovered this story and what you found.
JEROME STARKEY: Well, my attention was first brought to this story by [inaudible] and extraordinary press release, which talked about the gruesome discovery of these three women tied up, gagged and killed. And that just sounded incredibly unusual to me, so although they immediately—soon after the raid, we made contact with survivors, with relatives, and we made our way down to Gardez. And the family took us to the scene of the raid. And there they took us through what happened, piece by piece. We realized that [inaudible]—
AMY GOODMAN: Jerome, I’m just going to interrupt for a sec—Jerome, I just want to interrupt for a second. If you’re on speakerphone, could you come off it? We’re just having a hard time understanding you.
JEROME STARKEY: No, no. I’m not on speakerphone.
AMY GOODMAN: Much better, much better.
JEROME STARKEY: Fine, is that any better?
AMY GOODMAN: It’s a little better, as close as you can to the phone.
JEROME STARKEY: My attention was first drawn to this story by [inaudible] press release, an extraordinary press release, which talked about the bodies, women’s bodies, being discovered tied up, gagged and killed. Just sounded so unusual, so we made contact with relatives, survivors, people who have been there, including the vice chancellor of Gardez University. And they invited us down to Gardez, and they said if we could get to Gardez, they would guarantee our protection, they would take us out to the scene. And that’s what they did.
And when we were there, we had a series of interviews with survivors or Afghan officials. Piece by piece, [inaudible] the story just unraveled. They said that several militants were killed. When we spoke to the family, when we spoke to local officials, we discovered three women and two men were killed. One of the men was a policeman, and the other one was a district prosecutor. They certainly weren’t militant. In further questioning, we discovered that in fact two of the women were pregnant, and all three of the women, despite military claims, were killed by the raiding.
AMY GOODMAN: Continue to talk right into the phone. How do you know that the soldiers, these Special Forces soldiers, pulled the bullets out of the bodies, presumably to cover up that, you know, they could be traced?
JEROME STARKEY: Well, the nature of these operations means that the only way we’ll really ever know exactly what happened on that night is if any of the soldiers involved ever get an attack of consciousness and choose to speak out, because the only people who really know what happened are either part of that force or they’re dead, because the room in which this is alleged to have happened, the only people who were alive at the time were the US Special Forces.
But the first time this claim of removing the bullets was made to me came from Haji Sharabuddin, the head of the family. He said to me that when we were in the room where four of the five people were killed, he is disgusted and appalled, and he was angry. And he said, “And on top of killing them, they dug out the bullets.” But it wasn’t—when he said it to me, it wasn’t as if he was alleging any sort of conspiracy; it was more that he was alleging a double violation of the bodies. When [inaudible] is so hard to verify, I almost didn’t write it down in my notebook. And I certainly didn’t report it in our initial coverage of the story, because it’s one of these things that’s just so hard to be sure about.
Nonetheless, many weeks later, when I spoke to the Afghan—or I spoke to officials involved, closely involved, in the Afghan investigation, and they had arrived at the scene within hours of the raid—compared to me, I arrived almost a month after it happened—and they confirmed these allegations. And they had drawn this conclusion on the basis of testimony of the survivors, on the basis of analysis of photographs of the victims’ bodies, particularly photographs and footage of the entry wound, where the bullets appear to have gone in, and because they said they had been unable to recover all of the bullets that they understood had been fired during the raid.
AMY GOODMAN: Jerome Starkey, the Pentagon calling your charges blatantly false? Jerome? Jerome? Well, let me—
JEROME STARKEY: Hello?
AMY GOODMAN: Hi, Jerome. Can you hear me?
JEROME STARKEY: I can hear you now.
AMY GOODMAN: OK. The Pentagon calling your charges blatantly false?
JEROME STARKEY: Well, indeed. And not only did they categorically deny my suggestion of a cover-up when we first made it last month, they maintain that whilst they now admit the three women they said they found killed, they in fact killed them, they insist still this wasn’t a cover-up, this was a cultural misunderstanding.
Their claim, which might seem increasingly ridiculous, is based on the fact that they say the force on the ground, which we understand included Afghans, who should, if they had seen these bodies, been very simple for them to identify that what the US forces thought were bindings and gags were just in fact normal ritual funeral preparations.
And one of the things to come out of the Afghan investigation, which is very unusual, is that we understand the Special Forces sealed off the compound from 4:00 a.m., when they first arrived, until 11:00 a.m. that morning. That’s more than seven hours. And Afghan officials said that just seven bullets were fired during the course of the attack. So it’s not exactly clear, still not clear, why the US Special Forces would have stayed on location for such a long time. And we understand it’s during that time, during some of that time, that some of the relatives began preparing their dead wives, daughters, brothers, fathers for burial.
AMY GOODMAN: Jerome Starkey, I want to thank you for being with us, Times of London correspondent in Kabul, Afghanistan, broke the story.
Glenn Greenwald, we just have thirty seconds, but the significance of this and how the press covered this attack?
GLENN GREENWALD: The similarities between this story and the Iraq one we just talked about are obvious. Here you have an incident that we know about only because of sheer luck and determination on the part of a single reporter, and again the military lying about what took place. And if you go back and read the accounts fromCNN, the New York Times and others, all they do is mindlessly repeat what the Pentagon said without any questioning at all. That’s the way the media reports on these things. That’s how we, as a country, end up propagandized about it.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Glenn Greenwald, I want to thank you for being with us, blogger for Salon.com. And again, thank you to Jerome Starkey, who is in Kabul, Afghanistan now.
