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World Media Watch
by Gloria R. Lalumia
BUZZFLASH NOTE: Once again, these are the views and perspectives of the individual papers, not of BuzzFlash or Gloria. They offer BuzzFlash readers a way of reading what other nations are saying about the crisis, whether we like it or not. We repeat: This is not an endorsement of their viewpoints.
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1//The Pioneer, India--EDIT PAGE: THE AMERICAN PSYCHE (American protest too has travelled far from the cerebral dissent of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and other members of the Woodstock brigade. Indeed, artists in America thrived in the 1960s on account of their genteel anti-establishment stands and were loved by the followers of their music and films. Today, there is far greater majoritarian pressure on artistes to conform. It is not just the fear of a commercial blackout, as experienced by Dixie Chicks for criticising President Bush, but the degeneration in the nature of protest that goes into defining the new way of American life-a life in which it is becoming increasingly difficult to imagine, in the words of John Lennon, all the people, living life in peace.)
2//Asia Times Online, Hong Kong--NOW TO REPAIR THE IRAQI ECONOMY (The United States government is literally flying in millions of dollars to Iraq - in $1 and $5 denominations - as part of plans to rebuild that country's war-torn economy. The money, taken from frozen Iraqi assets held in the US, will be doled out to public servants in the form of onetime, $20 payments as an inducement for them to come to work. The hope is that the money will move its way through private transactions and ultimately aid efforts to build a functioning market economy - a goal economists say is probably years away.)
3//Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA), Syria--PRESS COMMENTARIES (For its part, alBaath daily underlined that the Iraqi demonstrations against occupation are no longer spontaneous but has become a political programme which aim at the expulsion of the occupation as soon as possible in order to rebuild Iraq politically and economically.)
4//Foreign
Policy In Focus, US--CALLS TO ATTACK SYRIA COME FROM A FAMILIAR
CHOIR OF HAWKS (The USCFL, whose 67 "Golden Circle" members
include virtually all of the 31 signatories of the report, has been
a major force behind the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty
Restoration Act that was just reintroduced in the House of Representatives
last Friday by Reps. Eliot Engel, a USCFL member, and Ileana Ros
Lehtinen... Now that Saddam Hussein's regime (in Iraq) is defeated," Engel
said April 11, "it is time for America to get serious about
Syria. The United States must not tolerate (its) continued support
of the most deadly terrorist organizations in the world, its development
of weapons of mass destruction, and its occupation of Lebanon." He
said a companion measure, cosponsored by Democratic Sen. Barbara
Boxer and Republican Sen. Rick Santorum will soon be introduced in
the Senate.)
5//The Daily Star, Lebanon--CHRISTIAN OPPOSITION SIMMERS OVER NEW
GOVERNMENT (The Christian opposition's failure to secure a single
seat in the new government has provoked disappointment and irritation
in Bkirki and among many opposition leaders and may threaten the
current detente between the Maronite Patriarchate and Baabda...Sources
close to Bkirki asserted that Sfeir's position, which had been
recently calm and supportive of Syria as a result of the regional
situation, "will reflect his annoyance with the political
situation." However, the sources added that the prelate will
not escalate the tone of his criticism out of awareness of the
sensitive regional situation and the increasing US threats against
Syria.)
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1//The
Pioneer Monday, April 21, 2003
http://www.dailypioneer.com/indexn12.asp?main_variable=EDITS&
file_name=edit2%2Etxt&counter_img=2
EDIT PAGE: THE AMERICAN PSYCHE
The Pioneer Edit Desk
It is a tad uncertain whether it is the dumbing down of Madonna or the dumbing down of America. It probably is both since the diva of supposedly avant-garde imagery has decided to present a tamer and more non-violent version of her music video, American Life, following criticism of her in the United States four weeks ago, for releasing an anti-war message just when American B-52s had begun raining bombs on Baghdad.
(SNIP)
And how? She took umbrage at the violent ways of the American establishment by showing, in her video, a hand grenade being tossed at a US President George W Bush look-alike! Clearly, this is the degeneration of protest against violence into even greater violence, and it is this dark underside of American life that perhaps calls for a closer scrutiny.
It is an inescapable reality that, as a culture, Hollywood (which may signify the American entertainment industry as a whole) celebrates violence at a popular level like few other similar industries in the world. It is one thing to depict violence so as to create revulsion for it, and quite another to turn it into a saleable commodity with box office draw. The American entertainment industry is responsible for doing the latter and, over the last two decades in particular, violence has come to symbolise largely the Hollywood nightmare factory. The frightening thing is that such depiction of screen or surreal violence is making inroads into people's lives...Then there are innumerable films depicting psychopathic violence, the overweening importance and use of the gun in everyday life, apart of course from kitschy depiction of blood-and-gore wars with aliens and such like.
American protest too has travelled far from the cerebral dissent of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and other members of the Woodstock brigade. Indeed, artists in America thrived in the 1960s on account of their genteel anti-establishment stands and were loved by the followers of their music and films. Today, there is far greater majoritarian pressure on artistes to conform. It is not just the fear of a commercial blackout, as experienced by Dixie Chicks for criticising President Bush, but the degeneration in the nature of protest that goes into defining the new way of American life-a life in which it is becoming increasingly difficult to imagine, in the words of John Lennon, all the people, living life in peace.
READERSPEAK
Latest comment: "It is Macarthyism come back. There is practically no freedom of expression in the USA now; the citizen has also been deprived of privacy. In a few more months, the USA would be as good as China."
2//Asia Times Online April 19, 2003
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/ED19Ak03.html
NOW TO REPAIR THE IRAQI ECONOMY
By Mark Baker
Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
PRAGUE - The United States government is literally flying in millions of dollars to Iraq - in $1 and $5 denominations - as part of plans to rebuild that country's war-torn economy.
The money, taken from frozen Iraqi assets held in the US, will be doled out to public servants in the form of onetime, $20 payments as an inducement for them to come to work. The hope is that the money will move its way through private transactions and ultimately aid efforts to build a functioning market economy - a goal economists say is probably years away.
The dollar scheme is just a small part of what ultimately could be a long and difficult undertaking to repair and transform an economy suffering from decades of conflict as well as economic sanctions imposed by the United Nations (UN) after the 1991 Gulf War.
Sultan Barakat is the director of the Postwar Reconstruction and Development Unit at Britain's York University. His unit specializes in advising countries rebuilding after years of conflict. It has been active in the Balkans and Afghanistan.
Barakat said that before real reconstruction can begin, order must be restored. "The most important task for now is going to be security, to make sure that the country is stabilized in one form or another," he said. "And then having done that, [the US-led coalition] will have to look into issues of welfare and providing safety for those who have lost either as a direct result of the war or as a result of many years of sanctions and economic difficulties."
Barakat said that a major difficulty in the transformation to a market economy is posed by Iraq's socialist past. Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath regime was modeled loosely after the command economies of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Much of the economic activity was centrally directed. The market has to be invented.
(MORE)
3//Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) 20-4-2003
http://www.sana-syria.com/english/newspaper/press_commentaries.htm
PRESS COMMENTARIES
A.N.Idelbi
Tishrin daily underlined on Sunday that the Arab region is passing through dangerous changes due to the occupation of Iraq and its repercussion particularly if the United States wants to make Iraq as a base for more mixing of cards and changes in line with Israeli interests.
(SNIP)
The daily underlined that Israel since the fifties have introduced the nuclear arms to the region and is the only country that possesses more than twenty nuclear warheads . In addition , Israel is still refusing to allow the international inspection to its well known nuclear sites in Negev desert.
For its part, alBaath daily underlined that the Iraqi demonstrations against occupation are no longer spontaneous but has become a political programme which aim at the expulsion of the occupation as soon as possible in order to rebuild Iraq politically and economically.
4//Foreign Policy In Focus April 16, 2003
http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2003/0304uscfl.html
CALLS TO ATTACK SYRIA COME FROM A FAMILIAR CHOIR OF HAWKS
By Jim Lobe
(Jim Lobe is a political analyst with Foreign Policy in Focus (online
at www.fpif.org). He also writes regularly for Inter Press Service.)
Many of the same people who led the campaign for war against Iraq signed a report released three years ago that called for using military force to disarm Syria of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and to end its military presence in Lebanon.
Among the signers are several senior members of the administration of President George W. Bush, including the chief Middle East aide on the National Security Council, Elliott Abrams; Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith; Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky; and senior consultants to both the State Department and the Pentagon on Iraq policy, Michael Rubin and David Wurmser. Also signing were Richard Perle, the powerful former chairman of the Defense Policy Board (DPB); Jeanne Kirkpatrick, former United Nations ambassador; Frank Gaffney, a former Perle aide who heads the Center for Defense Policy; Michael Ledeen, another close Perle collaborator at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI); and David Steinmann, chairman of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA).
The study, Ending Syria's Occupation of Lebanon: The U.S. Role, was co-authored by Daniel Pipes, who has just been nominated by Bush to a post at the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP), and Ziad Abdelnour, who heads a group founded by him called the United States Committee for a Free Lebanon (USCFL). The study was released by Pipes' group, the Middle East Forum.
The USCFL, whose 67 "Golden Circle" members include virtually all of the 31 signatories of the report, has been a major force behind the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act that was just reintroduced in the House of Representatives last Friday by Reps. Eliot Engel, a USCFL member, and Ileana Ros Lehtinen. The legislation, which had 150 cosponsors in the House last year, would impose far-reaching economic and diplomatic sanctions against Syria until the president certified that it has stopped all support to Lebanon's Hezbollah militia and other groups that Washington considers "terrorist," the government withdraws its estimated 20,000 troops from Lebanon, and takes other measures long demanded by Washington.
Now that Saddam Hussein's regime (in Iraq) is defeated," Engel said April 11, "it is time for America to get serious about Syria. The United States must not tolerate (its) continued support of the most deadly terrorist organizations in the world, its development of weapons of mass destruction, and its occupation of Lebanon." He said a companion measure, cosponsored by Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer and Republican Sen. Rick Santorum will soon be introduced in the Senate. The action comes amid a two-week-old flurry of threats by top administration officials against Syria over its alleged failure to cooperate with Washington's military campaign against Baghdad.
5//The Daily Star Beirut, Saturday April 19, 2003. Updated 08:30
AM +3GMT
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/19_04_03/art5.asp
CHRISTIAN OPPOSITION SIMMERS OVER NEW GOVERNMENT
Maronite patriarch 'disappointed' with lack of representation
Sabine Darrous, Daily Star staff
The Christian opposition's failure to secure a single seat in the new government has provoked disappointment and irritation in Bkirki and among many opposition leaders and may threaten the current detente between the Maronite Patriarchate and Baabda.
Cardinal Nasrallah Butros Sfeir was reported to have been "disappointed and dissatisfied" with the new government, according to sources close to the prelate. The sources said Bkirki wasn't pleased with the Christian representation in general and the Maronite in particular, which included only politicians from the loyalist camp.
(SNIP)
Sources close to Bkirki asserted that Sfeir's position, which had been recently calm and supportive of Syria as a result of the regional situation, "will reflect his annoyance with the political situation." However, the sources added that the prelate will not escalate the tone of his criticism out of awareness of the sensitive regional situation and the increasing US threats against Syria.
(SNIP)
Questions were raised about the reasons for disregarding Bkirki's preferences for the new government and the lack of positive response to its recent positions, which were considered by many as "historic" and an opportunity to bridge the gaps between the Maronite Patriarchate and Damascus.
The Bkirki source said that the lack of a comprehensive Christian representation in the new government was a "slap in the face" and a clear rejection of cooperation and a new beginning with Bkirki.
"It is as if the formation of the new government was meant to drive the country backward and not to push it to be better," the source said.
(SNIP)
"I believe that what happened was not a formation of a new government, but a reshuffle of the old one to serve a few personal interests," Harb told The Daily Star.
Harb said the new government does not represent the majority of Lebanese and was not the type of government needed at this time. He said he does not expect any "exceptional or positive positions" from its policy statement, adding that Qornet Shehwan will definitely oppose the new government.
Officials from the loyalist Christian camp believe the sensitivity of the regional situation and the threats against Syria and Lebanon required a "homogeneous" government that would remain distant from domestic conflicts.
(MORE)
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© 2003, Gloria R. Lalumia, insight@zianet.com
Radio for the Left at http://www.zianet.com/insightanalytical/radio.htm
