August 31, 2005

World Media Watch

by Gloria R. Lalumia

BuzzFlash Note: WMW provides BuzzFlash readers foreign views and perspectives that are not usually available from the media here in the U.S. The presentation of these articles from these international publications is not an endorsement of their viewpoints.

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WORLD MEDIA WATCH FOR AUGUST 31, 2005

1//The Daily Star, Lebanon--'ISLAM FORBIDS MILITARY USE OF NUCLEAR POWER' (Iran's new defense minister said on Tuesday using nuclear technology for military purposes was forbidden by Islam but Tehran would continue to develop a nuclear program to meet its electricity needs. Speaking at a ceremony to mark his official introduction as minister, Brigadier General Mustafa Mohammad Najjar added Iran would continue to develop ballistic missiles as a deterrent against attack. … . "As our Supreme Leader (Ayatollah Ali Khamenei) has said, the nonpeaceful use of nuclear technology is religiously forbidden," the official IRNA news agency quoted Najjar as saying. "Since fossil fuels are going to run out we should replace them with nuclear energy," he said, adding that Iran must prove through negotiations that it is not trying to build atom bombs. … . Iran's new top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani headed to India in an apparent bid to drum up support from New Delhi in the looming international clash over its nuclear program. State radio said Larijani would be in New Delhi for one day to meet with India's National Security Adviser MK Narayanan and "discuss peace in the region and deepen ties between the two countries." India is a key member of the Non-Aligned Movement, whose members have been more sympathetic to Iran's quest to possess the nuclear fuel cycle. India's Foreign Minister Natwar Singh is due to visit Iran early next month for talks with President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad that will likely include a proposed $7.4 billion gas pipeline between Iran and India.)

2//Asia Times Online, Hong Kong-- SISTANI.QOM: IN THE WIRED HEART OF SHI'ISM (Secular voices in Tehran are adamant: Ninety percent of the political power in Iran is in Qom. One may be tempted to add that at least 70% of the political power in Iraq is also situated in Qom. … . This is the room housing www.sistani.org, arguably the nerve center of Shi'ite Islam today, run by a soft-spoken, scholarly looking man, Ali Shabestari. Some grand ayatollahs may be grander than others. Since the war, invasion and occupation of Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani - based in Najaf, 160 kilometers south of Baghdad, but born in Sistan-Balochistan province in Iran - has become the paramount voice of Shi'ism. The victory of the Shi'ite-led coalition in the January elections in Iraq was basically a Sistani victory. Most of his closest aides are based in Qom, in Central Iran about 200 kilometers south of Tehran. Sistani's unquestioned moral authority has put the limelight on nothing less than a silent battle for the core of the Shi'ite soul. … . The question is inevitable: who is the most authoritative voice in Shi'ite Islam today? Is it the discreet, almost recluse Sistani in Najaf, Iraq who forced the American superpower to bow to his wishes? Or is it the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic in Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei? Who has the upper hand, Najaf or Qom?)

3//The Independent, UK--WAL-MART PRESIDENT TELLS UK TO INVESTIGATE THE POWER OF TESCO (The head of Wal-Mart, the world's biggest retailer and owner of the Asda supermarket chain, has demanded that the Government investigates the increasing dominance of its rival Tesco in the UK grocery market. In remarks that will be seen as highly ironic by critics of Wal-Mart's own domination of the US retail market, Lee Scott, its president and chief executive, said governments had a duty to act if a chain took more than 30 per cent of the market. … . Mr Scott's complaint mirrors one of those levelled at Wal-Mart in the US. Some states are campaigning to keep it out on the grounds that it kills off local businesses. On Wall Street, as a result, the company is out of fashion, with investors fearful that a groundswell of opposition to the retailing juggernaut may stop it in its tracks.)

4//The Toronto Star, Canada--NAFTA IS DEAD, IF IT EVER LIVED (… . Prime Minister Paul Martin seems to think a light slap on the American wrist - say, punitive duties on California wines applied at some vaguely indeterminate time in the future - will pressure the U.S. into doing what Canada wants. But the point is that the U.S. is not abiding by NAFTA rules because, in a fundamental way, it does not intend to - and never did. This is not because George W. Bush, the current U.S. president, is uniquely pig-headed. Rather, the American attitude to NAFTA reflects the long-established approach of a country so big and rich that it has not had to worry overmuch about international trade - and even less about trade with Canada. Historically, the U.S. has been willing to abide by trade rules when they are to its benefit, or at least to the benefit of key American interests. But it insists that such rules, whether under NAFTA, the World Trade Organization or the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade before that, provide exceptions for politically important U.S. industries. And when it thinks the rules are still managing to interfere with these industries, it either ignores them or demands that they be changed. … .)

5//The Philippine Daily Inquirer, Philippines--ARROYO FOES STAGE WALKOUT (As though foreshadowing a reprise of then President Joseph Estrada's aborted impeachment trial, pro-impeachment lawmakers yesterday walked out of the House justice committee hearing, claiming the proceedings were being railroaded. Tumult broke out when Maguindanao Representative Simeon Datumanong, chairman of the justice committee and a staunch ally of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, ruled out further debate on whether the amended impeachment complaint was "separate and distinct" from the other two. The pro-impeachment lawmakers walked out at around 4:15 p.m., flinging papers into the air. Observers in the gallery roared in approval and displayed thumbs-down signs. … . In Environment Secretary Michael Defensor's opinion, the pro-impeachment lawmakers should know by now that all is fair in war. … . But while he stopped short of saying that Malacañang was pulling out all the stops to quash the impeachment bid, he said he was "very confident" that the issue would be out of the way by the time the President flies to New York for the UN Summit in September.)

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1//The Daily Star, Lebanon Wednesday, August 31, 2005
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?...

'ISLAM FORBIDS MILITARY USE OF NUCLEAR POWER'
Compiled by Daily Star staff
(AFP, Reuters)

Iran's new defense minister said on Tuesday using nuclear technology for military purposes was forbidden by Islam but Tehran would continue to develop a nuclear program to meet its electricity needs. Speaking at a ceremony to mark his official introduction as minister, Brigadier General Mustafa Mohammad Najjar added Iran would continue to develop ballistic missiles as a deterrent against attack.

Accused by the U.S. of seeking atomic arms, Iran says it has no intention of using its nuclear facilities for anything other than peaceful purposes.

"As our Supreme Leader (Ayatollah Ali Khamenei) has said, the nonpeaceful use of nuclear technology is religiously forbidden," the official IRNA news agency quoted Najjar as saying. "Since fossil fuels are going to run out we should replace them with nuclear energy," he said, adding that Iran must prove through negotiations that it is not trying to build atom bombs.

Concern in the West over Iran's nuclear program was heightened this month when it broke UN seals and resumed work at a uranium conversion facility - a key plant in the process to create atomic reactor or bomb-grade fuel.

Iran has rejected demands by the board of the IAEA that it stop uranium conversion, a stance which some EU officials have warned could see it referred to the UN Security Council for punitive action when the IAEA meets again next month.

Iran's new top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani headed to India in an apparent bid to drum up support from New Delhi in the looming international clash over its nuclear program.

State radio said Larijani would be in New Delhi for one day to meet with India's National Security Adviser MK Narayanan and "discuss peace in the region and deepen ties between the two countries."

India is a key member of the Non-Aligned Movement, whose members have been more sympathetic to Iran's quest to possess the nuclear fuel cycle.

India's Foreign Minister Natwar Singh is due to visit Iran early next month for talks with President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad that will likely include a proposed $7.4 billion gas pipeline between Iran and India.

In his speech, Najjar highlighted the importance of Iran's Shahab-3 medium-range ballistic missile - capable of hitting Israel and U.S. bases in the Gulf.

"One of the major projects pursued by this ministry is the production of deterrence weapons and the manufacture of Shahab-3 is in accordance with that policy and will not be halted," the semi-official ISNA news agency quoted him as saying.

Opposition groups say Iran plans to use the Shahab-3 to carry nuclear warheads. Iran says Shahab-3 is a conventional weapon which would only be used if Iran came under attack.

Meanwhile, Iranian state television reported that the country has made a new breakthrough in its controversial nuclear program, successfully using biotechnology to extract larger and cheaper quantities of uranium concentrate from its mines, state television reported.

(MORE)

2//Asia Times Online, Hong Kong Aug 31, 2005
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GH31Ak03.html

SISTANI.QOM: IN THE WIRED HEART OF SHI'ISM
By Pepe Escobar

QOM - Secular voices in Tehran are adamant: Ninety percent of the political power in Iran is in Qom. One may be tempted to add that at least 70% of the political power in Iraq is also situated in Qom.

It's only a small room, one of its walls plastered with blue cabinet files containing e-mail printouts from all over the world. Behind a glass wall, five youngsters scan documents non-stop. Appearances are deceptive.

This is the room housing www.sistani.org, arguably the nerve center of Shi'ite Islam today, run by a soft-spoken, scholarly looking man, Ali Shabestari. Some grand ayatollahs may be grander than others. Since the war, invasion and occupation of Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani - based in Najaf, 160 kilometers south of Baghdad, but born in Sistan-Balochistan province in Iran - has become the paramount voice of Shi'ism. The victory of the Shi'ite-led coalition in the January elections in Iraq was basically a Sistani victory. Most of his closest aides are based in Qom, in Central Iran about 200 kilometers south of Tehran. Sistani's unquestioned moral authority has put the limelight on nothing less than a silent battle for the core of the Shi'ite soul.

Sistani's website, in five languages, receives an average of 15,000 visitors a day, and "700 to 1,200 e-mails every single day", according to Shabestari. "There were so many page visits and e-mails from predominantly Sunni, Wahhabi Saudi Arabia that the Saudi government blocked the site," he says with a chuckle (10% of Saudi Arabia's population is Shi'ite, living in the oil-rich Persian Gulf). From non-Arabic visitors to Sistani's website, e-mails are mostly about Iraqi politics; nowadays overwhelmingly about the federation of Iraq. Shabestari shows some e-mail print outs and the relevant response handwritten by the grand ayatollah himself.

The question is inevitable: who is the most authoritative voice in Shi'ite Islam today? Is it the discreet, almost recluse Sistani in Najaf, Iraq who forced the American superpower to bow to his wishes? Or is it the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic in Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei? Who has the upper hand, Najaf or Qom?

(MORE)

3//The Independent, UK Published: 29 August 2005
http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news/article308804.ece

WAL-MART PRESIDENT TELLS UK TO INVESTIGATE THE POWER OF TESCO
By Stephen Foley

The head of Wal-Mart, the world's biggest retailer and owner of the Asda supermarket chain, has demanded that the Government investigates the increasing dominance of its rival Tesco in the UK grocery market.

In remarks that will be seen as highly ironic by critics of Wal-Mart's own domination of the US retail market, Lee Scott, its president and chief executive, said governments had a duty to act if a chain took more than 30 per cent of the market.

He also said the UK's planning laws, which have curtailed the number of out-of-town superstore openings and caused long delays to other store building programmes, were hampering competition.

His remarks come as Asda prepares to launch a new round of price cuts in its increasingly bitter rivalry with Tesco, which has a market share of 30.5 per cent compared with Asda's 16.7 per cent. "As you get to over 30 per cent and higher, I am sure there is a point where government is compelled to intervene," Mr Scott said in a newspaper interview, "particularly in the UK, where you have the planning laws that make it difficult to compete. At some point the Government has got to look at it."

Concerns about Tesco's increasing power in the UK retail market have grown in recent months, especially since the publication of its record annual results in April, which showed that profits had topped £2bn and that one pound out of every eight spent in Britain is spent at its stores. In a poll shortly afterwards, half of consumers said Tesco was too powerful.

Mr Scott's complaint mirrors one of those levelled at Wal-Mart in the US. Some states are campaigning to keep it out on the grounds that it kills off local businesses. On Wall Street, as a result, the company is out of fashion, with investors fearful that a groundswell of opposition to the retailing juggernaut may stop it in its tracks.

(MORE)

4//The Toronto Star, Canada Aug. 27, 2005. 10:13 AM
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/A...

NAFTA IS DEAD, IF IT EVER LIVED
U.S. never played by trade rules so Canada can live without it

Thomas Walkom

The North American Free Trade Agreement is effectively dead. Canada, in spite of all its free-trade anguishing over the years, didn't kill it. Washington did.

This doesn't mean that trade is dead or even that some form of free trade is dead. Nor does it mean that Canadians should gnash their teeth and anticipate poverty.

It just means that this specific deal, which originated with the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement of 1989 and expanded five years later to include Mexico, is, to all intents and purposes, history.

The death of NAFTA was confirmed this month when Washington refused - again - to obey a trade tribunal requiring it to let Canadian softwood lumber into the U.S. duty-free.

Yet the dying has been going on a long time. In some ways, it is as if NAFTA never lived.
Canada's federal government finds this hard to accept. The governing Liberals, once stoutly opposed to the Canada-U.S. free trade deals, now swear by them.

Prime Minister Paul Martin seems to think a light slap on the American wrist - say, punitive duties on California wines applied at some vaguely indeterminate time in the future - will pressure the U.S. into doing what Canada wants.

But the point is that the U.S. is not abiding by NAFTA rules because, in a fundamental way, it does not intend to - and never did.

This is not because George W. Bush, the current U.S. president, is uniquely pig-headed.

Rather, the American attitude to NAFTA reflects the long-established approach of a country so big and rich that it has not had to worry overmuch about international trade - and even less about trade with Canada.

Historically, the U.S. has been willing to abide by trade rules when they are to its benefit, or at least to the benefit of key American interests.

But it insists that such rules, whether under NAFTA, the World Trade Organization or the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade before that, provide exceptions for politically important U.S. industries.

And when it thinks the rules are still managing to interfere with these industries, it either ignores them or demands that they be changed.

As the 24-year-long lumber saga shows, this is certainly the case with NAFTA. From Ronald Reagan on, Republican and Democratic presidents have made it clear that, in the crunch, Canada-U.S. trade will always be trumped by the domestic concerns of U.S. timber barons.

But U.S. special interests have also used their political clout to impede other Canadian exports - from wheat to potatoes to beef.

So, no. As a coherent, rules-based treaty designed to assure rational market access, NAFTA never really lived.

(MORE)

5//The Philippine Daily Inquirer, Philippines First posted 00:42am (Mla time) Aug 31, 2005
http://news.inq7.net/nation/index.php?index=1&story_id=48648

ARROYO FOES STAGE WALKOUT
Theatrics, a planned tantrum, Palace says

By Michael Lim Ubac, Inquirer News Service

As though foreshadowing a reprise of then President Joseph Estrada's aborted impeachment trial, pro-impeachment lawmakers yesterday walked out of the House justice committee hearing, claiming the proceedings were being railroaded. Tumult broke out when Maguindanao Representative Simeon Datumanong, chairman of the justice committee and a staunch ally of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, ruled out further debate on whether the amended impeachment complaint was "separate and distinct" from the other two.

The pro-impeachment lawmakers walked out at around 4:15 p.m., flinging papers into the air. Observers in the gallery roared in approval and displayed thumbs-down signs.

"They want to railroad the process. The De Venecia railroad is working double-, triple-time to railroad everything. I warn those in Malacañang, all of you will pay for this," said House Deputy Minority Leader Teofisto Guingona III.

But the administration-dominated justice committee was unperturbed.

It resumed the hearing less than two hours later and proceeded to vote on whether the opposition-amended complaint should be treated as separate from the original case filed by lawyer Oliver Lozano.

Except for Makati Representative Teodoro Locsin and Bataan Representative Antonino Roman, the rest of the 54 administration lawmakers who were left in the committee voted to treat the July 25 opposition complaint as a separate case -- a possible prelude to its dismissal.

(SNIP)

But Senator Manuel "Mar" Roxas II cautioned against the suppression of the complaints.

"The handlers of the President in the House should take care not to bulldoze the impeachment," he said. "The conclusion will be that the truth will not be known. The people want to know what happened, so if the truth cannot be heard, then what happened these past two months would have been a moro-moro and it will affect the credibility of the government."

All's fair

In Environment Secretary Michael Defensor's opinion, the pro-impeachment lawmakers should know by now that all is fair in war.

He said this was a reality that he, too, had to face when he was gathering signatures for the impeachment complaint against Estrada.

"That is something that we have to accept, something that we have to realize... It would have to be on the best judgment of every congressman to weigh whether they would sign or not sign [the complaint], based on the national interest or the interest of their constituency," Defensor said at a press conference.

But while he stopped short of saying that Malacañang was pulling out all the stops to quash the impeachment bid, he said he was "very confident" that the issue would be out of the way by the time the President flies to New York for the UN Summit in September.

Copyright 2005, Gloria R. Lalumia