February 20, 2006

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 FEBRUARY 20, 2006

1//Asia Times Online, Hong Kong--FUNDING REGIME CHANGE (Washington's latest policy of putting more pressure on Iran through securing additional funding for "democracy-promoting" activities inside Iran has been greeted with official and popular rejection, even open derision, in Tehran. "I think the Americans have no idea of what they're talking about," said Mamak Nourbaksh, a teacher of English literature. "No one is going to touch them [the funds], no one will work with them.")

2//The Sunday Times, UK--US MILITARY PLANES CRISS-CROSS EUROPE USING BOGUS CALL SIGN (The American military have been operating flights across Europe using a call sign assigned to a civilian airline that they have no legal right to use. Not only is the call sign bogus — according to the International Civil Aviation Organisation [ICAO] — so, it appears, are some of the aircraft details the Americans have filed with the air traffic control authorities. In at least one case, a plane identified with the CIA practice of “extraordinary rendition” — transporting terrorist suspects — left a US air base just after the arrival of an aircraft using the bogus call sign. The call sign Juliet Golf Oscar (JGO) followed by a flight number belongs, says the ICAO, to a now bankrupt Canadian low-cost airline called Jetsgo of Montreal. But for several years and as recently as last December it has been used selectively by both the American air force and army to cover the flights of aircraft to and from the Balkans.)

3//The Independent, UK--TOPPLING MUSHARRAF: HEAT RISES ON PAKISTANI LEADER (… The struggle between Musharraf, a liberal whiskey-drinking Muslim, and the forces of radical Islam, has been simmering since he seized power in a coup in 1999 and began promoting a modernising agenda. According to this vision, which carries the Orwellian name "Enlightened Moderation", Pakistan, a society so religiously conservative that a mixed-sex marathon last month caused uproar, would be transformed into a tolerant progressive state. It would still be an Islamic republic: the government ministry currently trying to rein in the madrassas (religious schools) for example, is also in charge of organising pilgrimages to Mecca, and the national airline plays taped prayers alongside safety announcements before takeoff, but a moderate one. But if nudging Pakistan into the 21st century while avoiding the fate of the Shah of Iran was already a challenge before 9/11, Musharraf's partnership with Bush's "war on terror" has made the balancing act almost impossible. The agenda to transform Pakistani society is now seen by Musharraf's critics as complicity in a greater American plot to extend secularism.)

4//The Sydney Morning Herald, Australia--A MEANER COUNTRY, AND A GOOD JOB TOO (HALF of voters believe Australia has become a meaner place in the 10 years since John Howard became Prime Minister - but many believe he has done a good job managing the economy. The Herald commissioned a poll of voter attitudes to Mr Howard's leadership to coincide with the 10th anniversary of his election. As well as the half of those polled who thought Australia had become meaner under him, four out of 10 said it was a "less fair society". The Herald Saulwick poll also uncovered an exquisite paradox in Mr Howard's popularity. On many, perhaps most, issues canvassed in the poll he fared poorly. Yet he enjoyed his positive rating because more people named his handling of the economy as the "best thing" he had done for Australia, an achievement that attracted admiration from both sides of the political spectrum. … Australia's role in the war in Iraq was by far the most commonly named "worst thing" Mr Howard had done. This was followed by criticism that he was too close to the US President, George Bush. Next came concern about his industrial relations legislation.)

5//Xinhua Online, China--CHINA FACES DAUNTING TASK ON JOB FRONT (Imagine 25 million men and women about the combined population of Australia and New Zealand pressing for new jobs. That is the daunting reality that the Chinese economy faces this year, the National Development and Reform Commission [NDRC] has reported. This is the country's worst employment crisis ever, as the children of baby boomers flood the job market seeking their first jobs. Their parents were born in the early 1960s, and they themselves in the late 1980s. China can generate only an estimated 11 million new jobs this year, according to the NDRC. And at no time this decade did they exceed 10 million a year. This means that despite a record number of employment openings about 11 million jobs have to be found for about 14 million people more. Guo Yue, a researcher with the Institute for Labour Studies under the Ministry of Labour and Social Security [MOLASS], told China Daily: "The government is racking its brains to create jobs as it braces for a real tough year.")

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1//Asia Times Online, Hong Kong Feb 18, 2006

FUNDING REGIME CHANGE
By Iason Athanasiadis

TEHRAN - Washington's latest policy of putting more pressure on Iran through securing additional funding for "democracy-promoting" activities inside Iran has been greeted with official and popular rejection, even open derision, in Tehran.

"I think the Americans have no idea of what they're talking about," said Mamak Nourbaksh, a teacher of English literature. "No one is going to touch them [the funds], no one will work with them."

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's request for extra funds marks a nearly eightfold increase in the US government's current expenditure on Iran and signals the beginning of a new period of concerted diplomatic pressure by the United States against Iran, a country that President George W Bush included in his infamous "axis of evil" speech in 2002.

In seeking an additional US$75 million from the US Congress to fund Iranian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that promote democracy, human rights and trade unionism, Rice is broadening the range of non-military options at Washington's disposal to weaken from within Tehran's clerical regime.

Of the new outlay, $50 million will go toward Farsi radio broadcasts; another $15 million is earmarked for increasing participation in the political process, including measures such as expanded Internet access. The Bush administration hopes to spend $5 million to fund scholarships and fellowships for young Iranians, and the State Department said $5 million "would go to public diplomacy efforts aimed at Iran, including its Persian-language website."

"The United States will actively confront the aggressive policies of the Iranian regime," Rice said. "At the same time, we will work to support the aspirations of the Iranian people for freedom and democracy in their country."

Such pronouncements are greeted with open skepticism by ordinary Iranians who have seen the infrastructure of neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan sustain significant blows by US invasions, after which they have lagged far behind the touted recovery schedules. Iranians also have not forgotten the support offered by Washington to their arch-enemy Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s.

One of the militantly anti-clerical-regime groups that could stand to benefit from the new windfall is the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), a Marxist-Islamist organization that is hated within Iran because it sided with the Iraqi dictator against Iran during the eight-year Iran-Iraq War.

The MEK has been registered by the State Department as a terrorist organization for the past 10 years, but now neo-conservative factions of the Bush administration are lobbying hard to remove it from the list. Should the MEK end up benefiting from US pro-democracy largesse, it would send a clear message to people inside Iran that Washington funds groups that engage in terrorist activity. Some reports quote unidentified US officials as saying that the MEK would not receive any of the new funds.

(SNIP)

Washington's new initiative might end up backfiring and contribute to the further stifling of civil society in Iran, if experience can be trusted. NGOs are regarded suspiciously by the Iranian government and are often accused of being agents of foreign influence.

Rice failed to make clear how the funds would be disbursed to groups inside Iran, given that Washington has lacked a direct diplomatic presence in Tehran for the past 26 years.

Some American analysts have also reacted with skepticism at the initiative, pointing out that it may be a case of too little too late. "One suspects there are no shortage of potential Iranian Chalabis [2] ready to set themselves up in a nice apartment in London's West End with some copiers and fax machines and the requisite bank accounts to reap the windfall," said James Russell, a senior lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School's department of national security affairs.

Despite other secret efforts the US Central Intelligence Agency has mounted in recent years, including a $2 million campaign in 1995 based largely on radio broadcasts denouncing the clerical regime, the CIA's analysts see little hope of creating a new generation of pro-Washington leaders for Iran.

2//The Sunday Times, UK February 19, 2006

US MILITARY PLANES CRISS-CROSS EUROPE USING BOGUS CALL SIGN
Jon Swain and Brian Johnson-Thomas in Rome

THE American military have been operating flights across Europe using a call sign assigned to a civilian airline that they have no legal right to use.

Not only is the call sign bogus — according to the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) — so, it appears, are some of the aircraft details the Americans have filed with the air traffic control authorities.

In at least one case, a plane identified with the CIA practice of “extraordinary rendition” — transporting terrorist suspects — left a US air base just after the arrival of an aircraft using the bogus call sign.

The call sign Juliet Golf Oscar (JGO) followed by a flight number belongs, says the ICAO, to a now bankrupt Canadian low-cost airline called Jetsgo of Montreal.

But for several years and as recently as last December it has been used selectively by both the American air force and army to cover the flights of aircraft to and from the Balkans.

These range from Learjet 35 executive jets to C-130 transport planes and MC-130P Combat Shadows, which are specially adapted for clandestine missions in politically sensitive or hostile territory.

A Sunday Times analysis of flight plans and radio logs has placed these aircraft at locations including Tuzla in Bosnia, Pristina in Kosovo, Aviano, the site of a large joint US-Italian military air base in northern Italy, and Ramstein in Germany, the headquarters of the US Air Forces in Europe (USAFE).

On December 11, 2004, USAFE in Ramstein filed a flight plan for a Learjet 35 to fly from Tuzla to Aviano. The flight plan was copied to 15 addressees including Tuzla airport, Aviano airport and a mysterious recipient labelled “xxxxxxxx.”

The aircraft’s identity was given as JGO 80, the flight was a Learjet 35 operated by the Department of Defence and the registration was 99999E.

The status of the flight was given as “humanitarian”. But it was also given as “state”, which means government, and as “protected”, which means diplomatic.

During the time the plane was in the air, USAFE changed some of the flight plan timings and at the same time the registration changed. The aircraft metamorphosed into 40112E but continued to be a Learjet 35 and was still JGO 80 and a humanitarian, government and diplomatic flight.

While the Learjet was on the ground at Tuzla, an Ilyushin 76 was loading a cargo of 45 tons of surplus weapons and ammunition sold off by the Bosnian military and destined for Rwanda in defiance of a UN embargo.

The Ilyushin left Tuzla, flew over Italy and headed south in the direction of Africa. The American Learjet took off 55 minutes later.

In a report exposing arms trafficking to war-torn central Africa, Amnesty International has suggested that “US security authorities were engaged in a covert operation to ferry arms to Rwanda in the face of political opposition from the European Union”.

(SNIP)

A USAFE spokesman last week said American aircraft using the JGO call sign were performing “Joint Guard Operations” for the Nato/European peacekeeping mission in the Balkans.

However, inquiries have shown that the military operation called “Joint Guard” ended in 1998. They also show that none of the US aircraft deployed in it match ones using the JGO call sign.

A spokesman for the ICAO said: “Our records indicate that the designator JGO is still assigned to Jetsgo and the ICAO does not assign the same code to two operators.”

3//The Independent, UK Published: 20 February 2006

TOPPLING MUSHARRAF: HEAT RISES ON PAKISTANI LEADER

His critics call him a Western poodle, the cartoons have fanned the flames, and now Bush is coming to town. Katherine Butler reports from Islamabad on the attempts to unseat the President

Minutes after India's cricketers beat Pakistan in Lahore last week, a casually dressed man with a moustache strolled confidently across the ground and was handed a microphone. Relaxed and smiling, Pervez Musharraf looked every bit the modern politician, delighting the crowd with jokes about India's star batsman's long hair. The style was more Bill Clinton than military dictator. And there was scarcely hint that this was a man who had survived two assassination attempts, or that he is struggling to hold his turbulent Islamic nation together and is now facing renewed threat as Pakistan hovers on the edge of an anti-Western implosion.

Just 24 hours after the cricket international the centre of Lahore was in flames and dead bodies lay on the streets, as the crisis over the "blasphemous sketches", as Pakistanis call the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohamed, moved into a new, violent and for Musharraf, treacherous phase. After a week in which protests spread like a rash across the country, many of them violent, Musharraf intervened yesterday to ban a mass rally planned for the capital, Islamabad, and ordered the detention of hundreds of ringleaders.

Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the leader of Jamaat-e-Islami, the religious party that called yesterday's rally, was placed under house arrest. Just hours earlier he had warned of a nationwide campaign to unseat the President if Musharraf were to hinder the protests. "We will not stop till we achieve our objectives against the present rulers," he said. "General Pervez Musharraf is acting as the representative of western civilisation and is fighting a battle against Islamic values."

For Musharraf to crack down with force is therefore a high-risk strategy, giving his opponents a pretext to raise the temperature further. He now faces his toughest 10 days in power as the countdown begins to a visit from George Bush. Unless Musharraf can quell, or at least contain, the dissent before then, the visit looks set to be engulfed by the "rolling campaign" of street protests that Pakistan's religious parties have warned they can deliver.

This crisis is no longer just about cartoons. It has become entwined with the desire by Musharraf's Islamist enemies to destabilise him by fanning a much wider uprising against what they see as his traitorous alliance with America.

The Pakistani leader is also the army's chief and still, as far as we know, has the most powerful wings of the military firmly on his side. But Pakistan is also still a hotbed for al-Qa'ida-affiliated extremists and jihadi militants hiding out and training in the wild ungovernable provinces along the border with Afghanistan. Twice, they have tried to blow up the President.

The Taliban, who fled here after being driven from Kabul, have not gone away either. Musharraf's removal, by elements who believe he is not Islamic enough, could open the way for dramatic regional instability, the threat of jihadists getting hold of Pakistan's nuclear weapons, or provoking a nuclear war with and India, and what Bush himself once warned would be "the worst form of Islamist militancy" in South Asia.

The American flag and branches of Kentucky Fried Chicken have already been burned in most street protests. In Peshawar, crates of Pepsi Cola and DVDs of Hollywood films were ransacked from shops and symbolically destroyed, and posters appeared showing not just the Danish Prime Minister but George Bush beside him, their grinning faces superimposed on the bodies of a pair of dogs.

How the protests tipped into deadly clashes with a wider political focus and the potential to topple Musharraf is murky. But then since Pakistan's birth in 1947 its politics has been murky and violent. And its leaders have a history of meeting violent ends variously ending up exiled, jailed, or ousted in coups. One was hanged and one died in an unexplained air crash.

(SNIP)

That the Danish cartoons are seen as evidence of an "orchestrated" attempt to humiliate Muslims might explain why protests have widened beyond Scandinavian targets. But senior Pakistani intelligence sources interviewed by The Independent in Islamabad are emphatic that a handful of extremist Islamist groups Musharraf proscribed after 9/11, and suspected of trying to assassinate him (perhaps with the complicity of sympathisers in the army) on at least two occasions, are manoeuvring behind the issue in Pakistan. Their aim is to bait the government into a clampdown that will radicalise opinion further.

Farhat Ullah Babar, a senator for Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan's Peoples Party, the most secular of the opposition parties, said the cartoon anger was wide open for exploitation by those who see Musharraf as the West's poodle. "It [the anger] is genuine, but the religious parties have identified an issue on which the Pakistani people are very agitated and which they can exploit to destabilise Musharraf."

The struggle between Musharraf, a liberal whiskey-drinking Muslim, and the forces of radical Islam, has been simmering since he seized power in a coup in 1999 and began promoting a modernising agenda. According to this vision, which carries the Orwellian name "Enlightened Moderation," Pakistan, a society so religiously conservative that a mixed-sex marathon last month caused uproar, would be transformed into a tolerant progressive state. It would still be an Islamic republic: the government ministry currently trying to rein in the madrassas (religious schools) for example, is also in charge of organising pilgrimages to Mecca, and the national airline plays taped prayers alongside safety announcements before takeoff, but a moderate one.

But if nudging Pakistan into the 21st century while avoiding the fate of the Shah of Iran was already a challenge before 9/11, Musharraf's partnership with Bush's "war on terror" has made the balancing act almost impossible. The agenda to transform Pakistani society is now seen by Musharraf's critics as complicity in a greater American plot to extend secularism.

(MORE)

4//The Sydney Morning Herald, Australia February 20, 2006

A MEANER COUNTRY, AND A GOOD JOB TOO
By Damien Murphy

HOWARD'S 10 YEARS
HALF of voters believe Australia has become a meaner place in the 10 years since John Howard became Prime Minister - but many believe he has done a good job managing the economy.

The Herald commissioned a poll of voter attitudes to Mr Howard's leadership to coincide with the 10th anniversary of his election. As well as the half of those polled who thought Australia had become meaner under him, four out of 10 said it was a "less fair society."

The Herald Saulwick poll also uncovered an exquisite paradox in Mr Howard's popularity. On many, perhaps most, issues canvassed in the poll he fared poorly.

Yet he enjoyed his positive rating because more people named his handling of the economy as the "best thing" he had done for Australia, an achievement that attracted admiration from both sides of the political spectrum.

Eighty-three per cent of those who identified the economy as the most important issue for Australia endorsed Mr Howard's handling of the purse strings. Among Labor supporters who gave priority to the economy, 61 per cent thought he was doing well.

He was also seen to hold the line on terrorism - with men his strongest supporters - and provide strong leadership in times of uncertainty. But there were many negatives. Australia was not only seen to have become less fair, but 55 per cent of voters regard Mr Howard as a divisive figure instead of a unifying one.

Australia's role in the war in Iraq was by far the most commonly named "worst thing" Mr Howard had done. This was followed by criticism that he was too close to the US President, George Bush. Next came concern about his industrial relations legislation.

(SNIP)

Mr Howard, on balance, was also not seen to have handled Australian interests well. Fifty-eight per cent of voters thought Australia's interests had not been looked after by going to war in Iraq, half considered Mr Howard's record lacking on the issue of refugees and asylum seekers while 47 per cent were unimpressed by his handling of the US Free Trade Agreement. Although half believed Australia had become meaner, respondents were split evenly over whether it was a better place to live, 31 per cent thinking it better, 30 per cent worse.

But nearly half thought they were personally better off, while nearly one in five said they were worse off. Coalition voters and the young were most likely to feel better off. Older voters were least inclined to say they were better off.

(SNIP)

The national survey by phone between January 31 and February 6 was of a random sample of 1000 people eligible to vote.

5//Xinhua Online, China 2006-02-20 08:15:00

CHINA FACES DAUNTING TASK ON JOB FRONT

BEIJING, Feb. 20 -- Imagine 25 million men and women about the combined population of Australia and New Zealand pressing for new jobs. That is the daunting reality that the Chinese economy faces this year, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) has reported.

This is the country's worst employment crisis ever, as the children of baby boomers flood the job market seeking their first jobs. Their parents were born in the early 1960s, and they themselves in the late 1980s.

China can generate only an estimated 11 million new jobs this year, according to the NDRC. And at no time this decade did they exceed 10 million a year.

This means that despite a record number of employment openings about 11 million jobs have to be found for about 14 million people more.

Guo Yue, a researcher with the Institute for Labour Studies under the Ministry of Labour and Social Security (MOLASS), told China Daily: "The government is racking its brains to create jobs as it braces for a real tough year."

An even greater challenge is that the crisis will continue for more than just one year, said Du Yang, a researcher at the Institute of Population and Labour Economics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

The mismatch between job supply and demand will continue till 2010, or the end of China's 11th Five-Year Plan (2006-10), Du forecast. He agreed that since there is no control over demand, "the only way is to enlarge supply, or to create as many jobs as possible."

The most effective way to create new jobs, he pointed out, is to create a conducive business environment for small- and medium-sized enterprises, especially labour-intensive operations.

Of the 25 million people who need urban jobs, according to the NDRC, 9 million will be those joining the job market, 3 million will be former rural residents who have recently moved to cities, and the remaining 13 million are workers let go or about to be retrenched by their employers, mainly as a result of the continuous restructuring of State-owned enterprises.

Of the 9 million newcomers, 4.1 million will be graduates, more than at any time in China's history, and an increase of 750,000 over last year.

(MORE)