World Media Watch for May 6, 2002

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//Far Eastern Economic Review, Hong Kong--TROUBLE AHEAD (Repression and rebellion are on the cards for Central Asia after the U.S., seeking support for its military campaign in Afghanistan, strengthened the region's five authoritarian presidents...The result: a staggering increase in repression and only mild criticism from Washington.)

2//The Guardian, UK--COMMENT: MYTH AND MALICE (But none of these statistics explains why a prosperous Alsatian town such as Schirmeck, profiled in this paper, polled 25.7% for Le Pen in the first round.... This is politics at its most emotional, irrational and inarticulate - and, to a large swath of the liberal establishment across Europe, at its most incomprehensible.)

3//Philippine Daily Inquirer, Philippines--CHOICE OF NEXT ARMED FORCES CHIEF A TOUGH CALL (...warned that an unpopular choice on Ms Macapagal's part could provoke discontent within the Armed Forces which, if stoked by politicians, could weaken her grip on power... But appointing Cimatu could provoke charges of a return to a hated practice of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who extended the careers of aging generals loyal to him, political analyst Antonio Gatmaitan said.) UPDATE-- Macapagal names Cimatu as next Armed Forces chief.

4//The Sydney Morning Herald, Australia--INDUSTRIAL WASTE SOLD AS FERTILISER (State government agencies encourage the practice in the name of recycling and farmers embrace it because it delivers cheap fertiliser. Corporations also can save millions of dollars in dumping costs.)

5//Frankfurter Allgemeine, Germany--GREENS ADOPT PLATFORM, RETURN TO ROOTS (In their effort to win the votes they need in the Sept. 22 election, the Greens adopted a platform focusing on such traditional party issues as the environment, social justice and equal rights for women and homosexuals.)

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1//Far Eastern Economic Review (Dow Jones) Issue cover-dated May 09, 2002
http://www.feer.com/articles/2002/0205_09/p014region.html

TROUBLE AHEAD

Repression and rebellion are on the cards for Central Asia after the U.S., seeking support for its military campaign in Afghanistan, strengthened the region's five authoritarian presidents

By Ahmed Rashid/ISLAMABAD

...This increased cooperation has put the region's five presidents under increasing scrutiny. All five have been in power since the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991 and are determined to remain in power. When the U.S. rushed into Central Asia to establish military bases for its campaign in Afghanistan, many in the region hoped that the international attention and pressure would force the five leaders to carry out long-needed political and economic reforms. Instead, the U.S. has focused on Afghanistan, while the Central Asian regimes have felt confident enough to use the threat of Islamic fundamentalism and the Al Qaeda terrorist network to continue in their old ways. The result: a staggering increase in repression and only mild criticism from Washington.

While Washington reaps the short-term benefits, it may well be storing up trouble for later. The increase in repression also energizes extremists, who are certain to destabilize their host countries, sow strife in the region and possibly target the U.S. just as Al Qaeda has done.

But the growing power of Central Asian leaders is also inspiring revolt among some in the top level of former communist bureaucrats who inherited the newly independent Central Asian states in 1991. Many are fed up with their leaders' lack of vision and unwillingness to carry out desperately needed reforms.

But isolation has become less of a worry to the region's leaders now that the U.S. military has arrived. All five countries are either hosting U.S. troops, getting American military training or at least allowing U.S. aircraft into their airspace.

In varying degrees all the regimes have used their new alliances with the U.S. to further repress democratic opposition, Islamic groups and the media. "Twelve years have passed but the undemocratic, human-rights-abusing, one-party states have not changed and neither has Western support for them," Mohammed Solih, leader of Uzbekistan's banned Freedom Party, or Erk, wrote in The New York Times on March 11. Solih, who has been in exile in Norway since 1992, says Uzbek President Islam Karimov "shows it is possible to gain prestige and money and extend your rule on a whim--and still gain American support in the post-terrorism world."

The U.S. military presence is a turning point in the history of Central Asia. It is the first arrival of Western armies since Alexander the Great conquered the region in 334 B.C. So far Russia and China have gone along with Washington's aims, but as the war in Afghanistan winds down, hardliners in both countries are expressing resentment and apprehension about a long-term U.S. military presence in a region they consider as their backyard.

And it's not all about geo-politics. The key to the region's future is who gets to dominate the oil and gas reserves of Central Asia and the Caspian region and build pipelines to new markets.

But designs on lucrative pipelines could remain pipe dreams unless there is stability in Central Asia, and that looks increasingly uncertain. In the absence of reforms, all the Central Asian economies have experienced massive downturns. Health and education services are disintegrating and unemployment is growing--reaching 80% in some areas, including the volatile Ferghana Valley which straddles Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kirgyzstan. The United Nations estimates that 70%-80% of the populations of Tajikistan and Kirgyzstan are living below the poverty level.

Such conditions offer extremist Islamic groups such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and Hizb-ut-Tahrir ripe ground for recruitment. The U.S. war has hit the IMU hard, as it maintained bases in Afghanistan and received aid from alleged terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden, but its underground network in Central Asia remains intact. Hizb-ut-Tahrir, a pan-Islamic movement which has growing underground popularity in four of the five countries, has issued anti-American leaflets in Kirgyzstan criticizing the U.S. troops' presence.

(SNIP)

"The Americans make statements that don't tie them down to anything and which are ignored by the Central Asian regimes," Emil Aliev, leader of Kirgyzstan's opposition Ar-Namys party, said in February.

Others are more optimistic. "One of the unintended consequences of the U.S. presence is that it is providing a sort of security umbrella and allowing opposition to get more active and people to speak up for the first time," says Richter.

So, should Washington tie its future strategy to largely discredited leaders or push for reform and support democratization? The dilemma is made more acute by the fact that many of the new opposition leaders served time in the regimes they now criticize and are themselves engulfed in corruption scandals.

(SNIP)

The future of the U.S.-Central Asia relationship will partly be shaped by what happens in Afghanistan. "If the situation deteriorates, then straight security concerns will dominate. If Afghanistan stabilizes then the U.S. will press for more reform," says Olcott. But Washington appears to lack a strategic vision for the region, such as one that would unite major powers in a bid to push the regimes to reform. In the meantime, as China and Russia gear up to oppose a long-term U.S. presence in Central Asia and extremist movements gain strength, Washington will have to watch its back.

2//The Guardian Monday May 6, 2002
http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,11882,710740,00.html

COMMENT: MYTH AND MALICE
Le Pen taps into the growing crisis of identity in European politics. How will the EU respond?

Madeleine Bunting

Kiss goodbye to those comforting illusions that Jean-Marie Le Pen's success in the first round of the French presidential elections was the result of a protest vote, leftwing fragmentation or misleading polls. It was none of these: it was what we most feared, the growth of the far right - Le Pen has increased his vote by a million since 1995. Even after two weeks of mass mobilisation against the threat to French democracy, his support held remarkably steady.

Take no comfort from the fact that Le Pen is as far from the Elysée as ever. That was never the issue. Well aware that he had no chance of winning the French presidency, he has spent the past two weeks preparing to work electoral defeat to his political advantage. He complained of the media's "diabolisation" of him, and suggested that massive vote-rigging on the part of Chirac's supporters would cheat him of the presidency. The picture he painted was of how he, as little David pitted against Goliath, had all the odds stacked against him; the "system" would ensure his defeat. For a political movement that feeds on the disempowerment among its voters, Le Pen's own disempowerment provides the perfect symbolic spectacle.

(SNIP)

The sketchy details that emerged of the typical Le Pen voter in the first round was that he was more often male (20% of men voted for Le Pen compared with 14% of women), older (he scored 22% among voters aged 50-64), unemployed (he scored 38% among the unemployed), or earning less than £1,000 a month (25%). Three-quarters said street crime was their greatest concern. But none of these statistics explains why a prosperous Alsatian town such as Schirmeck, profiled in this paper, polled 25.7% for Le Pen in the first round. The town is wealthy and does not have a large immigrant population, nor much crime or unemployment. One Schirmeck resident insisted he wasn't racist but wanted "to send a message to Paris that we're fed up".

This is politics at its most emotional, irrational and inarticulate - and, to a large swath of the liberal establishment across Europe, at its most incomprehensible. Nicholas Fraser in his book, The Voice of Modern Hatred, describes how a team of French researchers fed a sample of Le Pen's speeches into a computer and found that they were "not dependent on rationality or on the analysis of facts in a Cartesian manner". Why did they need a computer when even the most cursory knowledge of Le Pen's career and thinking exposes a rambling confusion of myth and malice?

(SNIP)

The free market's promise of cheaper prices, more choice and rising wages (even if they materialise) can't provide a sense of identity - that comfort of place and status, of knowing who you are, knowing others know who you are and knowing who they are - which provides those who lack the will or talent to compete in capitalism's race with a sense of purpose and potency. Insecurity is the shadowside of globalisation, which hybridises cultures and centralises power, creating a winners' global metropolitan culture, and brutally marginalises those who have no appetite for the relentless pace of change.

(SNIP)

Liberalism is of little help here, blinded by its preoccupation with the individual. Identity, by definition, is socially created: what identity do I have unless you recognise it? It is the failure of free-market capitalism to generate any collective identity - except the spurious substitute of consuming brands - that provides Le Pen with so many of his foot soldiers.

3//Philippine Daily Inquirer Monday May 06, 2002, Philippines
http://www.inq7.net/nat/2002/may/06/nat_3-1.htm

CHOICE OF NEXT ARMED FORCES CHIEF A TOUGH CALL
Posted: 11:29 PM (Manila Time) | May 05, 2002
Inquirer News Service

Wrong choice may lead to unrest

FIFTEEN months after crucial military support helped install her in power, President Macapagal-Arroyo faces one of her toughest tests: naming the next Armed Forces chief of staff.

Analysts agree the 55-year-old economist can ill afford to make a wrong call at a time when she is struggling to spur the economy to full recovery while working in a fractious political environment. They warned that an unpopular choice on Ms Macapagal's part could provoke discontent within the Armed Forces which, if stoked by politicians, could weaken her grip on power.

"The seeds of military adventurism are still there," former AFP chief and now opposition Sen. Rodolfo Biazon said Sunday, referring to a string of abortive coup attempts by disgruntled army officers in the late 1980s.

(SNIP)

Gen. Diomedio Villanueva retires on May 20, and the most prominent names in the list of possible replacements include those of Vice Chief of Staff Gregorio Camiling, Deputy Chief of Staff Narciso Abaya and Southern Command chief Roy Cimatu.

Cimatu has been reported as the preference of Ms Macapagal and Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes, whose vote could prove crucial, but he faces some resistance from current and retired officers because he is not the most senior candidate and because, scheduled to retire in July, his term may be extended.

But appointing Cimatu could provoke charges of a return to a hated practice of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who extended the careers of aging generals loyal to him, political analyst Antonio Gatmaitan said.

The practice helped provoke a military-backed "people power revolt" in 1986 which ended Marcos's 20-year rule.

(MORE)

UPDATE-- Macapagal names Cimatu as next Armed Forces chief
Posted: 8:43 AM (Manila Time) | May 06, 2002 By INQ7.net
http://www.inq7.net/brk/2002/may/06/brkpol_2-1.htm

PRESIDENT Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo on Monday has appointed Southern Command chief Lieutenant General Roy Cimatu as the next Armed Forces of the Philippines chief of staff. Cimatu will succeed AFP chief General Diomedio Villanueva who will retire on May 20.

In her weekly radio program on Monday, Ms. Macapagal also hinted she will extend Cimatu's term beyond his retirement on July 4, a practice some ranking officers oppose.

(MORE)

4//The Sydney Morning Herald May 6 2002
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/05/06/1019441463993.html

INDUSTRIAL WASTE SOLD AS FERTILISER
By Gerard Ryle

Big businesses across Australia are disposing of their industrial waste as fertilisers or soil conditioners to be spread on farms, vineyards and home gardens.

The material often contains potentially toxic substances and heavy metals such as arsenic, mercury, chromium and lead.

State government agencies encourage the practice in the name of recycling and farmers embrace it because it delivers cheap fertiliser. Corporations also can save millions of dollars in dumping costs.

Untreated slag from BHP's Port Kembla steelworks is being spread over dairy fields and crops in the southern tablelands.

Radioactive material from aluminium refineries in Western Australia is being poured onto big cattle stations. In Victoria, South Australia and Queensland, waste from zinc smelters, power stations, cement kilns and car-part manufacturers is turned into products for farms and home gardens.

The practice is perfectly legal.

In Australia, there is no national regulation of fertilisers and any material that has fertilising qualities can be labelled and used as such, even if it contains toxins and heavy metals.

(SNIP)

State environmental protection authorities and agricultural departments believe that the levels in the recycled material are harmless.

But they rarely test the products, relying instead on data supplied by the companies producing the waste for assurance that it is not dangerous.

Dr Mark Conyers, a soil scientist with the NSW Department of Agriculture, says it is time for a public debate on an issue which is unknown to most consumers.

"One of the things that disturbs me is that they give these apparently detailed analyses on their products, but they don't give you analysis on the bogymen [heavy metals]," he said. "It is like they are not there.

(MORE)

5//Frankfurter Allgemeine May 6, 2002
http://www.faz.com/IN/INtemplates/eFAZ/docmain.asp?rub={B1311FCC-FBFB-11D2-B228-00105A9CAF88}&doc={C705408B-EBE8-427A-953F-C26C98BC7DA8}

GREENS ADOPT PLATFORM, RETURN TO ROOTS

F.A.Z. WIESBADEN. Alliance 90/The Greens, the junior partner in Germany's coalition government, passed an election platform on Sunday at a party conference that saw little of the controversy that has disrupted many recent Green meetings.

(SNIP)

Mr. Fischer said the Greens had to garner "8 plus X" percent of the vote in order to regain a share of power, presumably again in coalition with the Social Democrats. The Greens won 6.7 percent in the 1998 German election and stand at about that level now, according to opinion polls.

In their effort to win the votes they need in the Sept. 22 election, the Greens adopted a platform focusing on such traditional party issues as the environment, social justice and equal rights for women and homosexuals.

Notably, the platform calls for the controversial environmental tax, essentially an energy tax, the proceeds of which go to the Germany's pension system, to be raised again after 2003.

(SNIP)

But the means by which these electoral promises would be paid for was left unclear, and the platform did not state by how much the environmental tax, which remains highly unpopular with many Germans, should be raised.

On foreign policy, a sensitive issue in a party which at the behest of Mr. Fischer has broken with its founding principle of pacifism, the Greens passed a motion on the Middle East that criticized German arms exports to Israel yet stopped short of calling for an embargo. It also said Germany should not support the United States -- militarily or in any other way -- in any possible attack on Iraq.

Many Green leaders admitted in private that the "neo-liberal" economics espoused in some quarters of the party were a non-starter for their party, and at the podium went out of their way to draw clear distinctions between the Greens and the traditionally pro-business Free Democrats and the center-right chancellor candidate, Edmund Stoiber of the Christian Social Union.

(MORE)

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© 2002, Gloria R. Lalumia
insight@zianet.com

More Stuff at: http://www.zianet.com/insightanalytical

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