Libya - Rebel Leadership Casts a Wide Net

BENGHAZI, Libya—The leader of the rebel government in eastern Libya earned his reputation as a foe of the regime from an unlikely post: as Col. Moammar Gadhafi's minister of justice.

Mustafa Abdel Jalil, a former judge who served in Col. Gadhafi's cabinet from 2007 until he resigned last month to protest violence against demonstrators, now heads the Libyan National Council, whose lineup seats former government insiders alongside hardened dissidents who spent years in prison.

The list of 10 names made public so far from the 31-member council suggests an effort by rebel leaders to be inclusive, to win over strategically important constituencies. Those include powerful tribes in western Libya, traditional elites in the east, and regime officials wavering over which way to throw their support.

The selections also appear to have been chosen with an eye to Western opinion; some of the officials are known in Washington and European capitals as secular, pro-Western and pro-business.

In naming the council, local councils in regions held by the opposition chose who would represent each city—though the entire process wasn't particularly transparent.

Islamists among the rebels have been largely kept out of the public spotlight, though they are believed to have support in eastern Libya and have assumed key functions in the rebel efforts to unseat Col. Gadhafi.

In the east Libyan city of Darna, for example, the man charged with heading the city's defenses is a former Islamist militant who fought in Afghanistan before being jailed by Col. Gadhafi. In neighboring Tobruq, defenses are lead by a secular ex-general who helped prosecute a campaign against Islamists during the 1990s.

The National Libyan Council, the rebels' Benghazi-based administration, has announced ten members so far. The rest of the body, which is supposed to have 31-members, hasn't been named because of security reasons or because some regions are still under Col. Moammar Gadhafi's control. The leadership is joined by some key appointees.

Mustafa Abdel Jalil: Head of the council. Born in 1952, Mr. Jalil is a former judge and served as minister of justice from 2007 until he resigned in the first days of the uprising last month. As minister, he earned opposition plaudits for taking public stands against the regime.
Abdullah al-Meihoub: Represents the city of Qoba. A law professor who wrote a scathing critique of Libyan leader Gadhafi's Green Book, which laid out his ruling philosophy and vision.
Zubeir Ahmed Sherif: Represent political prisoners. A descendant of Libya's last monarch, King Idriss Senussi, he was arrested in 1973 for conspiracy and served 31 years in prison, making him Libya's longest-serving prisoner.
Fatih al-Bahja: Represents Benghazi. A U.S.-educated professor of political science, he was charged by Libya's security apparatus for writing articles critical of the regime.
Abdel Hafeez Goga: Represents Benghazi. The council's deputy leader and official spokesman. A human-rights lawyer.
Ahmed al-Abbar: Represents Benghazi. A businessman who served as chairman of a company that imports agricultural goods. His family has historic ties to the Senussi monarchy, which ruled Libya until 1969.
Fatih Terbil: Representative of the youth. A human-rights activist and lawyer who represented the families of prisoners killed in the regime's 1996 crackdown on a prison rebellion that left 1,200 dead. His Feb. 15 arrest kicked off the protests that sparked the uprising.
Selway Dughaily: Representative for women. This Benghazi lawyer, whose uncle served time in prison for his opposition activities, comes from a prominent family in eastern Libya.
Othman Suleiman Al Mugharhi: Represents the city of Tobruq and surrounding areas.
Ashur Hamad Bourashed: Represents the city of Darna.

"They appear to be bringing in the Islamic opposition but in a more covert way, so they don't alarm the U.S.," said a Libyan-American businessman in Benghazi.

Rebel officials said the inclusion of senior ex-regime officials gives them leaders who understand the inner workings of the regime and encourages other regime officials to defect by showing them that the rebels are willing to welcome the former officials into their ranks.

Mr. Jalil, 58 years old, the head of the rebel council, comes from the eastern coastal city of Baida, the historic seat of the Senussi dynasty, which ruled Libya as a religious order and later a monarchy, before Col. Gadhafi seized power in 1969.

In his years as a judge, Mr. Jalil was known for ruling consistently against the regime. He was among a handful of officials who were brought into the regime in the early-to-mid 2000s as part of an effort by Col. Gadhafi's son, Saif al-Islam Gadhafi, to cast himself and the regime in a more reform-minded light.

After becoming justice minister in 2007, Mr. Jalil publicly defied the regime, which was unheard of for a minister serving Col. Gadhafi.

"It's as if he just wouldn't lie," said Heba Morayef, a Human Rights Watch official who twice visited Libya and met with Mr. Jalil both times. "I have never seen an Arab minister of justice who will publicly criticize the most powerful security agencies in the country."

In January 2010, Mr. Jalil appeared on national television, in front of Col. Gadhafi and hundreds of regime officials at an annual government conference, and declared his intent to resign over the government's refusal to release political detainees. His resignation was rejected.

Col. Gadhafi dispatched Mr. Jalil to Benghazi when protests first erupted on Feb. 15. When Mr. Jalil arrived to the east and saw the violence being used against protesters, he promptly resigned, the first senior official to do so.

Days later, he was asked if he would be willing to be public face of the rebellion to show Libyans and the outside world that there was a viable alternative to Col. Gadhafi. Mr. Jalil accepted.

On Wednesday, Libyan state television announced the central government was offering a bounty of 500,000 Libyan dinars ($400,000) to anyone who captured and handed Mr. Jalil over to the central government.

"We are the same as people in other countries, and are looking for the same things," Mr. Jalil said in an interview before he was formally tapped to lead the rebel government.

"We want a democratic government, a fair constitution, and we don't want to be isolated from the world anymore."

He appealed to the West for help and reassured them that "the international companies in Libya, the oil companies, all of them are safe."

Key Appointees

Omar Hariri: De facto rebel defense minister. An ex-general who was one of Col. Gadhafi's fellow revolutionaries in 1969. He was locked up by Col. Gadhafi in 1975 for his role in a coup plot, and served 15 years.
Mahmoud Jabril: One of two de facto rebel foreign ministers. A PhD in strategic planning from the University of Pittsburgh, Mr. Jabril spent decades in exile and ran a consultancy advising corporations and governments in the Middle East before he was recruited by Col. Gadhafi's son to head Libya's Economic Development Board in the mid-2000s. Left the post last year.
Ali al-Issawi: The other de facto rebel foreign minister is a career foreign service officer and former economy minister under Col. Gadhafi who resigned his post as ambassador to India when the uprising began.
The two men tapped to serve as the rebels' top diplomats abroad, Ali al-Issawi and Mahmoud Jabril, are also former regime officials with reputations as being reform-oriented and pro-business.

Mr. Issawi, a career diplomat and former trade minister, resigned his post as ambassador to India in protest against the crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators. He has in the past been feted by international companies interested in landing investments in Libya.

Mr. Jabril was wooed back to Libya from decades in exile by Saif Gadhafi to head the Economic Development Board, which was founded in the mid-2000s to encourage investment and economic growth in Libya. Mr. Jabril stepped down last year, amid disagreements with regime hard-liners over the slow pace of reform.

"By putting Jabril and Issawi on the list, they're sending a message to foreign companies that the future Libyan government is interested in foreign investment and privatization," said Jason Pack, a Libya scholar at Oxford University who has advised multinational companies on the business climate in Libya.

Other rebel officials have had more bitter dealings with the regime. Ahmed Zubeir Sherif is the lone descendant of Libya's last king, Idriss Senussi, among the rebel leadership so far.

Mr. Gadhafi kept him in prison for 31 years on conspiracy charges, making him the country's longest-serving prisoner.

The rebels' defense minister, Omar Hariri, was one of Mr. Gadhafi's fellow revolutionaries in 1969, but was imprisoned for 15 years after being implicated in a coup attempt in 1975.

The rebels' defense minister, Omar Hariri, was one of Mr. Gadhafi's fellow revolutionaries in 1969, but was imprisoned for 15 years after being implicated in a coup attempt in 1975.

Mr. Hariri is from the Farjan tribe, a western-based tribe with a strong presence in and around Mr. Gadhafi's stronghold city of Sirte, one of several appointments that appear aimed at wooing influential tribes.

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Is China Next? - FRANCIS FUKUYAMA

Will the protests that have swept the Middle East inspire a similar movement in China, or is that country's middle class more interested in the material than the political?
FRANCIS FUKUYAMA

Surveys show that a majority of Chinese feel their lives have gotten better economically in recent years.


Above, a worker at a construction site in Suining, China.

Over the course of three short months, popular uprisings have toppled regimes in Tunisia and Egypt, sparked a civil war in Libya and created unrest in other parts of the Middle East. They also have raised a question in many people's minds: Are all authoritarian regimes now threatened by this new democratic wave? In particular, is China, a rising superpower, vulnerable to these forces?

The Communist government in Beijing is clearly worried. It has limited news coverage of the recent uprisings and has clamped down on democratic activists and foreign reporters, acting pre-emptively against anonymous calls on the Internet for China to have its own "Jasmine Revolution." A recent front-page editorial in the Beijing Daily, an organ of the city's party committee, declared that most people in the Middle East were unhappy with the protests in their countries, which were a "self-delusional ruckus" orchestrated by a small minority. For his part, President Hu Jintao has urged the strengthening of what has been dubbed the "Great Firewall"—the sophisticated apparatus of censorship and surveillance that the regime uses to control access to the Internet.

China's middle class, unlike its counterparts in the Middle East, has benefited from dramatic economic growth and the government's focus on creating jobs for the educated.


Pictured here, a Chinese businesswoman shops for sunglasses at a boutique in a Beijing shopping center.

No social scientist or intelligence analyst predicted the specific timing or spread of the Arab uprising—the fact that it would start in Tunisia, of all places, that it would be triggered by an event like the self-immolation of a vegetable seller, or that protests would force the mighty Egyptian army to abandon Hosni Mubarak. Over the past generation, Arab societies have appeared stolidly stable. Why they suddenly exploded in 2011 is something that can be understood only in retrospect, if at all.

But this doesn't mean that we can't think about social revolutions in a more structured way. Even unpredictable things take place in a certain context, and the present-day situations of China and the Middle East are radically different. Most of the evidence suggests that China is pretty safe from the democratic wave sweeping other parts of the world—at least for now.

Perhaps the most relevant thinker for understanding the Middle East today and China tomorrow is the late Samuel Huntington—not the Huntington of "The Clash of Civilizations," who argued that there were fundamental incompatibilities between Islam and democracy, but the Huntington whose classic book "Political Order in Changing Societies," first published in 1968, laid out his theory of the development "gap."

Anti-government protesters have chased presidents from office in Tunisia and Egypt and have sparked a civil war in Libya.

Observing the high levels of political instability plaguing countries in the developing world during the 1950s and '60s, Mr. Huntington noted that increasing levels of economic and social development often led to coups, revolutions and military takeovers. This could be explained, he argued, by a gap between the newly mobilized, educated and economically empowered people and their existing political system—that is, between their hopes for political participation and institutions that gave them little or no voice. Attacks against the existing political order, he noted, are seldom driven by the poorest of the poor in such a society; they tend to be led, instead, by rising middle classes who are frustrated by the lack of political and economic opportunity.

All of these observations would seem to apply to Tunisia and Egypt. Both countries have made substantial social progress in recent decades. The Human Development Indices compiled by the United Nations (a composite measure of health, education and income) increased by 28% for Egypt and 30% for Tunisia between 1990 and 2010. The number of people going to school has grown substantially; Tunisia especially has produced large numbers of college graduates. And indeed, the protests in Tunisia and Egypt were led in the first instance by educated, tech-savvy middle-class young people, who expressed to anyone who would listen their frustrations with societies in which they were not allowed to express their views, hold leaders accountable for corruption and incompetence, or get a job without political connections.

Mr. Huntington stressed the destabilizing power of new social groups seeking political participation. People used to be mobilized by newspapers and radio; today they are spurred to action by cell phones, Facebook and Twitter, which allow them to share their grievances about the existing system and to learn about the possibilities of the larger world. This change in the Middle East has been incredibly rapid, and it has trumped, for now, old verities about the supposed passivity of Arab culture and the resistance of Islam to modernization.

But do these remarkable developments tell us anything about the possibility for future instability in China?

It is certainly true that the dry tinder of social discontent is just as present in China as in the Middle East. The incident that triggered the Tunisian uprising was the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi, who had his vegetable cart repeatedly confiscated by the authorities and who was slapped and insulted by the police when he went to complain. This issue dogs all regimes that have neither the rule of law nor public accountability: The authorities routinely fail to respect the dignity of ordinary citizens and run roughshod over their rights. There is no culture in which this sort of behavior is not strongly resented.

Egyptian anti-government protesters celebrated in Cairo after president Hosni Mubarak stepped down on February 11.

This is a huge problem throughout China. A recent report from Jiao Tong University found that there were 72 "major" incidents of social unrest in China in 2010, up 20% over the previous year. Most outside observers would argue that this understates the real number of cases by perhaps a couple of orders of magnitude. Such incidents are hard to count because they often occur in rural areas where reporting is strictly controlled by the Chinese authorities.

The most typical case of outraged dignity in contemporary China is a local government that works in collusion with a private developer to take away the land of peasants or poor workers to make way for a glittery new project, or a company that dumps pollutants into a town's water supply and gets away with it because the local party boss stands to profit personally. Though corruption in China does not reach the predatory levels of certain African or Middle Eastern countries, it is nonetheless pervasive. People see and resent the privileged lives of the nation's elite and their children. The movie "Avatar" was a big hit in China in part because so many ordinary Chinese identified with the indigenous people it portrayed whose land was being stolen by a giant, faceless corporation.

There is, moreover, a huge and growing problem of inequality in China. The gains from China's remarkable growth have gone disproportionately to the country's coastal regions, leaving many rural areas far behind. China's Gini index—a standard measure of income inequality across a society—has increased to almost Latin American levels over the past generation. By comparison, Egypt and Tunisia have a much more equal income distribution.

According to Mr. Huntington, however, revolutions are made not by the poor but by upwardly mobile middle-class people who find their aspirations stymied, and there are lots of them in China. Depending on how you define it, China's middle class may outnumber the whole population of the United States. Like the middle-class people of Tunisia and Egypt, those in China have no opportunities for political participation. But unlike their Middle Eastern counterparts, they have benefited from a dramatically improving economy and a government that has focused like a laser beam on creating employment for exactly this group.

To the extent that we can gauge Chinese public opinion through surveys like Asia Barometer, a very large majority of Chinese feel that their lives have gotten better economically in recent years. A majority of Chinese also believe that democracy is the best form of government, but in a curious twist, they think that China is already democratic and profess to be satisfied with this state of affairs. This translates into a relatively low degree of support for any short-term transition to genuine liberal democracy.

Indeed, there is some reason to believe that the middle class in China may fear multiparty democracy in the short run, because it would unleash huge demands for redistribution precisely from those who have been left behind. Prosperous Chinese see the recent populist polarization of politics in Thailand as a warning of what democracy may bring.

The fact is that authoritarianism in China is of a far higher quality than in the Middle East. Though not formally accountable to its people through elections, the Chinese government keeps careful track of popular discontents and often responds through appeasement rather than repression. Beijing is forthright, for example, in acknowledging the country's growing income disparities and for the past few years has sought to mitigate the problem by shifting new investments to the poor interior of the country. When flagrant cases of corruption or abuse appear, like melamine-tainted baby formula or the shoddy school construction revealed by the Sichuan earthquake, the government holds local officials brutally accountable—sometimes by executing them.

Another notable feature of Chinese government is self-enforced leadership turnover. Arab leaders like Tunisia's Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, Egypt's Mr. Mubarak and Libya's Col. Moammar Gadhafi never knew when to quit, hanging on 23, 30 and 41 years, respectively. Since Mao, the Chinese leadership has rigidly adhered to terms of about a decade. Mr. Hu, the current president, is scheduled to step down in 2012, when he is likely to be replaced by Vice President Xi Jinping. Leadership turnover means that there is more policy innovation, in sharp contrast to countries like Tunisia and Egypt, which have been stuck for decades in the rut of crony capitalism.

The Chinese government is also more clever and ruthless in its approach to repression. Sensing a clear threat, the authorities never let Western social media spread in the first place. Facebook and Twitter are banned, and content on websites and on China-based social media is screened by an army of censors. It is possible, of course, for word of government misdeeds to get out in the time between its first posting by a micro-blogger and its removal by a censor, but this cat-and-mouse game makes it hard for a unified social space to emerge.

A final critical way in which China's situation differs from that of the Middle East lies in the nature of its military. The fate of authoritarian regimes facing popular protests ultimately depends on the cohesiveness and loyalty of its military, police and intelligence organizations. The Tunisian army failed to back Mr. Ben Ali early on; after some waffling, the Egyptian army decided it would not fire on protesters and pushed Mr. Mubarak out of power.

In China, the People's Liberation Army is a huge and increasingly autonomous organization with strong economic interests that give it a stake in the status quo. As in the Tiananmen uprising in 1989, it has plenty of loyal units around the country that it could bring into Beijing or Shanghai, and they would not hesitate to fire on demonstrators. The PLA also regards itself as the custodian of Chinese nationalism. It has developed an alternative narrative of 20th-century history that places itself at the center of events like the defeat of Japan in the Pacific war and the rise of a modern China. It is very unlikely that the PLA would switch sides and support a democratic uprising.

The bottom line is that China will not catch the Middle Eastern contagion anytime soon. But it could easily face problems down the road. China has not experienced a major recession or economic setback since it set out on its course of economic reform in 1978. If the country's current property bubble bursts and tens of millions of people are thrown out of work, the government's legitimacy, which rests on its management of the economy, would be seriously undermined.

Moreover, Mr. Huntington's scenario of rising but unfulfilled expectations among the middle class may still play out. Though there is a labor shortage among low-skill workers in China today, there is a glut of the college educated. Every year into the future, China will graduate more than seven million people from its universities, up from fewer than a million in 1998, and many of them are struggling to find work suitable to their self-perceived status. Several million unemployed college graduates are far more dangerous to a modernizing regime than hundreds of millions of poor peasants.

There is also what the Chinese themselves call the "bad emperor" problem. China's historical achievement over the centuries has been the creation of high-quality centralized bureaucratic government. When authoritarian rulers are competent and reasonably responsible, things can go very well. Indeed, such decision-making is often more efficient than in a democracy. But there is no guarantee that the system will always produce good rulers, and in the absence of the rule of law and electoral checks on executive power, there is no way to get rid of a bad emperor. The last bad emperor, commonly (if quietly) acknowledged as such, was Mao. We can't know what future tyrant, or corrupt kleptocrat, may be waiting in the wings in China's future.

The truth is that, much as we might theorize about the causes of social revolution, human societies are far too complex, and change too rapidly, for any simple theory to provide a reliable guide. Any number of observers dismissed the power of the "Arab street" to bring about political change, based on their deep knowledge of the Middle East, and they were right every year—up until 2011.

The hardest thing for any political observer to predict is the moral element. All social revolutions are driven by intense anger over injured dignity, an anger that is sometimes crystallized by a single incident or image that mobilizes previously disorganized individuals and binds them into a community. We can quote statistics on education or job growth, or dig into our knowledge of a society's history and culture, and yet completely miss the way that social consciousness is swiftly evolving through a myriad of text messages, shared videos or simple conversations.

The central moral imponderable with regard to China is the middle class, which up to now has seemed content to trade political freedom for rising incomes and stability. But at some point this trade-off is likely to fail; the regime will find itself unable to deliver the goods, or the insult to the dignity of the Chinese people will become too great to tolerate. We shouldn't pretend that we can predict when this tipping point will occur, but its eventual arrival, as Samuel Huntington might have suggested, is bound up with the very logic of modernization itself.

—Mr. Fukuyama is a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. His new book, "The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution," will be published next month.
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page C1
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Daniel Hannan: A European's Warning to America

The perils of following us toward greater regulation, higher taxes and centralized power.

By DANIEL HANNAN

On a U.S. talk-radio show recently, I was asked what I thought about the notion that Barack Obama had been born in Kenya. "Pah!" I replied. "Your president was plainly born in Brussels."

American conservatives have struggled to press the president's policies into a meaningful narrative. Is he a socialist? No, at least not in the sense of wanting the state to own key industries. Is he a straightforward New Deal big spender, in the model of FDR and LBJ? Not exactly.

My guess is that, if anything, Obama would verbalize his ideology using the same vocabulary that Eurocrats do. He would say he wants a fairer America, a more tolerant America, a less arrogant America, a more engaged America. When you prize away the cliché, what these phrases amount to are higher taxes, less patriotism, a bigger role for state bureaucracies, and a transfer of sovereignty to global institutions.

He is not pursuing a set of random initiatives but a program of comprehensive Europeanization: European health care, European welfare, European carbon taxes, European day care, European college education, even a European foreign policy, based on engagement with supranational technocracies, nuclear disarmament and a reluctance to deploy forces overseas.

No previous president has offered such uncritical support for European integration. On his very first trip to Europe as president, Mr. Obama declared, "In my view, there is no Old Europe or New Europe. There is a united Europe."

I don't doubt the sincerity of those Americans who want to copy the European model. A few may be snobs who wear their euro-enthusiasm as a badge of sophistication. But most genuinely believe that making their country less American and more like the rest of the world would make it more comfortable and peaceable.

All right, growth would be slower, but the quality of life might improve. All right, taxes would be higher, but workers need no longer fear sickness or unemployment. All right, the U.S. would no longer be the world's superpower, but perhaps that would make it more popular. Is a European future truly so terrible?

Yes. I have been an elected member of the European Parliament for 11 years. I have seen firsthand what the European political model means.

The critical difference between the American and European unions has to do with the location of power. The U.S. was founded on what we might loosely call the Jeffersonian ideal: the notion that decisions should be taken as closely as possible to the people they affect. The European Union was based on precisely the opposite ideal. Article One of its foundational treaty commits its nations to establish "an ever-closer union."

From that distinction, much follows. The U.S. has evolved a series of unique institutions designed to limit the power of the state: recall mechanisms, ballot initiatives, balanced budget rules, open primaries, localism, states' rights, term limits, the direct election of public officials from the sheriff to the school board. The EU places supreme power in the hands of 27 unelected Commissioners invulnerable to public opinion.

The will of the people is generally seen by Eurocrats as an obstacle to overcome, not a reason to change direction. When France, the Netherlands and Ireland voted against the European Constitution, the referendum results were swatted aside and the document adopted regardless. For, in Brussels, the ruling doctrine—that the nation-state must be transcended—is seen as more important than freedom, democracy or the rule of law.

This doctrine has had several malign consequences. For example, it has made the assimilation of immigrants far more difficult. Whereas the U.S. is based around the idea that anyone who buys into American values can become American, the EU clings to the notion that national identities are anachronistic and dangerous. Unsurprisingly, some newcomers, finding their adopted countries scorned, have turned to other, less apologetic identities.

The single worst aspect of Europeanization is its impact on the economy. Many Americans, and many Europeans, have a collective memory of how Europe managed to combine economic growth with social justice. Like most folk memories, the idea of a European economic miracle has some basis in fact. Between 1945 and 1974, Western Europe did outperform the U.S. Europe happened to enjoy perfect conditions for rapid growth. Infrastructure had been destroyed during the war, but an educated, industrious and disciplined work force remained.

Human nature being what it is, few European leaders attributed their success to the fact that they were recovering from an artificial low. They convinced themselves, rather, that they were responsible for their countries' growth rates. Their genius, they thought, lay in having hit upon a European "third way" between the excesses of American capitalism and the totalitarianism of Soviet communism.

We can now see where that road leads: to burgeoning bureaucracy, more spending, higher taxes, slower growth and rising unemployment. But an entire political class has grown up believing not just in the economic superiority of euro-corporatism but in its moral superiority. After all, if the American system were better—if people could thrive without government supervision—there would be less need for politicians. As Upton Sinclair once observed, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it."

Nonetheless, the economic data are pitilessly clear. For the past 40 years, Europeans have fallen further and further behind Americans in their standard of living. Europe also has become accustomed to a high level of structural unemployment. Only now, as the U.S. applies a European-style economic strategy based on fiscal stimulus, nationalization, bailouts, quantitative easing and the regulation of private-sector remuneration, has the rate of unemployment in the U.S. leaped to European levels.

Why is a European politician urging America to avoid Europeanization? As a Briton, I see the American republic as a repository of our traditional freedoms. The doctrines rooted in the common law, in the Magna Carta, and in the Bill of Rights found their fullest and most sublime expression in the old courthouse of Philadelphia. Britain, as a result of its unhappy membership in the European Union, has now surrendered a large part of its birthright. But our freedoms live on in America.

Which brings me to my country's present tragedy. The fears that the American patriot leaders had about a Hanoverian tyranny were exaggerated. The United Kingdom did not develop into an absolutist state. Power continued to pass from the Crown to the House of Commons.

Until now. Nearly two and a half centuries after the Declaration of Independence, the grievances it adumbrated are belatedly coming true. Colossal sums are being commandeered by the government in order to fund bailouts and nationalizations without any proper parliamentary authorization. Legislation happens increasingly through what are called standing orders, a device that allows ministers to make laws without parliamentary consent—often for the purpose of implementing EU standards.

How aptly the British people might today apply the ringing phrases of the Declaration of Independence against their own rulers, who have "combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws."

So you can imagine how I feel when I see the U.S. making the same mistakes that Britain has made: expanding its government, regulating private commerce, centralizing its jurisdiction, breaking the link between taxation and representation, abandoning its sovereignty.

You deserve better, cousins. And we expect better.

Mr. Hannan is a member of the European Parliament. This essay is adapted from the Encounter Books Broadside, "Why America Must Not Follow Europe."

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La izquierda que calla ante la opresión - Fernando Henrique Cardoso

Por Fernando Henrique Cardoso
Fernando Henrique Cardoso es sociólogo y escritor, fue presidente de Brasil de 1995 a 2003

Desde que viví muy de cerca la experiencia de la "revuelta estudiantil" de mayo de 1968 en París empecé a dudar de las teorías que aprendiera sobre los cambios sociales en el mundo capitalista.

Estas estaban basadas en la visión de la historia como una sucesión de luchas entre las clases sociales, dirigidas al control del Estado para, por medio de éste, ya fuera mantener la dominación de clase, ya fuera destruirlas todas y construir la "sociedad del futuro" sin clases y, por consiguiente, sin que los partidos tuvieran alguna función relevante.

En la visión de los revolucionarios de inspiración leninista del siglo XX, éstos serían cruciales tan sólo en la "transición", cuando se justificaría incluso la dictadura del proletariado, ejercida por el partido.

Pues bien, en las huelgas estudiantiles de la Universidad de París, en Nanterre y en la Sorbonne (así como en los planteles universitarios estadounidenses, con otras motivaciones) que acabaron por contaminar a toda Francia y repercutirían en todo el mundo externo, vi con perplejidad que las consignas no hablaban de "antiimperialismo" y sólo remotamente mencionaban a los trabajadores, incluso cuando éstos, atónitos, entraban en los auditorios estudiantiles ocupados por los activistas jóvenes.

Se hablaba de libertad, de que estaba prohibido prohibir, de amor libre, de valorar al individuo contra el peso de las instituciones burocratizadas, y así sucesivamente. Es verdad que en las manifestaciones había banderas negras (de los viejos anarquistas) y rojas (de los bolcheviques). Faltaban los símbolos de lo nuevo y, además, en la confusión ideológica general, poco se sabía de lo que sería nuevo en las sociedades, esto es, en las estructuras sociales del futuro.

Por otro lado, el detonador de la revuelta no fueron las huelgas de los trabajadores, que ocurrieron después, ni los choques en el plano institucional, sino los pequeños y grandes anhelos de los jóvenes universitarios que, como en un cortocircuito, incendiaron al conjunto del país.

Sólo que después, el presidente francés, Charles de Gaulle, viendo su poder puesto a prueba, fue a buscar apoyos con los paracaidistas franceses establecidos en Alemania y, con la complicidad del Partido Comunista, restableció la norma antigua y "buena".

¿Por qué escribo estas reminiscencias? Porque desde entonces el mundo ha cambiado mucho, principalmente con la revolución informática. Los "órdenes establecidos" se desmoronan cada vez más sin que se perciba la lucha de clases.

Así sucedió con el desmembramiento del mundo soviético, simbolizado en la caída del muro de Berlín el 9 de noviembre de 1989. Y está siendo así también en el África del Norte y en Medio Oriente.

Cada vez más, en silencio, las personas se comunican, murmuran y, de repente, se movilizan para "cambiar las cosas". En este proceso, las nuevas tecnologías de comunicación desempeñan un papel esencial.

Hasta ahora, nos quedan dos lecciones. Una de ellas es que en el mundo moderno los órdenes sociales pueden deshacerse por medios sorprendentes para quienes vean las cosas a través del prisma antiguo. La palabra, transmitida a distancia, a partir de la suma de impulsos que parecen ser individuales, gana una fuerza sin precedentes. No se trata de panfletos ni del anticuado discurso revolucionario y ni siquiera de consignas, sino de reacciones racionales y emocionales de los individuos.

Aparentemente aislados, éstos están en realidad "conectados" con el clima del mundo circundante y ligados entre sí por medio de redes de comunicación que se hacen, se deshacen y se vuelven a hacer, al ritmo del momento, de las motivaciones y de las circunstancias. Un mundo que parecía ser básicamente individualista y regulado por la fuerza de los poderosos o del mercado, de repente muestra que hay valores de cohesión y solidaridad social que rebasan las fronteras de lo permitido.

Pero nos queda también otra lección: la reconstrucción del orden depende de las formas de organización, de liderazgos y de voluntades políticas que se expresan a modo de señalar un camino. A falta de ellas, se regresa a lo anterior - como en el caso de De Gaulle - o, en la inminencia del desorden generalizado, siempre existe la posibilidad de que un grupo cohesionado y no siempre democrático prevalezca sobre el impulso libertario inicial. En otros términos: regresa la importancia de la prédica democrática, de la aceptación de la diversidad, del derecho del "otro".

Tal vez sea éste el enigma a ser descifrado por las corrientes que quieren ser "progresistas" o "de izquierda". En tanto no alcancen lo "nuevo" en las circunstancias actuales (que supone, entre otras cosas, la reconstrucción del ideal democrático a base de la participación ampliada en los circuitos de comunicación para forzar una mayor igualdad), no contribuirán en nada para que en cada arranque de vitalidad en las sociedades tradicionales y autocráticas surjan de hecho nuevas formas de convivencia política.

Ahora mismo, con las transformaciones en el mundo islámico, es hora de apoyar en voz alta y clara a los gérmenes de la modernización, en vez de guardar un silencio comprometedor. O peor aún, romper el silencio para defender lo indefendible, como hiciera el presidente de Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, al decir: "Que me conste, (el líder libio coronel Muammar) Khadafi no es un asesino". O, como el ex presidente de Brasil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, quien antes llamó a Khadafi "líder y hermano".

Por no hablar de los intelectuales "de izquierda" que, todavía ayer, cuando yo estaba en el gobierno, veían en todo lo que era modernización o integración con las reglas internacionales de la economía, un acto neoliberal de vendepatrias. Exigían apoyo a Cuba, apoyo que no negué contra el injusto bloqueo a la isla, pero que no me llevó a defender la violación de los derechos humanos.

¿Será que no se dan cuenta de que, gracias al mayor intercambio con el mundo - y principalmente con el mundo occidental - ahora las poblaciones de Africa del Norte y de Medio Oriente vienen a ver en los valores de la democracia los caminos para liberarse de la opresión?

¿Será que, en Brasil, seguirán fingiendo que "el Sur", nacional-autoritario, es el mejor aliado de nuestro desarrollo - cuando el gobierno del Partido de los Trabajadores busca también una mayor integración del país en la economía global y en el sistema internacional - sin sacrificar nuestros valores más preciados?

Hay silencios que hablan y murmuran contra la opresión. Pero hay también silencios que no hablan porque están comprometidos con una visión que acepta la opresión.

No veo cómo alguien pueda considerarse "de izquierda" o "progresista" si calla en momentos en que se debe gritar por la libertad.

(Traducido por Jorge L. Gutierrez)

© 2011 Agencia O Globo

Distribuido por The New York Times Syndicate

El diputado nacionalista Gerardo Amarilla apoya idea de Saravia sobre zonas rojas

Amarilla a favor de militarizar algunas de las zonas rojas
El diputado nacionalista Gerardo Amarilla, respaldó la propuesta formulada por el senador oficialista Jorge Saravia de que las fuerzas militares se hagan cargo de la seguridad en zonas conflictivas de Montevideo. "Sin ingresar en los detalles de la propuesta, nos parece a primera vista interesante y digna de ser considerada", escribió Amarilla en su blog.

Hasta el momento la propuesta había despertado sólo críticas y cuestionamientos, tanto en la propia interna del Frente Amplio como desde la oposición.

"Es un tema muy sensible y donde el gobierno no ha logrado buenos resultados y -lo que es peor- se ha negado a reconocer que constituye uno de los principales problemas que padece nuestra sociedad", destacó el diputado blanco.

Amarilla recordó que en el año 2007, desde la Junta Departamental de Rivera, propuso un reconocimiento a los efectivos militares que habían participado en las misiones de paz y sugirió que por su "profesionalidad y por su vocación humanitaria" deberían ser considerados para otras tareas.

"No nos podemos dar el lujo de tener miles de efectivos que han vivido esas intensas experiencias de vida en lugares como Mozambique, Congo o Haití y no permitirnos que nos ayuden a trabajar en estrategias de pacificación e integración de zonas de nuestro país que atraviesan una marginalidad extrema", señaló.

Amarilla se comprometió a estudiar la propuesta de Saravia como una "herramienta para mejorar la seguridad".
http://www.elpais.com.uy/110310/pnacio-552447/politica/diputado-blanco-apoya-idea-de-saravia/

los Kirchner fayutos y enemigos de Uruguay, pero muy amigos del pepe

LOS CABLES SECRETOS SOBRE URUGUAY
Argentina transmitió a EE.UU. que intentaría impedir TLC con Uruguay
Postura. Públicamente Kirchner decía que no estaba "mal" que lo firmaran

Si bien públicamente Néstor Kirchner se mostraba afín a que Uruguay negociara un TLC con Estados Unidos, jerarcas de su gobierno transmitieron a diplomáticos estadounidenses que su país rechazaría un planteo en el Mercosur que habilitara ese camino.

Kirchner se refirió públicamente por primera vez al tema el 19 de enero de 2006 en Brasilia. "Si Argentina y Brasil no le brindan a Uruguay lo que Uruguay necesita, no está mal que ellos firmen un tratado con Estados Unidos", dijo el presidente argentino. "Creemos en el Mercosur, pero Argentina y Brasil están luchando por salir de una profunda crisis económica y puede suceder que no podamos brindarle a Uruguay las herramientas que su pueblo necesita, por lo que no podemos impedirle que hagan un buen trato", agregó.

Sostuvo además que su homólogo brasileño, Luis Inácio "Lula" Da Silva le había transmitido su voluntad de ser "más flexible" y que él había estado de acuerdo con ese enfoque.

Tras comunicar esas declaraciones, el embajador de Estados Unidos en Argentina, Lino Gutiérrez, sostuvo que "no es claro" por qué Kirchner hizo esas consideraciones, pero de todos modos aventuró posibles explicaciones, según un despacho fechado en enero de 2006, que es parte de los cables filtrados por WikiLeaks a los que tuvo acceso El País.

Gutiérrez señaló que Kirch-ner no había respondido a los pedidos de ayuda de Uruguay para poner fin al bloqueo de los puentes relacionado con el conflicto por la instalación de las plantas de celulosa.

Facilitar la negociación de un TLC con Estados Unidos "es una política viable de apoyar a Tabaré Vázquez sin tener que pagar el precio político interno de decirle a los argentinos que no pueden bloquear los puentes hacia Uruguay", opinó el diplomático.

Sostuvo además que Kirch-ner es un "nacionalista" que hace lo que cree mejor para su país -como imponer barreras comerciales a la importación de calzado desde Brasil-. "En ese contexto no es sorprendente que simpatice con los esfuerzos del presidente uruguayo Tabaré Vázquez para tratar de lograr lo mejor para Uruguay", señaló.

"Esa simpatía se hace más fácil por el hecho de que Argentina tiene relativamente poco comercio con Uruguay y tiene aun menos que perder como resultado de un TLC entre Uruguay y Estados Unidos", afirmó.

Ese mismo enero, la embajada de Estados Unidos en Montevideo creía que su país podía firmar un TLC con Uruguay, si bien advertía sobre la oposición de sectores "radicales" del Frente Amplio y de los "socios problemáticos", según cables filtrados por WikiLeaks divulgados el sábado pasado por El País.

En marzo, el presidente Tabaré Vázquez le transmitió "expresamente" al encargado de Negocios de la embajada, James Nealon, que quería llegar a firmar un TLC.

"lÍNEA ROJA". La actitud pública de Kirchner distaba de la posición que funcionarios de su Cancillería transmitían a jerarcas de la embajada de Estados Unidos en Buenos Aires.

En julio de 2006, el fin de la Presidencia argentina del Mercosur fue el punto de partida para que un oficial del área económica de la embajada se comunicara con el consejero Ernesto de la Guarda, de la oficina Mercosur del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores.

En esa conversación De la Guarda puntualizó que Argentina tenía tratados bilaterales de inversiones con 56 países, pero no con sus socios del Mercosur. "Tenemos un tratado bilateral de inversiones con Bulgaria, pero no con Uruguay", se lamentó, según el cable transmitido por Gutiérrez.

El diplomático argentino planteó la posibilidad de un TLC entre Estados Unidos y Uruguay. Sostuvo que Uruguay no había planteado formalmente la posibilidad ante el Mercosur -para lo que entendía debería pedir una excepción a la decisión 32/00 del bloque- y que el gobierno de su país no esperaba una discusión sobre el punto en la próxima cumbre.

Además, destacó que si bien él no pretendía saber la posición de Kirchner sobre el tema si Uruguay presionara, el momento era "especialmente ma-lo" para que lo hiciera.

"El reciente revés de Argentina en la Corte Internacional de Justicia en el caso por la construcción de las plantas de celulosa, aseguraría un rechazo de Argentina a cualquier planteo de una excepción", opinó De la Guarda. El diplomático se refería a que el 13 de julio la Corte de La Haya había rechazado, por 14 votos contra uno, el pedido de medidas cautelares efectuado por Argentina.

A continuación, el despa-cho diplomático recuerda que Kirchner dijo públicamente que Uruguay debería tener la libertad de negociar un TLC si deseaba hacerlo.

Tres meses más tarde, en septiembre la embajada transmite un cable al Departamento de Estado bajo el título "Secretario argentino de Comercio Exterior: por qué Uruguay no puede firmar un TLC". Ese despacho narra una conversación en la que el embajador Alfredo Chiaradia, secretario de Comercio Exterior de la Cancillería argentina, brinda "una clara señal" de que el gobierno de su país no permitiría a Uruguay firmar un TLC y permanecer en el Mercosur, en referencia a que Vázquez había anunciado que solicitaría permiso al bloque.

Chiaradia dijo que si Estados Unidos quería ofrecerles una cuota determinada o tarifas especiales podía hacerlo, pero que Uruguay, como miembro del Mercosur, no podía tener una actitud recíproca. Enfatizó que Uruguay estaría "cruzando una línea roja" si cerraba un acuerdo que ofrece servicios, compras gubernamentales y tratamiento de derechos de propiedad intelectual más favorables que los que tienen los países del bloque.

Cuando le consultaron sobre la posición pública de Kirchner, quien había manifestado que no bloquearía los planes uruguayos, respondió que "los presidentes siempre hacen referencias genéricas" y que las reglas del Mercosur eran claras e inflexibles en la materia.

El diplomático se planteó incluso la posibilidad de que Uruguay abandonara el Mercosur y señaló que si eso sucediera "la acción de los Estados Unidos tendría costos", según el cable.

Astori no desistió del TLC
Danilo Astori no perdió las esperanzas de firmar un acuerdo de libre comercio con Estados Unidos, aun después de que el intento del gobierno de Vázquez hubiera naufragado en octubre de 2006. Así lo consignó el embajador Frank Baxter en un despacho donde narró el primer encuentro oficial que mantuvo con el ministro de Economía el diciembre de 2006.

"Astori puso énfasis en el fuerte interés de Uruguay en continuar las negociaciones con vistas a firmar un eventual TLC. "Comencemos de nuevo", le dijo Astori a Baxter.
http://www.elpais.com.uy/110310/pnacio-552416/politica/argentina-transmitio-a-ee-uu-que-intentaria-impedir-tlc-con-uruguay/

http://www.elpais.com.uy/110310/pnacio-552415/politica/estilo-k-intensifico-el-bloqueo-a-puentes/

http://benitomedero.blogspot.com/2010/11/la-mafia-kirchner-es-el-cacique.html

How Winston Churchill Stopped the Nazis

How Winston Churchill Stopped the Nazis

By Klaus Wiegrefe

Photo Gallery: 13 Photos

Corbis

Some 70 years ago, Hitler's Wehrmacht was chalking up one victory after the next, but then Winston Churchill stood up to the dictator. Their duel decided World War II. The former British prime minister has been viewed as one of the shining lights of the 20th century ever since. Is the reputation justified?

Adolf Hitler and Winston Churchill never met, and who knows how it might have changed the course of history in the 20th century if the Nazi had made a different decision in the spring of 1932.

He was already standing in the lobby of the Grand Hotel Continental in Max Joseph Strasse in Munich, unshaven, exhausted from his election campaign, wearing a shabby trench coat. In another room, Churchill was dining with his family and members of his entourage, waiting for Hitler.

The short, stout Briton, the scion of one of England's most important families, was already famous. He was a successful journalist and author of bestsellers, and before World War I he had already served as home secretary, president of the board of trade and first lord of the admiralty (head of the navy). During World War I, he was appointed minister of munitions, then secretary of state for war and secretary of state for air. After the war, he became secretary of state for the colonies and, finally, served as chancellor of the Exchequer from 1924 to 1929. The British Isles had not seen someone with such an illustrious career in a long time.

Hitler Showed Little Interest

Of course, Churchill was a member of the opposition at the time. He had come to Munich to conduct research for a new book, and while he was there, he wanted to use the opportunity to meet the notorious Hitler, whose supporters were in the process of destroying the Weimar Republic. Churchill's son and Hitler's foreign press agent Ernst "Putzi" Hanfstaengl arranged for the two men to meet over dinner at the Continental, although Hanfstaengl neglected to tell the Churchills that the Fuehrer had shown little interest and had left it open as to whether he would attend.

The evening progressed without Hitler. After the dessert, Hanfstaengl excused himself and hurried to the hotel telephone booth to call the Fuehrer and find out whether he still intended to show up. Suddenly he saw Hitler standing in the lobby. The Nazi had coincidentally met with a benefactor at the Continental.

Hanfstaengl took the Nazi party leader aside and told him that if Churchill saw him now, his failure to appear would be seen as an insult. And then he said: "Mr. Hitler, you should come. It's truly important." But the party leader remained obstinate, and said: "Hanfstaengl, you know perfectly well that I have a lot to do at the moment and that we plan to get an early start tomorrow. So -- good night."

Churchill put on a good face over the rejection. Later on, Hanfstaengl sat down at the piano in the hotel's music room, and they sang Scottish songs together. But even in his memoirs, Churchill writes with regret that Hitler "lost his only chance of meeting me."

If Hitler had met Churchill in Munich, would he have realized that he was facing a man who was every bit his match? A man who actually enjoyed the war? And who would eventually force Hitler to his knees?

A Man Who Loved Danger and Sought Out Adventure

Churchill had killed people in battle as a young man, but he was not particularly struck by the experience. "Nothing in history was ever settled except by wars," the bellicose Churchill believed. He loved danger and sought out adventure. Even when he was in his sixties, as prime minister, he would stand on the roof of a government building in London during German air raids to observe the murderous spectacle from above, while his cabinet ministers fled into the bomb shelters.

Adolf Hitler and Winston Churchill. It was a rivalry that pitted a member of the petit bourgeoisie against a son of the aristocracy, an ascetic against a hedonist, and ideologue against a pragmatist, a murderer against an adventurer, a racist revolutionary against an imperial political realist.

Eight years after Hitler's failure to turn up at that dinner in Munich, the duel between these two men was to shape the fate of the world.

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Ecuador - Rafael Correa el "progresista" amigo del Pepe, Chavez y de 700 millones de dolares

El presidente de Ecuador y los millonarios contratos de su hermano
Paúl Mena Erazo
Ecuador

Según la Veeduría Ciudadana, los contratos y subcontratos ascenderían a US$700 millones.

Fue en junio de 2009 cuando estalló la noticia de que Fabricio Correa, hermano mayor del presidente de Ecuador, tenía millonarios contratos con el Estado. Hoy, año y nueve meses después, autoridades de control continúan investigando el caso que se ha convertido en una piedra en el zapato para el gobierno de Rafael Correa.

Esta semana, la Contraloría General del Estado envió a BBC Mundo las conclusiones de su análisis del informe de una veeduría ciudadana que estableció, el mes pasado, que los contratos y subcontratos de las empresas relacionadas con Fabricio Correa con el Estado ascenderían a US$700 millones.

La veeduría afirma que los acuerdos conllevan un perjuicio para el país de US$143 millones, y sostiene que el presidente Correa sí conocía de los contratos de su hermano antes de que el caso fuera hecho público por los medios de comunicación.

Descalificación

Rafael Correa ha descalificado el informe pese a que la veeduría había sido integrada por pedido expreso del propio mandatario. El presidente negó haber conocido de los contratos de su hermano y dijo que planteará acciones legales en contra de los veedores.

Ninguno de los funcionarios que en su momento tuvieron que ver con la firma de estos contratos cuestionados ha sido siquiera llamado a comparecer ante una autoridad de control
Juan Carlos Calderón, periodista
El jefe de Estado también cuestionó la imparcialidad del informe al señalar que el coordinador de la veeduría, Pablo Chambers, fue gerente de Pacifictel -una empresa estatal de telefonía- durante el gobierno del opositor Lucio Gutiérrez.

La Contraloría, en su análisis del informe de la veeduría, señala que existen contratos relacionados con Fabricio Correa que ya fueron examinados por su entidad en 2009, pero que hay otros acuerdos millonarios cuya auditoría está en ejecución.

En 2009, el ente fiscalizador auditó varios contratos entre empresas presuntamente relacionadas con Fabricio Correa y el Estado, los cuales sumaron un monto de US$167 millones.

Esta vez, en su análisis del informe de la veeduría, la Contraloría dice que está examinando otros contratos que suman más de US$440 millones.

Preguntas "sin respuesta"

Una vez que en 2009 medios de comunicación dieron a conocer este caso, el presidente Correa en principio defendió a su hermano, pero luego ordenó la terminación unilateral de los contratos con empresas relacionadas con Fabricio Correa.
El presidente cuestionó la imparcialidad del informe

El entramado de empresas involucradas incluyó algunas constituidas en Panamá.

Juan Carlos Calderón, miembro de un equipo de periodistas que expuso en el diario Expreso el tema por primera vez dijo a BBC Mundo que aún hay varias preguntas que no han sido contestadas.

"Ninguno de los funcionarios que en su momento tuvieron que ver con la firma de estos contratos cuestionados ha sido siquiera llamado a comparecer ante una autoridad de control", señaló Calderón.

El periodista dijo que aún queda por investigarse cómo Fabricio Correa adquirió ciertas empresas en Ecuador y Panamá, el nivel de conocimiento que pudieron haber tenido el presidente o altos funcionarios del gobierno sobre los contratos cuestionados, así como los montos globales de los contratos.

Calderón manifestó que se espera que la Fiscalía entregue algún resultado de la indagación que abrió en 2009 en torno a los contratos de Fabricio Correa.

Opositor

Fabricio Correa, de su parte, ha insistido en que no ha cometido ninguna ilegalidad, a la vez que se ha convertido en un férreo opositor del gobierno de su hermano.

Atrás quedaron los días cuando Fabricio aparecía como gerente de la campaña presidencial que en 2006 llevó a Rafael Correa al poder. Ahora, el hermano mayor recorre medios de comunicación nacionales e internacionales para criticar las relaciones de Ecuador con Venezuela y hablar de corrupción en el gobierno.

No creo que la justicia vaya a hacer más de lo que ha hecho
Simón Pachano, FLACSO
Para el analista Simón Pachano, profesor de la Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO), los millones de dólares que han estado en juego en los contratos cuestionados "son una contundente explicación de cómo se siente afectado el hermano mayor frente al gran negocio que estaba haciendo, y la razón por la que él se ha colocado en la oposición".

Fabricio Correa no ha descartado participar como candidato presidencial en las elecciones de 2012 con su propio movimiento político.

"Él está jugando a ser una alternativa política a su hermano", dijo Pachano a BBC Mundo.

Entretanto, el analista consideró como "muy poco probable" que las autoridades de justicia efectúen "una investigación rigurosa" sobre los contratos en cuestión.

"Ha sido más bien una investigación de prensa la que se ha hecho hasta ahora, y no creo que la justicia vaya a hacer más de lo que ha hecho", concluyó.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mundo/noticias/2011/03/110302_ecuador_correa_hermano_contratos.shtml

Por qué nadie protesta en La Habana

Por Mary Anastasia O'Grady

Los acontecimientos de los últimos 10 días de Egipto me hicieron acordar de Cuba. ¿Porqué una rebelión similar contra cinco décadas de represión sigue pareciendo un sueño lejano? Parte de la respuesta es la relación entre los hermanos Castro, Fidel y Raúl, y los generales. El resto se explica por el modelo significativamente más represivo del régimen de la isla. En el arte de las dictaduras, Hosni Mubarak no les llega ni al talón a los Castro.

Que tantos egipcios hayan levantado sus voces en la plaza Tahrir es un testimonio del anhelo universal por la libertad. Pero es un error ignorar el rol clave que juegan los militares. Apostaría a que cuando se escriba la historia del levantamiento, sabremos que los altos mandos de las fuerzas armadas no aprobaban el plan del presidente de designar a su hijo como candidato en la próxima elección.

Raúl Castro

Castro compró la lealtad de la policía secreta y las fuerzas armadas al cederles el control de los tres sectores más rentables de la economía: las ventas minoristas, el turismo y los servicios. Los militares cubanos reciben cientos de millones de dólares al año. Si el sistema colapsa, también lo hacen esos ingresos. Los militares egipcios también son propietarios de empresas, claro está, pero no dependen de una economía enteramente en manos del Estado. Y como beneficiario de una significativa ayuda y capacitación de Estados Unidos durante muchos años, las fuerzas armadas egipcias han cultivado una cultura de profesionalismo y de compromiso con el país por encima de cualquier individuo.

En Cuba no hay partidos políticos de oposición ni medios de comunicación que no pertenezcan al gobierno: brigadas de respuesta rápida aseguran que se acate la línea del partido. No se puede viajar fuera del país sin la autorización del gobierno. Los disidentes pacíficos con capacidad de liderazgo que no se quiebran son exiliados o asesinados.

La diferencia más impactante entre Cuba y Egipto es el acceso a Internet. En un informe elaborado por Freedom House en marzo de 2009 sobre Internet y la censura a los medios digitales en todo el mundo, Egipto ocupó el puesto 45 (de un total de 100 países), un poco por debajo de Turquía, pero por encima de Rusia. A Cuba le correspondió el lugar 90, con una censura mayor a la de Irán, China y Túnez. Mientras tanto, el servicio de telefonía celular en Cuba es demasiado caro para la mayoría de la población.

Sin embargo, la tecnología de alguna manera se filtra en Cuba. Cuando Fidel acabó con la vida del prisionero de conciencia Pedro Boitel en 1972 al negarle agua durante una huelga de hambre, el mundo apenas lo notó. En contraste, las noticias sobre la muerte a manos del régimen del prisionero de conciencia Orlando Zapata Tamayo en 2010 llegó a Internet casi inmediatamente y fue objeto de una condena mundial. La dictadura militar no pudo contener la publicidad negativa.

De manera similar, cuando las Damas de Blanco, un grupo de esposas, hermanas y madres de prisioneros políticos, fueron atacadas por la policía el año pasado cuando caminaban pacíficamente por La Habana, las imágenes fueron capturadas por teléfonos celulares e inmediatamente aparecieron en la red. Fue otro desastre de relaciones públicas para los hermanos Castro y sus amigos como el presidente mexicano Felipe Calderón y el presidente del gobierno español, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.

La presión internacional inducida por la tecnología está haciendo que el régimen se muestre más renuente a aplastar a sus críticos con los métodos tradicionales. En una entrevista del 27 de enero con el diario argentino Ámbito Financiero, la internacionalmente reconocida bloguera Yoani Sánchez dijo que el "estilo" de la represión del gobierno ha pasado de los arrestos agresivos y las largas condenas a los intentos focalizados de difamación y aislamiento. Agregó que la policía uniformada "fue distanciándose del tema político, no por órdenes de arriba, sino porque no quieren quedar asociados con la represión". Ahora, aseveró, la intimidación y los arrestos arbitrarios son realizados fundamentalmente por la policía secreta con indumentaria civil.

Un poco más de espacio ha envalentonado a la población. Sánchez manifestó en la entrevista que es "optimista respecto del proceso lento e irreversible en el interior de los cubanos, en el que la crítica ciudadana irá en aumento, habrá menos miedo, sentirán que la máscara es cada vez más innecesaria y que ya no se traduce en privilegios y subsidios".

La semana pasada se filtró en Internet un video de un seminario militar cubano respecto a cómo combatir la tecnología. Las imágenes muestran la preocupación de la dictadura con la web. El instructor advierte sobre los peligros que representan los jóvenes con un discurso atractivo que comparten información a través de la tecnología y que intentan organizarse. El "chat" en tiempo real, Twitter y la aparición de jóvenes líderes en el ciberespacio —llamado un "campo de batalla permanente"— son peligros descritos durante la charla de una hora de duración. El instructor también comparte sus preocupaciones respecto a los programas del gobierno de Estados Unidos que intentan aumentar el acceso a Internet al margen de los canales oficiales en la isla.

El viernes, el régimen brindó una nueva muestra de su paranoia al acusar de espionaje a Alan Gross, el contratista de la Agencia para el Desarrollo Internacional de Estados Unidos. Gross ha estado en la cárcel durante 14 meses por dar a los judíos cubanos equipos de computadoras para que se puedan conectar con la diáspora judía.

A pesar de un acceso muy limitado, los cubanos ya están recurriendo a Internet para compartir lo que hasta ahora habían mantenido en su cabeza: pensamientos contrarrevolucionarios. Si se extienden, incluso los bien alimentados militares no podrán salvar al régimen. Por ahora, sin embargo, los cubanos solamente pueden soñar con la libertad que los egipcios disfrutan mientras dan a conocer su descontento.

Escriba a O'Grady@wsj.com

la mision del ejercito uruguayo en Haiti

Uruguayan Contingent in Haiti Receives Donation of Transport Equipment

Posted: February 11, 2011

Uruguayan Foreign Minister Luis Almagro and Defense Minister Luis Rosadilla with U.S. embassy officials in Haiti.

Source: U.S. Embassy Port-au-Prince

On February 9, 2011, at the Casa de Uruguay outside of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, U.S. Embassy Deputy Chief of Mission David Lindwall officially turned over the first ten of 34 Jeep J8 transports to Uruguayan Foreign Minister Luis Almagro and Defense Minister Luis Rosadilla, for use by the Uruguayan contingent of MINUSTAH. 

One of the 34 Jeep J8 transports donated to the Uruguayan contingent.

The jeeps, purchased through a $2.4 million grant from the Department of State’s Global Peacekeeping Operations Initiative, will ensure that the Uruguayan detachment, which is deployed in the Sud and the Nord-Est Departments of Haiti, is capable of reaching rural, isolated places as part of its peacekeeping mission.  Uruguay is globally recognized as a world leader in support of UN Peacekeeping Operations, with over fifty-five years of experience.  Per capita, Uruguay continues to be the world leader in deployed peacekeepers.  Uruguay has been part of MINUSTAH since its inception in 2004 and currently provides more than 1,200 peacekeepers to the mission.

The U.S. government provided the Jeeps as part of our commitment to Uruguay and its participation in peacekeeping operations and the donation underscores the shared belief of our governments that we play a vital role in promoting democracy, global peace, and security around the world. 

In Haiti, MINUSTAH continues to be play an important role; it coordinated the many military contingents that came to help the people of Haiti recover from the earthquake.  Since then, it has played a critical role in helping the people and government of Haiti meet current challenges, like helping to deliver critical, post-earthquake supplies, partnering with the Haitian government to prepare for and respond to natural disasters, and providing important security and logistical support for the elections.