L´ UKRAINE NE SUPPORTE PLUS...
Link: http://www.lemonde.fr/europe/article/2013/12/26/ukraine-qui-a-decapite-le-lenine_4340166_3214.html
sábado, 28 de diciembre de 2013
DÉCAPITATION DE LA STATUE DE LÉNINE Á KOTOVSK
Link: http://www.lemonde.fr/europe/article/2013/12/26/ukraine-qui-a-decapite-le-lenine_4340166_3214.html
jueves, 26 de diciembre de 2013
˝The Economist˝ : America’s current shale-energy boom
FROM ˝THE ECONOMIST˝
A tale of two rushes
There’s gold in them there wells
Dec 21st 2013 | WILLISTON, NORTH DAKOTA | From the print edition
WHEN his neighbour discovered gold in a Californian river in 1848, Sam Brannan could have kept quiet about it. Instead, he filled a jar with gold dust and rushed around the streets of San Francisco shouting “Gold! Gold! Gold!” He had good reason to incite a gold rush: he owned a shop nearby. He became California’s first millionaire by selling picks, shovels, beans and bacon to the horde of prospectors who heeded his call.
Gold fever spread fast. The lure of buried treasure “sucked nearly
every free hand and available arm to the gold mines”, observes H.W.
Brands in “The Age of Gold”, a brilliant history of the period. “They
tore themselves from warm hearths and good homes, promising to return;
they fled from cold hearts and bad debts, vowing never to return.” The Alta California,
a local paper, reported that “The whole country…resounds to the sordid
cry of gold! GOLD!! GOLD!!!” It added that this would be the last issue
for a while, since all its staff were heading for the gold fields.
America’s current shale-energy boom has plenty in common with the
gold rush, and might prove as momentous. It has created a gusher of
wealth in remote places. It has lured young men to wild frontier towns,
such as Williston, North Dakota. Jim Cramer, a television host, sounded
just like Brannan when he reported from North Dakota in 2011. “This new
black gold rush is just getting started!” he bellowed, against a
backdrop of nodding donkeys. “Listen, people in this country who need a
job, get up here!”
Unlike the Alta California, not all of The Economist’s
writers have headed for the frontier. But one correspondent, intrigued
by the parallels between the two booms, put on stout boots, packed a
copy of “The Age of Gold” and set off for Williston.
For the ’49ers—as the men who hurried west in that year became
known—the trek to California was arduous. “Mules old enough to travel
well were unavailable at any price,” writes Brands. Prospectors who made
their way overland went “at the pace of the slowest oxen [pulling their
wagons], no more than two miles [3.2km] per hour”. Many succumbed to
cholera, thirst or Indian arrows. One group, on escaping from the most
godforsaken tract of the Mojave desert, doffed their hats, turned back
and said: “Goodbye, Death Valley!” “The name stuck,” notes Brands.
The journey to North Dakota today is more straightforward. Still,
when your correspondent tried to reserve a rental car at Bismarck
airport, they were sold out. He eventually found a pickup truck. Driving
it through the Badlands was hairy: hundreds of huge oil lorries kept
thundering in the opposite direction along narrow country roads. The
pickup went much faster than an ox wagon, except in the traffic jam
outside Williston, which looked like a long, motionless steel snake
festooned with lights. A sign offered a cheerful welcome to “Boomtown,
USA”.
Men behaving badly
The communities formed by the two groups of migrants have some
striking similarities. For gold miners in California, life was almost as
rough as the journey west had been. San Francisco in the summer of 1849
looked like “the bivouac of an army on the move”, writes Brands; most
of the buildings “were actually tents”. The miners smelled awful. No one
“could be bothered to wash dirty underwear, only to wash gold”.
Workers in Williston today generally have it easier—though newcomers
sometimes sleep in their cars, which is not advisable in the winter,
when temperatures often drop below minus 20°C. Places to stay are scarce
and expensive. Many oil workers live in “man camps”, which look like
college dormitories that have been built in a hurry. The companies that
run them, such as Target Logistics of Texas, prefer the term “crew
camps” to man camps; it sounds less burly and tattooed. But who are they
kidding? When The Economist visited Tioga Lodge, one of Target’s camps, 99% of the 930 residents were male.
It is a bare-bones place for men who work long, sweaty hours to sleep
and eat. Happily the food is free and unlimited. The kitchens chop up
vast quantities of meat into portions just small enough to fit on a
plate. “They eat a lot,” says the chief cook, Jeff Ball, who used to
cater for troops in Afghanistan. Some workers heap their trays with meat
and potatoes in the dining room, then walk over to the cafeteria to
load up with burgers, hot dogs and pizza. Your correspondent, at the
salad bar, felt lonely.
Mr Ball gives the oilmen whatever they want. If they crave blackened
catfish and prawn gumbo like mom used to make in Louisiana, they can
have it. Likewise if a crew from Mexico wants tamales. The only thing
they can’t have—in the man camp, at least—is alcohol. Oil firms prefer
that dangerous machinery be handled by men with clear heads.
Too drunk to frack
Life in the gold fields was often violent. Miners drank and gambled
and fought. Thieves and ruffians preyed on the weak and unwary. Justice
was rough. Brannan, the shop-owner, led a committee of vigilantes. In
June 1851 his men caught a gangster stealing a safe. After a two-hour
“trial”, they hanged him from a beam in a public square.
Life in the gold fields was often violent. Miners drank and gambled and fought.
Williston, too, has developed a bareknuckle reputation. “The theft up
here is unbelievable,” says a private detective hired by an insurer to
investigate the disappearance of 15 truckloads of oil. “A lot of people
here are trying to get a piece of the action without working.” And, with
so few women in the neighbourhood, many men are frustrated.
“You put a bunch of guys together, working 12 hours a day, and
they’re going to get into fights,” shrugs Josh Wipf, a mechanic from
Montana who moved to Williston last year. Mr Wipf, who says the ratio of
men to women in Williston “sucks”, admits to having been in a bar fight
himself. “It was about a girl, I think. I don’t really remember. I was,
you know…” he trails off.
“They get rowdy when they get drunk,” says Alice Trottier, a student
at Williston State College. “I would never go out jogging alone at night
now,” she laments. Like many young females in Williston, she finds it
annoying to be stared at all the time. On the plus side, scarcity gives
women power. Men “treat you like a princess. They pay for everything,”
says Ms Trottier. On a good night waiting tables at a pizza joint she
can make $200.
In California during the gold rush, many men could only find female
company if they paid for it. Life for boomtown prostitutes was rough and
risky; some Chinese women, speaking no English, were in effect slaves
to their pimps. But others made a lot of money. “At a time when a Paris
streetwalker might make the equivalent of $2 a night, some of the
Frenchwomen in San Francisco made $400,” writes Brands. Belle Cora’s
brothel on Dupont Street was renowned for fine wine and music as well as
sex. “Men with lust in their hearts…and gold in their pockets beat a
path through the muddy streets to her door, where she made sure they
wiped their feet before entering.”
The same trade exists today in Williston, but with fewer chandeliers
and violins. Most paid hookups are probably arranged online: the oil
workers all have smartphones. Some practise the oldest profession the
old-fashioned way, but this can annoy bystanders. One of the staff at
Bubba’s Bubbles, a laundry shop, says she “had to kick out” a woman with
a pink wig who was accosting male customers in the parking lot.
Striking it lucky
The California gold rush was a low-tech affair. “No capital is
required to obtain this gold, as the labouring man wants nothing but his
pick, shovel and tin pan,” wrote William Sherman, later a civil-war
general, in a missive to President James Polk in 1848. It seemed to
offer ordinary people a chance to get rich quick: one man, sifting
through the dirt at the bottom of a stream, might conceivably find
enough gold to retire on. Not a good chance, mind: only a lucky few
prospectors struck the mother lode. The rest typically struggled to find
enough ore to cover their expenses; some died poor and sorry, or quit
panning to find a steadier job.
Fracking, by contrast, requires capital and expertise. Oil giants
such as Statoil and Schlumberger are flocking to North Dakota. They
bring pricey, high-tech equipment, from microseismic sensors to drilling
rigs that walk, like something out of “Star Wars”. From little frack
pads in the middle of vast wheat fields, they can drill four miles down,
more than a mile to the side, and, thanks to satellite technology, hit a
target three feet across. Then they shoot thousands of gallons of
water, sand and chemicals into the shale formation, creating hairline
fractures in the rock—hence the procedure’s proper name, “hydraulic
fracturing”. The sand stops those fractures from closing up when the
pressure is turned off.
But North Dakota rewards ordinary folk, too. The lure is not a
slender chance of becoming rich, but the near-certainty of finding a
blue-collar job that pays middle-class wages. A roughneck or truck
driver can easily make $100,000 a year. (Why did Mr Wipf make the trek
from Montana? “Good money.”) Anyone who can pass a drug test can find
work.
And just as the gold rush made shopkeepers and shovelmakers rich, so
the spoils of gas are widely spread. A whole economy has sprung up to
support the frackers. Someone has to build man camps, roads and schools.
North Dakota Developments, a property developer, is trucking ready-made
six-room housing units over from Minnesota and erecting them in what
used to be a cornfield. Rob Gavin, the boss, says demand is so strong
that he expects to recoup the development costs in a single year.
The place is growing so fast that, even at boomtown wages, finding
workers can be hard. Paul Coppinger, a boss at Weir-SPM, a firm that
makes oil and gas pumps, says that only a couple of his 63 staff in
Williston are native North Dakotans. The Walmart in town is the messiest
your correspondent has ever seen; there are too few hands to tidy the
shelves. Workers quit and take better jobs faster than you can say
“frack”.
Theron Amos, the manager of the local Pizza Hut, says he has lost a
fifth of his staff—in the past week. “I have 20. I need 30,” he sighs,
as he wrestles with the cash register and passes the shrieking phone to a
colleague. “Oh, man, I’ve got more grey hairs than when I started this
job.” Would Mr Amos turn any applicant away? “Well, one woman came in
and ordered a pitcher of beer before the job interview. I didn’t hire
her.”
Sitting on a gold mine
The locals in 19th-century California were not consulted about the
gold rush. Many Native Americans, who in previous decades had reached
accommodations with Spanish and Mexican settlers, were murdered or
infected with unfamiliar diseases. Scorched-earth offensives starved
them off their land: since hunting them down was too time-consuming, one
white soldier wrote, “It was therefore decided that the best policy was
to destroy their huts and stores, with a view of starving them out.”
Their descendants live in reservations. Williston’s natives are faring
rather better.
Because they can drill sideways, frackers can suck out the oil and
gas under a huge farm while disturbing only a tiny part of it. So the
farmer carries on rearing cows as before. The fracking takes place so
far underground that he never notices it. But he notices the royalties
that the energy firms pay.
“Most farms round here have mineral income,” says Tom Rolfstad of the
Williston Economic Development office. A farmer with two square miles
of land will get a signing bonus of $2.5m and nearly 20% of the gross
value of the oil and gas pumped from it, he estimates. A good well can
keep producing for 30 years and yield 500,000 barrels of oil. At $100 a
barrel, that’s $10m for the farmer. Even small landowners benefit. Mr
Rolfstad gets regular little cheques for the oil and gas extracted below
his modest home.
Many of the ancestors of today’s North Dakotans arrived at Ellis
Island in the 19th century. “If you were Norwegian, they’d send you to
North Dakota. If you didn’t speak English, they’d give you a card round
your neck asking people to help you find the right train,” explains Mr
Rolfstad. Under the Homestead Act of 1862, if the immigrants staked out
160 acres and farmed it for five years, they owned it—and their
descendants own the mineral rights. In Europe, where such rights
typically belong to the state, people resent the disruption fracking
might cause. Americans, by contrast, tend to be delighted if a firm
wants to frack under their land.
And for landowners, the fracking itself is not the only
money-spinner. A farmer with land near Williston will have no trouble
renting it out. The town is desperate for more offices, homes, shops and
hotels. In one small field your correspondent counted 50 mobile homes.
One occupant, Cindy Martin, says the farmer charges her $1,000 a
month to park there, with no electricity or water. “It’s a terrible
price,” she complains. But the boom means labour is scarce and wages are
high; Ms Martin makes twice as much as she would elsewhere, working at
Bubba’s Bubbles. She and her husband drove up 2,000 miles from Arizona.
She seems content: “We came here to work. We refuse to lay back and let
the government take care of us. We’re too American for that.”
For all their good fortune, some locals fret about the crowding,
pollution and change that accompany the new wealth. “It was a quiet,
small town,” laments Gary Daniel, a middle-aged Willistonian, as he eats
fried chicken at Gramma Sharon’s family restaurant. He has seen oil
booms before, “but not like this one.” People used to know each other in
Williston, he recalls: “Now everyone’s in a hurry to go nowhere.”
Prices have soared. Mr Daniel knows of old people whose rent quadrupled
so they had to leave their homes. “It’s flat-out greed,” he spits. The
schools are packed; their walls are “just bulging out”. The traffic is
“insane”. Overall, “whether it’s good or bad, I haven’t made my mind
up.”
Mr Rolfstad has fewer doubts. Growth is being carefully planned, he
says. “We decided to double the size of the town. Then we decided to
quadruple it.”
After the flood
The gold rush of 1848-55 not only transformed the lives of those who
found fortunes in the dirt (and those who failed to); it also changed
America. It rapidly populated the new territory of California, which
America had just seized from Mexico, and hastened the day that the
Golden State became a state. It led to the construction of railroads to
bind the settled eastern states to the Wild West. Its legacy includes
San Francisco and America’s thriving Chinese population (which exploded
during the gold rush, as boatloads of Chinese prospectors arrived).
Brands, the historian, goes further, arguing that gold transformed
the American dream. Whereas the Puritans dreamed of accumulating modest
fortunes “a little at a time, year by year”, through “sobriety, thrift
and steady toil”, the ‘49ers dreamed of “instant wealth, won in a
twinkling by audacity and good luck”. Among the early settlers, failure
“connoted weakness of will or defect of soul”. In the gold fields, by
contrast, “a person was expected to gamble, and to fail, and to gamble
again”. And “[w]here failure was so common, it lost its stigma.” This
idea—that failure is a socially acceptable stepping stone to success—is
one reason why American capitalism is so dynamic.
The fracking boom could be every bit as important as the gold rush.
It is about to turn America into the world’s largest oil and gas
producer, outstripping Russia and Saudi Arabia. It could add almost $700
billion to the economy by 2020 (about 4% of GDP), predicts McKinsey, a
consultancy. By then it will have created up to 1.7m jobs—far more than
the car industry provides. The sudden abundance of natural gas has
drastically reduced American energy bills while curbing greenhouse-gas
emissions, since gas is cleaner than coal.
The longer term effects of a boom are unpredictable. For instance,
the gold rush arguably led to the creation of Silicon Valley. It spurred
the laying of the railroads, making Leland Stanford rich. He founded
Stanford University, which trained the engineers who started the tech
firms, from Hewlett-Packard to Google, which made the Valley the envy of
the world.
In North Dakota fracking has poured money into schools. Some of those
Norwegian immigrants used to set aside a portion of their farmland
income to support the village school. That rule lives on, in places, and
the land now generates mineral royalties. No one expects to see a great
university emerge in the Great Plains just yet. But you never know. Who
in 1849 could have predicted that the empty hills around San Francisco
would one day sprout an Apple?
From the print edition: Christmas Specials
domingo, 22 de diciembre de 2013
IRÁN : Entre Pasado y Futuro, entre Atavismos arcaicos y Globalización
Un ministre iranien reconnaît l’impuissance du régime à lutter contre les chaînes TV par satellite.
Du Blog ˝Nouvelles d´ Iran˝
Le ministre de la culture et de l'orientation islamique, Ali Janati
Dans les années 1980, la possession de magnétoscope en Iran était
interdite et passible d'une amende. Cette interdiction s'est assouplie
au cours des années et a finalement disparu complètement. A la fin des
années 1990, un nouveau phénomène s'est répandu notamment chez les
classes aisées et moyennes. Il s'agissait des chaînes satellitaires,
accessibles par une simple parabole, dissimulable sur le toit d'immeuble
ou dans une chambre de la maison.
Là encore, des lois visant à dissuader la population de détenir une
parabole ont été adoptées. La police, chargée de veiller aux bonnes
mœurs de la société, organisait régulièrement des descentes dans les
maisons et confisquait les équipements dits "illégaux". Mais
les Iraniens, loin de renoncer à leurs séries américaines préférées ou à
leurs émissions politiques diffusées depuis l'étranger par des chaînes
en langue persane, se procuraient rapidement d'une nouvelle parabole.
Bien que ce jeu du chat et de la souris perdure depuis des années,
l'Etat iranien semble incapable de mener à bien sa bataille contre ce
qu'il appelle "l'invasion culturelle". Fait inédit : le ministre de la culture et de l'orientation islamique, Ali Janati, a enfin dit ce que tout le monde sait mais ne dit pas. Mardi, 17 décembre, il a confié dans un entretien à l'agence officielle Isna que "71% des habitants de Téhéran" regardaient "des chaînes de télévision par satellite".
"Les restrictions imposées afin d'empêcher les citoyens
d'utiliser les technologies de communication et les nouveaux médias
n'ont pas donné de résultats que cherchait le régime", a également fait valoir le ministre de la culture.
Quelques mois plus tôt, Ali Janatai avait déjà parlé d'inefficacité
des mesures entreprises contre les chaînes satellitaires, dont
l'utilisation des brouilleurs d'ondes et les rafles de la police. "Nous
devons chercher une solution et produire des contenus intéressants pour
que les gens arrêtent de regarder les télévisions étrangères ou de se
servir des médias étrangers", avait-il proposé.
Ali Janati est l'un des rares ministres du gouvernement du président
modéré Hassan Rohani à avoir un compte sur Facebook, alors que ce réseau
social est bloqué en Iran. Ce responsable iranien a, à de multiples
reprises, demandé que les sites et les réseaux sociaux deviennent
accessibles aux Iraniens. Il a également plaidé pour davantage de
tolérance de la part des "censeurs" – ces employés du ministère de la
culture qui lisent tous les livres avant publication pour s'assurer de
leur conformité à l'islam et aux règles en République islamique.
Ces positions plus libérales de la part de ce ministre ont d'ores et
déjà suscité de vives réactions négatives de la part des conservateurs,
qui le menacent même de convocation au Parlement ou d'un vote de
défiance.
sábado, 21 de diciembre de 2013
ARGENTINA CUESTA ABAJO
“ARGENTINA CUESTA ABAJO”
|
El
martes 10 de diciembre, nuevamente la Argentina le demostró al mundo
su profunda incapacidad de organizarse políticamente de manera
mínimamente democrática, ciudadana, solidaria y pacífica.
Ese
día el Gobierno argentina emperifollaba el centro de Buenos Aires para
festejar 30 años de Gobierno en “democracia” (casi todos bajo
dirección peronista). La presidenta Cristina Fernández, a pesar de que
ha reducido en forma tajante su exposición pública, tenía ya planeado
pronunciar un discurso en Casa Rosada. Formaba parte de los festejos un
concierto al aire libre con la actuación de grandes artistas locales
(de corte “nacional y popular”, faltaba más) para que la población
notara el profundo apego del gobierno peronista para con la democracia.
En
un acto insólito, el gobierno había previsto la invitación de los
cuatro expresidentes –(Carlos Menem, Fernando De la Rúa, Adolfo
Rodríguez Saá, Eduardo Duhalde y a la familia de Raúl Alfonsín)- que
estuvieron al mando del país durante el período “democrático”. Con la
excepción de De la Rúa y Alfonsín, los otros fueron todos conspiradores
conspicuos contra sus más diversos correligionarios peronistas por lo
que, programar una serie de ceremonias en la que se pretendía poner en
evidencia los supuestos valores de continuidad institucional, civilismo
y solidaridad nacional lindaba entre el mal gusto o la tomadura de
pelo.
Pero
hay veces que la historia, siempre partera de imprevistos, se encarga
de poner las cosas en su sitio. Los años de corrupción oficial y
societal, los ataques sistemáticos a distintos sectores de la sociedad,
el mandoneo rutinario sobre la población y la profunda vocación
anti-democrática que, en realidad, reinó durante todo el período
“festejado” (quedan obviamente excluidos De la Rúa y Alfonsín de este
diagnóstico) repentinamente mostraron sus frutos.
El
acto se transformó radicalmente. Desde algunos días antes, los saqueos
estaban en vías de generalizarse en varias de las provincias del país,
mientras que la “nomenklatura” kirchnerista se aprestaba a jugar a la
fiesta de “la democracia”. En un municipio cercano a la ciudad de
Buenos Aires, el supermercado de un integrante de la comunidad china
fue asaltado por las turbas de “piqueteros”, incendiado el local y
muerto el propietario que pretendía defender algo llamado “derecho de
propiedad”.
Mientras
tanto, en la ciudad de Córdoba, ante el retiro y acuartelamiento
durante 35 horas de la policía de la provincia por sus reclamaciones
salariales no satisfechas, centenares y centenares de locales de todo
tipo fueron vaciados y destruidos. Casi simultáneamente en la provincia
de Entre Ríos se repetían las escenas de Córdoba en Concordia. Lo de
Córdoba en particular fue el doble disparador para dos fenómenos que se
dieron en paralelo. Por un lado, ante el aumento de urgencia otorgado a
la policía de la Provincia, el reclamo policial se generalizó. En más
de una docena de provincias del país los reclamos policiales se
dispararon. El gobierno nacional y los provinciales cedieron, más o
menos rápidamente, a aumentos demenciales e impagables. En el interim,
mientras se buscaban arreglos con las policías, el caos, el saqueo de
locales y el ejercicio de la violencia más disparatada se extendió por
buena parte de la Argentina causando, en el momento que se escribe esta
nota editorial, ya once muertos, un número indeterminados de heridos y
daños de montos difíciles de calcular ya que se calculan en unos 1900
los comercios atacados, saqueados y destruidos.
Alcanza
con ver las tomas televisivas para advertir que los saqueos tienen una
relación muy lejana con una hipotética situación de pobreza de
aquellos sectores de la población transformados en “saqueadores”. Son
muy variados los orígenes sociales de los argentinos que participan en
los saqueos que se han ido extendiendo, finalmente, a lo largo de 20
provincias del territorio y que nadie sabe si han realmente concluido.
En los últimos días, el despliegue de la Gendarmería para proteger todo
tipo de comercios ha enlentecido en algo el contagio de los saqueos.
A
pesar de los análisis edificantes de los distintos sociólogos que han
salido a “explicar” situaciones de pobreza, niveles de ingreso e
índices Gini diversos como supuestas “causas” del la instalación del
caos, es evidente que se trata de un problema de (falta absoluta de)
dirección política de la sociedad y no de un problema “social”.
Argentina está ante una crisis de gobernabilidad en toda la línea.
El
Gobernador de la Provincia de Córdoba, José Manuel de la Sota,
connotado anti-kirchnerista, y ejemplo mismo de peronista irredimible,
declaraba sin rubor alguno: “(Era)
impensable para cualquier gobernante que esta reclamación salarial (de
la policía) derivara en esta situación que se vive en las provincias.
(…) Se rompió el contrato social”.
La
declaración es inaudita porque presupone, o bien que la Policía,
sistemáticamente mal paga, hubiese roto un contrato social del que el
peronismo fuese un sabio guardián. O, peor aún, permite leer la
posibilidad de que los saqueadores hubiese “roto el contrato social”
cuando toda la Argentina sabe dos cosas fundamentales. La primera, que
los saqueos, como bien dijo al presidenta (que conoce bien el mecanismo
porque es experta en la materia), fueron como siempre organizados por
las organizaciones de base y los “punteros” peronistas de nivel
barrial. Y la segunda es que de la Sota finge ignorar que, de 1945
hasta la fecha, el peronismo y las Fuerzas Armadas han atacado
sistemáticamente todo intento de mantener nada parecido a un contrato
social estable.
El
gran violador del contrato social en la República Argentina es, hoy,
un gobierno peronista que, en la mejor tradición de Juan Domingo Perón,
ignora lo que debería ser el Estado de Derecho. El gobierno
kirchnerista persigue a los periodistas, pretende manipular medios de
prensa, intenta expropiar a los sectores de productores rurales, saquea
empresas nacionales y extranjeras, pretende “inventar” los precios de
la economía mintiendo abiertamente en las cifras macro-económicas, etc.
por lo que hace muchas décadas que la sociedad argentina y los simples
ciudadanos saben que viven más en una situación casi hobbesiana que en
una sociedad regida por algo parecido a un contrato social. Y decimos
“casi” porque, en Hobbes, la hipótesis que abona al “estado de
naturaleza”, supone una “guerra de todos contra todos” donde los
contendientes son hombres “iguales por naturaleza” los que se
enfrentan. En la Argentina, en cambio, los grandes agresores y
transgresores de la paz cívica y social han sido históricamente los
gobiernos peronistas y los gobiernos militares que se ensañan, desde
siempre, sobre la población.
Por
ello es que no deben de sorprender a nadie, en el mundo lejano que no
conoce a la “Argentina profunda”, las declaraciones de una saqueadora
de iniciales E.G. publicadas por “El País” de Madrid:
“La
mayoría roba, pero uno va a saquear para dar de comer a los chiquitos.
Cuando vas a decir al intendente (alcalde) que no tenés para comer, te
dice que no tiene nada más que una bolsa con un paquete de fideos, uno
de arroz, uno de azúcar, uno de puré de tomate y una botella de aceite
por mes, pero te dura dos días”, se queja. E. G. se entera de la
organización de saqueos por el boca a boca y Facebook, aunque hace una
semana se le descompuso el ordenador. En 2012 fue a saquear porque su
marido solo tenía trabajo un día por semana, ganaba 90 euros al mes y
con otros 155 de subvención estatal su familia comía una vez por día.
“No tenía miedo porque fui con mi papá”, cuenta. Ahora su marido
consiguió empleo formal, cobra 790 euros, sus hijos han vuelto a comer
dos veces por día, pero ella planeaba saquear porque la carne vacuna y
el pan “aumentan mucho” de precio. Aclara que otros vecinos roban
electrodomésticos o ropa para después revenderlos y
comprar después bienes básicos. También están los que no participan de
saqueos por razones morales o por el riesgo de resultar heridos.
Esta vez la presencia de gendarmes la disuadió de ir. “Ni loca voy a
que me maten”, cuenta y reconoce que delincuentes y policías de civil
participan también de saqueos mientras que punteros (dirigentes políticos barriales) los promueven.” (Edición Internacional del 11/12/2013).
Poco
queda que agregar a las declaraciones de esta “ciudadana”. La
espontaneidad de su amoralidad la exime de cualquier comentario. ¿Qué
de censurable hay en el saqueo y el robo si ella ha visto multiplicarse
de manera exponencial en pocos años el patrimonio de la pareja
Nestor/Cristina, si toda la población comenta cotidianamente los
negociados del vice-presidente Amado Boudou, si la clase política
peronista es el centro de corrupción de la sociedad argentina y si la
policía también es parte del esquema general de corrupción, para no
nombrar mas que los casos más notorios ?
Mientras
que el debilitamiento de la gobernabilidad se hace cada vez más
notorio en el país, los personajes de la política peronista intentar
encontrar la forma de sacar réditos del desastre. “Las influencias de
la dictadura” o “las corporaciones” son ahora el nuevo “tema” que han
desenterrado los auto-llamados “intelectuales peronistas” integrantes
de un movimiento llamado “Carta Abierta”. Y mientras estos personajes
juegan a ser políticos, la República de China eleva un tanto el tono
exigiendo que el gobierno garantice la seguridad de los inmigrantes
chinos afincados en Argentina. El gesto es meramente protocolar porque
la China sabe, perfectamente, que el gobierno de la Argentina es
absolutamente incapaz de ofrecer garantías, o seguridad, en tema
alguno.
|
sábado, 7 de diciembre de 2013
LA RÉACTION DES ULTRA-CONSERVATEURS CONTINUE
BLOGS DU “MONDE”
“Nouvelles d´Iran”
A Téhéran, rafle dans les milieux des cyberactivistes
Amir Tataloo, chanteur underground, a été arrêté mardi 3 décembre.
Un rappeur de la scène underground, célèbre sous le nom de scène Amir
Tataloo a été arrêté mardi 3 décembre. Le chef de la police des mœurs,
le général Masoud Zahedian, a confirmé la nouvelle de cette arrestation
dans un entretien accordé à l'agence officielle Isna,
mardi 3 décembre, ajoutant que la police allait désormais se charger
des chanteurs underground qui produisaient des œuvres et qui les
envoyaient "pour diffusion à des chaînes satellitaires", diffusées depuis l'étranger et interdites en Iran. "La télévision et la radio [nationales]
et le ministère de la culture et de l'orientation islamique ont fait le
nécessaire pour que les artistes puissent travailler. De fait, ceux qui
travaillent clandestinement doivent se soumettre au cadre légal défini
pour l'art égal", a déclaré le général Zahedian.
Alors que la possession de paraboles est interdite et passible d'une
amende, des millions d'Iraniens en détiennent et regardent ces chaînes
satellitaires. Des dizaines de ces chaînes, diffusées en langue persane,
sont consacrées à la musique iranienne, produite par des expatriés
vivant aux Etats-Unis, en Europe ou ailleurs, ou par des Iraniens
travaillant clandestinement en Iran. Tous les musiciens qui veulent
sortir leurs albums ou se produire sur scène en Iran sont tenus de
demander l'autorisation du ministère de la culture et de l'orientation
islamique. Alors qu'existent en Iran de nombreux chanteurs underground,
la police procède parfois à des arrestations et les soumet à de
nombreuses intimidations.
"ATTEINTE A LA SECURITE NATIONALE"
Âgé de 30 ans, le chanteur Amir Tataloo, de son vrai nom Amir-Hossein
Maghsoudlou, produisait de la musique dans différents styles. Du rap au
pop en passant par le blues, il a également composé quelques morceaux
de jazz. Ce jeune iranien a quitté Téhéran en 2007 pour s'installer à
Dubaï.
Quelques années plus tard, il est retourné en Iran pour
poursuivre clandestinement ses activités. Son premier album, Sous le sous-sol,
a été enregistré en 2011, sans autorisation, et diffusé en ligne ou par
des chaînes satellitaires. Amir Tataloo peut se targuer aujourd'hui de
562 000 "amis" sur Facebook.
L'agence semi-officielle Fars, proche des gardiens de la révolution, a également annoncé l'arrestation de seize "cyberactivistes, liés aux étrangers"
par le service du renseignement des gardiens de la ville de Kerman,
dans le sud du pays. Selon cette agence, ils sont accusés d'avoir "porté atteinte à la sécurité nationale en ayant collaboré avec des réseaux étrangères", "développé des sites [internet]" et "produit du contenu pour des sites contre-révolutionnaires dans le but de renverser la République islamique", a déclaré le procureur adjoint de Kerman, Ahmad Ghorbani.
DE NOUVELLES ARRESTATIONS
Selon cette autorité, "les membres de cette bande entretenaient des liens étroits avec des éléments antirévolutionnaires à l'étranger" et avaient touché des fonds en provenance des chaînes d'informations occidentales.
Peu après l'annonce de ces interpellations, le site Narenji (orange),
hébergé en Iran et consacré aux nouvelles technologies et aux nouveaux
gadgets, a annoncé l'arrestation de sept de ses collaborateurs par les
gardiens de la révolution, dont trois femmes. "Certains auteurs et
personnels techniques de l'équipe Narenji ont été arrêtés pour des
raisons inconnues. Nous ne sommes pas en mesure de connaître leur lieu
de détention. La publication de nouveaux contenus sera suspendue jusqu'à
la prochaine annonce", pouvait-on lire mardi sur le site. Cette page n'est restée que quelques heures en ligne avant d'être retirée.
Le site Narenji, lancé en 2007 par quelques blogueurs, avait remporté
le prix du meilleur site d'information en 2010 lors du troisième
Festival des sites iraniens en 2010 et le prix du meilleur blog en
persan par Deutsche Welle [le service international de diffusion de
l’Allemagne diffuse des émissions de radio ainsi que des programmes de
télévision ] en 2012.
LINK: http://keyhani.blog.lemonde.fr/2013/12/05/a-teheran-rafle-dans-les-milieux-des-cyber-activistes/#xtor=RSS-32280322
ABOUT NELSON MANDELA
FROM “THE NEW YORKER”
December 6, 2013
Nelson Mandela and the Bees
On a chilly Easter Saturday in 1998, I received an urgent message
from Nelson Mandela’s press aide to call a phone number in the Eastern
Cape. I was a reporter for a Sunday newspaper in Johannesburg at the
time, but was on vacation in Cape Town and had just stepped off a
wind-swept beach. So I was ill prepared for the conversation that
followed.
I called. A woman answered the phone and I gave my name. Soon, a
familiar voice boomed down the line. “I’m happy to hear from you,” said
President Nelson Mandela, as though a call from a reporter on a Saturday
afternoon was a pleasant surprise. But he wasn’t well, he said. The
reason for his indisposition was a swarm of honey bees that had attacked
him in his bathroom, while he was getting out of the bath.
The first democratic President of South Africa
said that he was particularly upset because he had defended the bees’
right to remain on the grounds of his rural home in Qunu, in the Eastern
Cape. “When the police wanted to remove them, I said, No, they are
perfectly entitled to select their own home,” he said. He also thought
the means of removing a hive—with smoke—was “a bit crude.”
But that morning, he’d stepped out of the tub and was about to put on
body lotion when he heard an aggressive buzzing outside the open
bathroom window. He had grown up in the countryside surrounding Qunu and
knew that, with snakes and bees, the best tactic is to keep still. But
the bees seemed intent on attacking, so he reached for a fumigator
spray.
“Then they launched a counterattack,” he said, stinging him in the
soft area just below the pit of his stomach, a favorite place for
attacking a boxer. “I had to flee.”
I asked a few questions, but I was so taken aback that I failed to
ask the big one: Why was he telling me this? He knew me as a reporter,
not as a confidante. His aides couldn’t or wouldn’t enlighten me, so I
called my editor from the beach parking lot and filed a story over the
phone. It ran the next day as a page-one anchor under the headline “STINGING ATTACK ON MANDELA HITS HIM BELOW THE BELT.”
It was picked up by the wire services and run around the world. At
least one newspaper felt at liberty to change his quotes. He had told me
that he was stung “four or five times in the stomach and in parts I am
too embarrassed to mention to a young lady.” That became “…and in other
parts that are privileged information.”
The story was deeply troubling for some. Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi,
who was in Mandela’s cabinet at the time, said that her mother-in-law
was concerned because the bees had stung him inside his house. A sangoma
(a traditional healer) told Sapa, a South African newswire service,
that this meant the ancestors were angry with him, and that his family
should slaughter a goat to appease them, and brew traditional beer.
“Why should the ancestors be angry with such a man?” I asked an aide.
“Because of Graça,” he said, meaning Graça Machel, Mandela’s then
fiancé. She was not even South African, let alone Xhosa, and there had
been some murmurings in Qunu about their relationship.
“There is a belief in Xhosa tradition that bees are connected to
ancestors, and if they show unkindness toward you it’s a message from
the ancestors,” Peter Mtuze told me years later. Mtuze is a professor
emeritus at Rhodes University in the Eastern Cape, a historian and an
expert on Xhosa culture. “Sometimes, it”—a bee attack—“just indicates
attention from the ancestor, if for some reason there is something you
need to do.”
At the time, I was ignorant of this dimension. When I interviewed
Mandela a few months after the bee incident, shortly before his
eightieth birthday, I asked him why he had told me, particularly given
that he had joked, soon after, that I had “exposed him to the world.”
Better the story got out the way it did, he said, than having a flutter
of gossip emanating from Qunu. He was kind enough not to say that he had
chosen a reporter whose ignorance would serve his purpose. My rendering
of the tale killed any deeper interpretation.
Mandela marked so many firsts in his brief five-year term as
President. One of them was the charming, though sophisticated and
tactical, way he dealt with the media. He got such good press not only
because of who he was but because of how he treated reporters. He once
fished a photographer from an Afrikaans newspaper out of a fountain on
the grounds of Tuynhuys, his Cape Town offices. The photographer had
been walking backward, taking pictures of him, when he tripped over a
ledge and fell into the water. (He was thereafter known among the local
cameramen as “the pool photographer.”) And he elevated the status of
journalists more than any other politician has done, before or since.
When the Namibian President, Sam Nujoma, came on his first state
visit to South Africa, in 1996, Mandela walked the surprised head of
state out of a press conference, through the Tuynhuys gardens to the
fence that borders Government Avenue, a tree-lined pedestrian
thoroughfare in Cape Town. Delighted schoolchildren stopped to shake his
hand through the railings. “Have you met the President of Namibia?” he
asked one solemnly. And to another: “What would you like to be when you
grow up? A doctor? Maybe even a news reporter?” He gestured at the reporters clustered around him.
There is an anthemic freedom song in Xhosa, Mandela’s mother tongue,
in praise of the statesman. It was sung when Mandela was imprisoned,
when he was freed in 1990, when he was President, and, afterward, in his
retirement. Nelson Mandela / Akekh’ ofananaye—“Nelson Mandela,
there is none other like him.” Today, for those of us fortunate enough
to have reported on him, it rings in our heads.
Pippa Green is a South African journalist and the
author of “Choice Not Fate,” a biography of Trevor Manuel, the first black finance minister appointed by Nelson Mandela.
Photograph: Steve Russell/Toronto Star via Getty
LINK: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2013/12/nelson-mandela-and-the-bees.html
jueves, 5 de diciembre de 2013
¿ACUERDO NUCLEAR CON IRÁN?
“5+1 e Irán : ¿ ACUERDO HISTÓRICO ?”
El
grupo de países llamado de los « 5+1 » (integrado por los Estados
Unidos, Rusia, la China, Grande-Bretaña, Francia y Alemania), después
de un proceso de negociación dificultoso, pero que parece haber
avanzado a buena velocidad, decidió firmar en Ginebra el domingo 24 de
noviembre un acuerdo con Irán que una buena parte de la prensa
internacional se apresuró a calificar de “histórico”.
Estrictamente
hablando, lo sucedido es, en algún sentido, bastante más modesto. El
acuerdo firmado sólo compromete a las partes a una serie de acciones (y
de abstención de acciones) por un plazo de seis meses durante los
cuales se continuarían las negociaciones hasta lograr un acuerdo que es
calificado de “completo”. Mientras tanto, durante ese plazo, Occidente
se compromete a levantar parcialmente las sanciones que estrangulan a
la economía iraní. Para ser precisos, se trataría de un alivio “…limitado, temporal, puntualmente dirigido y que podría ser anulado en cualquier momento”,
por un monto aproximado de 7.000 millones de dólares. De acuerdo a la
prensa, conviene señalarlo, este monto representa una fracción poco
significativa comparado al que llegan las sanciones aplicadas a Irán.
Este
país, por su parte, acepta detener todo proceso de enriquecimiento de
uranio arriba del 5% así como neutralizar su stock de uranio
enriquecido a más de 20% por medio de su “disolución”, promete suspender
el proceso de construcción del reactor de agua pesada de Arak e
interrumpir todo trabajo relacionado con la tecnología del plutonio.
Igualmente, Irán abriría la entrada a las instalaciones consideradas
como “sensibles” (Arak, Natanz, Fordow son los sitios explícitamente mencionados en los reportes disponibles) a la visita regular y acordada de los inspectores de la Agencia Internacional de Energía Atómica (AIEA).
La
complejidad de la temática tratada en el acuerdo (así como la
multiplicidad de temas que, aunque no figuren en él están, en muchos
casos, directamente relacionados) explican en buena medida la
“polvareda” de reacciones de los tipos más diversos que este por ahora
sólo provisorio proceso de acercamiento ha levantado.
Para
comenzar, en Irán pudo verse claramente la escisión entre los
ultra-conservadores criados a la sombra del régimen teocrático y esa
corriente, llamada por algunos “moderada”, que se hace presente
intermitentemente en la arena política y que, con el reciente ascenso
del presidente Hassan Rohani y una llamativa reivindicación pública del
ex presidente Mohammad Khatami (hasta hace poco caído en desgracia),
ha adquirido, aparentemente, nuevo vigor.
En
un primer momento los negociadores fueron recibidos “como héroes”, lo
cual es un indicador fuerte que, efectivamente, las sanciones de
Occidente están golpeando de lleno en la vida cotidiana de los iraníes.
Pero esa primera reacción rápidamente fue contrarrestada por una
contraofensiva de los sectores más tradicionalistas y religiosos del
régimen.
Presionados
por estos sectores ultra-conservadores, Rohani y el ministro de
asuntos exteriores de Irán salieron a la prensa a calificar de “no
válido” el comunicado de prensa publicado por la Casa Blanca sobre el
acuerdo por considerar que es una mera ficha técnica cuando, en
realidad, el acuerdo firmado es un “texto valorativo”. La denuncia,
ostensiblemente retórica, pone de manifiesto la necesidad de los
dirigentes iraníes de presentar el acuerdo a sus conciudadanos, y
particularmente a los ultraconservadores, bajo la luz más aceptable
posible.
Aun así, varios días después, el 29 de noviembre, Hassan Rohani se veía obligado a salir a la prensa internacional, vía The Financial Times, para reafirmar que nunca se había acordado el desmantelamiento del programa nuclear iraní.
Nótese
que la Casa Blanca también enfrenta dificultades. Aunque la opinión
pública norteamericana parece tornarse cada vez más favorable al
acuerdo (las encuestas se desataron rápidamente y el 44% de los
estadounidenses dice “apoyar” el acuerdo contra un 22% que lo
“rechaza”), la oposición republicana sube el tono de las críticas a
niveles tales que John Kerry ha tenido que salir a sostener que Irán
“no enriquecerá más uranio”, lo cual, evidentemente, no es consistente
con el acuerdo publicitado por la propia presidencia norteamericana.
La
posición de la Casa Blanca se torna, sin embargo, particularmente
incómoda (y seguramente mucho más incómoda que la de los jefes de
estado europeos) en la medida en que el lobby pro-israelí comienza a
presionar sobre el propio partido del Presidente Obama y más de un
representante demócrata ya habla de votar en el Congreso nuevas
sanciones contra Irán tan pronto como el mes que viene.
Tampoco
el acuerdo ha caído demasiado bien en las capitales árabes, con la
excepción, quizás, de El Cairo que atraviesa por una coyuntura interna
suficientemente delicada como para poder permitirse alguna
manifestación de corte internacional que pudiese ser leída como crítica
de los EE.UU. En Arabia Saudita, en cambio, y en general en los países
del Golfo, asisten con estupor a lo que temen sea un “cambio de
alianzas” de los EE.UU. en la región. Aunque esto, evidentemente, es
una dramatización caricatural, no es menos cierto que la sólida alianza
histórica con las monarquías del Golfo está siendo tensionada ante el
cambio que parecen estar propiciando los EE.UU. y una EU
particularmente dinámica y protagonista, luego de décadas de
congelamiento casi total de las relaciones entre Irán y Occidente.
Como
era previsible, la reacción más virulenta contra el acuerdo provino
del gobierno de Israel y particularmente del gobierno Netanyahu que no
pudo más que caricaturizar el notorio apresuramiento de la prensa
internacional al hablar de “histórico acuerdo”, con otra expresión poco
apropiada: “error histórico”.
La
reacción del gobierno Netanyahu es más explicable porque, en varios
sentidos, lo sucedido era más que previsible para sus integrantes. La
insistencia de John Kerry en encarrilar en los últimos meses, aunque
fuere a la fuerza, el proceso de diálogo entre Israel y la Autoridad
Palestina ahora aparece claramente como el preámbulo de un posible
cambio de la posición norteamericana ante la teocracia iraní. Los
conservadores israelíes siempre pretendieron “arreglar” la región antes
de “arreglar” el diferendo con los palestinos. Lo que vino seguramente
a poner en marcha los últimos meses Kerry en Israel, es la afirmación
de la convicción de los EE.UU. de que Israel debía ocuparse a la
brevedad de sellar un arreglo con los palestinos, mientras su aliado
mayor iba a proceder a algunos ajustes “en los alrededores”.
Es
más que probable que los EE.UU. hayan advertido hace bastante tiempo
que los conflictos internos al mundo islámico se agudizaban rápidamente
(agudización de la cual las efímeras “primaveras árabes” fueron un
síntoma) y que las tensiones que se pondrían en juego eran mucho más
decisivas para los intereses norteamericanos que las que involucraba el
conflicto árabe israelí.
Desde
luego que ello no debía implicar nada parecido a un “abandono” de
Israel, que sería suicida para cualquier gobierno en los EE.UU., pero
si podía comenzar el ejercicio paulatino de modificar una posición, en
la variable geometría regional, que tomase en cuenta, por ejemplo, el
crecimiento del rol de Turquía, el desbordamiento del fundamentalismo
sunita y, porque no, hasta la creciente aproximación de los EE.UU. a la
autosuficiencia energética en materia de hidro-carburos.
Del
lado del gobierno Netanyahu las cosas se complicaron realmente porque,
seguramente no es por casualidad que, en la quinta edición de las
conferencias “Iran Dialogues”, organizadas por el Centro Internacional
Toledo por la Paz, tanto Javier Solana, (ex Secretario de la OTAN y ex
Secretario de la Unión Europea y conocido por su moderación en política
internacional) como Shlomo Ben Ami (ex Ministro de Asuntos Exteriores
del gobierno laborista israelí entre 2000 y 2001), director del Centro,
se han pronunciado prudentemente a favor del acuerdo. Aunque, como
todo observador sensato, entienden que hay que ver el perfil
conciliador recientemente pergeñado por Irán con desconfianza, resaltan
que, más que la simple moderación, lo que Rohani vino a traer a la
política exterior iraní era racionalidad y previsibilidad.
En
ese escenario, mientras que Solana resalta la consistencia que ha
demostrado Rohani desde que asumió (aunque cabe recordar que el tiempo
que lleva Rohani en la presidencia es breve y que, por sobre todo este
proceso, lo que parece reinar es un zigzagueo del Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei) Ben Ami, por su lado, aprovecha la ocasión para pasarle la
factura al gobierno Netanyahu. Shlomo Ben Ami subraya,
provocativamente, que “Es una derrota política tremenda para Netanyahu. Se ha quedado sin agenda”.
En
todo caso, y más allá de las diferentes reacciones políticas que el
evento ha puesto en marcha, es evidente que el acuerdo temporal
alcanzado, aunque en sí mismo significa poca cosa, simbólicamente ha
creado una novedad: parece ser que Irán puede comportarse como un
estado dotado de una política exterior racional. Este simple hecho, que
es algo así como el presupuesto elemental de cualquier aproximación
“realista” de la política internacional, constituye un espacio para la
diplomacia que hasta hace una semana no parecía existir.
En
cualquier caso, y más allá de las más que previsibles ambigüedades que
pueda develar Irán en el corto plazo, conviene ir previendo los
efectos que el acuerdo (de concretarse y prolongarse) va a tener en la
distribución de fuerzas a nivel planetario.
Al
respecto, dejemos nada más planteado, el problema que significaría, a
mediano plazo, un simple acercamiento a Irán por parte de los EE.UU..
Recordará el lector que todo el sistema balístico de defensa desplegado
en Europa por la OTAN se justifica, en la actualidad, por lo que puede
significar el peligro balístico, y eventualmente nuclear, iraní. Este
argumento siempre fue resistido por Rusia que sabe perfectamente que la
agresividad irracional de la teocracia iraní le proporcionaba a la OTAN
un argumento para mantener un sofisticado sistema de defensa que tenía
como real objetivo, sobretodo, contener el poderío balístico ruso.
En
política internacional, las reacciones rara vez se hacen esperar. El
lunes 25 de noviembre, un día después de la firma con Irán, hablando en
Roma ante la prensa internacional, el Ministro de Relaciones
Exteriores de Rusia, Sergei Lavrov, señalaba que una de las enormes
“ventajas” del acuerdo alcanzado con Irán (y fervientemente apoyado por
Rusia) era que “obviaba” la necesidad de que la OTAN desplegase su
sistema de defensa en Europa Central ya que no habría más “peligro
iraní”.
Link Original: http://www.ort.edu.uy/facs/boletininternacionales/contenidos/178/editorialjavierbonillasaus166.html
domingo, 1 de diciembre de 2013
RESEARCHING AUTHORITARIAN REGIMES
Must academics researching authoritarian regimes self-censor?
28 November 2013
In the case of Rwanda, it is wrong to argue
that only academics working outside the country are capable of critical
comment, says Phil Clark
Source: Magnum
How far should a journalist go to secure access to a violent or repressive country? This question grabbed the attention of academics earlier this year after the BBC used a group of London School of Economics students to disguise a visit to North Korea to film undercover for a Panorama documentary.
The broadcaster stood by its decision not to pull the programme, which aired in April, but the LSE’s director, Craig Calhoun, warned that the episode had put the institution’s staff and students at risk.
“The school works in politically sensitive and unstable countries,” Calhoun wrote on Times Higher Education’s website at the time. “We study democracy and democratisation, social movements and economic change, international politics and regional relations…We study them, often, by physically visiting territories where suspicion of foreigners asking questions runs high. That suspicion is heightened by incidents such as this. In order to pursue our academic mission, our students and our staff need to be able to move as freely as possible about the world without facing stigmatisation.”
While the objectives of journalists and academics can be very different, questions about access – gaining it, maintaining it and whether, in some cases, there may be too high a price to pay for it – are very familiar to researchers studying countries that are subject to authoritarian rule or where there has been recent mass conflict. Is access predicated on the assumption that certain research topics or views are “off-limits”? Do those granted access practise self-censorship?
Such issues are regularly debated by academics specialising in the countries where I conduct most of my research – Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo – but it is in the case of Rwanda that debate about whether academics can combine fieldwork with criticism of national authorities has been most intense.
Source: Getty
Debate about the viability of research in Rwanda came to a head after the publication in April 2011 of a collection of essays, Remaking Rwanda: State Building and Human Rights after Mass Violence, edited by two respected scholars, Scott Straus and Lars Waldorf. The book, which covered a wide range of political and social issues in post-genocide Rwanda, was – for the most part – highly critical of the authoritarian “social engineering” project undertaken by the ruling party, the Rwandan Patriotic Front. It gave cursory attention to the enormous strides the country has taken over the past 20 years in terms of economic development, health, education, judicial reform, gender equality and social cohesion. There was also surprisingly little debate among the volume’s 29 contributors, which masked the fervent disagreement among scholars on Rwanda more broadly.
Although critical of the book, I was nonetheless shocked by the venomous reaction to it by the Rwandan government and a range of national commentators. An anonymous blog featured on the website of the Rwandan Embassy in Washington DC, as well as a series of articles in the state-owned New Times newspaper, accused the collection’s editors and various contributors of being “vultures”, “genocide deniers” and “enemies of Rwanda”. It was even falsely claimed that one contributor had secured a “fake” doctorate and that the reason she wrote critically of the Rwandan judicial system was because she had fallen in love with a genocide perpetrator who lived in her backyard throughout her fieldwork.
In response, Straus gave a number of interviews discussing the broader relevance of this vitriolic reception. He told the African Studies Association that the government’s reaction simply confirmed a central argument in the book that “the government’s domestic and international strategy is to silence critics”. The response by foreign researchers, Straus told The Chronicle of Higher Education, is to “internalize the logic of intimidation, which means that many of us self-censor. We say to ourselves, in effect, if I speak out I jeopardize my access to the country and to my interlocutors…[which] ultimately produces a skew in the published scholarship.” This was particularly concerning, he said, because foreign academics and human rights organisations are among the few sources capable of openly criticising the Rwandan regime: “It is left to outsiders to make critical comments if the domestic political space is largely closed.”
Source: Reuters
Local researchers continue to use research to challenge policies. They may not march down Kigali’s streets, but they are far from ineffectualStraus’ views are widespread among researchers on Rwanda. Soon after the publication of Remaking Rwanda, I attended a US State Department briefing at which the majority of the 20 assembled experts on the country said that they had not been there for several years – some since the late 1990s – because they were either officially personae non gratae or believed they would personally be at risk if they returned. One well-known academic told the meeting that it was not possible to conduct fieldwork in Rwanda unless one toed the line on all aspects of government policy.
These concerns are not without foundation. Working in a post-genocide society – with its inevitable divisions, tensions and trauma – and in an environment in which political and social interactions are sometimes controlled presents researchers with substantial problems. But those who claim that it is impossible to conduct field research on politically sensitive topics in Rwanda without self-censoring and that only those working outside the country are capable of critical comment about its government overstate the case.
There is a tendency among some foreign scholars and students to exaggerate the difficulties of conducting research in post-atrocity environments. To claim that the Rwandan government has placed a researcher under surveillance can add enormous cachet to his or her work: it is assumed that it must be sufficiently important and damning of state wrongdoing to warrant such close attention. This gives some academics an interest in magnifying the perils of their research.
On a Kigali hotel balcony several years ago, I met an American PhD student whose thesis explored the role of women in religious orders since the genocide. Given that the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches in Rwanda are trying to reinvent themselves after their institutional complicity in the violence – and that the government has an extensive programme focused on women’s empowerment – this struck me as an interesting although not particularly controversial subject. The student leaned across the table and whispered conspiratorially: “Ever since I got here, I’ve been followed everywhere I go.” I gently asked who she thought was following her. With great exasperation, she replied: “Well, the government of course.” Given the nature of the research, this seemed very unlikely.
I have had countless conversations of this self-aggrandising nature with foreign academics, students and journalists. The most extreme version involves the claim that a particular researcher has been blacklisted from Rwanda because of the sensitivity of his or her work. Yet, with the exception of a handful of senior academics such as Filip Reyntjens, René Lemarchand and Gérard Prunier, who fell out with the Rwandan government in the years immediately after the genocide, I know of no foreign scholar or student who is officially persona non grata in the country. While others claim to be blacklisted, none has to my knowledge attempted to enter Rwanda and been turned back from its borders. The reality is probably much less dramatic: they may have met some resistance in securing government interviews or permits to sensitive spaces such as prisons or military camps, or they may simply imagine that things will be difficult when they next return to the field.
Source: Getty
The claimed impossibility of researching sensitive topics in Rwanda also overlooks the important ways in which many academics succeed in voicing critical views on the country while retaining access to their field subjects. Rwanda is not North Korea: foreign researchers and journalists travel there freely and frequently, including some of the contributors to Remaking Rwanda. Some are more adept at maintaining access than others and the most effective continue their research over many years. While recognising the undeniable challenges of fieldwork, we should shift the rubric of respect from those who claim that researching in Rwanda is too fraught to those who continue to do complicated work on the ground.
From my own experience and that of others who have conducted sustained research in the country, the key is to be discreet, patient and respectful in the field and to build close relationships with local respondents, researchers and (where possible) government officials. Difficult environments require difficult, and savvy, research. It is possible to publish controversial findings and continue discussions with officials, provided one adopts a fair and considered tone. In many cases, researchers who have met closed doors in Rwanda have been bombastic or hectoring during their research, belligerently “speaking truth to power”. Such activist scholarship – which favours a certain political agenda over exploring complexities and contradictions – tends to make government officials in any country, not just Rwanda, defensive. Some foreign researchers adopt an all-knowing attitude in developing countries that they wouldn’t dare attempt at home and then wonder why local officials don’t assist them.
Building relationships with state actors and navigating officialdom often involves long and heated discussions. But adopting a balanced research approach – highlighting positives and negatives – and a respectful tone enables access and the open debate of controversial issues. At two large government-run conferences in Kigali last year – one to commemorate the 1994 genocide and the other to mark the closure of the 10-year process of genocide trials through the gacaca community courts – I gave presentations that included discussion of the charged issue of crimes committed by the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front against Hutu civilians immediately after the genocide. My comments included direct criticism of ruling party behaviour at official events where government ministers and other senior officials were present. Not unexpectedly, on both occasions some expressed their severe displeasure with me verbally and by email. However, after lengthy discussions, each one acknowledged that I had no axe to grind and that my criticisms accompanied an analysis of the many virtues of Rwanda’s approach to justice and reconciliation since the genocide.
Source: Reuters
Certainly Rwanda represents a tense, sensitive environment for local and foreign researchers. But many of the former, who understand the domestic terrain better than any foreigner, continue to use their research to challenge existing policies. They may not wave banners and march down Kigali’s streets, but they are far from cowed or ineffectual. Rather than being viewed as such, many of them would benefit from collaborations with foreign scholars and students, who possess crucial resources and access to international networks.
The danger of overstating the risks of researching in Rwanda is that it will discourage vital fieldwork and instead produce a generation of armchair critics who prefer to denounce Rwandan authoritarianism from afar but without deep empirical knowledge of conditions there. This will lead only to self-satisfied activist scholarship and uniform opinion, oblivious to the nuances and complexities of life inside the country.
It is pleasing to note that despite the doomsaying of some established academics, a new generation is ignoring their elders’ advice and getting about the challenging business of empirical research in Rwanda. In organising a recent conference at Soas, University of London on the Rwandan Patriotic Front, my colleague Jason Mosley and I received more than 60 abstracts, the majority from young academics who have recently conducted field research in Rwanda and elsewhere in central Africa. This new wave of researchers is proof that it is possible to be critical of the Rwandan government and maintain access to the country. Some of them contest the image of a despotic Rwanda in which citizens are merely ciphers of the government, while others argue that the state is authoritarian but, unlike many of their predecessors, support their claims with deep empirical knowledge of the inner workings of the government and its impact on the lives of everyday Rwandans.
Field research in post-conflict or repressive societies is never going to be easy. But it is possible, through respecting and building relationships with local actors, to research in these environments and to be critical of domestic trends. The outcome is a deeper understanding of complex societies, which is vital for shaping international narratives and can benefit local citizens.
Link: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/features/must-academics-researching-authoritarian-regimes-self-censor/2009275.article#.UphVlnBHJFE.twitter
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