Mikhail Kalashnikov 1919-2013

Aos 94 anos, o criador da famosa espingarda de assalto AK-47, Mikhail Kalashnikov faleceu ontem na Rússia. Convido-vos a verem o artigo que aqui escrevi em Abril.

A História do Dinheiro

Niall Ferguson[1] é não só um dos grandes historiadores britânicos do nosso tempo como também um comunicador fora de série. Esta série de documentários entitulada "A Ascensão do Dinheiro - Uma História Financeira do Mundo" atravessa os tempos para nos mostrar como o dinheiro, a bolsa, os seguros, as acções, futuros e opções foram sendo criados e como criaram e destruiram países. As verdadeiras armas de destruição massiça do mundo, e ao mesmo algumas das melhores invenções já feitas pela humanidade. São muitas horas, algo que dificilmente se consegue ver de seguida, mas acreditem que valerá a pena.

O outro Holocausto

Umas décadas antes do holocausto que constantemente preenche as páginas dos jornais e as telas do cinema, um outro levou à morte de centenas de milhares, senão de milhões, de pessoas. Uma etnia vítima do homicídio industrial e calculado e cuja memória é constantemente esquecida pelo mundo. Inclusivé pelos descendentes dos criminosos que o fizeram, o Império Otomano. Se em alguns países, a negação do holocausto arménio é crime, na moderna Turquia a menção deste crime pode resultar em detenção, como aconteceu ao escritor alemão-turco Dogan Akhanli[1], ou em complicados processos judiciais, como foi o caso do prémio Nobel da literatura Orhan Pamuk[2].

Mas os Arménios são um povo pequeno, pouco influente e sem lóbies poderosos. Deles não dependem eleições das maiores potências do mundo. E a este povo, sobreviventes e descentes do genocídio que em breve será centenário, nunca foram pagas restituições.

A Síria, como o Líbano, a Palestina e outros países do Médio Oriente, receberam involuntariamente muitos dos refugiados durante 1915. Hoje as suas vidas voltam a estar em risco, quando a Síria atravessa uma guerra civil que será lembrada durante muito tempo. Onde as minorias religiosas parecem estar cada vez mais frágeis. E onde estes descendentes de refugiados provavelmente tornar-se-ão refugiados eles próprios.

Deixo aqui mais um artigo de Robert Fisk, no jornal britânico The Independent[3] sobre os Cristãos Arménios Sírios.

Igreja Cristã Arménia de S.Jorge em Allepo, Síria em Outubro 2012 totalmente
queimada depois de combates entre o exército Sírio e forças rebeldes. 

Nearly a century after the Armenian genocide, these people are still being slaughtered in Syria


And now, almost unmentioned in the media, their holy places are also being desecrated

Just over 30 years ago, I dug the bones and skulls of Armenian genocide victims out of a hillside above the Khabur River in Syria. They were young people – the teeth were not decayed – and they were just a few of the million-and-a-half Armenian Christians slaughtered in the first Holocaust of the 20th century, the deliberate, planned mass destruction of a people by the Ottoman Turks in 1915.

It was difficult to find these bones because the Khabur River – north of the Syrian city of Deir ez-Zour – had changed. So many were the bodies heaped in its flow that the waters moved to the east. The very river had altered its course. But Armenian friends who were with me took the remains and placed them in the crypt of the great Armenian church at Deir ez-Zour, which is dedicated to the memory of those Armenians who were killed – and shame upon the “modern” Turkish state which  still denies this Holocaust – in that industrial mass murder.

And now, almost unmentioned in the media, these ghastly killing fields have become the killing fields of a new war. Upon the bones of the dead Armenians, the Syrian conflict is being fought. And the descendants of the Armenian Christian survivors who found sanctuary in the old Syrian lands have been forced to flee again – to Lebanon, to Europe, to America. The very church in which the bones of the murdered Armenians found their supposedly final resting place has been damaged in the new war, although no one knows the culprits.

Yesterday, I called Bishop Armash Nalbandian of Damascus, who told me that while the church at Deir ez-Zour was indeed damaged, the shrine remained untouched. The church itself, he said, was less important than the memory of the Armenian genocide – and it is this memory which might be destroyed. He is right. But the church – not a very beautiful building, I have to say – is nonetheless a witness, a memorial to the Holocaust of Armenians every bit as sacred as the Yad Vashem memorial to the victims of the Jewish Holocaust in Israel. And although the Israeli state, with a shame equal to the Turks, claims that the Armenian genocide was  not a genocide, Israelis themselves use  the word Shoah – Holocaust – for the Armenian killings.

In Aleppo, an Armenian church has been vandalised by the Free Syrian Army, the “good” rebels fighting Bashar al-Assad’s regime, funded and armed by the Americans as well as the Gulf Sunni Arabs. But in Raqqa, the only regional capital to be totally captured by the opposition in Syria, Salafist fighters trashed the Armenian Catholic Church of the Martyrs and set fire to its furnishings. And – God spare us the thought – many hundreds of Turkish fighters, descendants of the same Turks who tried to destroy the Armenian race in 1915, have now joined the al-Qa’ida-affiliated fighters who attacked the Armenian church. The cross on top of the clock tower was destroyed, to be replaced by the flag of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

Nor is that all. On 11 November, when the world honoured the dead of the Great War, which did not give the Armenians the state they deserved, a mortar shell fell outside the Holy Translators Armenian National School in Damascus and two other shells fell on school buses. Hovhannes Atokanian and Vanessa Bedros, both Armenian schoolchildren, died. A day later, a bus load of Armenians travelling from Beirut to Aleppo were robbed at gunpoint. Two days later, Kevork Bogasian was killed by a mortar shell in Aleppo. The Armenian death toll in Syria is a mere 65; but I suppose we might make that 1,500,065. More than a hundred Armenians have been kidnapped. The Armenians, of course, like many other Christians in Syria, do not support the revolution against the Assad regime – although they could hardly be called Assad supporters.

Two years from now, they will commemorate the 100th anniversary of their Holocaust. I have met many survivors, all now dead. But the Turkish state, supporting the present revolution in Syria, will be memorialising its victory at Gallipoli that same year, a heroic battle in which Mustafa Kemal Ataturk saved his country from Allied occupation. Armenians also fought in that battle – in the uniform of the Turkish army, of course – but I will wager as many dollars as you want that they will not be remembered in 2015 by the Turkish state which was so soon to destroy their families.

Hitchhikers’ guide to  bad old Iran

While we all bask in the glow of happy relations with Iran, it might be well to read – in four months’ time, unless their publishers have the common sense to bring it forward – a remarkable book by Shane Bauer, Josh Fattal and Sarah Shourd. 

They – and you may not remember this – were the hitchhikers who “strayed” into Iran in 2009 from Iraqi Kurdistan. Sarah (pictured below with Shane) was released first and she called me on the phone to talk about her fiancé, Shane, and to ask if The Independent could help secure the two men’s release. We published some of Shane’s journalism – I made a point of telling the Iranian ambassador in Beirut to read it – and, with or without The Independent’s help, they were both released. I was delighted.

They had been arrested during the presidency of the lunatic Ahmadinejad, and it’s clear from their book that they were lured over the border by Iranian frontier guards. One of them eventually emailed Sarah that this was the case.

But their incarceration, their vicious solitary confinement – a form of torture if ever there was one – and their relations, not just with their fellow condemned prisoners but with their guards, is a remarkable story.

Sarah quickly worked out, back in freedom, that the US government was not their natural friend; there are some sharp words about the “peacemaker” Dennis Ross.  A good book – which I rarely say – and it’s called A Sliver of Light.  A Fisk read.

Uma tragédia afegã

Fiquei bastante impressionado com este artigo do The Independent[1] sobre a pedofilia no seio da (excessivamente) tradicional sociedade afegã. Aparentemente o problema tem crescido depois da invasão de 2001 e, uma vez que a prática de sexo com jovens rapazes tinha sido proibida pelos Talibans, coloca-os numa posição de superioridade moral, o que lhes traz apoio entre os líderes e populações que se insurgem contra esta prática.

Uma história triste, praticamente desconhecida e que exigia outro tipo de ajuda por parte das grandes potências do mundo que não hesitaram em gastar triliões de dólares numa guerra mas nunca colocaram muito esforço em ajudar a construir um novo país no Afeganistão.

With the looming withdrawal of Nato troops and a persistent insurgent threat, Afghanistan is in a precarious position. Innumerable tragedies have beleaguered rural Afghans throughout the past decades of conflict — perpetual violence, oppression of women, and crushing poverty have all contributed to the Hobbesian nature of life in the Afghan countryside.

While the Afghan government has been able to address some of these issues since the Taliban's ouster in 2001, archaic social traditions and deep-seated gender norms have kept much of rural Afghanistan in a medieval state of purgatory. Perhaps the most deplorable tragedy, one that has actually grown more rampant since 2001, is the practice of bacha bazi — sexual companionship between powerful men and their adolescent boy conscripts.

This phenomenon presents a system of gender reversal in Afghanistan. Whereas rural Pashtun culture remains largely misogynistic and male-dominated due to deeply-ingrained Islamic values, teenage boys have become the objects of lustful attraction and romance for some of the most powerful men in the Afghan countryside.

Demeaning and damaging, the widespread subculture of paedophilia in Afghanistan constitutes one of the most egregious ongoing violations of human rights in the world. The adolescent boys who are groomed for sexual relationships with older men are bought — or, in some instances, kidnapped — from their families and thrust into a world which strips them of their masculine identity. These boys are often made to dress as females, wear makeup, and dance for parties of men. They are expected to engage in sexual acts with much older suitors, often remaining a man's or group's sexual underling for a protracted period.

Evolution of Bacha Bazi

Occurring frequently across southern and eastern Afghanistan's rural Pashtun belt and with ethnic Tajiks in the northern Afghan countryside, bacha bazi has become a shockingly common practice. Afghanistan's mujahideen warlords, who fought off the Soviet invasion and instigated a civil war in the 1980s, regularly engaged in acts of paedophilia. Keeping one or more “chai boys,” as these male conscripts are called, for personal servitude and sexual pleasure became a symbol of power and social status.

The Taliban had a deep aversion towards bacha bazi, outlawing the practice when they instituted strict nationwide sharia law. According to some accounts, including the hallmark Times article “Kandahar Comes out of the Closet” in 2002, one of the original provocations for the Taliban's rise to power in the early 1990s was their outrage over paedophilia. Once they came to power, bacha bazi became taboo, and the men who still engaged in the practice did so in secret.

When the former mujahideen commanders ascended to power in 2001 after the Taliban's ouster, they brought with them a rekindled culture of bacha bazi. Today, many of these empowered warlords serve in important positions, as governors, line ministers, police chiefs and military commanders.

Since its post-2001 revival, bacha bazi has evolved, and its practice varies across Afghanistan. According to military experts I talked to in Afghanistan, the lawlessness that followed the deposing of the Taliban's in rural Pashtunistan and northern Afghanistan gave rise to violent expressions of paedophilia. Boys were raped, kidnapped and trafficked as sexual predators regained their positions of regional power. As rule of law mechanisms and general order returned to the Afghan countryside, bacha bazi became a normalized, structured practice in many areas.

Many “chai boys” are now semi-formal apprentices to their powerful male companions. Military officials have observed that Afghan families with an abundance of children are often keen to provide a son to a warlord or government official — with full knowledge of the sexual ramifications — in order to gain familial prestige and monetary compensation. Whereas bacha bazi is now largely consensual and non-violent, its evolution into an institutionalized practice within rural Pashtun and Tajik society is deeply disturbing.

Pedophilia and Islam

The fact that bacha bazi, which has normalized sodomy and child abuse in rural Afghan society, developed within a deeply fundamentalist Islamic region of the world is mystifying. According to a 2009 Human Terrain Team study titled “Pashtun Sexuality,” Pashtun social norms dictate that bacha bazi is not un-Islamic or homosexual at all — if the man does not love the boy, the sexual act is not reprehensible, and is far more ethical than defiling a woman.

Sheltered by their pastoral setting and unable to speak Arabic — the language of all Islamic texts — many Afghans allow social customs to trump religious values, including those Quranic verses eschewing homosexuality and promiscuity. Warlords who have exploited Islam for political or personal means have also promulgated tolerance for bacha bazi. The mujahideen commanders are a perfect example of this — they fought communism in the name of jihad and mobilized thousands of men by promoting Islam, while sexually abusing boys and remaining relatively secular themselves.

Tragic Consequences

The rampant paedophilia has a number of far-reaching detrimental consequences on Afghanistan's development into a functional nation. The first — and most obvious — consequence of bacha bazi is the irreparable abuse inflicted on its thousands of victims.

Because it is so common, a significant percentage of the country's male population bears the deep psychological scars of sexual abuse from childhood. Some estimates say that as many as 50 percent of the men in the Pashtun tribal areas of southern Afghanistan take boy lovers, making it clear that paedophilia is a pervasive issue affecting entire rural communities. Many of the prominent Pashtun men who currently engage in bacha bazi were likely abused as children; in turn, many of today's adolescent victims will likely become powerful warlords or government-affiliated leaders with boy lovers of their own, perpetuating the cycle of abuse.

A second corrupting, and perhaps surprising, consequence of bacha bazi is its negative impact on women's rights in Afghanistan. It has become a commonly accepted notion among Afghanistan's latent homosexual male population that “women are for children, and boys are for pleasure.” Passed down through many generations and spurred by the vicious cycle created by the pedophile-victim relationship, many Afghan men have lost their attraction towards the opposite gender. Although social and religious customs still heavily dictate that all men must marry one or more women and have children, these marriages are often devoid of love and affection, and are treated as practical, mandated arrangements.

While the Afghan environment has grown more conducive to improving women's social statuses, the continued normalization of bacha bazi will perpetuate the traditional view of women as second-class citizens — household fixtures meant for child-rearing and menial labor, and undeserving of male attraction and affection.

The third unfortunate consequence of bacha bazi is its detrimental bearing on the perpetual state of conflict in Afghanistan, especially in the southern Pashtun-dominated countryside. Because paedophilia and sodomy were, and remain, a main point of contention between the Islamist Taliban and traditional Pashtun warlords, the widespread nature of bacha bazi likely continues to fuel the Taliban's desire to reassert sharia law. The adolescent victims are vulnerable to Taliban intimidation and may be used to infiltrate the Afghan government and security forces.

The resurgence of bacha bazi since the Taliban's defeat and the significant percentage of government, police, and military officials engaged in the practice has put the United States and its NATO allies in a precarious position. By empowering these sexual predators, the coalition built a government around a “lesser evil,” promoting often-corrupt pedophiles in lieu of the extremist, al-Qaida-linked Taliban. Going forward, the strong Western moral aversion to pedophilia will likely erode the willingness of NATO and international philanthropic agencies to continue their support for Afghanistan's development in the post-transition period. As Joel Brinkley, a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, asked: “So, why are American and NATO forces fighting and dying to defend tens of thousands of proud pedophiles, certainly more per capita than any other place on Earth?”

Looking Forward

Despite the grave nature of the child abuse committed across Afghanistan, this tragic phenomenon has received relatively little global attention. It has been highlighted mainly in sporadic news articles and one Afghan-produced documentary, while other Afghan issues such as women's rights and poverty are center stage.

From a human rights perspective, the pervasive culture of paedophilia deserves substantial international consideration due to its detrimental effects — the immediate and noticeable effects on the young victims, as well as the roadblocks it creates towards achieving gender equality and peace.

The only way to tackle both bacha bazi and gender inequality is to modernize Afghanistan's rule of law system. Afghan officials have been scrutinized in multiple reports by the United Nations' Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict for their failure to protect children's rights. Although Afghan officials formally agreed to outlaw these practices in response to UN criticism in 2011, the government's ability and willingness to internally enforce laws protecting children has been non-existent.

If a future Afghan government can achieve a balance between the Taliban, who strictly enforced anti-paedophilia laws but harshly oppressed women, and the current administration, which has put an end to the hard-line Islamic subjugation of women but has allowed bacha bazi to reach shocking levels, Afghanistan's dismal human rights record may improve.

An additional strategy for combating bacha bazi is to attack the issue from an ethno-cultural standpoint. Identifying key tribal elders and other local powerbrokers who share the West's revulsion towards such widespread paedophilia is the first step in achieving lasting progress. As is true with women's rights, understanding Afghanistan's complex social terrain and bridging its cultural differences is necessary to safeguard the rights of adolescent boys.

The Afghan government's acknowledgement of bacha bazi and subsequent outreach into rural Pashtun communities, where the legitimacy of the government is often eclipsed by the power of warlords and tribal elders, will also be critical. The most important breakthrough, of course, will come when the Afghan government, police, and military rid themselves of all pedophiles. If the central government can ensure its representatives at the local level will cease their engagement in bacha bazi, the social norms are bound to change as well.

Eliminating this truly damaging practice will finally occur when a paedophile-free Afghan government is able to more closely connect the country's urban centers to its rural countryside. Only then will a progressive social code be established. And if this evolved social code can incorporate the tenets of Islam with social justice and effectively marginalize the archaic and abusive aspects of Pashtun and Tajik warlord culture, there is hope for Afghanistan yet.

Chris Mondloch served as an analyst for the U.S. Marine Corps for five years and directed intelligence production for the Corps' Economic Political Intelligence Cell in Helmand province in 2012

Nelson Mandela 1918-2013

Obrigado Cristiano!

Onde quer que eu vá, na aldeia mais remota do deserto do Sahara, às espectaculares metrópoles do Médio Oriente, das belas capitais europeias aos confins da Índia, Cristiano Ronaldo chega sempre antes de mim.

Obrigado Cristiano!

As Bruxas da Noite

As Bruxas da Noite - URSS 1942

Este é um artigo que demorei mais de um ano a compor. A primeira vez que ouvi falar das "Bruxas da Noite", uma unidade de aviadoras soviéticas durante a segunda guerra mundial, foi no livro "Um Escritor na Guerra", de Antony Beevor e Luba Vinogradova. Na altura retirei uma conjunto de pequenas histórias que achei bastante interessantes. Só mais tarde, depois de ver mais alguns documentários sobre o assunto é que me decidi a escrever sobre o assunto.

Agora, com o Halloween no War Thunder a anunciar o clássico avião das "Bruxas da Noite" Polikarpov PO-2[1], e a revista "All About History"[2] a dedicar uma série de páginas às famosas pilotos, já não tinha mais desculpas para manter o silêncio. Todas as informações de que precisava estavam agora disponíveis.

O contexto, claro está, é a Operação Barbarossa[3], quando em Junho de 1941 a Alemanha Nazi invade a União Soviética. Derrotas atrás de derrotas dão a clara impressão a ambos os lados (e a todos os outros que assistem horrorizados) de que estamos perante mais uma bem sucedida blitzkrieg da Alemanha Hitleriana sobre mais uma potência mundial.

Em poucas semanas, milhões de soldados vindos de todos os cantos da URSS morriam ou eram feitos prisioneiros. Stalin, o todo poderoso ditador soviético envia todas as tropas para a frente de combate que pode. Mal preparadas, mal organizadas e mal equipadas.

É neste ambiente de derrota total e absoluta que Marina Raskova[4], famosa piloto russa detentora de vários recordes aéreos de distância e que já conquistara a medalha de "Herói da União Soviética" pede uma audiência com Josef Stalin. E foi através do seu conhecimento pessoal e do desespero da URSS que consegue passar a sua proposta. Sem nada a perder, Stalin aceita a criação da primeira esquadrilha feminina. A sua prioridade é no entanto muito baixa. O seu equipamento não passava de sobras da muito desfalcada e mal equipada força aérea soviética.

Policarpov Po-2

Três regimentos da força aérea foram criados, exlusivamente compostos por mulheres. Não só as pilotos, mas todo o pessoal de terra era também do sexo feminino. Destes três, um haveria de ficar famoso. Curiosamente, não o que tinha os mais modernos aviões nem as missões de combate mais espectaculares, mas sim o Regimento 588 de Bombardeamento Noturno[5]. Equipado com velhos Polikarpov Po-2[6], biplanos dos anos 20 que já estavam absolutamente ultrapassados quando a guerra se inicia, nada faria crer que este regimento teria quaisquer condições para se destacar.

Assim, um conjunto de raparigas com cerca de 20 anos de idade lideradas por Yevdokia Bershanskaya[7], com os seus ultrapassados Po-2, vestidas com roupas dos aviadores masculinos em segunda mão e botas vários números acima dos adequados entram na guerra depois de um apertado e insuficiente treino.

Yevdokia Bershanskaya

A sua missão era o bombardeamento de precisão, harassment e reconhecimento aéreo. Os seus aviões, originalmente desenhados para treino e apoio agrícola, encontravam-se agora a lutar contra modernos Messerschmitt 109 e FW-190. A vitória parecia impossível, e nem uma coragem extrema permitiria acreditar na sobrevivência destas mulheres contra os maiores pilotos de todos os tempos. Afinal de contas, os cem primeiros ases (pilotos com mais aviões abatidos) da segunda guerra mundial são todos da Luftwaffe, a força aérea alemã. Curiosamente, o primeiro não alemão foi um finlandês, Ilmari Juutilainen[8] que também lutou também contra a URSS (e equipado com o caça alemão Bf 109. Mas nem tudo eram más notícias para o regimento feminino. Os seus ultrapassados biplanos eram de tal forma lentos (a sua velocidade máxima era 152 Km/h) que os aviões alemães não conseguiam voar à mesma velocidade. Por outro lado, como acontecia com grande parte dos biplanos da época, eram extremamente ágeis por isso conseguiam enganar os ataques da Luftwaffe. Se a isso acrescentarmos o facto de este regimento se ter especializado em ataques noturnos, a aviação alemã tinha imensas dificuldades em impedir as corajosas aviadoras.

Assim, os seus bombardeamentos normalmente passavam sem obstruções. O 588º, mais tarde renomeado 46º Regimento da Guarda devidos aos seus feitos durante o período mais negro da guerra, melhorou ainda as suas prestações especializados no voo planado com o motor desligado. Atravessavam as linhas inimigas sem se denunciarem, largando então as suas bombas quando viam os cigarros acessos nas trincheiras do inimigo. As tropas soviéticas deixavam pequenas velas no fundo das suas próprias trincheiras de forma a que elas soubessem exactamente onde terminava o território controlado pelo Exército Vermelho. Voavam tão baixo que a utilização de pára-quedas era irrelevante. Ao ponto de nem sequer os trazerem a bordo.

Foram os amedrontados alemães nas trincheiras do leste da europa que lhes deram o nome: Nachthexen. As russas gostaram e adoptaram-no, ficando para a história como As Bruxas da Noite. Ao todo, as tripulações (que nunca excederam os 40 pares) receberam 23 medalhas de Herói da União Soviética.

No final da guerra, cada piloto tinha feito mais de 1000 saídas. 3 mil toneladas foram lançadas sobre o inimigo e 30 dos seus membros morreram em combate. Uma história em grande parte desconhecida no Ocidente. Apenas uma das muitas pequenas histórias de coragem e desespero que marcaram a mãe de todas as guerras.

Obviamente... apoio!

Como é do conhecimento geral, na Arábia Saudita não é permitido às mulheres guiar. É, aliás, o único país do mundo em que isso acontece. Hoje, uma demonstração no país levou muitas mulheres à rua na luta por esse direito tão básico[1].

Já agora, naturalmente que isto não tem nenhuma desculpa de cariz religioso. Existem muitos mais países muçulmanos, vários onde a sharia é lei e no entanto as mulheres guiam. 

Não há muito a acrescentar. Obviamente têm o meu total apoio.

Farahani - Iraniana e corajosa

Golshifteh Farahani - actriz iraniana exilada em Paris

Durante os meus anos tive oportunidade de conhecer bastantes iranianos. Naturalmente não os suficientes para conhecer o pulsar daquele povo, mas o suficiente para pelo menos colocar em causa as ideias pré-concebidas que trazia comigo. 

A maioria dos que conheci não eram distinguíveis dos europeus. A forma de vestir dos homens era perfeitamente ocidental. Em relação às mulheres tinham, regra geral um ar de italianas. Bem vestidas vaidosas e nada parecidas com as árabes. Num ou noutro caso usavam lenço a tapar o cabelo, mas normalmente nem isso. 

Body of Lies, realizado por Ridley Scott com
Di Caprio, Farahani e Russel Crowe

Foi depois de começar a conhecer casais iranianos que começei a reparar com mais cuidado nas imagens que vinham do Irão. Na rua, notava-se que as mulheres usavam sem excepção hijab (o lenço utilizado para não mostrar o cabelo), mas ao contrário dos países árabes do golfo, os lenços eram coloridos, à semelhança dos utilizados no Levante (Palestina, Líbano, Jordânia e Síria). Também dava para ver que esse uso era fruto de imposição da lei islâmica que (ainda) impera no país. Afinal de contas, o lenço aparecia sempre uns centímetros mais atrás do que devia, deixando umas cuidadas madeixas à frente. A maquilhagem, proibida no país, estava presente em todo o lado, embora suficientemente discreta para poderem fingir que era a sua cor natural.

Fui ficando por isso com a impressão que talvez o povo iraniano já esteja realmente cansado do creativo regime semi teocrático e semi democrático do seu país. A leitura do livro de Shirin Ebadi[1] (prémio Nobel da Paz em 2003) "Iran Awakening" forteleceu-me em muito essa ideia. A recepção que lhe foi feita quando regressou ao Irão, com centenas de milhares de pessoas na rua, mostrou que são muitos os que estão com ela.

Farahani no filme "About Elly"

Entretanto uma nova personagem emerge, a actriz iraniana Golshifteh Farahani[2] que contracenou com Leonardo di Caprio no filme "Body of Lies" de 2008[3]. Desde o início que o regime se mostrou extremamente desconfortável com o à vontade desta. Posteriomente, começa a aparecer em filmes sem o mandatório hijab. Mais tarde revela-se totalmente na revista francesa Madame Le Figaro, onde aparece despida.

A coragem de Farahani é invulgar. Certamente que muitos considerarão que estas fotos não passam de um golpe de publicidade para fomentar a sua carreira. Não dúvido que isso seja verdade. Acontece diariamente no mundo da moda e cinema. O que não acontece todos os dias é alguém de uma teocracia fazê-lo. Os riscos que corre são tudo menos comuns. E a mensagem política que envia é muitíssimo mais forte. Farahani foi, segundo a própria em entrevista ao Der Spiegel[4], avisada de que já não era bem-vinda no seu país e que se arriscava a ser presa. Encontra-se por isso exilada em Paris há 4 anos, sem qualquer esperança de poder voltar à sua terra Natal. Quando li este artigo lembrei-me de algo que aqui escrevi sobre umas imagens de Angela Merkel nua: "No lugar onde cometeu este acto o naturismo era proibido? Cometeu algum crime?". Esta entrevista fez pensar que não deveria ter escrito tal frase. Afinal de contas, no caso de Farahani, ele poderá mesmo ter cometido um crime no seu país. E mesmo assim eu não quero saber e não sou capaz de a criticar por isso.

Espero sinceramente que Farahani possa um dia voltar à sua terra natal. E que o faça sem medo e em liberdade. Com hijab ou sem ele, conforme a sua vontade.

Judeus da Dinamarca

O holocausto nazi não foi sempre igual. Não teve sempre o mesmo ritmo. A vergonha não foi sempre a mesma. E a história do genocídio do povo judeu na europa é a história de cada uma das vítimas, mas também de cada um dos sobreviventes. Na Dinamarca passou-se algo muito interessante. Pelo trabalho de dois oficiais nazis, pelo desinteresse de Berlim e pela discreto apoio da Suécia, a quase totalidade dos judeus dinamarquesas conseguiram escapar ao horror dos campos de concentração e extermínio.

É da história desses 7000 judeus e dos que os ajudaram que fala este interessante artigo da revista alemã Spiegel[1] que passo a transcrever.


The Exception: How Denmark Saved Its Jews from the Nazis

By Gerhard Spörl
Denmark was the only European country to save almost all of its Jewish

Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz

residents from the Holocaust. After being tipped off about imminent roundups by prominent Nazis, resisters evacuated the country's 7,000 Jews to Sweden by boat. A new book examines this historical anomaly.
They left at night, thousands of Jewish families, setting out by car, bicycle, streetcar or train. They left the Danish cities they had long called home and fled to the countryside, which was unfamiliar to many of them. Along the way, they found shelter in the homes of friends or business partners, squatted in abandoned summer homes or spent the night with hospitable farmers. "We came across kind and good people, but they had no idea about what was happening at the time," writes Poul Hannover, one of the refugees, about those dark days in which humanity triumphed.

At some point, however, the refugees no longer knew what to do next. Where would they be safe? How were the Nazis attempting to find them? There was no refugee center, no leadership, no organization and exasperatingly little reliable information. But what did exist was the art of improvisation and the helpfulness of many Danes, who now had a chance to prove themselves.

Members of the Danish underground movement emerged who could tell the Jews who was to be trusted. There were police officers who not only looked the other way when the refugees turned up in groups, but also warned them about Nazi checkpoints. And there were skippers who were willing to take the refugees across the Baltic Sea to Sweden in their fishing cutters, boats and sailboats.

A Small Country With a Big Heart

Denmark in October 1943 was a small country with a big heart. It had been under Nazi occupation for three-and-a-half years. And although Denmark was too small to have defended itself militarily, it also refused to be subjugated by the Nazis. The Danes negotiated a privileged status that even enabled them to retain their own government. They assessed their options realistically, but they also set limits on how far they were willing to go to cooperate with the Germans.

The small country defended its democracy, while Germany, a large, warmongering country under Hitler, was satisfied with controlling the country from afar and, from then on, viewed Denmark as a "model protectorate." That was the situation until the summer of 1943, when strikes and acts of sabotage began to cause unrest. This prompted the Germans to threaten Denmark with court martials and, in late August, to declare martial law. The Danish government resigned in protest.

At this point, the deportation and murder of European Jews had already been underway for some time in other countries that had submitted to Nazi control. In the Netherlands, Hungary, Greece, Lithuania, Latvia and Poland, the overwhelming majority of Jews, between 70 and 90 percent of the Jewish population, disappeared and were murdered. The Nazis deported and killed close to half of all Jews in Estonia, Belgium, Norway and Romania. About a fifth of French and Italian Jews died. As historian Peter Longerich writes, the Holocaust was dependent, "to a considerable extent, on the practical cooperation and support of an occupied country or territory."

The Danes provided no assistance to the Nazis in their "Jewish campaign" in Denmark. They viewed the Jews as Danes and placed them under their protection, a story documented in "Countrymen," a new book by Danish author Bo Lidegaard. "The history of the rescue of the Danish Jews," writes Lidegaard, "is only a tiny part of the massive history of the Shoah. But it teaches us a lesson, because it is a story about the survival instinct, civil disobedience and the assistance provided by an entire people when, outranged and angry, it rebelled against the deportation of its fellow Danes."

Ten Years Documenting the Danish Resistance

Lidegaard, born in 1958, is a tall intellectual with many talents. As a diplomat, he represented his country in Geneva and Paris. After that, he served as an adviser to two succeeding Danish prime ministers and, in 2009, he organized the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen. He has been the editor-in-chief of Politiken, Denmark's large, left-liberal daily newspaper, since April 2011.

He worked on his book for 10 years. During a conversation in Hamburg, Lidegaard said that he was interested in finding out why Denmark had wanted to save the Jews -- and why the Nazis allowed them to be saved. Two men played a key role in the affair -- two German Nazis, each with his own story.

One of the Germans was named Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz. He was from a merchant's family in the northern port city of Bremen and joined the Nazi Party in 1932. Duckwitz was a Nazi and an anti-Semite out of conviction. He worked for Alfred Rosenberg, one of Hitler's race ideologues, who was sentenced to death in Nuremberg in 1946 and executed.

Duckwitz gradually developed an aversion to the Nazis' brutishness and bloodlust. Because he was familiar with Denmark from his earlier days and had a fondness for the country, he went to Copenhagen in September 1939, working as a shipping expert for the German Reich's Ministry of Transport.

Germany occupied Denmark on April 9, 1940, but the protectorate was allowed to direct its internal affairs. It kept a certain amount of latitude and rejected the Nazis' demand that it introduce the death penalty and segregate Jews. The country asserted itself as much as it could.

Germany declared Denmark a model for the protectorates that Hitler intended to establish in Western Europe after the end of the war. The Nazis initially sent only 89 officials to the country, and they were responsible for 3.8 million Danes. By contrast, Berlin sent 22,000 officials to France. Unlike France, Denmark was small and had only a small Jewish population. The country also had no raw materials of importance to the war effort. Denmark supplied agricultural products to Germany, but its economic role was relatively small.

An Enemy from Within

Duckwitz wrote a manuscript describing his official and unofficial activities in Copenhagen. The document, which remains in the political archive of the German Foreign Ministry today, both complements and contradicts Lidegaard's account.

Part of Duckwitz's job was to manage German ships calling at Danish ports. He signed agreements with Danish government agencies that regulated "the reciprocal use of tonnage." He was also required to report to Berlin when the Danish underground committed acts of sabotage against ships.

In addition, Duckwitz established ties with Social Democrats and young labor leader Hans Hedtoft, and he assisted Danes who had fallen into the Germans' clutches. Duckwitz's office soon became unofficially known as "the office for rescuing people."

A Nazi himself, Duckwitz became an opponent of the Nazis who simultaneously had good connections in Berlin. The Nazis could hardly have failed to notice the change. They threatened to recall him several times but never followed through.

Duckwitz exemplified what the German philosopher Hannah Arendt called "the role played by the German authorities in Denmark, their obvious sabotage of orders from Berlin," a phenomenon that she found astonishing. "It is the only case we know of in which the Nazis met with open native resistance, and the result seems to have been that those exposed to it changed their minds.

The second German was and remained a staunch Nazi and anti-Semite. Werner Best was a senior official at the Reich Main Security Office, where he worked closely with SS leader Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich, the head of the agency. But then Best quarreled with Heydrich and fell from favor. He left Berlin and joined the German military administration of France, where he managed the internment and persecution of Jews, earning the nickname "Bloodhound of Paris."

In the summer of 1942, Best was sent to Denmark as Berlin's new plenipotentiary, which made him the highest authority in the protectorate. "Best was to play a key role in the fate of the Danish Jews, but exactly what that role was is still debated today," writes Lidegaard.

Lidegaard believes that Best was an opportunist who, in the fall of 1943, was smart enough to recognize that the war was lost for Germany. He tolerated what Duckwitz was doing, because he assumed that he would be treated more leniently after the war if he had turned a blind eye to Duckwitz's activities. But Duckwitz would have disagreed with Lidegaard. He saw Best as a man who had changed his mind in Copenhagen, in the way Hannah Arendt described.

In his manuscript, Duckwitz writes that the Nazis had intended from the beginning to proceed eventually against the Jews in Denmark. In early September 1943, Best and Duckwitz received word from Berlin that Hitler's cohorts were pushing to have the Danish Jews deported. This prompted Best to take initiative, writes Duckwitz. On Sept. 8, the plenipotentiary sent a telegram to Berlin in which he proposed that the German military, the Wehrmacht, should take action against the Jews in Denmark -- in effect appropriating what had, until then, only been a rumor.

But that was only a trick, suggests the well-meaning Duckwitz, who asserts that Best had believed "that his suggestion to launch a campaign against the Danish Jews would be rejected outright. He saw a great benefit in taking the initiative away from those groups that wanted Hitler to persecute the Jews in Denmark."

As Duckwitz tells it, Best had never meant the Nazis to take up his suggestion. He had bluffed and miscalculated. But Lidegaard doesn't buy that assessment. He believes it was an earnest request.

In any case, the response arrived from Berlin on Sept. 19, 1943. Hitler approved of Best's proposal and had ordered Himmler to execute the plan.

Preempting the 'Jewish Campaign'

Duckwitz promptly notified his Danish informants in the government, among the Social Democrats and within the Jewish community. He traveled to Sweden and told Prime Minister Per Albin Hansson what was about to happen. The Swedish government instructed its envoy in Copenhagen to freely issue passports to Danish Jews and made preparations to accept refugees at home.

The "Jewish Campaign" began on the night of Oct. 1. The German security forces consisted of 1,300 to 1,400 police officers, together with Danish volunteers and the Schalburg Corps, an SS unit consisting of Danes. Several hundred Jews fell into their hands, and 202 were designated for deportation and taken, along with 150 Danish communists, to the Wartheland, a ship with the capacity to hold 5,000 passengers.

Neither the German Wehrmacht nor the police "proved to be especially eager to help the Gestapo hunt down the Danish Jews," writes Lidegaard. The campaign was declared over at 1 a.m., and Best wrote in his report to Berlin that Denmark had been "de-Jewed."

"De-Jewed?" One can hardly assume that the Nazis failed to notice that only a few hundred people had been transported on the large ship, while at the same time, thousands of Jews were fleeing to the coast in order to escape to Sweden. It is also difficult to imagine that Duckwitz's conspiratorial activities remained completely unnoticed in Berlin. So why didn't the Nazis do anything about it?

Denmark simply wasn't that important to them, Lidegaard said during the conversation in Hamburg. Besides, he added, the Nazis knew that the Danes would protect their Jews from mass deportation. They had opted to present Denmark to the world as a model protectorate, so they decided for once to dispense with violent reprisals.

Aftermath

What about Duckwitz and Best? Lidegaard believes they acted in the knowledge that Berlin had only a moderate interest in Denmark. One of the oddities of the Danish situation, he says, is that Adolf Eichmann traveled to Copenhagen in November 1943 and expressed his satisfaction with the "Jewish Campaign."

In the end, 7,742 Jews were able to flee to Sweden across the Baltic Sea. Each of the refugees received government support in Sweden if it was needed. The Danish government also advocated on behalf of those who had been deported. After negotiations with Himmler, 423 Danes were released from the Theresienstadt concentration camp in early 1945.

How many Danish Jews were killed? An estimated 70, or one percent of the country's Jewish population at the time. Denmark is a shining exception in the history of the European Holocaust.

Both Best and Duckwitz survived the war in Copenhagen. Best was arrested, testified in the Nuremberg War Crimes trial and was later extradited to Denmark. The Copenhagen Municipal Court sentenced him to death on Sep. 20, 1948, but in appeal proceedings his sentence was reduced to 12 years in prison. He was given credit for his behavior in the fall of 1943, and in response to pressure from the new German government in Bonn, he was released on Aug. 24, 1951.

After that, he worked in the office of Ernst Achenbach, a politician with the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP), for the rehabilitation of former Nazis. He provided the defense with exonerating material in many Nazi trials without making an appearance himself.

Honor, Dishonor

In Germany, Best lived undisturbed for two decades. Only in the late 1960s did documents and witnesses turn up to shed light on his past in the Reich Main Security Office. But his trial was repeatedly postponed for health reasons. Best, an eternally colorful but sinister figure, died in June 1989.

Duckwitz remained in Copenhagen after the war, initially working as a representative of the West German chambers of commerce. He entered the diplomatic service when the Foreign Ministry was rebuilt in West Germany. He returned to Denmark as the West German ambassador in 1955. Ten years later, he chose to retire early, because he disagreed with Bonn's policy of marginalizing East Germany.

But soon Chancellor Willy Brandt brought him back and made him his chief negotiator for the Treaty of Warsaw, which was designed to reconcile Poles and Germans.

Soon after the end of the war, Denmark honored Duckwitz, the converted Nazi, for his role in the rescue campaign. In 1971, two years before his death, Yad Vashem, Israel's memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, presented him with its "Righteous Among the Nations" award.

The Eleventh Day

Da autoria do jornalista da BBC Anthony Summers e da sua esposa Robbyn Swan, "The Eleventh Day - The definitive account of 9/11" é um extenso e detalhado trabalho de investigação sobre o atentado de 11 de Setembro de 2001. Este trabalho, que foi finalista do prémio Pulitzer em 2012, é de facto uma obra impressionante. Os autores trataram cada uma das pontas soltas com bastante seriedade e não aceitaram nenhum informação pelo seu valor facial.

Por um lado não se fugiram ao estudo das diversas teorias de conspiração que abundam na internet e na literatura da última década. Infelizmente muitas destas tomaram tais proporções que devem mesmo ser estudadas oficialmente de forma a que se lhes possa ser dada resposta cabal. Milhões de pessoas pelo mundo fora acreditam que o governo americano fez os atentados. Muitas outras defendem que o governo americano teria conhecimento e deixou que acontecesse. Tal como os autores, não acredito em nenhuma dessas hipóteses. Uma conspiração desse tipo exigiria um tipo de organização nunca vista. E certamente nunca visto num governo que nem sequer conseguiu plantar uma bomba no Iraque quando percebeu que afinal não havia lá nada que justificasse o ataque.

De qualquer forma, Summers e Swan correm cada um desses pontos que mais dúvidas têm causado: a inexistência de imagens do avião que bateu no Pentágono e a hipótese de ter sido um missil; a queda do avião na Pennsylvania; a forma como ambas as torres gémeas do World Trade Center ruiram e, umas horas depois, do Edifício 7. Em todas as situações em que tinha algumas dúvidas em relação à história oficial fiquei convencido (no que toca à autoria e formato do ataque).

Mas os autores estão longe de ser o que os apoiantes de Bush gostariam que fossem, e se é verdade que se opõem de forma categórica em relação às principais teorias da conspiração, por outro lado expõe de forma clara a enormidade dos erros cometidos pela administração de George W. Bush, pela do seu antecessor Bill Clinton e ainda pela absoluta incapacidade das várias organizações americanas responsáveis pela segurança do território comunicarem umas com as outras (nomeadamente a CIA, o FBI, a NSA e a FAA).

Embora ainda muita documentação esteja ainda longe dos olhares do público, também ficamos a saber como alguns dos membros da cúpula americana estavam absolutamente obcecados com questões em nada relacionadas com o ataque, em especial o Iraque. No próprio dia, Rumsfeld já procurava motivos para invadir o Iraque quando todas as informações apontavam para Bin Laden. Também percebemos que muitos serviços secretos estrangeiros avisaram que algo estava para acontecer, que Bin Laden estaria na sua origem, que seriam utilizados aviões comerciais e até datas muito aproximadas do que veio a acontecer. Egipto, Arábia Saudita, Alemanha, Jordânia e França foram alguns dos avisaram os Estados Unidos - e em alguns casos pessoalmente George W. Bush - mas foram totalmente ignorados.

Depois do ataque, todas as referências à Arábia Saudita e às provas que ligavam algumas figuras da sua família real à Al Qaeda foram removidas. Muitos dos intervenientes mentiram nos primeiros inquéritos. E, não obstante a inegável incompetência de muitos dos que deveriam estar a assegurar a defesa dos EUA, nem uma pessoa na organização militar, política ou de inteligência foi penalizada pelo sucesso dos atentados.

Um livro interessante e que aconselho. Não alegrará os que fielmente acreditam que o governo americano provocou os ataques, mas parece-me que é até ao momento a visão mais lógica, crítica e realista do que aconteceu nesse dia.

Que se passa com o Canal História?

Há alguns anos atrás, o História era o meu canal de eleição. Depois de me inteirar das notícias, tipicamente na SIC Notícias passava para o Canal História e via documentários atrás de documentários sobre a Segunda Guerra Mundial, sobre o Antigo Egipto, sobre Roma e Cartago e até algumas produções portuguesas e espanholas de documentários bastante inesperados e interessantes.

Hoje em dia, o Canal História - e o mesmo pode ser dito do Discovery - resumem-se a disparatados programas sobre extra-terrestres sem o mais pequeno rigor científico, como os Ancient Aliens[1], uns grupos de compradores de antiguidades ou leilões como o Caça Tesouros ou Preço da História, ou uns documentários baseados em teorias da conspiração puramente especulativos como o Livro dos Segredos. Em geral aqueles que eram antes canais que nos traziam ciência e conhecimento transformaram-se em entretenimento barato. Ainda teve alguma piada quando apareceram os Mithbusters[2], que procuravam provar ou desmentir mitos urbanos com alguma ciência e muita experiências práticas. Depois disso, muito pouco de interessante apareceu.

Mas este Ancient Aliens deve ultrapassar mesmo todos os limites. Semanalmente, um grupo de loucos defendem que toda a nossa história é explicada exclusivamente pelo facto de, no passado, extra-terrestres terem comunicado com os nossos antepassados dando-lhes conhecimentos que de outra forma eles nunca conseguiram adquirir por si sós. Assim, e ao longo de 6 anos, foram-nos dizendo que cada um dos mitos e religiões são totalmente verdadeiras - todas em simultâneo - com o pequeno detalhe de que cada um dos deuses era um E.T. Todas as grandes construções da antiguidade - especial destaque para as pirâmides do Egipto - são obras de seres de fora do nosso planeta. Tudo isto apresentado como se de uma teoria científica fosse. Admito que os programas têm imagens interessantes, são bem realizados e têm um ritmo que ajuda a colar os telespectadores ao ecrã, mas ao apresentar estas divertidas teorias num canal como o História, estão a colocar estas ideias ao lado das que passaram pelo crivo de cientistas independentes e que garantem a utilização de um verdadeiro método científico na produção de resultados e nos testes práticos às teorias. Este programa está, obviamente, ao nível da ficção científica e era como tal que deveria ser apresentado. Como uma versão documental do Star Gate[3] (que pega precisamente na ideia de que o antigo Egipto era uma civilização controlada por extraterrestres).

Enfim, perdoem-me o desabafo. E o pior é que não é um exclusivo nacional. No médio oriente, onde me encontro, já percebi que todos estes canais apresentam praticamente os mesmo programas. Um nível muito baixo, e uma tristeza para quem efectivamente gosta de História. 

US cowardice will let Israel’s isolated right off the hook

Mais uma vez, Robert Fisk e a sua experiência única de Médio Oriente num brilhante artigo de opinião no The Independent.


US cowardice will let Israel’s isolated right off the hook

These are hard times for the Israeli right. Used to bullying the US – and especially its present, shallow leader – the Likudists suddenly find that the whole world wants peace in the Middle East rather than war. Brits and Americans didn’t want to go to war in Syria. Now, with the pleasant smile of President Rouhani gracing their television screens, fully accepting the facts of the Jewish Holocaust – unlike his deranged and infantile predecessor – the Americans (75 per cent, if we are to believe the polls) don’t want to go to war with Iran either.

Having, live on television, forced President Obama to grovel to him on his last trip to the White House – Benjamin Netanyahu brusquely told him to forget UN Security Resolution 242, which calls for a withdrawal of Israeli forces from lands occupied after the 1967 war – the Israeli Prime Minister did a little grovelling himself on Monday. He no longer called for a total end to all Iranian nuclear activities. Now it was only Iran’s “military nuclear programme” which must be shut down.And, of course, like Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction programme” which President George W Bush had to invent when the weapons themselves turned out to be an invention, we still don’t know if Mr Netanyahu’s version of Iran’s “military nuclear programme” actually exists.
What we do know is that when Mr Rouhani started saying all the things we had been demanding that Iran should say for years, Israel went bananas. Mr Netanyahu condemned him before he had even said a word. “A wolf in sheep’s clothing.” Even when Mr Rouhani spoke of peace and an end to nuclear suspicions, Israel’s “Strategic Affairs” Minister – whatever that means – said time had run out for future negotiations. Yuval Steinitz claimed that “if the Iranians continue to run [their nuclear programme], in another half a year they will have bomb capability”.

Mr Netanyahu’s own office joined in the smear campaign.

“One must not be fooled by the Iranian President’s fraudulent words,” one of Mr Netanyahu’s men sneered. “The Iranians are spinning in the media so that the centrifuges can keep on spinning.”The Rouhani speech was “a honey trap”. Mr Netanyahu himself said Mr Rouhani’s address to the UN, a speech of immense importance after 34 years of total divorce between Iran and the US, was “cynical” and “totally hypocritical”.

Israel Hayom, the Likudist freesheet, dredged up – yet again – the old pre-Second World War appeasement argument that the Israeli right have been reheating for well over 30 years. “A Munich wind blows in the west,” the paper said.Perhaps it had its effect. If he was not so frightened of Israel – as most US administrations are – President Obama might actually have shaken hands with Mr Rouhani last week; though Mr Rouhani himself might have preferred not to touch the hand of the “Great Satan” too soon. Instead, President Obama settled for a miserable phone call and proved that he knew how to say goodbye in Farsi. Pathetic is the word for it.
In the past, Arab delegates would storm out of the UN General Assembly when Israelis took the stand. When the crazed President Ahmadinejad spoke, Western nations and the Israelis stormed out. But when Mr Rouhani came to speak, Western nations crowded into the chamber to hear him. But Israel stormed out.
“A stupid gesture,” according to that wise old Israeli sage, writer and philosopher Uri Avnery. “As rational and effective as a little boy’s tantrum when his favourite toy is taken away. Stupid because it painted Israel as a spoiler, at a time when the entire world is seized by an attack of optimism after the recent events in Damascus and Tehran. Stupid, because it proclaims the fact that Israel is at present totally isolated.”

Mr Avnery’s contention is Israel wanted two wars, the first against Syria, the second against Iran.

As he wrote last week, when Congress hesitated to strike Damascus, “the hounds of hell were let loose. Aipac (the largest Likudist pro-Israeli lobby group in the US) sent its parliamentary rottweillers to Capitol Hill to tear to pieces any senator or congressman who objected”.

Yet at the White House on Monday, the Israeli Prime Minister had calmed down. I doubt if it will last. Israel, I suspect, will do everything it can to cut down Mr Rouhani’s overtures, whatever American public opinion might say.

For there was President Obama at Monday’s meeting, praising Mr Netanyahu for his support for a two-state solution. And what did President Obama actually say? That there was “a limited amount of time to achieve that goal”.

So why was there only a “limited amount of time”? Not a single scribe asked the poor fellow.

There is, of course, only a “limited amount of time” – in my view, no time at all – to achieve this illusory goal because the Netanyahu government is thieving, against all international law, yet more Palestinian Arab land for Jews and Jews only, at a faster rate than ever, to prevent just such a Palestinian state ever existing.The Israeli right are well aware of this. And when President Obama can’t even explain this weird “limited amount of time”, the Israelis know that he is still a groveller. This is what real “appeasement” is all about. Fear.

And even if President Obama had the courage to say boo to a goose in his final term in office, you can be sure that Madame Clinton – to quote Sir Thomas More – doesn’t have the spittle for it. For she wants to be the next appeaser-president.

The Likudists have isolated Israel from the world just now but be sure American cowardice will let them off the hook.

Let's be honest about Israel's Nukes

Um artigo muito interessante sobre a questão das armas nucleares em Israel. O habitual elefante na sala que ninguém quer ver. E os grandes diplomatas ocidentais pretendem ignorar o facto de que o motivo porque toda a gente na reunião sente necessidade de armas nucleares, químicas ou biológicos é em grande parte o terror que têm pelo facto de Israel ter 200 (?) ogivas nucleares.

Artigo do New York Times escrito por Victor Gilinsky e Henry Sokolski a 18 de Setembro.

O Cartoon é retirado de um outro site, e que me pareceu apropriado...

Let's be honest about Israel's Nukes

THE recent agreement between the United States and Russia on Syria’s chemical weapons made clear what should have been obvious long ago: President Obama’s effort to uphold international norms against weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East will entangle the United States in a diplomatic and strategic maze that is about much more than Syria’s chemical arsenal.

President Bashar al-Assad of Syria insists that the purpose of his chemical arsenal was always to deter Israel’s nuclear weapons. If Syria actually disarms, what about Egypt and Israel? Egypt (about whose chemical weapons the United States has been strangely silent) points to Israel. And Israel of course has its own chemical weapons to deter Syria’s and Egypt’s, and it is not about to give them up. A headline in the Israeli daily Haaretz a few days ago stated: “Israel adamant it won’t ratify chemical arms treaty before hostile neighbors.”

These three countries have not adhered to the Biological Weapons Convention either. And Israel is not a member of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, despite having developed a formidable nuclear arsenal of its own, which will soon become the central fact in this drama, whether the United States likes it or not.

An obstacle of America’s own making has long prevented comprehensive negotiations over weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East. While the world endlessly discusses Iran’s nuclear capabilities and the likelihood that it will succeed in developing an atomic arsenal, hardly anyone in the United States ever mentions Israel’s nuclear weapons.

Mr. Obama, like his predecessors, pretends that he doesn’t know anything about them. This taboo impedes discussions within Washington and internationally. It has kept America from pressing Egypt and Syria to ratify the chemical and biological weapons conventions. Doing so would have brought immediate objections about American acceptance of Israel’s nuclear weapons.

What sustains this pretense is the myth that America is locked into covering up Israeli nuclear bombs because of a 1969 agreement between President Richard M. Nixon and Israel’s prime minister, Golda Meir. For Mr. Nixon, it was mainly about gaining Israeli support in the cold war. He and Mrs. Meir understood the need to discourage the Soviets from providing their Arab allies with nuclear weapons. A declared Israeli nuclear arsenal would have led to pressure for Moscow to do so. But such cold war reasons for America to stay mum evaporated decades ago. Everyone knows the Israelis have nuclear bombs. Today, the main effect of the ambiguity is to prevent serious regional arms-control negotiations.

All other countries in the region are members of the nonproliferation treaty, but there are still unresolved issues. Syria was caught building an illicit nuclear reactor in 2007, which Israel swiftly bombed. Mr. Assad still has not allowed international inspectors to fully investigate that obliterated reactor site. And Syria’s ally Iran is suspected of trying to assemble its own weapons program to challenge Israel’s nuclear monopoly. Indeed, many analysts believed that Mr. Obama’s decision to issue a “red line” barring the use of chemical weapons in Syria was in fact driven by the perceived need to demonstrate that he was prepared to use force against Iran if it moved further toward nuclear weapons.

This witches’ brew was supposed to become the subject of an international conference, mandated in 2010 by the unanimous vote of the members of the nonproliferation treaty, including the United States. But that conference hasn’t happened, in part because of White House ambivalence about how it might affect Israel.

In April, the American assistant secretary of state for international security and nonproliferation, Thomas M. Countryman, expressed hope that the conference would be held by this fall. And earlier this month, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, urged all parties to set a conference date “as quickly as possible.” He also argued that it should include Israel and Iran. Russia attempted to include the conference in last week’s agreement, but Secretary of State John Kerry resisted. It is not going to go away.

If Washington wants negotiations over weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East to work — or even just to avoid making America appear ridiculous — Mr. Obama should begin by being candid. He cannot expect the countries participating in a conference to take America seriously if the White House continues to pretend that we don’t know whether Israel has nuclear weapons, or for that matter whether Egypt and Israel have chemical or biological ones.

And if Israel’s policy on the subject is so frozen that it is unable to come clean, Mr. Obama must let the United States government be honest about Israel’s arsenal and act on those facts, for both America’s good and Israel’s.

Victor Gilinsky, a former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, is an energy consultant. Henry D. Sokolski, a former deputy for nonproliferation policy in the defense department, is executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center.