Why It Matters

Where Journalists’ Killers Go Free

Newsweek — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 21:06:47 GMT

By Katie Paul

It’s no surprise that journalism can be dangerous work. Reporters are routinely killed on assignment in conflict areas or covering other hazardous parts of the world. But what about those killed not in the course of their work but because of their work?

Like 54-year-old Philip Agustin, whose newspaper was about to publish a special edition on missing government funds in the Philippines when he was shot in the back of the head at his daughter’s home on May 10, 2005. Or Bautista Merino, 24, and Martínez Sánchez, 20, the hosts of a local radio station in Mexico’s tumultuous southern state of Oaxaca, who were driving home on a rural highway on April 7, 2008, when they were gunned down by unidentified assailants wielding assault rifles. Or Mahad Ahmed Elmi, a Somali morning talk show host shot dead outside the entrance of his radio station’s building as he arrived for work on Aug. 11, 2007. Later that day Elmi’s colleague Ali Iman Sharmarke was killed by a remote-controlled bomb that detonated under his car as he was returning from Elmi’s funeral.

No one has ever been convicted of these killings. Nor has anyone been brought to justice in 23 other cases of journalist murder in the Philippines, in seven in Mexico and in five in Somalia. And these are only a fraction of the more than 500 murders of journalists, specifically because of their reporting, since 1992, the year the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) began keeping detailed death records. While past awareness campaigns have looked at press freedom issues more broadly, the CPJ today came out with an Impunity Index to focus the spotlight squarely on those countries whose governments have consistently failed to solve these murders.

Predictably, war-torn countries top the list—with Iraq in a category all its own, at 79 unsolved cases. Sierra Leone, Somalia, and Colombia follow in second, third, and fourth place. But what’s less predictable is that even in countries where mortar fire is a way of life, the overwhelming majority of journalists killed in the line of duty are felled not as unintended casualties of stray bullets but as targets. In fact, the CPJ says, the risk of being outright murdered because of one’s reporting is journalism’s number one hazard, responsible for 70 percent of all work-related deaths in the profession. What’s more, the majority of the 13 countries that made the ignominious list are not war-torn at all but established democracies, like Mexico and India, that have fully functioning law enforcement institutions.

“We wanted to focus on what we believe is the greatest single threat to journalists around the world and devise an index that was as objective as possible,” said Joel Simon, CPJ’s executive director. “So, as we go out and publicize this, what we’re basically saying to governments that might be embarrassed is, ‘You can’t really argue with these numbers. The only way you can improve your ranking on this index is to solve these crimes’.”

Some of the murders—like the killing in Pakistan of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, or the shooting in Russia of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya and American editor Paul Klebnikov—do attract international attention. But many of the slain journalists remain unknown and unheralded. Simon notes that over 85 percent of those murdered are local reporters whose investigative work often earns them the ire of the people they cover and who cannot up and leave when they are threatened. And when governments don’t look very hard to find or charge the killers, their actions set a chilling precedent for other reporters working in troubled spots. That’s a precedent the CPJ hopes its new report can counter.

Attempt on Karzai Marks Taliban’s Spring Offensive

Newsweek — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 22:38:07 GMT

Massoud Hossaini/AFP-Getty Images
Survivor: Karzai evades death one more time

By Jeffrey Stern

The first mortar round fell during a 21-gun salute, so that the thunder of the real cannonade was camouflaged by that of the staged. When the parliamentarians struck by gunfire slumped back, those standing near appeared casually confused rather than frightened, as if a fellow dignitary had merely succumbed to a fainting spell, and had unbalanced a few others on his way down. Then, visible on national television, was the accelerating reaction of people who recognize the presence of danger but not its exact location. Troops in fatigues ran into those wearing ceremonial dress while men belly-flopped to check the undercarriages of SUVs for charges, pulled flak jackets out and threw them at those who didn’t already have them. Soldiers fled, and the president’s men took up firing positions while the president himself ducked into an SUV and was driven to safety.

This was the scene in Kabul on Sunday, when Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai narrowly escaped yet another assassination attempt—the fourth since he took office. Three people, including a child and a parliamentarian from Paktia province where, ironically, the Taliban is far more active than here in Kabul, died in the attack.

Less than two hours after the abrupt end to Kabul’s celebration of Mujaheddin day—the 16th anniversary of the country’s liberation from Soviet-backed rule—Karzai appeared on national TV looking neither grave nor concerned. Indeed, throughout his address he seemed to be suppressing a smirk--the beginning of a grin that was either a deliberate taunt to the conspirators, or just an expression of the tendency to smile when things get serious. The gist of his message: I’m ok, we caught the bad guys, have a good day.” (A spokesman for the Taliban, which claimed responsibility for the attack, said that three of the attackers were killed; three escaped.)

Given that the parade was political theater—the government risks exposing that it’s not in control, in the hopes of demonstrating that it is—Karzai was playing master of ceremonies, apologizing for a brief interruption, and, in a way, assuring the audience that the show would go on. The parade took place amidst Karzai’s campaign to tell the West he doesn’t need them bossing him around, and, now that he’s hinting at a second term as president, to prove to his people that he believes it. He’s a man whose mandate is to be the mortar holding together the disparate ethnic and political factions that comprise a national house on the verge of collapse. “The mayor of Kabul” is the tongue-in-cheek moniker worn out now beyond the point of cliché, but if it accurately appraises his reach, then this marks the first time he was targeted in his own municipality.

Still, Karzai is seasoned by his years dodging bullets, both those composed of political vitriol, and those composed of lead. And by now, he’s a leader of sturdy constitution, able to respond publicly to attempts on his life with an air of the cavalier. His outward bearing was less that of a man who’s just escaped assassination, and more of a boy who has once more dodged his pursuer in a game of tag. A little pride, rather than relief.

Within hours of the attack the Taliban claimed responsibility, their spokesman saying celebrating “independence” was a farce. “We cannot say Afghanistan is free,” Zabiullah Mujaheed told reporters over the phone. “Afghanistan is still under the domination of infidels.” It would have been a dismissible piece of publicized paranoia had it not so closely echoed Karzai’s own indictment of western meddling, published in the previous day’s New York Times. “We have to make sure that when a Talib comes to Afghanistan,” Karzai told the Times, “he is safe from arrest by the coalition.”

It would seem pleading clemency for a party one day that shoots at you the next is a sign of ineptitude and political impotence. But to Karzai, the mire of Afghanistan has always been a Tale of Two Talibans: The orthodox, and the extreme. The puritans protecting farmers in the countryside, and the militants shooting at presidents in the city. As far as Karzai is concerned, the bridge between the two types of Talib is not an organic one. It’s built by foreign entities exploiting religious fervor for political purposes. America empowering radical elements in the Mujaheddin to drive out the Soviets and ultimately enabling the Taliban movement; Pakistan and their policy of “Strategic Depth.”

And the backdrop of the day’s events would have provided a fitting stage for Karzai to illuminate the ill effects of the international community on his country. Spectators lined up in front of Ghazi stadium, where the Taliban once served up public executions as standard fare between halves of soccer; in a neighborhood named for the holy warrior Ghazi Mahmoud Khan--“Ghazi” being the title bestowed upon one who kills invaders--in Khan’s case, the British. And all of it an area reduced to rubble and rebar during the civil war, damage wrought predominantly by the rockets of Ahmed Shah Massoud, the warlord favored and funded by America.

And so begins the Taliban’s spring offensive, not as a massive bloodletting in the thawing mountains of a remote province, but as a thoughtfully-constructed stage usurped in the heart of the capitol city. The Taliban exerts instability not only in its capacity for destruction, but also in its ability to access targets that should be unattainable, and then to capitalize. If the government has its national radio and television network, then the Taliban’s mouthpiece is the mouth of the common Afghan, who wonders aloud how the attackers could get so close without inside help. And once the prospect of compromised government is voiced by semi-official sources in semi-respectable publications, rumors spread like wildfire: Karzai himself planned the attack so the proceedings would be wrapped up before his political opponents had a chance to speak. On the streets they joked that a local television network was behind it all, staging a diversion so Parliament would forget about its recent ban on Indian soap operas. A picture of the Spring ’08 Taliban begins to crystallize: newly urbanized, as P.R savvy as ever, and cultivating sources inside the security apparatus (or making a convincing case that they are). Meanwhile, Karzai is up against them; he’s up against an international community skeptical of his ability to stand up to his people, he’s up against a people skeptical of his ability to stand up to the international community, and he may be up for re-election. Perhaps that near smile was a grimace after all.

Jeffrey Stern is a freelance journalist based in Kabul.

Carter Rejects Criticism of Hamas Talks

Newsweek — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 11:17:56 GMT

By Kevin Peraino

Jimmy Carter has been roundly pilloried on the cable news channels for his meetings last week in Damascus and Cairo with senior Hamas leaders. When I saw the former president at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem this afternoon, I asked him why he thought American public opinion was so harshly critical of his trip. "You know the answer to that," Carter replied. "Let me say this without criticizing the news media in America. There is no balanced coverage of what goes on in the Holy Land in the American news media. It's ridiculous, if you analyze it column by column and headline by headline. I would say it's not a bias on the part of the Washington Post or The New York Times or The L.A. Times or so forth. Or Newsweek. It's a fact that in the political discussion – which is the origin of most of your news – it's politically suicidal for any candidate to say anything that's displeasing to Israel. It's suicide. So far as I know, there's only one member of Congress since my book ["Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid"] came out that's had one thing to say that wasn't completely compliant with what the Israeli government's policy was at a certain time. And what you [in the media] have to do is cover what McCain says, and what Hillary says, and what Obama says, about my trip. They're all critical. It's inconceivable that Obama or Clinton could say 'We approve of Jimmy Carter's meeting with Hamas.' I'm not complaining. I've been in politics myself. There's no discussion, no debate, in the United States."

The ironic thing is that some recent polls have shown that a majority of Israelis – including large segments of the hawkish Likud party – favor direct negotiations with Hamas. "I was impressed with that," Carter said when I asked him about the polls. "These are people who know what they're talking about, and they know that there's no way to have peace unless Hamas is brought into the discussion. They also know – sometimes they may be reluctant to admit it – that in an honest and free and fair and transparent election, Hamas candidates prevailed."

Kenya, Where It Pays to be a Politician

Newsweek — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 21:48:06 GMT

By Andrew Ehrenkranz

Thursday’s swearing in of a broad coalition Cabinet seems have ushered in a new era of peace in Kenya. While relief and in some cases, jubilation, is palpable on the streets of Nairobi today, there’s also a growing dread at sticker shock of this new government of "unity". With opposition leader Raila Odinga as Kenya’s 2nd post-independence Prime Minster, the new Cabinet is the country’s largest ever, at 40 Kenyan cabinet ministers and 52 assistant ministers, and will cost Kenyan taxpayers nearly $800 million dollars more than last year's government, a huge burden for average Kenyans already struggling to make ends meet after months of unrest.

Kenyan politicians are not just among the highest paid in Africa, but around the world, says Tiberius Barasa, a research fellow at Nairobi’s Institute of Policy Analysis and Research . In a country where the average salary is less than $400 US dollars per year, a Kenyan Cabinet minister makes $18,000 per month, plus thousands more in allowances and a host of other perks like country homes, club membership, and two new cars. Earning approximately $216,000 annually (of which only $3,000 is taxable income), Kenyan Cabinet members make more than their counterparts in the United States. Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki earns $615,000 US dollars a year, tax-free, far more than that of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown (about $373,000 ) or President George W. Bush($400,000). “The salaries are actually nearing the level of comparable politicians in Italy, currently the highest in the world. “Barasa says. Though the original argument had been that higher government salaries prevent corruption, there’s little evidence to support that justification in Kenya, where a number of high profile corruption scandals have been unearthed over the past few years. A movement amongst civil society groups for a re-adjustment of the pay scale of politicians was thwarted last year, unsurprisingly voted down by the politicians themselves when it came to vote in Kenyan parliament. At this current moment in Kenya, with a severely hobbled economy after months of unrest and where more than 300,000 displaced Kenyans still languish in internal displacement camps, it remains to be seen if a bigger government will yield results. “Kenya is struggling to move up the ladder of industrialized nations, we can’t afford to sustain such high salaries.”

For poorer Kenyans, the high salaries are a source of rage. “How can ministers get 1 million(shillings) a month when I am lucky to get a dollar a day?," complains 25 year old Ryan idling near a fly-blown fish-fry in the slum of Kibera. “It’s just greed, they don’t hear us!” Kibera, a 30-minute walk from downtown Nairobi, has calmed down after the violence that wracked Kenya in the wake of last December's disputed poll. There's even a cautious optimism. "This government is better than no government," says Abdul Fakir, one of a group perching on milk crates in the Makina section. But Fakir is hardly overwhelmed by the new political deal. "We have faith but more in ourselves than with this government. We have hope for [new Prime Minister Raila Odinga], but we'll see..."

How to win the war against dengue fever

Mac Margolis — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:27:27 GMT

A bout of dengue starts with a pounding headache and a blazing fever. Next come excruciating body cramps and joint pain that render the stricken listless and useless for days on end. And that's if you're lucky. In its most extreme or "hemorrhagic" version, dengue is a killer. So far, 88 people have succumbed in this year's outbreak in the state of Rio de Janeiro, almost half of them children. And although the epidemic that turned the hospitals in Brazil's signature city into refugee camps now looks to have peaked, the balmy tropical autumn will surely keep the body count ticking higher over the next few months.

That's the bad news. The good news is that it doesn't have to be this way. Yes, dengue fever is now the bug of the millennium, infecting close to a hundred million people in 100 countries wordwide every year. And there is no vaccine for dengue or even the faint hope that the mosquito, aedes aegypti, that spreads the contagion can be erradicated. But there are ways to fight back, if not to wipe out the disease then at least to keep every outbreak from becoming a funeral procession.

How? Prevention. A number of regions where the contagion has caused havoc in the past have managed to avoid the worst. Until late last century dengue was virtually unknown in the Americas, thanks to a a painstaking, hemispheric, door-to-door mosquito killing campaign. True, the main target back then was not dengue but yellow fever, which is also spread by aedes aegytpi. But slaying one contagion meant avoiding the other, and as late as 1980, both diseases had all but disappeared. Along came "progess" in the form of the great third world industrial revolution, which emptied the countryside and stuffed the cities with poor people in airless slums - perfect incubators for mosquitoes - and suddenly dengue came raging back, from the Antilles to Asuncion.

But some societies are winning the war against dengue. After two huge outbreaks in 1994 (20,000 cases) and 1998 (14,000), Puerto Rico, with the help of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the U.S. government headquarters for disease research and prevention, has managed to dampen subsequent outbreaks by mobilizing society, on television, in the classroom, and house-by-house, to kill mosquitoes and eliminate the standing pools of water where they flourish. "The problem is not just one of virology or public health, but also of engaging society," says Wellington Sun, head of CDC's Puerto Rico office.

Few countries can match Singapore for disease control. Dengue is now a major killer in Asia, but this city state has managed to beat back the disease. Perhaps one of the reasons is that the authorities act not only at the height of epidemics, when, alas," it's too late to do much," says Michael Nathan, an insect-borne disease specialist at the World Health Organization in Geneva. Instead, Singapore works to wipe out mosquitoes in off years when the disease (and most politicians) sleeps. Significantly, it's not the public health bureaucracy but the environment and water resources ministry in Singapore that is charged with fighting dengue, a smart move when confronting a disease that thrives in the steamy, waterlogged urban jungle.

Singapore is not immune; 19 people died from dengue in 2005. But it has proved a model of moving fast and aggressively against the virus before an outbreak gets out of hand. (Case in point: Singapore managed to stop cold a recent global outbreak of a dengue-like virus called chicken gunya after just 13 cases.)

You don't have to go so far for successful disease control. Last year, Campo Grande, a city of 780,000 inhabitants in southwestern Brazil, was rocked by its worst dengue epidemic in years, with 46,000 cases. Only two people died. The reason: agile nurses and orderlies scurried to medicate victims who were standing on queue at hospitals, hydrating the worst cases with life-saving saline solution, well before physicians arrived.

My favorite example comes from a little town called Adolfo, 270 kms from São Paulo. Surrounded by cities plagued by dengue, the keepers of Adolfo knew they needed something more than bug repellant to ward off the disease. They needed citizen involvement. So they offered a carrot. Families that managed to eliminate pools of water and unkempt potted plants where mosquitoes flourish were rewarded with free wideband Internet access. The result: while nearby towns like José Bonifácio have all they can do to keep the mosquito at bay, Adolfo has been dengue free this year. The town fathers called their project Adolfo Connected to the World. They might have called it beating the millennium bug.

Kenya: A Fragile Peace Gets Shakier

Newsweek — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 23:23:35 GMT

By Andrew Ehrenkranz

Where to first, the driver asked: Baghdad, Somalia or Darfur? Even as a hypothetical, it’s not the easiest question to answer. But along a hectic stretch of highway just outside the west Kenyan city of Kisumu, I learned, all these places could be visited in a couple hours on a Friday afternoon.
Kenyan nicknames often seem odd choices for an African nation. Gangs are named after Muslim groups like the

Taliban-even though its members are Christian-and after fighters in remote Kosovo.
Naming places after some of the world’s more troubled areas, though, has a curious logic. “Baghdad” is an intimidating sprawl of ramshackle houses and shops known as a no-go zone even for police, who keep watch there only during the daylight. A few hundred meters down the road, you hit the “ Somali Base”, a small roadside of enclave where a large pack of touts and hustlers looking for any way to survive assemble en masse each day. “We call it Somali base because we don’t have a leader,” says a teenager in a camouflage ball cap named Steven, citing the lack of a government in Somalia as the inspiration for the area’s name. Crossing into a vast dirt parking lot, a burned-out metallic blue Bedford pickup truck lay wrecked, the words “South Sudan” graffiti on its side door. “You are in Darfur now“ says Ojijio, a curious passerby pointing towards another overturned car with, what else, “Darfur” painted on its hood. Nearby a group of men argued over their pay for transporting a coffin, moving the body from the back of one flatbed truck to the other, to the bereaved family’s dismay.

Life in Kenya’s Darfur is always a struggle, but today, as Kenya stands yet again on the brink of bloodshed--only six weeks after a brokered peace deal ended months of tribally-fueled post-election violence that killed more than 1,500 people and drove close to 300,000 from their homes--things could soon get much worse.
What began as a small sticking point--the balance of power in the government’s cabinet left unresolved in the Kofi Annan-led peace mediations--has put incumbent President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga back at testy loggerheads and the country back on edge, raising enough concern today for U.S. Ambassador to Kenya Michael Ranneberger to warn that cabinet stalemate threatens to unhinge the entire power-sharing agreement. Since Tuesday, small bands of protesters have begun returning to the streets around the country, infuriated by the government’s unwillingness to honor the peace agreement and grant both parties an equal share of key Cabinet positions.

Kenya’s Darfur took its name shortly after the violence became rampant across Kisumu, a political stronghold of opposition leader Odinga and home to some of the fiercest clashes between Kenyan riot police and protesters during the violence that erupted over the disputed Dec. 27 presidential poll. After the police started to go on the offensive in dealing with demonstrators, their neighborhood became the only “refuge from police attacking us”, said Freddie Odiambo hovering amongst a crowd of Darfur residents. There’s also a tribal connection with the people of Darfur; according to Odiambo, the Luo in Kenya originally migrated from South Sudan, and speak a similar mother tongue. “ They are Luos like us” he says, “ We are in solidarity with them.” While Kenya’s Darfur hasn’t suffered the level of violence and devastation as its namesake in Sudan, suffering is relative. “We have no money, no jobs, everything is at a standstill”, bellowed a truck driver named Crispin Otiendo, adding that virtually all building construction in Kisumu is on hold until there’s no longer a threat of war. Until then, he believes, things will remain tense and could explode again at anytime. “ Forming a cabinet that is even, 50-50, only that one can make this end,” he says.

The Green Wall of China - and beyond

Mac Margolis — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 12:23:10 GMT

For calloused earth watchers, the latest word on the state of global forests was all too familiar. In the annual Global Monitoring Report 2008, released on April 8, the World Bank concluded that the planet's woodlands are still vanishing at an alarming rate. Between 2000 and 2005, according to the most up-to-date numbers, an average of 73,000 square kilometers of forests fell annually. That is to say, a swath of forest the size of Panama tumbles every year to the loggers' chainsaws, the planters' bulldozer, and the settlers cocktail of kerosene and a match.

More than provoking another round of handwringing, the report is sure to add wood to the already inflamed political row over who is to blame for the worsening assault on the earth's climate. Thanks to the rich world's addiction to fossil fuels like oil, natural gas and coal, developing nations have often been portrayed as innocents in the tale of dangerous climate change. That is no longer the case. The felling of forests accounts for about 20 percent of all the carbon that humans pour into the skies every year, worsening the planetary greenhouse effect and driving unpredictable climate change. Leading the plunder are the developing nations, with top honors going to Brazil and Indonesia, which together (see chart, page 206) destroy nearly 50 million kilometers of woodlands a year. So whether it's burning gasoline or torching rainforests, no society has a monopoly on fouling the earth's atmosphere.

But there are some surprises in the dismal forest tally. First, while the assault against woodlands is a global one, some countries have been quietly getiing greener. In fact, many woodlands are growing back at a pace that has taken the scientific world by surprise, starting with the richest nations. Thanks to a combination of aggressive reforestation, preservation, falling population, and removing marginal farm land from cultivation, countries from Japan to Germany have seen their forests flourish in recent years. In Spain, Ukraine and Finland, tree farming for timber and pulp and paper has clothed once barren plots. Japan has denser forests today than it did before World War II. All told, 22 of the world's most forested nations had become greener between 1990 and 2005, according to a study of international specialists coordinated by the University of Helsinki.

By 2005, according to the World Bank, high income countries boasted close to 1 hectare of forest per person, three times the green space per capita (.29 hectares) in the poorest nation. The gains were particularly startling in Europe, where new forests are helping literally to clear the air, sopping up 126 million tons of atmospheric carbon a year, equal to 10 percent of all EU smokestack and tailpipe emissions.

More remarkably, two of the biggest and fastest developing nations are also reversing the deforestation curse, challenging the notion that development with preservation is an oxymoron. India and China have recorded some of the fastest gains in forest cover on the planet. Indeed, if Brazil is the all too familiar portrait of forests in peril then China has become the unlikely poster child of preservation. China's green thumb arose from environmental disaster. As it happened, predatory wood cutters and farmers had so depleted the stands of trees girdling the lowlands that in 1998 disaster struck; torrential rains swelled the Yangtze river, causing devastating floods that claimed more than 3,000 lives.

Since then Beijing cracked down on bootleg loggers and exhorted the nation to sow the nation with fast growing poplar, eucalyptus and pine. By some count the Chinese plant 5 billion trees a year. Though the new forests are a thin filter for the megatons of greenhouse gases hurled into the skies by China's breakneck development, replanted areas already take up more carbon than the amount released by annual tree felling. (Planted forests in India are drinking up nearly as much carbon as the country's woodcutters and developers can release.)

Environmental purists may argue, with reason, that the soldierly rows of eucalyptus for pulp and paper or exotic pine for construction are poor stand-ins for the majestic old growth forests that once crowned the planet. But in a world choking on the consequences of decades of environmental plunder, the fact that the planet is a little greener is already a breath of fresh of air.

Macedonia and Greece, Or How I Got Involved in a Diplomatic Row

Ginanne Brownell — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 22:24:55 GMT

I was settling in for an evening with friends on Friday night when my mobile rang. "Ms. Brownell, this is the Greek Embassy in Washington," the caller informed me. "We wanted to talk with you about the interview you did with the foreign minister from FYROM." My heart sank. I knew why he was calling, and that my relaxing Friday evening was not going to happen.

FYROM (pronounced "Figh-Rahm") is the international shorthand for the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. There is a huge debate at the moment between Greece and its neighbor to the north. My interview (http://www.newsweek.com/id/129146) with the Macedonian foreign minister, it turns out, added fuel to an already flaming diplomatic fire. The Greek foreign minister now wanted to give me the Greek point of view, which he proceeded to do.

Afterwards I called a Greek friend of mine and told her the story. She did not assuage my fear that I had somehow contributed to a diplomatic incident. "Yeah, no kidding they're are mad and I think now there is no way they will agree on a name," she said. She was right: at meetings on Saturday, Greece rejected every name proposed, and now this week's NATO summit looks to be fraught. "I think your piece is the reason why they are pissed off," my Greek friend texted me on Saturday. "You have brought on a diplomatic deadlock." Of course, she was joking. I think.

Here, in full, is the Greek response:

RESPONSE BY GREEK AMBASSADOR TO THE U.S.

TO THE INTERVIEW OF FOREIGN MINISTER MILOSOSKI

The Foreign Minister of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) invents non-existent minorities and resorts to nationalistic practices of the past in interpreting Greece's position on the enlargement of NATO and the invitation to his country to join the Alliance. ("What is in a Name?" - Newsweek Web exclusive, March 26, 2008).From the outset, regarding Mr. Miloskoski's claims on minorities, I should point out that "people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones".

Allow me to explain Greece's position on the enlargement of NATO to the Western Balkans that will be decided at next week's Summit meeting in Bucharest, Romania.

Greece, a member of NATO since 1952, has been a strong advocate of the integration of Southeastern Europe into the Euroatlantic Institutions. On the basis of this strategic choice, we support NATO's "open door" policy. An open door policy, however, must be based on the principles of good neighborly relations and allied solidarity.

Greece supports the enlargement of NATO in the Western Balkans, with the invitations to Croatia and Albania. Ιt is ready also to welcome the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), provided that our northern neighbor shifts from their nationalistic logic and agree to a mutually agreeable name for international use that differentiates the new Balkan state from the Greek province of Macedonia; a name that will not be a vehicle for propaganda and irredentism against a neighboring NATO member.

Athens has shown its good will towards Skopje in many ways. It has supported its neighbor, both politically and economically, ranking as the number one foreign investor in that country, with $1 billion invested capital that has generated 30,000 new jobs. Most recently, we went the extra mile, or rather the most important mile, when we expressed our readiness to agree to a composite name with a geographic qualifier. This is a major shift from Greece's initial position, which excluded any use of the term "Macedonia", in the name of our neighbor.

Contrary to Mr. Milososki's claims the name issue is not a bilateral one. It is an international issue, which concerns our broader region. Directly, or indirectly, it concerns NATO and the U.N. And, if not resolved now, it may fester to poison future generations, undermining stability and cooperation in the 21st century.

On this issue, we are not alone. 115 members of the U.S. Congress, from both parties, support House Resolution 356, expressing the "sense of the House of Representatives that FYROM should stop hostile activities and propaganda against Greece, and should work with the United Nations and Greece to find a mutually acceptable official name".

A similar resolution, S.R. 300, was introduced in the Senate by Senators Robert Menendez, Barrack Obama and Olympia Snowe.

Greece has called upon FYROM's leadership to act responsibly and show political courage and meet Greece half way. It will be a responsible move on the part of an aspiring candidate, a move that will win them a European future, a future of stability, peace and economic prosperity, based on the principles upon which NATO and the European Union are founded.

Alexandros P. Mallias

Ambassador of Greece to the United States

Zimbabwe Holds Breath As Polls Close

Newsweek — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 18:01:38 GMT

By Karen MacGregor

For the past eight years, the majority of Zimbabweans have made it clear that they want to be rid of an increasingly autocratic, corrupt and incompetent Zanu-PF government led by President Robert Mugabe. But in elections Saturday their hopes might for the third time be dashed, amid mounting evidence of large-scale vote rigging that will ensure a poll that is anything but free and fair. Still, with the stiffest competition he has ever faced from two other candidates, Mugabe’s sacked finance minister Simba Makoni and opposition Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai, Zimbabwe is holding its breath for polling results that are expected to begin rolling in on Sunday.

Polling stations around the country were open for 12 hours on Saturday, with an electorate of just under six million people voting for president as well as members of a 210-seat parliament and local councils. Security has been tight but voting appeared to proceed peacefully--though extremely slowly at urban stations, where most opposition supporters reside. Almost all Western journalists have been denied accreditation to cover the election, and only observers from “friendly,” mostly African countries, have been invited. Zimbabweans abroad, now thought to number more than three million of a former population of 13 million people--many of them opposition supporters who have fled to South Africa to escape intimidation and economic collapse--have not been allowed to vote.

The past eight years have been a nightmare for most Zimbabweans. In 2000 Mugabe had already been in power for 20 years, and in February of that year citizens said, “no” to him in a referendum on constitutional changes. Faced for the first time with a real threat to his rule, Mugabe--once the darling of the West for running sub-Saharan Africa's major post-colonial success story--reacted with ruthless speed in cracking down on a swelling trade union-led opposition movement and white farmers, whom he perceived as its funders. Since then white farmers have been chased off their land, thousands of opposition supporters have been assaulted (and many killed) by security forces and militia, draconian laws have been passed, corruption has run rampant and the economy has collapsed. Inflation is running at 100,000 percent and unemployment at 80 percent.

Until recently, not much attention was being paid to the 2008 election, given the allegations of rigging and numerous shenanigans during previous polls (before 2000 Zimbabwe was a de facto one-party state). It was assumed that Mugabe would win, no matter how many votes he did or did not receive. And that Tsvangirai, now leading a splintered Movement for Democratic Change, would take yet another drubbing. But then last month Makoni, 57, a man from the Zanu-PF inner circle who had reportedly given up trying to reform the party from within, made a surprise entry into the contest--and invigorated it. It was, says University of Zimbabwe political scientist Dr John Makumbe, “exhilarating. What Makoni did was throw the electoral process a lifeline. People who thought they couldn’t be bothered to vote started scampering to get registered, and there has been a lot of debate”.

Zimbabweans could be grasping at straws. There are enormous obstacles to democratic change, including a security apparatus which has said it will not accept any result other than a Mugabe win. But given the staggering scale of economic collapse, this poll might yet prove to be competitive.

Japan's Political Claustrophobia

Newsweek — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 16:54:30 GMT

By Akiko Kashiwagi

As we Japanese watch the U.S. presidential candidates enthusiastically campaigning with promises of "change", it is hard not to compare what's going on in U.S politics with what's going on in Japan. Here, politics is at a standstill, and there doesn't seem to be a way out. Unlike American youth, who are excited about Barack Obama's hopeful message, young people in Japan find it hard to hope for the better. "It's like 2 or 3 am. It's still dark," says a young parliamentary aide about the gloomy mood on Japan's Capitol Hill.

The Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda came to power last September backed by factions including that of the powerful road-construction industry. Six month later, it looks as if we have gone back to the pre-Koizumi era, watching politicians call for more roads using gasoline taxes. This faction had been robbed of their influence under the Koizumi administration, but now they are back and so are the old-style politics.
This isn't the only thing contributing to the gridlock. With the opposition party in control of the Upper House and determined to block nearly every bill, nothing gets decided. Fukuda's popularity has fallen to 30 percent, and his back is to the wall. Some analysts say his failure to appoint a shoo-in Bank of Japan Governor is a sign that the ruling Liberal Democratic Party is losing power and the day of a change in regime is drawing near. Under Koizumi, who promoted the structural reforms, the LDP succeeded in regaining its popularity from among floaters. But his successors are not so successful. They lack his charisma and his penchant for reform. Fukuda is seen as representing the status quo.
Ironically, the opposition party is also seen as unconstructive. It is becoming even less popular than the ruling party. This is not exactly what many expected to see when the opposition party won a landmark victory in the upper house elections last summer. Now neither party looks attractive. A sense of claustrophobia has set in.

At a time like this, where is the Japanese Obama? We have no shortage of young, ambitious politicians who call for pension reforms, reducing the wealth gap and fiscal discipline. But it doesn't seem we'll get one anytime soon. "The problem is that we are not seeing any new political movement rising" despite the stalemate, says Takahiro Suzuki of Think Tank 2005. That's because most politicians owe their incumbencies to the existing political system, making it enormously difficult for them to act independently or form a new party, he says. In addition, seniority counts for a lot in Japanese politics. Political watchers regretfully say that the downfall of Shinzo Abe, the youngest post-war Prime Minister, has virtually killed chances of a generational shift in political leadership for years. In the end, he seemed to demonstrate that youth is equivalent to inexperience. Amid the gridlock and the falling approval rating, rank and file politicians from both parties seem increasingly frustrated.

No doubt the next elections are crucial for Japan. The decision when to call an election is Prime Minister Fukuda's. He has a big job ahead of him.

The Dutch Greet 'Fitna' With a Yawn

Newsweek — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 14:34:42 GMT

By Friso Endt

The Netherlands has been in something of a panic forweeks in anticipation of Geert Wilders's anti-Muslim movie, Fitna. Wilders, thebleach blond Dutch populist whose Party of Freedom holds 9 seats in Parliament,went on a rant last fall when he announced his intentions to make the film,which he had promised by April 1. Three weeks ago, the Dutch ChristianDemocrat/ Labour/ Calvinist Christian Union coalition began warning Dutchcitizens living and working of attacks by Muslim extremists in response to themovie. Prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende, the baby-faced ex-professor, talkedfearfully on television about an impending "crisis". His address onlyserved to draw the world's attention to Wilders--television audiences in SaudiArabia, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Indonesia covered the brouhaha. InKabul, protesters burned Dutch and Danish flags (memories linger of thenotorious anti-Mohammed cartoons) and demanded the immediate withdrawal ofDutch NATO troops.

That was before anybody had seen the film. For a while,it looked like no one would. Wilders couldn't find a television station to airit or an Internet service provider who would post it. He was close to givingup, when on Thursday evening the UK firm FilmLeak.com posted it on its Web site.

As expected, the 16-minute film is designed not toenlighten but to incite hatred. It's a hodgepodge of news clips, using imagesof the attacks on the New York World Trade Center, the London Underground andthe Madrid Railway station juxtaposed with the face of an unnamed Iman, whosays, "What makes Allah happy? Allah is happy when non Muslims are beingkilled." The flim ends with a depiction of Mohammed-from Danish cartoonistKurt Westergaardt-with a bomb in his hands. After one hour on the site, twomillion Dutch people had seen the film and 200,000 viewers had watched theEnglish language version. Wilders claimed six million people had seen it.

In trying to isolate Dutch Muslims, Wilders seems to havedone the opposite. The film was roundly criticized in the media as"cheap," "empty" and "bourgeois." "It's old,already years old news, and tells nothing new or exciting," one newseditorsaid on Dutch television. The reaction of Dutch Muslims was muted. "This moviehas no quality," says Mohammed Ayoutaleb, the Moroccon -bornDutch-educated Under Minister of Social Affairs. When cameras of Al Jazeeraappeared before The Hague's biggest mosque on Friday to report the event, theImam urged people not to stoop to criticism of Wilders or his film. "Let'signore it and him," he said. Another young Muslim leader said: "Ofcourse we have ethical problems [with the movie]. But most of us are also ofDutch nationality and we are proud to have that."

Dutch Justice Minister Hirsch Ballin Friday morning thanked the the country'sMuslims for showing restraint. Polls on Saturday morning showed that, were elections held then, Wilders'party would have lost three seats Parliament.

Do you have a license for that Kalashnikov?

Owen Matthews — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 19:41:44 GMT

Mikhail Kalashnikov got a fairly raw deal out of Communism. The assault rifle he designed while lying wounded in hospital at the end of the Second World War became a Twentieth Century icon. His name is the world's best-known brand (think about it - there may be Kalahari bushmen who havent heard of Coca Cola, but odds are they've heard of Kalashnikov). According to Jane's Defense Weekly, up to 100 million Kalashnikovs of various types have been produced since the gun went into production in 1947, largely thanks to the Soviet habit of giving friendly foreign allies the technology to produce the weapons free of charge. But Kalashnikov himself, who will be 90 this year, lives in a modest apartment in the Volga city of Izhevsk. He hasn't received a penny of royalties on his famous invention - though he is a Lieutenant-General and boasts a chestful of medals.

Reuters 2007...

Now, the Russian state is trying to do its best to redress that injustice - if not in the interests of the AK-47's inventor, then at least in the interests of his country. First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov announced today that Moscow would be pursuing its "intellectual property rights" in 18 countries where production of the Kalashnikov continues, including China, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Germany, Egypt and Libya.

Having the most famous name in the world must be satisfying - but some cash would probably be a welcome supplement to his $230 per month pension.

Argentina: 'Queen' Cristina's 100 Days

Newsweek — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 22:17:03 GMT

By Brian Byrnes

The Queen’s honeymoon was over before it even began. Less than 72 hours after she donned the azure-and-white sash as Argentina’s first elected female president, her highness had already gone to battle.

Argentina’s Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner’s reputation as strong-willed, outspoken and sometimes flippant had earned her the faux-royal title, and it was proven in spades on December 13, when she took the podium at the Pink House in downtown Buenos Aires to blast U.S. allegations that Venezuela's Hugo Chavez had tried to fund her presidential campaign with clandestine petrodollars.

With pointing fingers and a steely glare, “garbage” was how she described a U.S. prosecutor’s charges that a suitcase from Venezuela stuffed with $800,000 in cash had been destined for her campaign coffers before it was detained at a Buenos Aires airport in August. Fully aware of the moment, Cristina played the gender card, vowing not to be “pressured” because she was a woman and -- in a not-so-subtle dig at the Bush administration -- promising to strengthen relations with “friendly” countries, like Venezuela.

Not exactly a winning start for a president who was expected to improve ties with the U.S. following a frosty four-and-a-half years under her predecessor (and husband) Nestor Kirchner, who routinely blamed the IMF and Wall Street for Argentina’s catastrophic economic collapse in 2001. Cristina--with her penchant for globetrotting, high fashion and political discourse--would surely be able to patch up foreign relations, or so everyone thought.

It turns out the post-inauguration dust-up was a sign of things to come. As she marks the 100th day of her presidency today, Fernandez de Kirchner’s approval rating remains high -- 54 percent according to one recent poll, 65 percent according to another – and Argentina is enjoying sustained 8 percent economic growth, but problems are mounting for the fledgling presidenta, chief among them a growing perception that the First Gentleman did a better job when he was in charge.

A poll released on Sunday found that few Argentines have faith in their new leader. When asked who inspires more confidence, 37 percent said Nestor, while just 18 percent answered Cristina. Nestor was known as an early riser and tireless worker; Cristina’s afternoon arrivals and long vacations have quickly earned her the title of “part-time president” in some local press.

Clearly not the ideal way to start a mandate, and there’s more trouble brewing.

Argentina’s powerful agricultural sector has been on strike since March 13, protesting the government’s new tax increase on commodity exports. Nestor’s administration clashed repeatedly with farmers, and they clearly still have a bone to pick with the Kirchners.

An energy crunch continues to nag Argentina and frozen utility rates have discouraged investment in the troubled sector. Cristina has taken token steps recently to try to reduce the crunch. In late December, she temporarily ordered Argentina’s clocks set forward one hour with hopes of shrinking electricity consumption during the sweltering South American summer. There are conflicting reports on whether that move was a success. She also called for millions of free low-watt light bulbs to be distributed around the country. But a cohesive plan to get Argentina’s energy grid on track is still lacking--as is one for tackling rising inflation.

The private sector and economists refuse to swallow the government’s suspiciously low official inflation rate of 8.5 percent (most put it at more than twice that number). A recent poll found that when asked if they believe the government inflation numbers, 74 percent said “no.”

Cristina did come out looking good both at home and abroad when she worked to calm tempers earlier this month after a conflict centering around the death of a Colombian rebel leader almost brought Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela to war. She has also been actively working to secure the release of Ingrid Betancourt, the former Colombian presidential candidate held captive by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) since 2002, and will meet with French president Nicolas Sarkozy on the issue in Paris next month.

But there seems to be more headaches than headway on foreign affairs issues.

A scandal involving foreign diplomats stationed in Argentina who allegedly imported and sold Hummers, Mercedes Benz sedans and other luxury vehicles at a profit is still unfolding, and it cost Argentina’s deputy foreign minister his job this month.

A human rights champion, Cristina raised eyebrows in February when the first state dinner she hosted was held in honor of visiting Equatorial Guinea dictator Teodoro Obiang.

And last week came the icing on the 100-day cake. Condoleezza Rice skipped Argentina on her South American tour, an omission viewed by many as a sign that relations between Buenos Aires and Washington have yet to thaw since Cristina’s ill-advised, anti-U.S. outburst in December. Local reports this week claim that Cristina – eager to be an international player – was furious at the State Department snub.

One telling illustration of the differences between the two Kirchner presidencies was published in a local newspaper on Sunday. Perfil reported that in his first 100 days as commander-in-chief, Nestor met with international heavyweights like George W. Bush, Tony Blair and then-U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell--whereas Cristina spent time recently hanging with Latin leftists like Chavez and Evo Morales, as well as chatting up supermodel Naomi Campbell and hunky Spanish actor Antonio Banderas.

An audience fit for a queen, yes. But for a president?

Tibet protests spread

Mary Hennock — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 02:46:32 GMT

As the smoke from burning buildings clears from the sky above Lhasa, Tibetan exile groups are scrambling to get a clear picture of what happened during pro-independence protests last week. Above all, they want to know many people died and how. The Tibetan-government-in-exile says 30 people are dead in the violence that gripped the city on Friday and Saturday. China's official Xinhua news agency says 10 civilians died in fires set by rioters.

However, two things are already clear. The first is that Beijing's hopes for a smooth and successful Olympics now hinge on this issue. The second is that protests have already spread to Tibetan populations living in the broad crescent of provinces that rims the Autonomous Region.

Pro-independnce websites have posted mobile phone photos and video footage of chanting crowds and riot police.

The 300-year-old Labrang monastry in Gansu province. Labrang is a pilgrimage and teaching center, and one of the most important centers of Tibetan Buddhism. Reliable reports from what has happened or is happening there are as hard to find as for Lhasa itself, but mobile phone photos

There are Tibetans living in a broad crescent of provinces bordering the Tibet Autonomous Region

Borderline Case

Mac Margolis — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 14:35:26 GMT

Politicians on both sides of the partisan divide in the U.S. rarely miss a chance to beat the drums over the perils of the immigrant tide and the imperative to "secure our borders." That might be a good idea. With the world's largest economy on a slide, the dream of making America is looking less lustrous every day, and now the U.S. risks seeing one of its most dynamic and creative sources of human capital blow away with the prairie dust.

There are already troubling signs. A recent study by the Inter-American Development Bank reports that the flow of dollars Latin American and Caribbean immigrants send back home is slackening. In 2007, Latins living in the U.S. remitted $66 billion to their native countries. That's not half bad (a record amount, in fact) but what drew the Bank's attention was the modest 7 percent increase over the previous year. Until then the flow of dollars back home had been expanding at double digit rates every year. Last year the nominal sum of incoming migrant dollars actually fell in Brazil, from $7.4 billion to $7.1 billion.

The analysts are still mulling the numbers, but a likely factor is the collapse last year of immigration reform efforts in the U.S. Congress, which has made it more difficult for undocumented migrants to get working papers or residency. Another is the weakening U.S. economy, which has dried up the service and construction jobs that most immigrants flock to and also heightened discrimination, as native U.S. workers drop into a xenophobic crouch.

But a growing reason for the drought in remittances is that many immigrants may simply be calling it quits. With jobs evaporating and dollar wages buying fewer and fewer pesos, reais, escudos and bolivars, the onetime golden shores for newcomers are turning to sand. No wonder thousands of Brazilians in Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York are packing their bags and heading south. Even Mexicans are reported to be opting for "self deportation" as opportunities evaporate stateside.

This doesn't necessarily mean failure. While the U.S. founders, most other economies in the Americas are if not "decoupling" from the mothership then holding up gamely in headwinds. Brazil, which has exported tens of thousands of workers over the years, is on target to grow by 5-6 percent this year. The Argentine and Venezuelan economies are topping 8 percent growth (though inflation threatens both). Colombia, Peru and Chile are looking solid. That is encouraging news for the less fortunate parts of the hemisphere and at least partial compensation for the hole in the national coffers left by tumbling remittances, which for many nations are more important than official international foreign aid.

How beneficial the exodus will be the for the gringos is another question. For all the political huff over invading aliens filching employment and opportunities, the U.S. economy owes its foreigners, legal or not, a considerable debt. They shovel, sweep, serve and tidy up in jobs many pedigreed Americans would hold their noses over. At last count (2006) foreigners ran firms that kicked in 6 percent of U.S. GDP and 14 percent of all business spending on research and development. They also reinvested half their revenues locally ($71 billion), paid fully 13 percent of national taxes and generated one of ten private sector jobs in the U.S..

Alien agitprop? Hardly. I lifted those numbers from a Feb. 28 speech by David McCormick, the U.S. undersecretary of Treasury for International affairs. That's one that got by the border patrol.