Week In Photo (07 December - 13 December)

Residents walks past murals of late South African former president Nelson Mandela in Soweto,
near Johannesburg, on December 7, 2013, two days after his death. (Photo: Carl de Souza - AFP)

Turkish riot police officers take cover as Kurdish protesters shoot fireworks at them during clashes in
central Istanbul on December 7, 2013. Two Kurdish protesters were killed by Turkish police the day before.
(Photo: Bulent Kilic - AFP)

Runners dressed as Father Christmas take part in the charity fund-raising
 "Santa Run" in Victoria Park, north London on December 8, 2013. (Leon Neal - AFP)

Anti-government protesters celebrate after removing concrete barricades outside
the Government House in Bangkok on December 9, 2013. (Photo: Indranil Mukherjee - AFP)

Brazilian youngsters play football at the beach in Natal, Brazil on December 8, 2013.
Natal is one of the cities to host the FIFA World Cup Brazil 2014. (Photo: Christophe Simon - AFP)

A Pakistani child looks for items to be recycled amid garbage on the outskirts of Lahore on December 9, 2013.
Government statistics say 22 percent of the population live in poverty,
although independent economists say the figure is closer to 30 percent. (Photo: Arif Ali - AFP)

A Thai Buddhist monk holds his bowl against his chest as he waits for alms outside a temple near
the Government House in the early morning in Bangkok on December 11, 2013.
(Photo: Indranil Mukherjee - AFP)

Marseille's Tunisian forward Saber Khalifa (R) eyes the ball on December 11, 2013
at the Velodrome stadium in Marseille, southern France. (Photo: Bertrand Langlois - AFP)

A woman walks at the Christmas decorated Syntagma square opposite the parliament in
Athens on December 11, 2013. (Photo: Aris Messinis - AFP)

Young Syrian refugees build a snowman following a storm in a makeshift refugee camp
 in the Lebanese village of Baaloul in the Bekaa Valley, on December 12, 2013.
(Photo: Mahmoud Zayyat - AFP)

Beirut's seafront area of Ain al-Mreisseh during the arctic storm Alexa on December 11, 2013.
(Photo: Marwan Tahtah)

Las grandes portadas sobre JFK de Esquire

Enero, 1962

Marzo, 1963

Junio, 1964 (de George Lois)

Septiembre, 1965 (Otra Lois)

Abril, 1967 (Lois también)

Mayo, 1967 (Más Lois)

Octubre, 1968 (…otra de Lois)

Noviembre, 1973 

Junio, 1977 

Noviembre 1991 

Enero 2010 

Esquire ha trasladado su Kennedymanía a las ediciones fuera de Estados Unidos. Vea si no:

España. Octubre, 2013. Muy mal gusto ese titular. JFK nació un 29 de mayo,
así que en octubre no celebra "cumpleaños". Si se referían al asesinato… pues vaya.
Por mucho que nos ponga Marilyn Monroe, este titular es una falta de criterio colosal,
un frívolo jijí jajá. Eso sí, la foto es un fotón. Compárela con las que vienen ahora.

Croacia, noviembre 2013.

Oriente Medio, noviembre 2013 

El bonus son las portadas con que el Saturday Evening Post recibió y despidió a JFK. Para el ejemplar de diciembre 1963 enlutaron el mismo retrato que Norman Rockwell, su portadista de cabecera, les pintó para la de octubre de 1960:

El retrato original

What Did Assad’s Allies Do in Two Weeks?

People protest against a US military intervention in Syria in front of the Cannon House Office Building near the US Capitol in Washington on 9 September 2013. (Photo: AFP - Nicholas Kamm)

By: Ibrahim al-Amin

Published Tuesday, September 10, 2013

It was the British House of Commons that first opened the way for what became a retreat from the brink of war. Suddenly, public opinion entered the calculations of Western governments, which quickly led to a search for an exit for the White House. As soon as Barack Obama put the matter up before Congress, it was clear that he was looking for some sort of compromise.

All that was left was to find something that Washington can go to its Arab and European allies with and tell them, “See, this is what I got for not waging a war on Syria.”

The Russians saw their opportunity to make a move. They needed to come up with something that would not look like a defeat for the US, while at the same time wouldn’t make Damascus look like it is backing down completely. So they came up with the idea of neutralizing Syria’s chemical arsenal by placing it under international supervision.

The Russian initiative will likely usher in what appears to be only a temporary settlement, postponing the attack, rather than canceling it altogether. But even this requires quite a bit of discussion in order to see the light of day, and as the saying goes, the devil is in the details.

The Israeli plan in effect seeks a replay of the Iraq scenario, in which weapons inspectors were asked to look in every nook and cranny, including Saddam Hussein’s private palaces, until the US was ready to attack.

And what was leaked by the Israeli media about a Tel Aviv plan, advising Obama to drag out the negotiations, suggests that this will be nothing more than a short respite, until the opportunity presents itself at a later date to strike. By then perhaps, the right conditions will be in place to wage a war under more favorable circumstances.

The Israeli plan in effect seeks a replay of the Iraq scenario, in which weapons inspectors were asked to look in every nook and cranny, including Saddam Hussein’s private palaces, until the US was ready to attack. In Syria’s case, the Americans could use the excuse of having failed to reach a final agreement based on the Russian initiative as an excuse to wage a far broader assault on Damascus than what was planned this time around.

But what about the other side? How does it appraise the situation? And what is it planning for any future confrontation?

No one needs to tell Syria’s allies that Washington no longer possesses complete freedom to do as it pleases, particularly compared to a decade or so ago, before getting bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan. They also know that America’s recent setbacks have produced a regional and international opposition alliance that brings together powerful forces that continue to grow by the day.

This opposition alliance operates on a number of levels: Russia playing a diplomatic role, while Iran is prepared to take the lead militarily, if it comes to a regional confrontation with the US. Tehran is not only capable of facing down Washington in Syria and the surrounding area, but it has the ability to cause them serious harm.

In two short weeks, this alliance succeeded in mobilizing a broad military front that is prepared to engage in an extended war that could last for months or more, opening up many new opportunities that were not previously available and making it possible for this alliance to confront any Western attack, without submitting to the aggressors’ timeframe, geography or scale.

Ibrahim al-Amin is editor-in-chief of Al-Akhbar.

This article is an edited translation from the Arabic Edition.

Isn't it time to respect Venezuela's democracy?

By Samuel Moncada, Special to CNN

February 18, 2013 -- Updated 1218 GMT (2018 HKT)

Over the past decade, all sorts of predictions have been made, ranging from catastrophic election defeats to the implosion of the Venezuelan economy. But the fact these predictions have failed to materialize has not deterred many of Venezuela's most fervent critics in their quest to engineer a constant and misleading narrative of impending disaster.

The reality is that ever since President Hugo Chavez was first elected, Venezuela has defied these negative predictions and brought unprecedented social progress to the country over the last 14 years. Since 2004 poverty has been reduced by half andextreme poverty has been cut by 70%. University enrolment has doubled, entitlement to public pensions has tripled, and access to health care and all levels of education have been dramatically expanded.

Venezuela now has the lowest levels of economic inequality of any Latin American country as measured by the Gini coefficient. Our country has already achieved many of the Millennium Development Goals, and is well on target to achieve all eight by the 2015 deadline.

This progress has been achieved by using Venezuela's vast oil revenues to transform the lives of ordinary people. The sheer scale of our oil reserves -- the world's largest -- guarantees the complete sustainability of the model in which the country's resources are used to stimulate growth in the economy and aid development.

But Chavez's most significant achievement has been to trigger the awakening and empowerment of the majority. A majority of Venezuelans have seen vast improvements in their living standards and, as a consequence, they have continued to defend their interests at the ballot box.

The Venezuelan people are very clear about what they want.President Chavez was re-elected in October 2012 with 54% of the vote in an election that boasted an 81% turnout. The Venezuelan people showed their support for the government again in December 2012 in the gubernatorial elections, which saw Chavez's political party win 20 out of 23 states.

Governments in Europe and other parts of the world could only dream of these levels of support after 14 years in power. This shows that social progress in Venezuela has been consolidated and that there is a desire to further expand this progress.

In the coming years, the Venezuelan government will continue to respond to the needs of the Venezuelan people. Hundreds of thousands of new homes have been built over the last two years which have not only greatly improved living standards but also provided jobs and contributed to a boom in the construction industry. The government is well on its way to meeting its target of building three million new homes by 2019.

While many economies around the world are shrinking, theVenezuelan economy grew by 5.5% in 2012. Against the backdrop of a continuing international financial crisis, commerce in Venezuela grew by 9.2% and communications by 7.2%, manufacturing grew by 2.1% and the oil sector grew by 1.4% -- making Venezuela one of the fastest growing economies in Latin America.

At a time when many countries are attacking the rights of the most vulnerable sectors of society, Venezuela is providing ever greater protection for low-income senior citizens and single-parent families with younger children or disabled dependents.

The failed development models of previous governments condemned millions of Venezuelans to poverty. Before the election of Chavez in 1998, Venezuela suffered years of falling GDP. The country had one of the worst economic records in the world -- a record that led to mass social unrest and violent military crackdowns.

Venezuela will continue on its path of social progress and empowering ordinary citizens. The greatest hope for the future is the people know that they alone hold the power to determine the direction the country will take.

After so many failed predictions, isn't it time to respect Venezuela's democracy and the will of the people?

So, Guess Who´s Lying...

Israel launches airstrikes on Syria



Israel Strikes Syrian Trucks Heading for Lebanon

Assassination Attack on Politician Caught on Tape

The only thing missing on L´ Imaginaire Collectif...

The Bulgarian politician Ahmed Dogan was unhurt after an as-yet-unnamed assailant rushed the stage and attempted to shoot him with a small handgun.

Dogan is the leader of Bulgaria's opposition movement for Rights and Freedoms. As he addressed that group's congress on Saturday, an attacker attempted to shoot him but the gun reportedly "misfired," according to the Sofia, Bulgaria news agency.

The agency said Bulgaria's Socialist party (one of several parties in opposition to the Movement for Rights and Freedoms in Bulgaria) issued a statement condemning the assassination attempt. "What happened cannot be downplayed. This is an assault on democracy in Bulgaria and against everyone in Bulgaria," said the Socialists. They added, "We are deeply alarmed at the processes going on in society and at the possible destabilization of the country.

Mashable

Mali’s Secret Infrastructure

by SASHA ROSS

The armed Islamists who fled to Mali after the fall of Qaddafi’s government are significant, but they do not represent a complete rationale for French intervention. The Tuareg rose up in revolt partly due to Islamist influence, but also through nationalist impulse due to the general patterns of land and water grabs that marked what was considered by the North Atlantic countries to be the “stable democracy” of Amadou Toumani Touré.

The government of Touré fell due to the military’s frustration over the wildfire advance of Tuareg militancy, but the coup government’s failure to stem the tide of revolt brought in foreign powers. The tipping point of French intervention came not on Sunday, January 13, but as early as April 5 of last year, as Tuareg forces swept further along the Niger River to Douentza. At that point, the fifteen West African countries began planning a military intervention against the rebels with the logistical aid of France. The plan was OKed by the UN Security Council in December.

On Monday, January 14, the day after the French air strikes commenced, Tuareg rebels took over the town of Diabaly (the site of the summary execution of 16 unarmed preachers by the Malian army in September of last year), advancing the border of territory claimed by the rebels even closer south towards the capital.

As air strikes continued in Mali, President Hollande of France lectured the World Future Energy Summit about investing in renewable energy to avoid ‘catastrophe’. The immediate contradiction between the expenditure of fossil fuels and greenhouse gasses to fuel the global military industrial complex is merely the beginning of a tangled web of modern colonial relationships being established in Africa today.

The Malibya Canal

Mali is not known for being a nation with many natural resources, so Hollande’s insistence that the invasion comes at the insistence of the international community to remove militant Islamists from the country’s north seems to hold up. But tilting lances at Islamists is not quite enough: the de facto leader of Libya today, Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, has declared that Shari Law will now define Libya’s juridical order, yet French corporations have paid regular visits to his government. The fight in Mali is not about only about Islam, but about the relationship between Islam and investment, land, and particularly, water.

In 2009, Patrik Lukas, the head of the Africa Division of France’s main body of transnational corporate interests, Medef International, called for help from the French government. Complaining of competition from the Chinese government during a visit to Mali and Senegal, Lukas insisted that “there is a real issue that goes beyond the issue of the private sector… The French government should definitely help the private sector working in Africa”.

At the time, Libya was endeavoring in a full-scale land and water grab in Mali, choosing to work with Chinese contractors instead of French. In the years leading up to his ouster, Qaddafi was seeking to diversify the Libyan economy in keeping with a neoliberal restructuring that included developing domestic agriculture as well as importing agricultural produce from his neighbors to the south. Building up a proxy corporation called Malibya Agriculture with money from Libya-Africa Portfolio Fund for Investment, Qadaffi secretly purchased 100,000 acres (roughly 156 square miles) along the Niger River region of Boky Wéré in 2008 for cultivation of rice and biofuels. To irrigate the massive tract of agricultural land, Malibya endeavored with the help of Chinese contractors to dig a 25-mile canal that holds dire ecological prospects, not just for biodiversity but also for local fisherfolk and farmers.

In an article published by Yale environmental rag, Environment 360 in February 2011, freelance journalist Fred Pearce states the canal “will enhance Libyan food security at the expense of Malian food security by sucking dry the river that feeds the inland delta, diminishing the seasonal floods that support rich biodiversity—and thriving agriculture and fisheries vital to a million of Mali’s poorest citizens—on the edge of the Sahara desert.” Geopolitically, the canal is almost at the point of distinction between the North and South.

Pearce went on to prophetically note, “(w)ith Al Qaeda busy recruiting disaffected people such as the Tuareg nomads around Mali’s borders, any disruption to the traditional way of life could feed its violent agenda.” As the French flew into Mali on January 13, the rebels were advancing to Diabaly, drawing the border of claimed territory over the Malibya canal like a blanket.

The volatile combination of Al Qaeda and the Tuareg is more important to France now than ever. While France holds the primary position in international development assistance to Mali (quite convenient for rebuilding purposes after air strikes), Libya has also become a heavy investor in Malian infrastructure and construction. With the French intervention in Libya, the agricultural situation of that desert nation, which imports ¾ of its grains, shows up on France’s own balance sheet.

In November 2011, an agricultural delegation from France spoke to members of the Libyan government about encouraging the agricultural sector—particularly livestock, which eat rice bran and hulls, among other grains. Thus, projects like the land and water grabs in Mali take on an utmost importance for the Libyans as well as the French. Keeping Mali out of the hands of the Taureg dissidents is imperative to maintaining the “soft imperialism” of North Atlantic hegemony in Africa by increasing the amount of land under control of the West for investment in “renewables”, for instance biofuel cultivation which currently takes up about 60% of all agricultural lands recently purchased in Africa.

Sasha Ross lives in Portland, Oregon where he directs the Cascadia Field Office of the Earth First! Journal, and works at local bio-diversity group, Bark. He is currently editing an anthology about the Global Land Grab.

This article is also being published at the Earth First! Newswire.

France’s Tragic Path in Mali

by BARRY LANDO

Paris.

With hundreds of French troops in Mali, and hundreds more headed that way, the U.S. among other countries, has also pledged some limited support: intelligence, communication, logistics, unarmed drones. But Washington obviously would like to keep a low profile. Washington, in fact, had been militating against just such a move, fearing that another Western intervention in an Arab land would provide another ideal recruiting target for erstwhile jihadis across the Muslim world, not to mention to provoking a spate of terrorist attacks in Europe.

In fact, though, it turns out that the U.S. has already played a major role in the crisis. It’s a devastating lesson of plans gone awry, another dreary footnote to the law of unintended consequences.

According to an excellent New York Times account, for the past several years, the United States has spent more than half a billion dollars in West Africa to counter the threat of radical Islam, America’s “most ambitious counterterrorism program ever across these vast, turbulent stretches of the Sahara.”

The aim of the program was that, rather than rely on the U.S. and its allies to combat Islamic terrorism in the region, the United States would train African troops to deal with the threat themselves.

To that end, for five years U.S. Special Forces trained Malian troops in a host of vital combat and counterterrorism skills. The outcome was considered by the Pentagon to be exemplary

But all that collapsed as the result of another unintended consequence– of the French-led intervention in Libya. After the fall of Khadhaffi, droves of battle-hardened, well-armed Islamic fighters and Tuareg tribesmen, who had been fighting in Libya, swarmed into Northern Mali.

Joined by other more radical Islamist forces, some linked to Al Qaeda, they had no trouble defeating the Malian army.

Why? Because of the defection to the rebels of several key Malian officers, who had been trained by the Americans.  Turns out that those officers, who were supposed to battle the rebels, were ethnic Tuaregs, the same nomads who were part of the rebellion.

According to the Times, The Tuareg commanders of three of the four Malian units in the north, at the height of the battle, decided to join the insurrection, taking weapons, valuable equipment and their American training with them. They were followed by about 1600 additional army defectors, demolishing the government’s hope of resisting the rebel attack.

In other words, it’s very likely that the French and their allies-to-come in Mali will be battling rebel troops trained by the U.S. Special Forces.

Caught totally by surprise by the whole ghastly mess, the American officials involved with the training program were reportedly flabbergasted.

There are obvious questions: How was it possible for the Special Forces and their Pentagon bosses and the CIA to have had such a total lack of understanding of the Malian officers they’d trained and the country they’d been operating in for over five years? But you could ask that same question about U.S. military actions in any number of countries over the past few decades, from Lebanon to Iraq to Afghanistan, where the most apt  comparison might be to releasing elephants into a porcelain shop.

Which leads to a more fundamental question: how is the U.S. to avoid similar catastrophic mistakes down the road? The Pentagon has recently announced that some 3,000 troops, no longer needed in Afghanistan, have been reassigned to work with the local military in 35 countries across Africa–to deal with the threat of Al Qaeda-linked terrorism.

Sounds just like what was going on in Mali.

But does anyone really think the U.S. and its military will have a better understanding of the myriad forces, tribes, religions, governments, legal and illicit financial interests struggling for power and influence in those countries than it did in Mali?

Or in Iraq, Or Afghanistan or Iran or Somalia or Lebanon, or Vietnam or Cambodia.

And has France now embarked down the same tragic path?

Barry M. Lando, a graduate of Harvard and Columbia University, spent 25 years as an award-winning investigative producer with 60 Minutes. His latest book is “Web of Deceit: The History of Western Complicity in Iraq, from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush.” Lando is currently completing a novel, “The Watchman’s File”, concerning Israel’s most closely guarded secret (it’s not the bomb.) He can be reached through his blog.