Δευτέρα, Ιουλίου 31, 2006

Jihad vs. McWorld

The two axial principles of our age—tribalism and globalism—clash at every point except one: they may both be threatening to democracy

by Benjamin R. Barber

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J ust beyond the horizon of current events lie two possible political futures—both bleak, neither democratic. The first is a retribalization of large swaths of humankind by war and bloodshed: a threatened Lebanonization of national states in which culture is pitted against culture, people against people, tribe against tribe—a Jihad in the name of a hundred narrowly conceived faiths against every kind of interdependence, every kind of artificial social cooperation and civic mutuality. The second is being borne in on us by the onrush of economic and ecological forces that demand integration and uniformity and that mesmerize the world with fast music, fast computers, and fast food—with MTV, Macintosh, and McDonald's, pressing nations into one commercially homogenous global network: one McWorld tied together by technology, ecology, communications, and commerce. The planet is falling precipitantly apart AND coming reluctantly together at the very same moment.

These two tendencies are sometimes visible in the same countries at the same instant: thus Yugoslavia, clamoring just recently to join the New Europe, is exploding into fragments; India is trying to live up to its reputation as the world's largest integral democracy while powerful new fundamentalist parties like the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, along with nationalist assassins, are imperiling its hard-won unity. States are breaking up or joining up: the Soviet Union has disappeared almost overnight, its parts forming new unions with one another or with like-minded nationalities in neighboring states. The old interwar national state based on territory and political sovereignty looks to be a mere transitional development.

The tendencies of what I am here calling the forces of Jihad and the forces of McWorld operate with equal strength in opposite directions, the one driven by parochial hatreds, the other by universalizing markets, the one re-creating ancient subnational and ethnic borders from within, the other making national borders porous from without. They have one thing in common: neither offers much hope to citizens looking for practical ways to govern themselves democratically. If the global future is to pit Jihad's centrifugal whirlwind against McWorld's centripetal black hole, the outcome is unlikely to be democratic—or so I will argue.

McWorld, or the Globalization of Politics

Four imperatives make up the dynamic of McWorld: a market imperative, a resource imperative, an information-technology imperative, and an ecological imperative. By shrinking the world and diminishing the salience of national borders, these imperatives have in combination achieved a considerable victory over factiousness and particularism, and not least of all over their most virulent traditional form—nationalism. It is the realists who are now Europeans, the utopians who dream nostalgically of a resurgent England or Germany, perhaps even a resurgent Wales or Saxony. Yesterday's wishful cry for one world has yielded to the reality of McWorld.

THE MARKET IMPERATIVE. Marxist and Leninist theories of imperialism assumed that the quest for ever-expanding markets would in time compel nation-based capitalist economies to push against national boundaries in search of an international economic imperium. Whatever else has happened to the scientistic predictions of Marxism, in this domain they have proved farsighted. All national economies are now vulnerable to the inroads of larger, transnational markets within which trade is free, currencies are convertible, access to banking is open, and contracts are enforceable under law. In Europe, Asia, Africa, the South Pacific, and the Americas such markets are eroding national sovereignty and giving rise to entities—international banks, trade associations, transnational lobbies like OPEC and Greenpeace, world news services like CNN and the BBC, and multinational corporations that increasingly lack a meaningful national identity—that neither reflect nor respect nationhood as an organizing or regulative principle.

The market imperative has also reinforced the quest for international peace and stability, requisites of an efficient international economy. Markets are enemies of parochialism, isolation, fractiousness, war. Market psychology attenuates the psychology of ideological and religious cleavages and assumes a concord among producers and consumers—categories that ill fit narrowly conceived national or religious cultures. Shopping has little tolerance for blue laws, whether dictated by pub-closing British paternalism, Sabbath-observing Jewish Orthodox fundamentalism, or no-Sunday-liquor-sales Massachusetts puritanism. In the context of common markets, international law ceases to be a vision of justice and becomes a workaday framework for getting things done—enforcing contracts, ensuring that governments abide by deals, regulating trade and currency relations, and so forth.

Common markets demand a common language, as well as a common currency, and they produce common behaviors of the kind bred by cosmopolitan city life everywhere. Commercial pilots, computer programmers, international bankers, media specialists, oil riggers, entertainment celebrities, ecology experts, demographers, accountants, professors, athletes—these compose a new breed of men and women for whom religion, culture, and nationality can seem only marginal elements in a working identity. Although sociologists of everyday life will no doubt continue to distinguish a Japanese from an American mode, shopping has a common signature throughout the world. Cynics might even say that some of the recent revolutions in Eastern Europe have had as their true goal not liberty and the right to vote but well-paying jobs and the right to shop (although the vote is proving easier to acquire than consumer goods). The market imperative is, then, plenty powerful; but, notwithstanding some of the claims made for "democratic capitalism," it is not identical with the democratic imperative.

THE RESOURCE IMPERATIVE. Democrats once dreamed of societies whose political autonomy rested firmly on economic independence. The Athenians idealized what they called autarky, and tried for a while to create a way of life simple and austere enough to make the polis genuinely self-sufficient. To be free meant to be independent of any other community or polis. Not even the Athenians were able to achieve autarky, however: human nature, it turns out, is dependency. By the time of Pericles, Athenian politics was inextricably bound up with a flowering empire held together by naval power and commerce—an empire that, even as it appeared to enhance Athenian might, ate away at Athenian independence and autarky. Master and slave, it turned out, were bound together by mutual insufficiency.

The dream of autarky briefly engrossed nineteenth-century America as well, for the underpopulated, endlessly bountiful land, the cornucopia of natural resources, and the natural barriers of a continent walled in by two great seas led many to believe that America could be a world unto itself. Given this past, it has been harder for Americans than for most to accept the inevitability of interdependence. But the rapid depletion of resources even in a country like ours, where they once seemed inexhaustible, and the maldistribution of arable soil and mineral resources on the planet, leave even the wealthiest societies ever more resource-dependent and many other nations in permanently desperate straits.

Every nation, it turns out, needs something another nation has; some nations have almost nothing they need.

THE INFORMATION-TECHNOLOGY IMPERATIVE. Enlightenment science and the technologies derived from it are inherently universalizing. They entail a quest for descriptive principles of general application, a search for universal solutions to particular problems, and an unswerving embrace of objectivity and impartiality.

Scientific progress embodies and depends on open communication, a common discourse rooted in rationality, collaboration, and an easy and regular flow and exchange of information. Such ideals can be hypocritical covers for power-mongering by elites, and they may be shown to be wanting in many other ways, but they are entailed by the very idea of science and they make science and globalization practical allies.

Business, banking, and commerce all depend on information flow and are facilitated by new communication technologies. The hardware of these technologies tends to be systemic and integrated—computer, television, cable, satellite, laser, fiber-optic, and microchip technologies combining to create a vast interactive communications and information network that can potentially give every person on earth access to every other person, and make every datum, every byte, available to every set of eyes. If the automobile was, as George Ball once said (when he gave his blessing to a Fiat factory in the Soviet Union during the Cold War), "an ideology on four wheels," then electronic telecommunication and information systems are an ideology at 186,000 miles per second—which makes for a very small planet in a very big hurry. Individual cultures speak particular languages; commerce and science increasingly speak English; the whole world speaks logarithms and binary mathematics.

Moreover, the pursuit of science and technology asks for, even compels, open societies. Satellite footprints do not respect national borders; telephone wires penetrate the most closed societies. With photocopying and then fax machines having infiltrated Soviet universities and samizdat literary circles in the eighties, and computer modems having multiplied like rabbits in communism's bureaucratic warrens thereafter, glasnost could not be far behind. In their social requisites, secrecy and science are enemies.

The new technology's software is perhaps even more globalizing than its hardware. The information arm of international commerce's sprawling body reaches out and touches distinct nations and parochial cultures, and gives them a common face chiseled in Hollywood, on Madison Avenue, and in Silicon Valley. Throughout the 1980s one of the most-watched television programs in South Africa was The Cosby Show. The demise of apartheid was already in production. Exhibitors at the 1991 Cannes film festival expressed growing anxiety over the "homogenization" and "Americanization" of the global film industry when, for the third year running, American films dominated the awards ceremonies. America has dominated the world's popular culture for much longer, and much more decisively. In November of 1991 Switzerland's once insular culture boasted best-seller lists featuring Terminator 2 as the No. 1 movie, Scarlett as the No. 1 book, and Prince's Diamonds and Pearls as the No. 1 record album. No wonder the Japanese are buying Hollywood film studios even faster than Americans are buying Japanese television sets. This kind of software supremacy may in the long term be far more important than hardware superiority, because culture has become more potent than armaments. What is the power of the Pentagon compared with Disneyland? Can the Sixth Fleet keep up with CNN? McDonald's in Moscow and Coke in China will do more to create a global culture than military colonization ever could. It is less the goods than the brand names that do the work, for they convey life-style images that alter perception and challenge behavior. They make up the seductive software of McWorld's common (at times much too common) soul.

Yet in all this high-tech commercial world there is nothing that looks particularly democratic. It lends itself to surveillance as well as liberty, to new forms of manipulation and covert control as well as new kinds of participation, to skewed, unjust market outcomes as well as greater productivity. The consumer society and the open society are not quite synonymous. Capitalism and democracy have a relationship, but it is something less than a marriage. An efficient free market after all requires that consumers be free to vote their dollars on competing goods, not that citizens be free to vote their values and beliefs on competing political candidates and programs. The free market flourished in junta-run Chile, in military-governed Taiwan and Korea, and, earlier, in a variety of autocratic European empires as well as their colonial possessions.

THE ECOLOGICAL IMPERATIVE. The impact of globalization on ecology is a cliche even to world leaders who ignore it. We know well enough that the German forests can be destroyed by Swiss and Italians driving gas-guzzlers fueled by leaded gas. We also know that the planet can be asphyxiated by greenhouse gases because Brazilian farmers want to be part of the twentieth century and are burning down tropical rain forests to clear a little land to plough, and because Indonesians make a living out of converting their lush jungle into toothpicks for fastidious Japanese diners, upsetting the delicate oxygen balance and in effect puncturing our global lungs. Yet this ecological consciousness has meant not only greater awareness but also greater inequality, as modernized nations try to slam the door behind them, saying to developing nations, "The world cannot afford your modernization; ours has wrung it dry!"

Each of the four imperatives just cited is transnational, transideological, and transcultural. Each applies impartially to Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists; to democrats and totalitarians; to capitalists and socialists. The Enlightenment dream of a universal rational society has to a remarkable degree been realized—but in a form that is commercialized, homogenized, depoliticized, bureaucratized, and, of course, radically incomplete, for the movement toward McWorld is in competition with forces of global breakdown, national dissolution, and centrifugal corruption. These forces, working in the opposite direction, are the essence of what I call Jihad.

Jihad, or the Lebanonization of the World

OPEC, the World Bank, the United Nations, the International Red Cross, the multinational corporation...there are scores of institutions that reflect globalization. But they often appear as ineffective reactors to the world's real actors: national states and, to an ever greater degree, subnational factions in permanent rebellion against uniformity and integration—even the kind represented by universal law and justice. The headlines feature these players regularly: they are cultures, not countries; parts, not wholes; sects, not religions; rebellious factions and dissenting minorities at war not just with globalism but with the traditional nation-state. Kurds, Basques, Puerto Ricans, Ossetians, East Timoreans, Quebecois, the Catholics of Northern Ireland, Abkhasians, Kurile Islander Japanese, the Zulus of Inkatha, Catalonians, Tamils, and, of course, Palestinians—people without countries, inhabiting nations not their own, seeking smaller worlds within borders that will seal them off from modernity.

A powerful irony is at work here. Nationalism was once a force of integration and unification, a movement aimed at bringing together disparate clans, tribes, and cultural fragments under new, assimilationist flags. But as Ortega y Gasset noted more than sixty years ago, having won its victories, nationalism changed its strategy. In the 1920s, and again today, it is more often a reactionary and divisive force, pulverizing the very nations it once helped cement together. The force that creates nations is "inclusive," Ortega wrote in The Revolt of the Masses. "In periods of consolidation, nationalism has a positive value, and is a lofty standard. But in Europe everything is more than consolidated, and nationalism is nothing but a mania..."

This mania has left the post-Cold War world smoldering with hot wars; the international scene is little more unified than it was at the end of the Great War, in Ortega's own time. There were more than thirty wars in progress last year, most of them ethnic, racial, tribal, or religious in character, and the list of unsafe regions doesn't seem to be getting any shorter. Some new world order!

The aim of many of these small-scale wars is to redraw boundaries, to implode states and resecure parochial identities: to escape McWorld's dully insistent imperatives. The mood is that of Jihad: war not as an instrument of policy but as an emblem of identity, an expression of community, an end in itself. Even where there is no shooting war, there is fractiousness, secession, and the quest for ever smaller communities. Add to the list of dangerous countries those at risk: In Switzerland and Spain, Jurassian and Basque separatists still argue the virtues of ancient identities, sometimes in the language of bombs. Hyperdisintegration in the former Soviet Union may well continue unabated—not just a Ukraine independent from the Soviet Union but a Bessarabian Ukraine independent from the Ukrainian republic; not just Russia severed from the defunct union but Tatarstan severed from Russia. Yugoslavia makes even the disunited, ex-Soviet, nonsocialist republics that were once the Soviet Union look integrated, its sectarian fatherlands springing up within factional motherlands like weeds within weeds within weeds. Kurdish independence would threaten the territorial integrity of four Middle Eastern nations. Well before the current cataclysm Soviet Georgia made a claim for autonomy from the Soviet Union, only to be faced with its Ossetians (164,000 in a republic of 5.5 million) demanding their own self-determination within Georgia. The Abkhasian minority in Georgia has followed suit. Even the good will established by Canada's once promising Meech Lake protocols is in danger, with Francophone Quebec again threatening the dissolution of the federation. In South Africa the emergence from apartheid was hardly achieved when friction between Inkatha's Zulus and the African National Congress's tribally identified members threatened to replace Europeans' racism with an indigenous tribal war. After thirty years of attempted integration using the colonial language (English) as a unifier, Nigeria is now playing with the idea of linguistic multiculturalism—which could mean the cultural breakup of the nation into hundreds of tribal fragments. Even Saddam Hussein has benefited from the threat of internal Jihad, having used renewed tribal and religious warfare to turn last season's mortal enemies into reluctant allies of an Iraqi nationhood that he nearly destroyed.

The passing of communism has torn away the thin veneer of internationalism (workers of the world unite!) to reveal ethnic prejudices that are not only ugly and deep-seated but increasingly murderous. Europe's old scourge, anti-Semitism, is back with a vengeance, but it is only one of many antagonisms. It appears all too easy to throw the historical gears into reverse and pass from a Communist dictatorship back into a tribal state.

Among the tribes, religion is also a battlefield. ("Jihad" is a rich word whose generic meaning is "struggle"—usually the struggle of the soul to avert evil. Strictly applied to religious war, it is used only in reference to battles where the faith is under assault, or battles against a government that denies the practice of Islam. My use here is rhetorical, but does follow both journalistic practice and history.) Remember the Thirty Years War? Whatever forms of Enlightenment universalism might once have come to grace such historically related forms of monotheism as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, in many of their modern incarnations they are parochial rather than cosmopolitan, angry rather than loving, proselytizing rather than ecumenical, zealous rather than rationalist, sectarian rather than deistic, ethnocentric rather than universalizing. As a result, like the new forms of hypernationalism, the new expressions of religious fundamentalism are fractious and pulverizing, never integrating. This is religion as the Crusaders knew it: a battle to the death for souls that if not saved will be forever lost.

The atmospherics of Jihad have resulted in a breakdown of civility in the name of identity, of comity in the name of community. International relations have sometimes taken on the aspect of gang war—cultural turf battles featuring tribal factions that were supposed to be sublimated as integral parts of large national, economic, postcolonial, and constitutional entities.

The Darkening Future of Democracy

These rather melodramatic tableaux vivants do not tell the whole story, however. For all their defects, Jihad and McWorld have their attractions. Yet, to repeat and insist, the attractions are unrelated to democracy. Neither McWorld nor Jihad is remotely democratic in impulse. Neither needs democracy; neither promotes democracy.

McWorld does manage to look pretty seductive in a world obsessed with Jihad. It delivers peace, prosperity, and relative unity—if at the cost of independence, community, and identity (which is generally based on difference). The primary political values required by the global market are order and tranquillity, and freedom—as in the phrases "free trade," "free press," and "free love." Human rights are needed to a degree, but not citizenship or participation—and no more social justice and equality than are necessary to promote efficient economic production and consumption. Multinational corporations sometimes seem to prefer doing business with local oligarchs, inasmuch as they can take confidence from dealing with the boss on all crucial matters. Despots who slaughter their own populations are no problem, so long as they leave markets in place and refrain from making war on their neighbors (Saddam Hussein's fatal mistake). In trading partners, predictability is of more value than justice.

The Eastern European revolutions that seemed to arise out of concern for global democratic values quickly deteriorated into a stampede in the general direction of free markets and their ubiquitous, television-promoted shopping malls. East Germany's Neues Forum, that courageous gathering of intellectuals, students, and workers which overturned the Stalinist regime in Berlin in 1989, lasted only six months in Germany's mini-version of McWorld. Then it gave way to money and markets and monopolies from the West. By the time of the first all-German elections, it could scarcely manage to secure three percent of the vote. Elsewhere there is growing evidence that glasnost will go and perestroika—defined as privatization and an opening of markets to Western bidders—will stay. So understandably anxious are the new rulers of Eastern Europe and whatever entities are forged from the residues of the Soviet Union to gain access to credit and markets and technology—McWorld's flourishing new currencies—that they have shown themselves willing to trade away democratic prospects in pursuit of them: not just old totalitarian ideologies and command-economy production models but some possible indigenous experiments with a third way between capitalism and socialism, such as economic cooperatives and employee stock-ownership plans, both of which have their ardent supporters in the East.

Jihad delivers a different set of virtues: a vibrant local identity, a sense of community, solidarity among kinsmen, neighbors, and countrymen, narrowly conceived. But it also guarantees parochialism and is grounded in exclusion. Solidarity is secured through war against outsiders. And solidarity often means obedience to a hierarchy in governance, fanaticism in beliefs, and the obliteration of individual selves in the name of the group. Deference to leaders and intolerance toward outsiders (and toward "enemies within") are hallmarks of tribalism—hardly the attitudes required for the cultivation of new democratic women and men capable of governing themselves. Where new democratic experiments have been conducted in retribalizing societies, in both Europe and the Third World, the result has often been anarchy, repression, persecution, and the coming of new, noncommunist forms of very old kinds of despotism. During the past year, Havel's velvet revolution in Czechoslovakia was imperiled by partisans of "Czechland" and of Slovakia as independent entities. India seemed little less rent by Sikh, Hindu, Muslim, and Tamil infighting than it was immediately after the British pulled out, more than forty years ago.

To the extent that either McWorld or Jihad has a NATURAL politics, it has turned out to be more of an antipolitics. For McWorld, it is the antipolitics of globalism: bureaucratic, technocratic, and meritocratic, focused (as Marx predicted it would be) on the administration of things—with people, however, among the chief things to be administered. In its politico-economic imperatives McWorld has been guided by laissez-faire market principles that privilege efficiency, productivity, and beneficence at the expense of civic liberty and self-government.

For Jihad, the antipolitics of tribalization has been explicitly antidemocratic: one-party dictatorship, government by military junta, theocratic fundamentalism—often associated with a version of the Fuhrerprinzip that empowers an individual to rule on behalf of a people. Even the government of India, struggling for decades to model democracy for a people who will soon number a billion, longs for great leaders; and for every Mahatma Gandhi, Indira Gandhi, or Rajiv Gandhi taken from them by zealous assassins, the Indians appear to seek a replacement who will deliver them from the lengthy travail of their freedom.

The Confederal Option

How can democracy be secured and spread in a world whose primary tendencies are at best indifferent to it (McWorld) and at worst deeply antithetical to it (Jihad)? My guess is that globalization will eventually vanquish retribalization. The ethos of material "civilization" has not yet encountered an obstacle it has been unable to thrust aside. Ortega may have grasped in the 1920s a clue to our own future in the coming millennium.

"Everyone sees the need of a new principle of life. But as always happens in similar crises—some people attempt to save the situation by an artificial intensification of the very principle which has led to decay. This is the meaning of the 'nationalist' outburst of recent years....things have always gone that way. The last flare, the longest; the last sigh, the deepest. On the very eve of their disappearance there is an intensification of frontiers—military and economic."

Jihad may be a last deep sigh before the eternal yawn of McWorld. On the other hand, Ortega was not exactly prescient; his prophecy of peace and internationalism came just before blitzkrieg, world war, and the Holocaust tore the old order to bits. Yet democracy is how we remonstrate with reality, the rebuke our aspirations offer to history. And if retribalization is inhospitable to democracy, there is nonetheless a form of democratic government that can accommodate parochialism and communitarianism, one that can even save them from their defects and make them more tolerant and participatory: decentralized participatory democracy. And if McWorld is indifferent to democracy, there is nonetheless a form of democratic government that suits global markets passably well—representative government in its federal or, better still, confederal variation.

With its concern for accountability, the protection of minorities, and the universal rule of law, a confederalized representative system would serve the political needs of McWorld as well as oligarchic bureaucratism or meritocratic elitism is currently doing. As we are already beginning to see, many nations may survive in the long term only as confederations that afford local regions smaller than "nations" extensive jurisdiction. Recommended reading for democrats of the twenty-first century is not the U.S. Constitution or the French Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen but the Articles of Confederation, that suddenly pertinent document that stitched together the thirteen American colonies into what then seemed a too loose confederation of independent states but now appears a new form of political realism, as veterans of Yeltsin's new Russia and the new Europe created at Maastricht will attest.

By the same token, the participatory and direct form of democracy that engages citizens in civic activity and civic judgment and goes well beyond just voting and accountability—the system I have called "strong democracy"—suits the political needs of decentralized communities as well as theocratic and nationalist party dictatorships have done. Local neighborhoods need not be democratic, but they can be. Real democracy has flourished in diminutive settings: the spirit of liberty, Tocqueville said, is local. Participatory democracy, if not naturally apposite to tribalism, has an undeniable attractiveness under conditions of parochialism.

Democracy in any of these variations will, however, continue to be obstructed by the undemocratic and antidemocratic trends toward uniformitarian globalism and intolerant retribalization which I have portrayed here. For democracy to persist in our brave new McWorld, we will have to commit acts of conscious political will—a possibility, but hardly a probability, under these conditions. Political will requires much more than the quick fix of the transfer of institutions. Like technology transfer, institution transfer rests on foolish assumptions about a uniform world of the kind that once fired the imagination of colonial administrators. Spread English justice to the colonies by exporting wigs. Let an East Indian trading company act as the vanguard to Britain's free parliamentary institutions. Today's well-intentioned quick-fixers in the National Endowment for Democracy and the Kennedy School of Government, in the unions and foundations and universities zealously nurturing contacts in Eastern Europe and the Third World, are hoping to democratize by long distance. Post Bulgaria a parliament by first-class mail. Fed Ex the Bill of Rights to Sri Lanka. Cable Cambodia some common law.

Yet Eastern Europe has already demonstrated that importing free political parties, parliaments, and presses cannot establish a democratic civil society; imposing a free market may even have the opposite effect. Democracy grows from the bottom up and cannot be imposed from the top down. Civil society has to be built from the inside out. The institutional superstructure comes last. Poland may become democratic, but then again it may heed the Pope, and prefer to found its politics on its Catholicism, with uncertain consequences for democracy. Bulgaria may become democratic, but it may prefer tribal war. The former Soviet Union may become a democratic confederation, or it may just grow into an anarchic and weak conglomeration of markets for other nations' goods and services.

Democrats need to seek out indigenous democratic impulses. There is always a desire for self-government, always some expression of participation, accountability, consent, and representation, even in traditional hierarchical societies. These need to be identified, tapped, modified, and incorporated into new democratic practices with an indigenous flavor. The tortoises among the democratizers may ultimately outlive or outpace the hares, for they will have the time and patience to explore conditions along the way, and to adapt their gait to changing circumstances. Tragically, democracy in a hurry often looks something like France in 1794 or China in 1989.

It certainly seems possible that the most attractive democratic ideal in the face of the brutal realities of Jihad and the dull realities of McWorld will be a confederal union of semi-autonomous communities smaller than nation-states, tied together into regional economic associations and markets larger than nation-states—participatory and self-determining in local matters at the bottom, representative and accountable at the top. The nation-state would play a diminished role, and sovereignty would lose some of its political potency. The Green movement adage "Think globally, act locally" would actually come to describe the conduct of politics.

This vision reflects only an ideal, however—one that is not terribly likely to be realized. Freedom, Jean-Jacques Rousseau once wrote, is a food easy to eat but hard to digest. Still, democracy has always played itself out against the odds. And democracy remains both a form of coherence as binding as McWorld and a secular faith potentially as inspiriting as Jihad.


The URL for this page is http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/199203/barber.

Το αραβικό ζήτημα

Του ΠΕΡΙΚΛΗ ΚΟΡΟΒΕΣΗ

ΤΟ ΡΑΔΙΟΦΩΝΟ ΛΥΧΝΑΡΙ ΔΙΠΛΑ ΣΤΟΥΣ "ΓΙΑΤΡΟΥΣ ΚΑΡΔΙΑΣ"

Η συγκέντρωση φαρμάκων συνεχίζεται...

Το Ραδιόφωνο Λυχνάρι (91.4) στηρίζοντας τα μέλη της μη-κυβερνητικής ανθρωπιστικής οργάνωσης «ΓΙΑΤΡΟΙ ΚΑΡΔΙΑΣ» σας καλεί να βοηθήσετε άμεσα στη συγκέντρωση φαρμακευτικού υλικού το οποίο θα χρησιμοποιηθεί για τα θύματα της αιματηρής εμπόλεμης κρίσης στο Λίβανο. Ήδη έχει συγκεντρωθεί αρκετό υλικό το οποίο παραδόθηκε στην οργάνωση που αυτές τις μέρες βρίσκεται στη δεύτερη αποστολή της στο Λίβανο.

Η πρόσκληση-έκκληση για όλους τους συμπολίτες μας ισχύει, αφού οι ανάγκες είναι τεράστιες.

Συγκεκριμένα τα υλικά που χρειάζονται είναι: ελαστικοί επίδεσμοι, γάζες απλές-γάζες fucidin , τοπικά αντισηπτικά (και pulvo), σύριγγες, κολλύρια αντιβίωση, παυσίπονα σε χάπια (όχι ασπιρίνες), αντιβίωση για ενήλικες σε δισκία και κάψουλες, παιδική αντιβίωση σε χάπια, σιρόπια και αλοιφές.

Το φαρμακευτικό υλικό συγκεντρώνεται στα γραφεία του Ραδιοφώνου Λυχνάρι Αθηνών 109 (Ανάληψη), από τις 8 το πρωί ως τις 9 το βράδυ. (τηλ. 22410 77130)

Σημειώνουμε ότι η Αντιπρόεδρος κα. Ελένη Σωτηρίου φιλοξενήθηκε για δεύτερη φορά στην εκπομπή Art Attack της παραγωγού Πόλυς Χατζημάρκου, την Τρίτη 25 Ιουλίου, τονίζοντας τη σημασία της προσφοράς και ευχαριστώντας τους συμπολίτες μας που ανταποκρίθηκαν άμεσα. Σήμερα στην εκπομπή της Χατζημάρκου (5-7 μ.μ.), η κυρία Σωτηρίου μιλάει τηλεφωνικά από το Λίβανο.

Στην προσπάθεια αυτή, ας βοηθήσουμε όλοι...



Σας Ευχαριστούμε

για την πολύτιμη συνεργασία σας

H πολιτική διοξίνη

"Εκατό φορές πάνω από το όριο, είναι η πολιτική διοξίνη με την οποία δηλητηρίασαν τη ζωή των Θεσσαλονικέων, οι διοικούντες τη Νομαρχία και το Δήμο Θεσσαλονίκης. Η απάθεια και η απόλυτη αδιαφορία για τα κοινά με τα οποία εμπότισαν την καθημερινότητα των πολιτών, είναι το καρκίνωμα που η «Πρωτοβουλία για τη Θεσσαλονίκη» και ο υποψήφιος Δήμαρχος Γιάννης Μπουτάρης επιχειρούν ν’ ανατρέψουν. Οι Ταγαράδες είναι το αποτέλεσμα της μη περιβαλλοντικής πολιτικής που μέχρι σήμερα άσκησαν.

Είναι αδιανόητη η άποψη του δημάρχου Θεσσαλονίκης ότι άλλοι έχουν τις θεσμικές αρμοδιότητες για την κατάσταση στους Ταγαράδες. Έτσι, από … φορέα σε φορέα , βρέθηκε στο φορείο η υγεία των Θεσσαλονικέων !

Είναι προσβλητική για τη νοημοσύνη των Θεσσαλονικέων η δήλωση του νομάρχη ότι «αν το συμβάν δεν είχε τύχει στην προεκλογική περίοδο μπορεί να μην ασχολιόταν κανένας με το θέμα»! Εξ ιδίων κρίνει τα αλλότρια, παρά το γεγονός ότι σύμφωνα με τους ειδικούς επιστήμονες η έκλυση των διοξινών μπορεί να ανέρχεται και εκατό φορές πάνω από τα επιτρεπτά όρια.

Όσο για τις πολιτικές ηγεσίες των παρατάξεων που αποδέχονται στα ψηφοδέλτιά τους τη φυσική παρουσία υποψηφίων δημοτικών συμβούλων με τεράστιες ευθύνες για την «πληγή» των Ταγαράδων, περιμένουμε τις απαντήσεις τους επί των ερωτημάτων που θέσαμε ως Παράταξη, μέχρι τις 15 Σεπτεμβρίου.

Η «Πρωτοβουλία για τη Θεσσαλονίκη» θεωρεί ότι η συμμετοχή του Τεχνικού Επιμελητηρίου, του Α.Π.Θ. και άλλων επιστημονικών φορέων, αποτελεί το πρώτο βήμα για τη σύνταξη ολοκληρωμένου σχεδίου αντιμετώπισης ατυχημάτων σε χωματερές που όφειλε να έχει ήδη συντάξει στα 17 χρόνια λειτουργίας του ο Σύνδεσμος Ο.Τ.Α. Μείζονος Θεσσαλονίκης".

«Πρωτοβουλία για τη Θεσσαλονίκη»

Κυριακή, Ιουλίου 30, 2006

19η Ημέρα Πολέμου- Η σφαγή της Κανά

Η πλέον αιματηρή επίθεση
Αιματοχυσία αμάχων σε νέα ισραηλινή επιδρομή στο νότιο Λίβανο


ΣΤΗΝ ΚΑΝΑ ΔΕΝ ΓΙΝΟΝΤΙΑ ΠΙΑ ΘΑΥΜΑΤΑ » antiPoihsis


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Sensitive Pictures >>

Η μαμή του Τρόμου και ο "βομβαρδισμός" της Θεσσαλονίκης

Η σφαγή των Παλαιστινίων στα προσφυγικά στρατόπεδα Σάμπρα και Σατίλα το 1982 οδήγησε στη «γέννηση» της Χεζμπολάχ…

Η 19μερη σφαγή των Λιβανέζων ποιο «τέρας» θα γεννήσει;

Και ποιος τελικά είναι η πραγματική «μαμή» των «τρομοκρατών»;



Το 1982 έφεραν τη Χεζμπολάχ, το 1987 τη Χαμάς, το 2006 τι;

...

Το ίδιο ακριβώς «επιχείρημα», σχεδόν σε «καρμπόν», το διάβασα αρκετές φορές τις τελευταίες ημέρες: «Δηλαδή εμείς –οι Ελληνες- τι θα κάναμε εάν οι γείτονές μας, οι Σκοπιανοί, διεκδικούσαν την Μακεδονία και άρχιζαν να βομβαρδίζουν με «κατιούσα» τη Θεσσαλονίκη;».

Το διατύπωσε πρώτος ο Ανδριανόπουλος και έπιασαν να το κοπιάρουν όλοι οι νεόκοποι, ανεγκέφαλοι απολογητές της Ηγεμονίας και απροκάλυπτοι υπερασπιστές του «δίκαιου πολέμου» των Ισραηλινών, μαζί τους κι ο αρχιτέκτονας Κωνσταντινίδης στο ΒΗΜΑ της ΚΥΡΙΑΚΗΣ (που πολλά δάκρυα χύνει σήμερα για το πεσμένο άγαλμα του Τρούμαν –τρομάρα του!).
Το διάβασαν πέντε-δέκα αποχαυνωμένα «γαλαζο-φαιά» ανδράποδα και το έκαναν «σημαία» μαζί με ένα πλήθος άλλων ανοησιών που μηρυκάζουν ως «ορθολογικοί» και «ψύχραιμοι» παρατηρητές και αναλυτές των τεκταινόμενων στον Κόσμο.

Ξεχνούν βέβαια να δώσουν την απάντηση. Όχι επειδή δεν την ξέρουν -32 χρόνια ΜΟΝΟ έχουν περάσει, διάολε, μνήμη χρυσόψαρου έχουν;
Ότι κάναμε και τότε!
Εάν οι πύραυλοι που «θα» βομβαρδίσουν τη Θεσσαλονίκη έχουν την επιγραφή “made in USA”, θα κάνουμε ψιλοκομμένο τουμπεκί! Αυτή είναι η μία απάντηση!

Η άλλη είναι αυτή που στην πραγματικότητα δεν τολμούν να πουν: η Μακεδονία (και η Θεσσαλονίκη) ανήκουν εδώ και 8-9 χρόνια, ούτως ή άλλως, στην KFOR. Οπότε φίδι κολοβό που θα έτρωγε τους Σκοπιανούς πριν καν σκεφτούν να «μας» βομβαρδίσουν με κάτι άλλο εκτός από παγωτά-πυραύλους.

Ή μήπως δεν ξέρουν ότι και εμείς και οι σκοπιανοί ανήκουμε στη Μεγάλη Συμμαχία των Προθύμων;
(Χωρίς φυσικά να έχουμε τα προνόμια και τη δυνατότητα ανάληψης πρωτοβουλιών άλλων Συμμάχων όπως π.χ. του Ισραήλ)

Open Lebanon

Σάββατο, Ιουλίου 29, 2006

Το Ισραήλ χρησιμοποιεί παράνομα όπλα

Blogs vs. Bombs

Νομίζω ότι ο πρώτος από τους έλληνες blogger που έγραψε για τα «blogs του Πολέμου» ήταν το Ιστολόγιο (Από τον Λίβανο (και την Γάζα)), ύστερα ήταν ο Αστέρης με εκείνο το Τα blogs για το Λίβανο. Ή τουλάχιστον ήταν αυτά τα πρώτα που διάβασα επιστρέφοντας από το ταξίδι.

Μέσω αυτών των blogs διάβασα και τη σχετική αρθογραφία στις ξένες εφημερίδες όπως το Blogs vs. Bombs, της νοτιοαφρικανικής Mail & Guardian αλλά και εκτενή απανθίσματα από τη λιβανέζικη μπλογκόσφαιρα σχετικά με τον πόλεμο στο Global Voices Online.

Σχετικά post έχουν δημοσιεύσει τις τελευταίες ημέρες και οι (αντιγράφω από τον Αστέρη):

Θοδωρής Γούτας (1, 2, 3), Argos (1, 2, 3, 4), ttallou (1, 2), CrazyMonkey, AR_LAV, newManifesto (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12), J95, Σπιτάκι (1, 2, 3), dogblogger (1, 2, 3, 4), ANemos (1, 2, 3), Diablog (1, 2, 3), Διπλωματικός Λαθρεπιβάτης, Reality Tape, Πάνος Ζέρβας, Οίστρος (1, 2, 3, 4) Γκάζι Καπλάνι, Buruburu, Tertuliano Máximo Afonso, Sraosha, kukuzelis, Voyager (1, 2, 3), Στάθης (1, 2, 3), McFly, Εργοτελίνα, kyrallina, Krotkaya, Θεωρείν, Ηλιοτρόπιο, Calle Drama (1, 2, 3, 4), fruit cake love (1, 2, 3), philos (1, 2), Ροδιά (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6), Μαύρος Γάτος (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 , 10, 11), Darthiir, M. Hulot, Μαριαλένα (1, 2), Κατερίνα, Νετρίνος (1, 2), System Intruder, Μάρκος Αυρήλιος, Δε μασάμε ρε (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), Skipper, Vjay, Κωνσταντίνα, Αδέσποτη (1, 2), Freeblogger, Ελένη Γεωργίου, candyblue, Τεκμήριο, Panic Room (1, 2), Κλέαρχος (1 , 2), lkrory21 (1, 2), Postnuclear Icehouse, Λύσιππος, drakouna, perperouna, Ελληνίδα, Trixxypixxy, Μούτρα, Nikant, Vista, Ντροπαλός, e-rooster

Σήμερα, 18 ημέρες μετά το ξέσπασμα του πολέμου στο Λίβανο, οι ελληνικές εφημερίδες ασχολούνται για πρώτη φορά με το θέμα. Η ΕΛΕΥΘΕΡΟΤΥΠΙΑ έχει μάλιστα στο σημερινό της φύλλο κι έναν σχετικό φάκελο με τίτλο: Ο ΠΟΛΕΜΟΣ ΣΤΟ ΔΙ@ΔΙΚΤΥΟ.

Νομίζω ότι μέσα από τα παραπάνω αξίζει κανείς να κρατήσει αυτά από το άρθρο της Ντάνι Βέργου:

«Πρόκειται ίσως για την ευρύτερη διατύπωση απόψεων μέσω Διαδικτύου στον πλανήτη. Ισραηλινοί, Παλαιστίνιοι και Λιβανέζοι, πολίτες, μερικοί δημοσιογράφοι και άλλοι παρατηρητές γράφουν και καταγράφουν την κρίση στη Μέση Ανατολή σε ηλεκτρονικά ημερολόγια ή ιστολόγια (blogs) και αναρτούν φωτογραφίες στο Διαδίκτυο.»

(…)

«Καλύτερο ρεπορτάζ και από τους κορυφαίους δημοσιογράφους εφημερίδας, ραδιοφώνου ή τηλεόρασης», γράφει η γαλλική «Le Monde» που ανακηρύσσει τους «Λιβανέζους bloggers» (lebanesebloggers.blogspot.com) και την «Αλήθεια Ειπωμένη Ωμά» (truthlaidbear.com) «καλύτερες πηγές ενημέρωσης του πολέμου». «Ούτε οι πιο έμπειροι από εμάς δεν θα κατάφερναν τόσο εύστοχα να ζωντανέψουν στα μάτια του αναγνώστη έναν πόλεμο», αναφέρει η «Washington Post», και οι «Times» του Λονδίνου συμφωνούν ότι «είναι ο πόλεμος με το πιο πλούσιο ρεπορτάζ και φωτορεπορτάζ, που δεν κάνουν δημοσιογράφοι αλλά απλοί πολίτες, αυτόπτες μάρτυρες».

(…)

«Οταν αυτός -που ζούμε- ο κύκλος άσκοπων θανάτων και καταστροφής κλείσει, όταν διαλυθεί ο θυμός, ίσως κρατήσουν οι άνθρωποι αυτοί -Λιβανέζοι και Ισραηλινοί- τις προσωπικές επαφές τους με "τον εχθρό". Σκεφτείτε τι θα σημαίνει εάν η επόμενη γενιά Λιβανέζων και Ισραηλινών πολιτικών και επιχειρησιακών ηγετών έχουν προσωπική γνώση του ανθρωπισμού του άλλου. Δεν θα ξεχάσουν ότι ακόμη και ενώ υπήρχε ένας πόλεμος σε εξέλιξη, ήταν σε θέση να μιλούν ο ένας στον άλλον και να εκφράζουν τα συναισθήματά τους. Δεν είναι τόσο εύκολο να σκοτώσεις κάποιον που γνωρίζεις. Μπορείς, όμως, να σκεφτείς να ξεκινήσεις μια κοινή προσπάθεια ανάπτυξης σε πολιτικό ή επιχειρηματικό επίπεδο με κάποιον από την άλλη πλευρά που γνωρίζεις ως άνθρωπο και όχι απλώς ως έναν "παλιό εχθρό"».



Φάκελος





Τετάρτη, Ιουλίου 26, 2006

Η Φρικτή Εκλογίκευση του Ηγεμόνα (ΙΙ)



Το Ισραήλ ΔΕΝ έχει πυρηνικά;

Οι Ινδίες;

Τα καθεστώτα του Πακιστάν και της Σαουδικής Αραβίας είναι δημοκρατικά;

«Το ηθικό και κανονιστικό ζήτημα που τίθεται εξαιτίας της «επιλεκτικότητας» των ανθρωπιστικών παρεμβάσεων, δεν εξαντλεί το πρόβλημα. Πράγματι, τα τελευταία δεκαπέντε χρόνια, καμιά απολύτως «ανθρωπιστική παρέμβαση» δεν αποτολμήθηκε και δεν συζητήθηκε ενάντια σε στρατηγικούς συμμάχους των ΗΠΑ και ενάντια στην εκπεφρασμένη τους βούληση. Ετσι όμως, όχι μόνον η αποτρεπιτκή δύναμη των αφηρημένων ανθρωπιστικών διακηρύξεων του ΟΗΕ καταλήγει να ισούται προς το μηδέν, αλλά η ιδιότητα του συμμάχου φαίνεται να αποτελεί επαρκή εγγύηση για την αναπαραγωγή της οποιασδήποτε αυθαιρεσίας και ασυδοσίας. Με αποτέλεσμα, οι μεν δυνάμει πολέμιοι της ηγεμονικής δύναμης να απειλούνται ανεξάρτητα από τις τυχόν κανονιστικές παραβιάσεις, οι δε σύμμαχοι να θεωρούν εαυτούς υπεράνω πάσης υπερεθνικής απειλής. Είναι πιθανό ότι σε κάποια τουλάχιστον φάση ο Σαντάμ και ο Μιλόσεβιτς (όπως άλλωστε και ο Νάσερ, ο Καντάφι και δεκάδες άλλοι «ταραξίες» στο παρελθόν) θα ήταν πρόθυμοι να διπραγματευθούν ένα μερικό έστω «εξανθρωπισμό» των καθεστώτων τους. Αντίθετα, το Ισραήλ, το Πακιστάν και η Σαουδική Αραβία θεωρούν αυτονόητο ότι βρίσκονατι σε κατάσταση εγγενώς απυρόβλητη. Με αυτή την έννοια, το συχνά προβαλλόμενο επιχείρημα ότι οι μερικές και επιλεκτικές ανθρωπιστικές παρεμβάσεις είναι καλύτερες από το τίποτα, είναι τουλάχιστον αμφίστομο. Μια οικουμενική έννομη τάξη, που καταλήγει να ενθαρρύνει την τυραννία των εκλεκτών, δεν είναι μόνον ηθικά κατάπτυστη αλλά και ιστορικά τυραννιογόνα».

Προς ένα Νόμιμο Μονοπώλιο Βίας

Πόλεμος και Ειρήνη

ΜΕΤΑ ΤΟ «ΤΕΛΟΣ ΤΗΣ ΙΣΤΟΡΙΑΣ»

Κωνσταντίνος Τσουκαλάς

Η Φρικτή Εκλογίκευση του Ηγεμόνα (I)

«Να ρίξουμε την αυταρχική ηγεσία του Αραφάτ στην Παλαιστίνη»

«Να χτυπήσουμε τους τρομοκράτες της Χαμάς»

«Να αποκατασταθούν δημοκρατικές συνθήκες στην Παλαιστίνη και να γίνουν εκλογές»

«Να ρίξουμε την εκλεγμένη κυβέρνηση της Χαμάς διότι είναι τρομοκράτες»

«Να χτυπήσουμε το Ιράκ πριν αποκτήσει πυρηνικά»

«Να ρίξουμε το καθεστώς του Σαντάμ και να αποκαταστήσουμε τη Δημοκρατία!»

«Να χτυπήσουμε το Ιράν πριν αποκτήσει πυρηνικά»

«Να ρίξουμε το καθεστώς των Μουλάδων και να αποκαταστήσουμε τη Δημοκρατία!»

«Να σχεδιάσουμε μια Νέα Μέση Ανατολή»

...

"Αυτός είναι ο διόλου τυχαίος, εκλεκτικός και τις περισσότερες φορές αδέξιος τρόπος με τον οποίο συνδυάζονται εκ πρώτης όψεως ασύμβατες μεταξύ τους επιχειρηματολογίες που επιχειρούν να δικαιώσουν τον προληπτικό πόλεμο ταυτοχρόνως στο όνομα της ασφάλειας και του ανθρωπισμού.

Πράγματι, όταν η ανάγκη οικουμενικής προστασίας εναντίον μιας εικαζόμενης «απειλής» δεν είναι δυνατόν να στοιχειοθετηθεί με επαρκή βεβαιότητα, «προστίθεται» το επιχείρημα της διαρκούς ευθύνης της διεθνούς κοινότητας να προστατεύσει τους χειμαζόμενους πληθυσμούς από την αυθαιρεσία των κυβερνήσεών τους.

Ετσι όμως, αντί να αλληλοενισχύονται, οι δύο εκλογικευτικές προσεγγίσεις αλληλοαναιρούνται. Από τη μια μεριά, σχετικοποιείται και αμβλύνεται το πανάρχαιο προαπαιτούμενο του Γκρότιους, ο οποίος απέκλειε τον προληπτικό πόλεμο αν δεν συνέτρεχε άμεση, παρούσα και αναμφισβήτητη επιθετική δράση ενάντια στον αναγκαστικά αμυνόμενο (De jure bellis ac pacis, 1625, Βιβλίο ΙΙ, κεφ. 22). Από την άλλη μεριά, παραμένει κατ’ ανάγκην ρευστό το ζήτημα των ποσοτικών, ποιοτικών και νομικών όρων που οφείλουν να συντρέχουν έτσι ώστε να τεκμηριώνεται η «ευθύνη προστασίας» των απειλούμενων προσώπων".

Προς ένα Νόμιμο Μονοπώλιο Βίας

Πόλεμος και Ειρήνη

ΜΕΤΑ ΤΟ «ΤΕΛΟΣ ΤΗΣ ΙΣΤΟΡΙΑΣ»

Κωνσταντίνος Τσουκαλάς



...




Δευτέρα, Ιουλίου 24, 2006

O Eξολοθρευτισμός

Exterminsm

Βλέπε (διάβαζε) Ε.Ρ. Thompson "Exterminism The Last Stage of Civilazation" και ακόμη το "Πόλεμος και Ειρήνη" του Κ. Τσουκαλά απ' όπου και το απόσπασμα:

"Ο νέος περί Πολέμου λόγος βρίσκεται εμπεπλεγμένος σε μια αδισώπητη ηθική αντίφαση: Απο τη στιγμή που η εκ του μακρόθεν επιτελούμενη μαζική εξόντωση των εχθρών, είτε είναι είτε δεν είναι τύποις ένοπλοι, αποτελεί αναπόσπαστο "οργανικό" μέρος της σύγχρονης ηγεμονικής στρατηγικής, είνια σαφές οτι το υπέρογκο "περιστασιακό τίμημα" των υπέρμετρων πολέμων θα πληρωθεί τελικώς απο όλους όσοι ανήκουν στην "υπο εξόντωσιν κοινωνία"."

(...)

"Είναι εντελώς χαρακτηριστικό οτι τα θύματα των πολέμων που διεξήχθησαν κατά την τελαυταία δεκαετία αποτελούνταν από αμάχους σε ποσοστό που υπερέβαινε τα 90% του συνόλου των απωλειών".

Το αντίστοιχο ποσοστό ήταν της τάξεως του 5% στον Α' Παγκόσμιο Πόλεμο και του 50% στον Β' Π.Π. (Simon Chesterman, Civilians in War)

Απολύτως σχετικό και το Post: Το συνεχές του άμαχου-μάχιμου (alberich)

Ποιος είναι ο Τρομοκράτης; » ΙΣΤΟΛΟΓΙΟΝ

Το Post του ΙΣΤΟΛΟΓΙΟΥ συμπληρώνεται θαυμάσια με το άρθρο Πόσο εύκολα ξεχνάμε τις σφαγές...
του ROBERT FISK ...
ΠΟΡΕΙΑ ΕΝΑΝΤΙΑ ΣΤΗ ΣΦΑΓΗ » Ομάδα ΡΗΓΜΑ

Τα blogs για το Λίβανο



Πέμπτη, Ιουλίου 13, 2006

Μέση Ανατολή "Ωρα Μηδέν" (πηγές)

Βομβάρδισαν το αεροδρόμιο της Βηρυτού και το υπουργείο Εξωτερικών στη Γάζα


...



Israel enforces blockade on Lebanon Reuters AlertNet
Israel widens Lebanon reprisals, 36 civilians die Reuters
Israeli shekel, stocks tumble on Lebanon fighting Reuters
Israel attacks Beirut international airport Pravda
Northern Israeli city hit by rockets from Lebanon Reuters
Beirut airport hit, Lebanon fires TVNZ
Israel, Lebanon trade fire Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Lebanon recalls its Ambassador to US Ya Libnan
US urges caution in Middle East ABC Online
US: Lebanese ambassador sent home Ynetnews...

Σε αποκλεισμό του Λιβάνου από αέρος και θαλάσσης προχωρά το Ισραήλ

Στα 75,74 δολάρια εκτινάχθηκε η τιμή του πετρελαίου λόγω της έντασης στη Μέση Ανατολή

Πράξη πολέμου για το Ισραήλ η απαγωγή των στρατιωτών στο Λίβανο (12/7/2006)

Δύο Ισραηλινοί στρατιώτες όμηροι της Χεζμπολάχ στο Λίβανο (12/7/2006)

Απειλές από τον Χανίγιε για τις ισραηλινές επιχειρήσεις στη Γάζα (11/7/2006)

Ανταλλαγή του Ισραηλινού στρατιώτη με Παλαιστίνιους κρατουμένους ζητά η Χαμάς (10/7/2006)

Στο χείλος της καταστροφής η Γάζα μετά τις αλλεπάλληλες ισραηλινές επιθέσεις (9/7/2006)

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Παλαιστινιακή Αρχή

Κυβέρνηση του Λιβάνου

Κυβέρνηση του Ισραήλ