| Disguised Fighters Target Government Bodyguards Iraqi police officials say a hit squad disguised in military uniforms has killed three brothers who worked as bodyguards for the government. online.wsj.com |
Chile's miners can thank God, but their leaders should show contrition | Hugh O'Shaughnessy Government officials and mine owners are using the 'spiritual fervour' of the rescue to hide their appalling safety recordPiety is part of daily life in Chile, as natural as the towering Andes mountains which cut the country off from the world along its eastern flank. The miners' reaction to their escape from the depths of the earth this week at Copiapó was no staged affair but merely what one would expect from tough Chilean workers doing a dangerous job in a dilapidated set of tunnels.Augusto Pinochet himself, at least in his early years, showed the piety he inherited from his devout mother Avelina, who was unlettered but had a ferociously strong will. When he damaged his knee in a road accident when he was six she vowed she would wear clothes coloured brown – the colour of the Virgin of Mount Carmel, patroness of Chile – for 15 years if he recovered and that he would do the same for 10 years, reduced to two years if he went into the army. And so it came about.In 1936 the young officer himself fixed an ex-voto plaque to the wall of a church in his native ValparaÃso in honour of the Virgin which bore the words.Thank you, mother mineSuccour me always,Ensign A PinochetThere was no indication that either the adolescent Pinochet or his mother were insincere or in bad faith in their devotions though in later years he defied the church and quietly blitzed it where he could when churchmen, as they often did, took issue with his policies as a dictator.Indeed in the first years of his tyranny his most fervent and dangerous critic was Chile's most outstanding catholic of the last century Cardinal Raúl Silva HenrÃquez, the pious, humbly born but extremely effective archbishop of Santiago. Silva did a great deal for Pinochet's victims, setting up a multifaith campaigns for human rights and promoting soup kitchens for those who had little to eat.At the same time, sadly, the Catholic church in Chile has suffered from senior clerics, including those appointed by the Vatican as its representatives in Chile. Chief among them was Cardinal Angelo Sodano, an Italian who was appointed papal nuncio for a decade in 1978, five years after Pinochet's bloody coup.Seeking to smooth the feathers of the tender-minded dictator, Sodano saw that the great Silva was packed off by Rome as soon as he reached retiring age and had the much more dubious cardinal, Francisco Javier Errázuriz Ossa, in his place. Back in Rome where he rose to be a cardinal and the secretary of state – the prime minister of the Vatican – under pope John Paul II, Sodano had the gall to appeal to the Blair government and the Archbishop of Canterbury in November 1998 to release Pinochet from confinement at Virginia Water and allow him to return to Chile, thus letting him to escape justice before the Spanish courts.As in many other Latin American countries, the Jesuits are strong in Chile and their magazine, Mensaje, has under Pinochet and his successors been a beacon of decency in the highly unequal society that the dictator set up in 1973 and which his successor and fellow-rightwinger President Sebastián Piñera, a billionaire, has strengthened.It will come as no surprise to those who have had experience of the deep vein of arrogant smugness that sometime affects those at the top of Chilean society that Piñera's chaplain, Alfredo Cooper, declared during the rejoicings at Copiapó this week that Chile was gripped by spiritual fervour in the aftermath of the miners' rescue and he urged Britain to throw off its "perverse unbelief" and turn to God.That sounds more than a little rich from a man who presumably agrees with his master Piñera that it has been acceptable for mine owners such as those who own the San José mine to ignore safety regulations and put the lives of the 33 miners in the gravest jeopardy in the first place.If that is part of Chile's "spiritual fervour", count me out.ChileChristianityReligionCatholicismPope Benedict XVIHugh O'Shaughnessyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
French retirement protests take violent turn By JENNY BARCHFIELD 2010-10-19T16:07:09ZPARIS (AP) -- Masked youths clashed with police and set fires in cities across France on Tuesday as protests against a proposed hike in the retirement age took an increasingly radical turn. Hundreds of flights were canceled, long lines formed at gas stations and train service in many regions was cut in half.... hosted.ap.org |
Myanmar Election 2010 Myanmar will go to the polls for the first time in 20 years. What changes, if any, could this election bring to the country? online.wsj.com |
China 'ready to abandon North Korea' Leaked dispatches show Beijing is frustrated with military actions of 'spoiled child' and increasingly favours reunified KoreaChina has signalled its readiness to accept Korean reunification and is privately distancing itself from the North Korean regime, according to leaked US embassy cables that reveal senior Beijing figures regard their official ally as a "spoiled child".News of the Chinese shift comes at a crucial juncture after the North's artillery bombardment of a South Korean island last week that killed four people and led both sides to threaten war. China has refused to condemn the North Korean action. But today Beijing appeared to bow to US pressure to help bring about a diplomatic solution, calling for "emergency consultations" and inviting a senior North Korean official to Beijing.China is sharply critical of US pressure tactics towards North Korea and wants a resumption of the six-party nuclear disarmament talks. But the Guardian can reveal Beijing's frustration with Pyongyang has grown since its missile and nuclear tests last year, worries about the economic impact of regional instability, and fears that the death of the dictator, Kim Jong-il, could spark a succession struggle.China's moves to distance itself from Kim are revealed in the latest tranche of leaked US embassy cables published by the Guardian and four international newspapers. Tonight, the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, said the US "deeply regrets" the release of the material by WikiLeaks. They were an "attack on the international community", she said. "It puts people's lives in danger, threatens our national security and undermines efforts to work with other countries to solve shared problems," she told reporters at the state department.The leaked North Korea dispatches detail how:• South Korea's vice-foreign minister said he was told by two named senior Chinese officials that they believed Korea should be reunified under Seoul's control, and that this view was gaining ground with the leadership in Beijing.• China's vice-foreign minister told US officials that Pyongyang was behaving like a "spoiled child" to get Washington's attention in April 2009 by carrying out missile tests.• A Chinese ambassador warned that North Korean nuclear activity was "a threat to the whole world's security".• Chinese officials assessed that it could cope with an influx of 300,000 North Koreans in the event of serious instability, according to a representative of an international agency, but might need to use the military to seal the border.In highly sensitive discussions in February this year, the-then South Korean vice-foreign minister, Chun Yung-woo, told a US ambassador, Kathleen Stephens, that younger generation Chinese Communist party leaders no longer regarded North Korea as a useful or reliable ally and would not risk renewed armed conflict on the peninsula, according to a secret cable to Washington.Chun, who has since been appointed national security adviser to South Korea's president, said North Korea had already collapsed economically.Political collapse would ensue once Kim Jong-il died, despite the dictator's efforts to obtain Chinese help and to secure the succession for his son, Kim Jong-un."Citing private conversations during previous sessions of the six-party talks , Chun claimed [the two high-level officials] believed Korea should be unified under ROK [South Korea] control," Stephens reported."The two officials, Chun said, were ready to 'face the new reality' that the DPRK [North Korea] now had little value to China as a buffer state – a view that, since North Korea's first nuclear test in 2006, had reportedly gained traction among senior PRC [People's Republic of China] leaders. Chun argued that in the event of a North Korean collapse, China would clearly 'not welcome' any US military presence north of the DMZ [demilitarised zone]. Again citing his conversations with [the officials], Chun said the PRC would be comfortable with a reunified Korea controlled by Seoul and anchored to the US in a 'benign alliance' – as long as Korea was not hostile towards China. Tremendous trade and labour-export opportunities for Chinese companies, Chun said, would also help 'salve' PRC concerns about … a reunified Korea."Chun dismissed the prospect of a possible PRC military intervention in the event of a DPRK collapse, noting that China's strategic economic interests now lie with the United States, Japan and South Korea – not North Korea."Chun told Stephens China was unable to persuade Pyongyang to change its self-defeating policies – Beijing had "much less influence than most people believe" – and lacked the will to enforce its views.A senior Chinese official, speaking off the record, also said China's influence with the North was frequently overestimated. But Chinese public opinion was increasingly critical of the North's behaviour, the official said, and that was reflected in changed government thinking.Previously hidden tensions between Pyongyang and its only ally were also exposed by China's then vice-foreign minister in a meeting in April 2009 with a US embassy official after North Korea blasted a three-stage rocket over Japan into the Pacific. Pyongyang said its purpose was to send a satellite into orbit but the US, South Korea and Japan saw the launch as a test of long-range missile technology.Discussing how to tackle the issue with the charge d'affaires at the Beijing embassy, He Yafei observed that "North Korea wanted to engage directly with the United States and was therefore acting like a 'spoiled child' in order to get the attention of the 'adult'. China encouraged the United States, 'after some time', to start to re-engage the DPRK," according to the diplomatic cable sent to Washington.A second dispatch from September last year described He downplaying the Chinese premier's trip to Pyongyang, telling the US deputy secretary of state, James Steinberg: "We may not like them ... [but] they [the DPRK] are a neighbour."He said the premier, Wen Jiabao, would push for denuclearisation and a return to the six-party talks. The official also complained that North Korea "often tried to play China off [against] the United States, refusing to convey information about US-DPRK bilateral conversations".Further evidence of China's increasing dismay with Pyongyang comes in a cable in June 2009 from the US ambassador to Kazakhstan, Richard Hoagland. He reported that his Chinese counterpart, Cheng Guoping. was "genuinely concerned by North Korea's recent nuclear missile tests. 'We need to solve this problem. It is very troublesome,' he said, calling Korea's nuclear activity a 'threat to the whole world's security'."Cheng said Beijing "hopes for peaceful reunification in the long term, but he expects the two countries to remain separate in the short term", Hoagland reported. China's objectives were "to ensure they [North Korean leaders] honour their commitments on non-proliferation, maintain stability, and 'don't drive [Kim Jong-il] mad'."While some Chinese officials are reported to have dismissed suggestions that North Korea would implode after Kim's death, another cable offers evidence that Beijing has considered the risk of instability.It quoted a representative from an international agency saying Chinese officials believed they could absorb 300,000 North Koreans without outside help. If they arrived "all at once" it might use the military to seal the border, create a holding area and meet humanitarian needs. It might also ask other countries for help.The context of the discussions was not made explicit, although an influx of that scale would only be likely in the event of regime failure. The representative said he was not aware of any contingency planning to deal with large numbers of refugees.A Seoul embassy cable from January 2009 said China's leader, Hu Jintao, deliberately ducked the issue when the South Korean president, Lee Myung-bak, raised it at a summit."We understand Lee asked Hu what China thought about the North Korean domestic political situation and whether Beijing had any contingency plans. This time, Hu apparently pretended not to hear Lee," it said. The cable does not indicate the source of the reports, although elsewhere it talks about contacts at the presidential "blue house" in South Korea. ChinaNorth KoreaSouth KoreaThe US embassy cablesUS foreign policyNuclear weaponsUS national securityUnited StatesSimon Tisdallguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |