| Tensions Ahead of South Sudan Vote The president of semiautonomous South Sudan has asked the visiting U.N. Security Council to deploy U.N. peacekeepers along the border with northern Sudan ahead of a contentious referendum on southern independence in January. online.wsj.com |
Chile miners: Rescued foreman Luis Urzúa's first interview Foreman said his secret for keeping the men bonded was democracy, but others mention fears of death and cannibalismSpeaking from a hospital bed at the San José mine, shift foreman Luis Urzúa – the man who kept the Chilean miners alive for two months – said his secret for keeping the men bonded and focused on survival was majority decision-making."You just have to speak the truth and believe in democracy," said Urzúa, his eyes hidden behind black glasses.As nurses, doctors and psychologists rushed around him in a chaotic scene, the world's most famous foreman sat in bed, his arms folded across a thick chest, and spoke about making tough decisions 700 metres below ground when all hope seemed lost. "Everything was voted on ... We were 33 men, so 16 plus one was a majority."However, as the first accounts of life for the trapped miners start to emerge, a complicated picture of squabbles, disagreements and even physical confrontations suggests that the official version may be rather sanitised.Immediately after the collapse at the mine at lunchtime on 5 August, he sent men to investigate. Some drove a pickup, inching up a ramp. With clouds of dust limiting visibility to less than a metre, they were unable to see the path and crashed."We were trying to find out what we could do and what we could not," said Urzúa. "Then we had to figure out the food."Like a ship's captain, 54-year-old Urzúa was the last to leave after 70 days trapped below the Atacama desert. He was winched to the surface shortly before 10pm local time on Wednesday, amid extraordinary scenes of emotion and celebration across Chile.President Sebastián Piñera greeted him with tears in his eyes. "You're not the same after this and neither are we," Piñera told him. "We will never forget this."The government hailed the men as models of solidarity, but in a separate interview with the Guardian, Richard Villaroel, another member of "los 33", said the truth was not so simple. There was the waiting for death, the hopelessness, the petty squabbles and the nagging, unspoken fear of cannibalism.Villaroel painted a more complex picture of the drama than the official version which has dominated media coverage. "We were waiting for death. We were consuming ourselves — we were so skinny."Speaking as the men were whisked to a hospital in the nearby town of Copiapo, the 23-year-old mechanic said the mood inside the collapsed mine had swung wildly from despair and division to euphoria and unity.The first 17 days were the worst, before a probe from the surface punched through to their cavern, as the miners prepared for a lonely, drawn-out death by starvation.Villaroel thought he would never see his unborn child. "I was afraid of not meeting my baby, who is on the way."Some men were so despairing that they climbed into bed and would not get out.The daily food ration from the meagre stocks was about half a spoonful of tuna or salmon. "We talked about it at the first meeting we had when we were trapped. We all agreed that we would all share the food that was there. You just had to rough it. Every 24 hours eat a small piece of tuna. Nothing else."Their bodies shrivelled. Villaroel lost 12kg. "We were getting eaten up, as we were working. We were moving, but not eating well. We started to eat ourselves up and get skinnier and skinnier. That is called cannibalism, a sailor down there said. My body was eating itself up."Did the men fear cannibalism of the other type? Villaroel paused. "At that moment no one talked about it. But once [help came] it became a topic of joking, but only once it was over, once they found us. But at the time there was no talk of cannibalism."The water in the mine the men were forced to drink was polluted. "It had a bad taste. It had lots of oil, from the machines, but you had to drink it."Urzúa tried to instill a philosophical acceptance of fate. "Every day [he] told us to have strength. If they find us they find us, if not, that's that. Because the probes [drilling towards the men] were so far away so we had no hope. Strength came by itself. I had never prayed before, but I learned to pray, to get close to God."Villaroel said the men divided up into work groups. "We the mechanics were part of one group, we took care of the trucks. Other people organised the food, rationed it."When the probe finally reached the men, euphoria swept them. "It was huge happiness for us all. We sang the national anthem as soon as the tube arrived. We painted it. With so much adrenaline in that moment we could not think."Once the miners realised they would be saved they signed a "blood pact" to not reveal all that happened beneath the Atacama desert, he said.In a video-conference with relatives last week, Dario Segovia, a 48-year-old drill operator, made a not-so cryptic allusion to troubles: "What happens in the mine, stays in the mine."One secret, it seems, is the division that plagued the group for a time. Despite the pact, there are several cracks in the official version of steadfast unity and solidarity between "los 33".The earliest suggestion of divisions came in the first video the miners sent up: only 28 featured. The other five — Juan Aguilar, Raúl Bustos, José Henriquez, Juan Illanes and Villaroel — were nowhere to be seen.Where were they? The authorities offered no explanation. José Villaroel, Richard's father, said the mechanic had been upset at colleagues who "showed off" for the camera. When relatives sent down cameras for each miner, Villaroel was among a small group who sent them back up.Another miner, Osman Araya, told his brother Rodrigo that three groups had formed and that there were squabbles over space and work practices. Daniel Sanderson, a miner on the surface, said he received a letter from one of the trapped men describing disagreements which escalated into physical confrontations. "They broke into three groups because they were fighting. There were fistfights," said Sanderson, who ended his night shift and left the mine just hours before the collapse. Asked to describe the nature of the conflicts, Sanderson, replied: "That's part of the pact".The Spanish newspaper El PaÃs reported that the five missing from the video had been working for a separate sub-contractor and had formed their own group dynamic — living apart from the others and plotting their own escape strategy involving tunnels.The division ended when the sub-contractor boss, who was on the surface, ordered the five to integrate.An early test of the "pact" will be whether the men equally share income from interview fees, book royalties, movie rights and gifts which are set to flood in.They have reportedly agreed to sign a legal contract promising to pool the bonanza. With some men likely to earn far more than others — notably Urzúa and Mario Sepúlveda, a natural showman — there may be temptation and family pressure to make individual deals.The men, in dressing gowns and slippers, got a glimpse of the attention their story has generated by peering out of their hospital windows and seeing throngs of journalists below. An estimated 1 billion people around the world watched the televised rescue.Some of the men were expected to go home as early as today. Three required dental surgery and one was recovering from pneumonia, but otherwise the miners were in good shape, said Jorge Montes, the hospital's deputy director.President Sebastián Piñera visited the men and promised to review labour rights and health and safety laws.ChileJonathan FranklinRory Carrollguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Cameron Unveils U.K. Defense Cuts Prime Minister David Cameron said that the army will lose 7,000 personnel by 2015 while Naval manpower will be reduced by 5,000 and the Royal Air Force will lose 5,000 positions. online.wsj.com |
Letters: Faith and yoga living side by side Viv Groskop's is a sad story, of the priest who would not acknowledge that hers was a first wedding (Leave, with my blessing, 19 October). She was right to observe that the churches now are tending to "insiders" only: you're either "in" or you're "out", and this is really uncomfortable for those of us who follow Christianity, but can't accept all its dogma.It's all too easy to trigger the traditional faith points where people want simple certainties. They know, in their hearts, that there is no "old man in the sky" but behave as if there was one: then you can go on to say that He has a genetic Son, Jesus. Simple, but unlikely, and at odds with the increasing understanding of the complexities of our world, of the Bible and of our minds.Churches, generally, do not encourage people in their search for a faith that seems more relevant to our 21st-century world – even more rarely via the pulpit! This would threaten the "tradition".But there is a hunger for new approaches in which the carpenter from Nazareth can show us all a better way of living in our complicated world, not just in and around the church club. Several organisations now promote such ideas and encourage this exploration; they are mostly growing outside of any structured churches. Two examples are Christians Awakening to a New Awareness and Progressive Christianity Network.I would urge "searching" readers to look at the websites for these networks and discover new insights for themselves where faith and yoga can live side by side.Rev Peter HartleyWest Sussex• I have much sympathy with Viv Groskop. The church I was brought up in was a broad church, and as a student I was excited by reading John Robinson's Honest to God. But the church was not just a talking shop. We cared for the poor, refugees, the hungry and the environment – it was worth belonging to!The struggle to have women priests – now much appreciated in many parishes – left many of us exhausted, yet still the struggle goes on with people like Stephen Bould determined to fix the church in some indeterminate past. As a church we fail the needy in many cases, particularly our gay friends, and this is a situation likely to get worse as the Church of England pushes ever onwards to accept the Anglican Covenant, which will put us all in the hands of the most dogmatic fundamentalists.But all is not lost! The C of E still has many liberal members in parishes across the land where Viv and others will find an open and welcoming church.Rosalind LundVice-chair, Modern Church• Viv Groskop's concerns about prescription and exclusion in churches are shared by plenty of us who do still go regularly. Less of St Paul and more of St John would be a healthy development, for a start. Recently I have been introduced to the theology of the Iona Community and this has revealed a wider and more deeply sacramental perspective, while retaining the sort of essential focal points that can never be provided by yoga classes. Strongly recommended! Nicholas JardineMuch Hadham, Hertfordshire• I am an atheist, but I was moved to deep sympathy for Father Stephen Bould, who is moving with his parishioners in Folkestone to the church of Rome, by the attack on him by Viv Groskop. Father Gould and I will differ on most points of belief, but we agree that they should be taken seriously, and not merely provide an occasional theatrical background to Ms Groskop and her headdress. Anything worth doing needs attention: casual, part-time attendance is seldom sufficient. If Ms Groskop attends her yoga classes on this basis she will soon get the heave-ho.James SempleSeaton, Devon• I did not see Viv Groskop's piece until the evening because I had been leading a day of Christian meditation at a Franciscan friary in Dorset. Please don't imagine that all C of E clergy have adopted the same hard attitude that Viv encountered over her wedding. Some of us are proud to be considered woolly and liberal if that means being open to people no matter what stage they have reached in their spiritual journey.Rev Dan RichardsBruton, SomersetChristianityAnglicanismCatholicismReligionWeddingsguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Art Stolen by the Nazis Now Cataloged Online in Database During World War II, the Nazis pulled off the biggest art heist in history, looting thousands of paintings worth untold millions. Now, thanks to a newly available online database, some of them can be returned feedproxy.google.com |