The Guardian, 4th Sept. 2012
It was a cry, raw and anguished, that pierced the convivial party
atmosphere and laid bare the sense of anomie gnawing away at South Africa.
The archbishop emeritus Desmond Tutu had an emotional
outburst on Monday night as he castigated politicians for greed, failing
schools and the "nightmare" of the Marikana mine massacre. His impromptu speech shocked
guests at a book launch in Cape Town, according to local media reports, which said a "chatty audience"
including senior government officials was immediately silenced.
Reports
vary on his exact opening words, but a spokesman for Tutu indicated
that he shouted: "What the heck are you doing?"
Beeld newspaper then quoted a highly emotional Tutu as
saying: "I am 80 years old. Can't you allow us elders to go to our
graves with a smile, knowing that this is a good country? Because truly –
it is a good country."
Tutu, a Nobel peace laureate described as
the moral conscience of South Africa, has not been afraid to
criticise the governing African National Congress (ANC), for example
over the refusal to grant the Dalai Lama an entrance visa.
On
Monday he was at the District Six museum for the launch of the struggle
veteran Michael Lapsley's book Redeeming the Past, along with guests
including Marius Fransman, the deputy foreign minister, and other
high-ranking figures.
Lapsley was an ANC chaplain who lost an eye
and both hands to a parcel bomb sent by the apartheid regime. Later,
speaking from the podium, Tutu expressed frustration at the betrayal of
such sacrifices after the dawn of multiracial democracy in 1994.
"Is
this the kind of freedom people were tortured and people were maimed
for?" he was quoted as saying. "I ask myself, why were we in the
struggle? The highest price was paid for freedom, but are we treating it
as something precious?
"How can we have children 18 years later
who go to school under trees and whose education is being crushed without textbooks and no one is
held accountable? Have we so quickly forgotten the price of freedom?
"People
are going to sleep hungry in this freedom for which people were
tortured and harmed … It is difficult to believe people are getting such
money and benefits, and are driving such flashy cars while the masses
suffer in cramped shacks."(1)
Soo good when instinctive outbursts for justice like these are heard. Viva La Tutu!
Note:
(1) http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/04/desmond-tutu-expresses-outrage-failing-politicians
Wednesday 5 September 2012
Tuesday 4 September 2012
Israel Not Likely to Strike Iran pre-November
Senior U.S. intelligence official: Israel won't strike Iran before November
Haaretz, Sept. 4, 2012
There is a growing American assessment that Israel will
not attack Iranian nuclear facilities before the U.S. presidential
elections on November 6.
U.S. House of Representatives
Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, who visited Israel last
week, told a breakfast panel at the Republican National Convention in
Tampa, Florida on Tuesday that he believes the Israeli government is
likely to wait until after the elections.
Rogers said that after his trip,
during which he met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he’d been
left with “no doubt in my mind” that the U.S. election cycle was part of
Israel’s calculations. Asked why he thought Israel would wait, Rogers
said, “Because I think they believe that maybe after the election they
can talk the United States into cooperating.”
Rogers’ remarks were published on the
website of the Washington newspaper The Hill, which reports primarily
on the U.S. Congress.
During Rogers’ meeting with
Netanyahu, the prime minister criticized U.S. President Barak Obama’s
attitude toward Iran, according to a report in the daily Yedioth
Ahronoth. This led to a sharply worded exchange between Netanyahu and
U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro, who was present at the meeting,
the paper said. Shapiro subsequently denied the report.
On Monday, former CIA director
Michael Hayden told Haaretz that a decision on attacking Iran need not
be made right now, as current assessments point to Iran achieving
nuclear-weapons capabilities no earlier than 2013 or 2014.
Hayden said he believes those
assessments are still valid, even though the time needed for the
Iranians to make the leap into actual production of nuclear weapons has
decreased, since the bottleneck in that plan was the missile development
and the lack of enriched uranium needed to make warheads, not Tehran’s
ability to turn the material into weapons.
Hayden added that if and when a
decision is made to attack Iran, the U.S. would be better equipped to
conduct it than Israel(1)
Not too surprising. They have to calculate the US election cycle. They want US money, diplomatic cover for the Occupation, etc, and to have a reasonable possibility for a successful strike on Iran would require a joint operation with the US military.
Note:
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