31.8.14

Quando o Sol inchar e a Terra se vaporizar


O Homem tem dedicado muito menos tempo à exploração espacial do que deveria. Pensa pequeno; e por isso não se arrisca, não vai por aí fora, rumo à Lua, a Marte e a outros corpos celestes.
O Universo existe há 15 mil milhões de anos, o Sol e a Terra há 4.500 milhões de anos; e nós estamos sós, pois que ainda não nos atrevemos a tentar o contacto com outros que por aí possam ter surgido, pelo Cosmos fora.
Nos últimos mil milhões de anos, animais semelhantes a vermes evoluíram até se tornarem humanos. E se a vida noutros planetas, ou noutras galáxias, estiver mil milhões de anos mais avançada, poderá ser que criaturas de lá olhem para nós como se fôssemos uns simples vermes.
Os mais importantes desenvolvimentos da vida na Terra poderão estar ainda por acontecer; e o Homem não pode ser tão mesquinho, tão tacanho, que não se prepare para eles.
Para muitos de nós, a era espacial só começou há uns 58 anos, aproximadamente. E não nos demos ao trabalho de explorar mais intensivamente a Lua, de colonizar Marte, de estudar diferentes asteroides, de colocar o pé em cometas...
Depois da Apollo 17, tornámo-nos provincianos, mais preocupados com as guerras no Vietname e no Iraque do que com o conhecimento de Júpiter e de Saturno, de cujos mundos ainda tanto ignoramos.
Numa noite de Julho de 1969 estivemos com Neil Armstrong e Edwin Aldrin; mas depois estagnámos, não vimos que era preciso continuar a ir à Lua e desvendar os caminhos de Marte, de Io, Europa, Titã. Perdemos o fôlego.
Sabemos nós quais as verdadeiras dimensões do Universo? Quando é que ele na verdade começou a existir? Quantos os milhares de milhões de anos-luz que nos separam de determinada galáxia?
Perdemos tempo com os conflitos na Síria e na Líbia, não nos sobrando energias para estudar melhor os telescópios que nos mostram certas regiões do Universo tal como elas eram há 5.000 milhões de anos.
Não sabemos viajar no Tempo e no Espaço, quedando-nos antes pelas tricas da União Europeia e pelas investidas russas no Leste da Ucrânia.
Pensamos em pequenino, deixando de parte os mistérios do Cosmos. Ignoramos, por exemplo, a maior parte de nós, que há galáxias que se movem a milhões de quilómetros por hora, afastando-se cada vez mais da Terra, do Sol, da Via Láctea.
O Universo inteiro expande-se, parecendo querer explodir, e nós debatemos se a Índia irá ter mais habitantes do que a China ou se a Nigéria conseguirá um lugar de membro permanente no Conselho de Segurança das Nações Unidas.
Acordem, senhores. Acordem de uma vez por todas, para a forte realidade de que a Terra não é, de forma alguma, o centro do Universo, mas apenas um simples grão de poeira cósmica. Um planeta que daqui a 6.000 milhões de anos poderá ser pura e simplesmente vapor, quando o Sol, velho e inchado, se transformar numa gigante vermelha.
Jorge Heitor  31 de Agosto de 2014

Eurocépticos marcam pontos na Saxónia

Germany's newest party, the Eurosceptic "Alternative for Germany" (AfD), has won its first seats in the state parliament of Saxony, according to preliminary results.

Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats won the vote with 39.5% according to exit polls.

The AfD, which says it is anti-euro (the currency), rather than anti-Europe, won around 9.6% of the vote.

Eurosceptic parties made large gains in the European elections in May.

The projected results from Saxony, a state in eastern Germany, indicate a much more successful showing at the ballot box than had been predicted.

The BBC's Damien McGuinness in Berlin says this is the first time that an anti-euro party has won seats in a German state parliament - which is big news in a country where support for the European Union is traditionally strong.

The AfD appeals to some conservative voters who think that Angela Merkel has moved too far to the centre, he adds.

The new party, which is one year old, entered the European parliament in May's elections, calling for the breakup of the euro and campaigning against bailouts for southern European countries.

However the party is seen by some as being controversial, accused of catering to nationalist sentiment and attracting right-wing extremists, our correspondent adds.

Angela Merkel, whose party sits on the centre-right, has ruled out any future coalition with AfD.  BBC

Guebuza saúda Mugabe


WAS Mozambican President Armando Guebuza being just a tad ironic and mischievous when he congratulated Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe on his political longevity at the recent Southern African Development Community (SADC) summit in Victoria Falls? Or was it just projection between sentimental constitutional democrats, desperately seeking meaning in yet another uninspiring gathering of this listless organisation?
“We are coming to the end of our tenure as the president of Mozambique, and will hand over the baton to a new leader on October 15,” said Guebuza, a youthful 71. He is obliged to stand down after serving the maximum number of two presidential terms, as stipulated by his country's constitution. “We are grateful to President Robert Mugabe, who is the only leader who has attended all 34 SADC summits since 1 April 1980.”
Namibian President Hifikepunye Pohamba likewise bid farewell to his peers, as he has also reached his constitutional expiry date and will hand over to a successor after imminent elections.
Perhaps the likes of Guebuza really do admire the 90-year-old Mugabe for his staying power and feel nostalgic for the good old days of unfettered and interminable rule, which he exemplifies. Mugabe, 90, for whom term limits are surely a neo-imperialist plot to effect regime change, had just manoeuvred his 49-year-old wife Grace into the presidency of Zanu PF women's league. This is apparently to position her to succeed him if he dies in office - or at least to protect him and his family interests by keeping his enemies at bay.
Mugabe was in his usual fine, indestructible spirits as host of the summit, using the chair to admonish President Jacob Zuma and South Africa for what he implied was some sort of economic neo-colonialism. Zuma, like Pohamba, had refused to sign a draft protocol on trade in services within the SADC region, apparently for technical reasons.
Mugabe told a press conference after the summit that he had appealed to Zuma to sign the protocol. “We also appealed to South Africa, which is highly industrialised, to lead us in this and work with us, and cooperate with us and not just regard the whole continent as an open market for products from South Africa,” said Mugabe. “We want a reciprocal relationship where we sell to each other and not just receive products from one source.”

Mugabe à frente da SADC

Last updated on: August 17, 2014 2:25 PM
Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe on Sunday urged southern Africa to move away from “over-reliance” on foreign aid at a two-day summit being held in Zimbabwe.
The 90-year-old leader spoke Sunday after taking the chairmanship of the 15-member Southern African Development Community (SADC).
Mugabe, who will lead SADC for the next 12 months, said southern Africa must use its natural resources such as minerals and land. The region has the world’s largest platinum deposits and supplies of other valuable commodities such as diamonds and gold.
"Our continued over-reliance on the generosity and goodwill of our cooperating partners tends to compromise our ownership and sustainability of our SADC programs. How can we proudly claim SADC to be own organization when close to 60 percent of the programs are externally funded?" he asked.
Finished vs raw goods
Mugabe also called on countries to drive growth by exporting more finished goods instead of raw materials.
Southern Africa must "wean itself from exporting raw materials and create value chains that will lead to the exportation of finished products," he said.
"Our region has abundant resources, which instead of being sold in raw form at very low prices must be exploited and beneficiated to add value to the products which we export," Mugabe said.
The summit, which ends Monday, is being held under a theme of "economic transformation," which leaders say can be achieved by using the region's vast natural resources.
On Friday, rights groups called on SADC leaders to include issues of human rights abuses in the region on their meeting’s agenda.
Mugabe has ruled Zimbabwe since independence in 1980, but a series of economic crises, flawed elections and brutal crackdowns have brought U.N. sanctions and turned the former revolutionary into a Western pariah.
He was the only leader from southern Africa not invited to attend a major U.S.-African summit in Washington earlier this month, which included about  45 of the continent's heads of state.

Iraque: Circuncisão de homens, venda de mulheres


ISIS Forcefully Circumcised Assyrian Christian Men in Mosul, Sold 700 Yazidi Women
(AINA) — The Tunisia Daily is reporting that the Islamic State (ISIS) forcefully circumcised Assyrian men in Mosul, without anesthesia. The report does not specify the number of men that were affected but does state that it was an organized mass circumcision. ISIS has ordered the circumcision of all Christian children and adults who remain in Mosul.
Very few Assyrian Christians stayed in Mosul after ISIS gave them a deadline to convert, pay jizya, leave or die (AINA 2014-07-20).
The report also states that ISIS sold 700 Yazidi women for $150 each in a public slave auction in Mosul.

- See more at: http://pamelageller.com/2014/08/isis-forcefully-circumcised-assyrian-christian-men-mosul-sold-700-yazidi-women-public-slave-auction.html/#sthash.EAMkmUBw.dpuf

30.8.14

Conselho Europeu: Tusk substitui Van Rompuy

O novo presidente do Conselho Europeu é Donald Tusk, primeiro-ministro polaco, que irá substituir o belga Herman van Rompuy. A decisão foi tomada este sábado na cimeira extraordinária do Conselho Europeu, que juntou em Bruxelas os chefes de Estado e de Governo da União Europeia. O anúncio foi feito pelo ainda presidente do Conselho Europeu na sua conta da rede social Twitter. 

Para além da decisão quanto à presidência do Conselho Europeu, ficou também decidido que a atual ministra dos Negócios Estrangeiros de Itália, Federica Mogherini, será a próxima responsável pelo Política Externa da União Europeia (UE), ocupando o cargo de Alta Representante para os Negócios Estrangeiros. O cargo era ocupado desde 2009 pela britânica Catherine Ashton.

Em conferência de imprensa, Rompuy disse estar convencido de que o Conselho Europeu fez escolhas acertadas e de que a representação da UE estará em boas mãos. O ainda atual presidente do Conselho acrescentou que Donald Tusk iniciará funções no dia 1 de dezembro, para um mandato de dois anos e meio. À semelhança do que acontece com Rompuy, também Tusk irá acumular o cargo com o de presidente das cimeiras da zona euro.

Herman Van Rompuy definiu Tusk  como "um dos veteranos do Conselho Europeu" e um "homem de Estado para a Europa". Já sobre Federica Mogherini, Rompuy diz ser "o novo rosto da UE nas relações com os seus parceiros internacionais, que irá evidenciar as suas capacidades de mediadora na defesa do papel da UE na cena internacional. 

Na cimeira realizada em julho, os 28 Estados-membros não tinham chegado a acordo sobre o nome de Federica Mogherini. Alguns Estados-membros do Leste opuseram-se nessa altura, acusando-a de ser demasiado "amiga" da Rússia e de ser inexperiente.

Próximos passos 

A decisão em relação a estes cargos tinha de ser tomada nestes dias, sob pena de inviabilizar a entrada em funções a tempo da nova Comissão Europeia, liderada pelo luxemburguês Jean-Claude Juncker, que deverá suceder ao executivo de José Manuel Durão Barroso no próximo dia 1 de novembro.

Agora com um nome designado para o cargo de Alto Representante, Juncker poderá proceder à distribuição de "pastas" entre os comissários já indicados pelas capitais, num processo que ainda se afigura complexo, já que continuam a ser muito poucas as mulheres designadas pelos Estados-membros. O Parlamento Europeu já advertiu por diversas vezes que chumbará um executivo com uma representação feminina inferior àquela verificada na "Comissão Barroso" (nove mulheres).

A nova equipa que Juncker apresentar terá ainda de se sujeitar a audições e votações no Parlamento Europeu antes de poder entrar em funções. 

O Governo português anunciou no início do mês de agosto o nome de Carlos Moedas, secretário de Estado adjunto do primeiro-ministro, para integrar a "Comissão Juncker", restando saber que pasta irá ter.


Ler mais: http://expresso.sapo.pt/donald-tusk-e-o-novo-presidente-do-conselho-europeu=f887697#ixzz3BtzgdNeN

Guiné Equatorial: Comportamento pouco diplomático

by ARLnow.com — August 26, 2014     

A girl was beaten with a chair leg in the diplomatic residence of Equatorial Guinea last night, police said Tuesday, but no arrest has been made because the alleged attacker is a diplomat.
The incident happened around 9:30 p.m. Monday on the 4000 block of 27th Road N., in Arlington’s tony Dover-Crystal neighborhood. Police were called to the home of Ambassador Ruben Maye Nsue Mangue after a female 911 caller reported that “there’s someone going crazy at her house” and a man “hit her in the head with a chair,” according to scanner traffic.
“I’ve been there before,” said a responding officer. “There have been previous calls from this address.”
The female victim was struck “several times,” police said. Paramedics transported her to Virginia Hospital Center with a head wound, but no arrests were made.
“The subject has full diplomatic immunity and was not arrested,” Arlington County Police said in a crime report today. Police said the assault was “domestic” in nature but declined to reveal the identity of the suspect.
“We won’t go in to those details at this time,” ACPD spokesman Dustin Sternbeck told ARLnow.com. “The State Department was notified by our officers and it’s in their hands at this point.”
An anonymous tipster who contacted ARLnow.com this morning, before news of the attack was made public, claimed that the ambassador — who was appointed last year after serving on the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and the Peace and Security Council of the African Union — was the attacker and that his teenager daughter was the victim.
Reached at the Equatorial Guinea embassy in D.C., Rebeca Maye, who identified herself as Ambassador Nsue’s secretary, said his 16-year-old daughter was brought to Virginia Hospital Center with a head injury, but added that it was “not very big.” Maye declined to answer questions about the alleged assault and said the ambassador would not be available for comment until later Tuesday night.
Equatorial Guinea is a small nation on the west coast of Africa. It has a population of just 650,000, but it’s one of sub-Sahara Africa’s largest oil producers, according to Wikipedia.
Neighbors of the diplomatic residence on 27th Street, who did not wish to be identified by name, said the family that lives there mostly “keeps to themselves” — but there have been some recent disturbances.
“A girl can sometimes be heard screaming foul language” from the home, one neighbor said. Another said police were called to the house a couple months ago when a man and a woman had a shouting match outside.
Andrea Swalec, Ethan Rothstein and Scott Brodbeck contributed to this report

Timor-Leste: Clínica de olhos artificiais

Jose′ Ramos-Horta Opens Artificial Eye Clinic in Timor-Leste


Opening of the artificial eye clinic in TimorIn February 2008 I was about to fly out to Timor-Leste to start an artificial eye clinic. Nobel peace prize winner Jose′ Ramos-Horta had been elected as President in May of the the previous year. The day before I was due to go to Timor he was shot and critically injured in an assassination attempt. I cancelled my trip and waited for the situation to stabilise.
Thankfully the President recovered and I did eventually make it to Timor in July later that year. It was an extremely challenging experience and I wasn’t as prepared as I needed to be. The country had been through so much trauma and upheaval that arranging things was far more difficult than I’d anticipated.
On that first visit I had six blind patients who spoke no English and I did not have access a translator. The room I worked in had no running water so between patients I washed my hands out the window with bottled water. Just about every aspect of running the clinic was complicated in one way or another. For me it was a bit of a trial by fire. To be honest, after the challenges of that first visit I found it hard to go back.
Fast forward six years and several clinic visits later and so much progress has been made. I’m a lot more organised and I have had help from my husband Michael who helps me run the clinic and sort out unexpected things that come up. I’ve also had a lot of fantastic support from Rotary and the Royal Australian College of Surgeons (RACS). Over the years I’ve worked from several different locations. This past year it has progressed in leaps and bounds. RMS Engineering donated a sea container and RACS applied for a grant through Lions First Sight Foundation  to fit the container out as an Artificial Eye Lab. The National Eye Clinic arranged five applicants  for the position of  trainee ocularist for the new clinic. My thanks to RACS, Lions First Sight, Timor Leste National Eye Clinic and Aus Aid for all their wonderful support.
Now another important milestone has been achieved. I’m very excited that the new clinic has just been officially opened in it’s permanent new home by Jose′ Ramos-Horta. We have two trainees from that clinic coming to Perth soon to continue their training. It’s been a long journey and it’s so satisfying to see the clinic very close to being able to run independently.
Timor itself continues to go from strength to strength and it’s been such a privilege for me to visit each year and see this growth. I’m so relieved Jose′ Ramos-Horta is fully recovered and so very pleased we’ve got this clinic to a point where it is there to serve the lovely people of Timor.

Novo filme do português Miguel Gomes


A Scheherazade in Today’s Portugal

Miguel Gomes’s ‘Arabian Nights’ Looks at a Gloomy Nation


                 
Slide Show|8 Photos
LISBON — On a cool night last month, Miguel Gomes, one of Portugal’s most prominent film directors, was shooting a scene for his latest movie in an outdoor amphitheater, high above the Tagus River here. Pall Mall cigarette in hand, he told an actress to look more beleaguered before she began a crucial monologue that captures the country’s dark mood.
“She can’t stand it anymore; she feels all this weight,” Mr. Gomes said before calling “Acção!” (pronounced as-AUW), Portuguese for “Action!” It was the final day in Lisbon for the shoot of “As 1,001 Noites,” or “Arabian Nights,” an experimental yearlong project in which the director has blended fact and fiction to examine contemporary Portugal in the throes of its debt crisis.
Mr. Gomes’s films, including the critically acclaimed “Tabu” (2012), have often featured documentary-style footage. But for “Arabian Nights,” which is expected to be released next year, he took this approach to a new level, bringing on a team of three journalists to research real reports from the Portuguese press and develop them with screenwriters into around a dozen fictional episodes, all narrated by a contemporary Scheherazade.
Photo
The Portuguese director Miguel Gomes on the set of his film "Arabian Nights." Credit Patricia DeMelo Moreira for The New York Times
“I thought maybe that I should make a film with Portuguese stories that are popping up, appearing at this moment,” Mr. Gomes said. “Arabian Nights” is one of the first films to take on the euro crisis. It attempts to hold a mirror, albeit a convex one, to a country struggling with unemployment, emigration and general gloom.
While television coverage of the crisis has been “superficial,” a film can add “a level of depth that only cinema can bring,” said Vasco Câmara, a film critic and editor at Público, a Lisbon daily, who has been tracking the movie since Mr. Gomes announced it. 
For the movie’s structure, Mr. Gomes turned to “The Arabian Nights,” whose heroine tells stories to her new husband, the king, to delay her death sentence. Despite working with factual material, Mr. Gomes, 42, said he had wanted to transcend the real and create a kind of diversion — a complex, more self-aware kind of fiction.
“The idea is not to give back this kind of reality that we are living in my country, but to recreate it as fiction,” he said. “That’s Scheherazade’s job.”
The euro crisis may be less dominant in the headlines today, but the social toll of the tax increases, wage cuts and reductions to social services that came in exchange for a foreign bailout in 2011 is still felt in Portugal. Although unemployment has dropped to 13.9 percent, down from above 17 percent last year, it remains higher than the European average. But the picture is more complex. Hundreds of thousands of Portuguese don’t figure on the unemployment rolls because they have emigrated to seek work abroad. In 2012 about 120,000 people emigrated from Portugal, which has a population of 10 million and a labor force of 5.5 million, according to the country’s statistics agency.
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The set of "Arabian Nights." Credit Patricia DeMelo Moreira for The New York Times
To find reports that might inspire episodes in the film, the journalists — Maria José Oliveira, João de Almeida Dias and Rita Ferreira — scoured local papers and produced daily news roundups for the screenwriters. They also produced reported articles and published them on the movie’s websitewebsite. One is the story of a married couple outside Lisbon who committed suicide in October, a complicated event that captured the country’s pervasive pessimism. Another tells of a songbird competition held by working-class men in Lisbon.
“It’s a different country from 2009 or 2010,” Ms. Oliveira said, sitting in the film’s makeshift newsroom, beneath a map of Portugal with pins on the 40 towns the team had visited. Back in 2012, there were huge public demonstrations in Portugal, but now people have grown tired.
“There’s a silent poverty,” Mr. Dias said. “The middle class almost disappeared.” Ms. Oliveira said the project had no political slant.  
The journalists began researching articles last fall. Before filming began in November, Mr. Gomes chose about two dozen actors — men and women, old and young — to build the characters as they progressed, said Luis Urbano, a co-producer of the film. Along the way they were joined by many nonactors and extras.
The monologue for which Mr. Gomes was giving direction is part of a trial scene that was inspired by the real story of a Portuguese judge who began to cry after pronouncing the sentence of a man accused last year of robbing people at knife-point outside A.T.M.s.
Photo
The actress Luisa Cruz on the set. Credit Patricia DeMelo Moreira for The New York Times
“I’m feeling sick,” the judge (the Portuguese actress Luísa Cruz) says in the film. “This grotesque chain of stupidity, evil, desperation is beginning to test my competence and above all my patience.”  
As he watched that night’s shooting, Mr. Urbano said, “In general, it’s about the situation, the loss of innocence.” Ever since Portugal signed its loan agreement in 2011, much of the national conversation has revolved around assigning blame for the mess. “That nobody is innocent in the country” is an idea that gained traction, Mr. Urbano added. “The people blame bankers; the bankers blame politicians.”
In September Mr. Gomes will shoot a final scene near Marseille, whose regional government has contributed funding for “Arabian Nights.” The movie also has some financing from the state-run Portuguese film institute, but more than half of its budget, three million euros (about $4 million), comes from abroad, Mr. Urbano said, including government money from France and Switzerland.
Portugal has been a constant source of inspiration for Mr. Gomes, who studied film in Lisbon and began his career as a critic before moving behind the camera. His first feature, “The Face You Deserve,” appeared in 2004. In 2008 “Our Beloved Month of August,” which revealed his melancholic style and his love-hate relationship with his native country, put him on the international map.  
Obsessed with the unreliability of memory, individual and collective, Mr. Gomes in “Tabu” used flashbacks to tell the story of an elderly woman in Lisbon. Filmed in black and white, “Tabu” used voice-overs and a quasi-documentary style, akin to that of an old newsreel. That year, at the Berlin Film Festival, it won the Critics’ Prize and the Alfred Bauer Prize for opening “new perspectives on cinematic art.” His 26-minute film “Redemption,” shown at last year’s Venice Film Festival, is shot like a home movie from the pasts of four European leaders, including Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany. 
Rui Vieira Nery, the director of Portuguese language and culture programs at the Gulbenkian Institute in Lisbon, the country’s pre-eminent cultural institution, described Mr. Gomes’s work as “very ambivalent.” He said the director was inspired by, but also departed from, Portugal’s Cinema Novo of the 1960s and 1970s, which had drawn on Italian neorealism and the French New Wave and had become more political after the Carnation Revolution of 1974 toppled Portugal’s dictatorship.
“There’s a certain disenchantment with the great narratives of the traditional left — the need for utopian goals and moral values, of something to believe in,” Mr. Nery said of Mr. Gomes’s films. “On the other hand, there’s a certain feeling of defeat” and a “disenchantment that’s combined with this urge for a project we can believe in.”
 

28.8.14

Brasil: Marina poderá ganhar

Em um possível segundo turno, levantamento CNT/MDA mostra a candidata do PSB com 43,7% das intenções de voto, contra 37,8% de Dilma

Atualizada em 27/08/2014 | 14h1327/08/2014 | 11h27
Nova pesquisa aponta vitória de Marina no segundo turno Montagem sobre fotos/Reprodução
Foto: Montagem sobre fotos / Reprodução
Divulgada nesta quarta-feira, a pesquisa CNT/MDA para a corrida presidencial aponta vitória da candidata do PSB, Marina Silva, em um eventual segundo turno contra a presidente da República e candidata à reeleição pelo PT, Dilma Rousseff. Conforme o levantamento, Marina teria 43,7% das intenções de voto, e Dilma, 37,8%.
Na pesquisa estimulada para o primeiro turno, a petista é quem está na liderança — tem 34,2%, seguida de Marina, com 28,2%, e de Aécio Neves (PSDB), com 16%. Os demais candidatos, juntos, somam menos de 3% dos índices.
A CNT/MDA também fez uma simulação de segundo turno entre Dilma e Aécio. A petista venceria com 43% dos votos, contra 33,3% do tucano. Em um eventual segundo turno entre os candidatos do PSB e do PSDB, Marina tem 48,9% das intenções, e Aécio, 25,2%.

EUA: A paranóia do terrorismo

Ret. Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney told Fox News Channel's "America's News HQ" host Uma Pemmaraju on Saturday that United States might be witness to another terror attack on September 11 this year, according to Breitbart.
In order to address the increasing threat of ISIS, an al-Qaeda breakaway group, the U.S. should "go to DEFCON 1, our highest state of readiness and be prepared as we lead up to 9/11," because "we may even see a 9/11/14," the network military analyst said.

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In the interview, the missing Malaysia Airlines jet MH370 was also referenced by McInerney. On March 8, Flight 370 went missing en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Despite extensive land and sea searches, officials have failed to find any sign of the missing Boeing 777-200ER, which was carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew. It's believed that the plane crashed into the southern Indian Ocean, west of Australia.
"On the seventh of September, a major news network and publishing network are going to put out a book. It is going to be earth shattering of what's happening and what happened. The fact is we may even see a 9/11/14 MH-370 surface again. We should go to DEFCON 1, our highest state of readiness and be prepared as we lead up to 9/11," he said.
When Pemmaraju asked, "When you say a major news organization is coming forward with a publication, what are you referring to specifically? Can you allude to that, give us more details?"
McInerney responded, "I can't give you any more than what I've just said. But it is going to be extremely important and America should take notice. We are less safe today than we were six years ago."
At this point, the general warned that America should raise the terror level ahead of the anniversary of 9/11, Breitbart reported.
Meanwhile, House Intelligence Committee Mike Rogers, R-Mich., said on August 17 that he believes the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has put the U.S. in more danger than it was in the lead up to the Sept. 11 attacks more than a decade ago, CBS News reported. "Before 9/11, there were single-level threat streams coming to the United States. So, pretty serious. Obviously they got in and conducted the attacks on 9/11. Now you have multiple organizations, all al Qaeda-minded, trying to accomplish the same thing," Rogers said in an interview on CBS' "Face the Nation."
"Now you have two competing terrorist organizations, both of them want to get their credentials to the point where they can say, 'We are the premier terrorist organization.' Both want to conduct attacks in the West for that reason. And guess what? That means we lose at the end. If either one of those organizations is successful, we lose."
"The threat matrix is so wide and it's so deep. We just didn't have that before 9/11," Rogers said.   Headlines & Global News

Ébola: Cada vez pior

The Ebola outbreak in West Africa is going to get worse before it gets better, according to the top US public health official.

Tom Frieden, the director of the Centers for Disease Control, said the epidemic would need an "unprecedented" response to bring it under control.

Health ministers from across West Africa are due to meet in Ghana to discuss the growing crisis.

The World Health Organization says the outbreak has killed 1,427 people.

The health body says it is the largest ever Ebola epidemic and has infected an estimated 2,615 people.

Liberia has been hardest-hit of the affected countries, with 624 deaths and 1,082 cases since the start of the year.

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Health workers take off their protective suits after finishing disinfecting areas at a hospital in Pita, Guinea - 25 August 2014 There have been more than 2,600 confirmed cases of Ebola, with around half of those being deadly
Ebola Virus Disease (EVD)
  • Symptoms include high fever, bleeding and central nervous system damage
  • Fatality rate can reach 90% - but current outbreak has mortality rate of about 55%
  • Incubation period is two to 21 days
  • There is no vaccine or cure
  • Supportive care such as rehydrating patients who have diarrhoea and vomiting can help recovery
  • Fruit bats, a delicacy for some West Africans, are considered to be virus's natural host

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Mr Frieden met Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf to discuss ways to fight the disease.

"The cases are increasing. I wish I did not have to say this, but it is going to get worse before it gets better," he admitted.

"The world has never seen an outbreak of Ebola like this. Consequently, not only are the numbers large, but we know there are many more cases than has been diagnosed and reported," he added.

He said there was a need for "urgent action" and called on Liberians "to come together" to stop misconceptions that have helped the outbreak spread.

Despite rumours to the contrary, the virus is not airborne and is spread by humans coming into contact with bodily fluids, such as sweat and blood, from those infected with virus.

Health ministers from the Economic Community of West African States will meet in Ghana's capital Accra on Thursday to discuss the regional response to the crisis.

The extraordinary meeting comes after the African Development Bank warned that the outbreak is causing enormous economic damage to West Africa as foreign businesses quit the region.

Meanwhile, medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has branded the international response "entirely inadequate".

Brice de la Vigne, MSF operations director, said efforts to bring the outbreak under control had been far too chaotic.

"It is simply unacceptable that serious discussions are only starting now about international leadership and coordination," he said.

"Self-protection is occupying the entire focus of states that have the expertise and resources to make a dramatic difference."  BBC

Senegal: Confirmação de petróleo no offshore



Oil samples have been recovered in the FAN-1 exploration well being drilled offshore Senegal by FAR Ltd (ASX:FAR) and its joint venture partners Cairn Energy PLC (Operator), ConocoPhillips and Petrosen - the Senegalese national oil company.


Elevated gas and fluorescence were encountered in a shallow secondary target and the presence of oil was confirmed by an intermediate logging program. Oil samples from a thin sand were collected by an MDT wireline formation tester for further analysis. This well data confirms the existence of a working petroleum system.

The FAN-1 well has reached a depth of 4402 metres where intermediate casing has now been set. The well will be deepened to planned Total Depth ("TD") of approximately 5000 metres. Conclusive results for this well will not be available until drilling operations are completed and all of the well data is fully assessed. The Operator anticipates that drilling of the FAN-1 well will be completed during the next month after which time the rig will be moved to the SNE-1 well location, the second well of the two well program offshore Senegal.
FAR Managing Director, Cath Norman said, "The presence of oil In the secondary target is important in helping our geological understanding of the margin and is significant because it confirms the existence of a working petroleum generating system. It is very pleasing that the building blocks of a working petroleum system are present and we look forward to drilling ahead to deeper objectives in FAN-1 and completing the SNE-1 well."


As previously announced, the drilling program has been designated as "tight" by the Operator and hence no information related to depth or formation will be provided during the drilling beyond what is required to meet ASX continuous disclosure obligations.

This release in relation to the matter referred to in the Company’s trading halt announcement of 25 August 2014.
Pre-drill estimates


The FAN-1 well is designed to test a stacked fan structure with the potential to contain approximately 900 million barrels of oil (mmbbls) (unrisked prospective resources)* with approximately 135mmbbls net to FAR* which owns a 15% working interest. FAN-1 will be followed immediately by the SNE-1 well to be drilled on the shelf targeting approximately 600mmbbls of oil (unrisked prospective resources)* with approximately 90mmbbls net to FAR* (reference: FAR ASX release of 27 February 2013).




About the drilling offshore Senegal


FAN-1 is the first exploration well in a two well program, offshore Senegal with the wells to be drilled back to back. The first well will be located on the North Fan prospect in 1,500m water depth. This well will be immediately followed by a second exploration well targeting a shelf edge prospect in 1,100m of water (See figures 1, 2 and 3).
These will be the first deep water (>1,000m) wells drilled in Senegalese waters and the first offshore wells to be drilled for over 20 years. The two exploration wells will test combined prospective resources of approximately 1.5 billion barrels of unrisked prospective resources* (225 mmbbls net to FAR*) and FAR retains a 15% working interest in the blocks. (Reference: FAR ASX release of 27/2/2013).


The FAN-1 well is a pure exploration well and, even if successful, will not be completed as a commercial production well. In the event of a success, the Joint Venture may decide to conduct further drilling and evaluation activities.

Moçambique: No bom caminho

Moçambique acaba de ser elogiado pela Organização das Nações Unidas (ONU) por ter alcançado "resultados significativos" nas áreas dos direitos humanos, saúde materno-infantil, descentralização, economia, boa governação, emprego, segurança alimentar e nutricional desde 2012.

Elegendo 2013 como o "ano de destaque" no que respeita ao bom desempenho de Moçambique, a ONU aponta o "forte crescimento económico" do país impulsionado em grande parte pela rápida expansão da indústria extractiva no período em análise, possibilitando novos financiamentos e parcerias, como factores que determinaram a avaliação positiva.

Entretanto, apesar desse boom económico, aliado a progressos positivos no acesso a serviços sociais básicos, mais de 50% dos moçambicanos vivem em situação de pobreza crónica, um quadro preocupante que deve ser invertido, indica aquela organização mundial no seu mais recente relatório sobre programas de desenvolvimento em implementação no país desde 2012.

Por outro lado, a ONU destaca reformas legislativas em Moçambique com vista ao cumprimento de normas internacionais sobre a protecção de mulheres e crianças vítimas de violência e abuso sexual, para além de acções de criação de empregos para jovens para o seu maior envolvimento no processo de desenvolvimento socioeconómico do país.

Como recomendação, a ONU indica que "Moçambique deve continuar a construir um caminho transparente", através da formação e inclusão social, tidos como pilares essenciais de governação para uma economia bem sucedida.

Refira-se que Moçambique é um dos oito países-pilotos no mundo que beneficiam de programas das Nações Unidas para reformas nas áreas sociais, economia e boa governação, cuja agenda é "Um líder, um programa, um orçamento, uma só voz e um escritório".

Em Moçambique aquela iniciativa está a ser monitorada por 22 agências da Organização das Nações Unidas, com um orçamento de cerca de USD 723,5 milhões.

(E. Arante) Correio da Manhã, Maputo

27.8.14

Gaza: Cessar-fogo, depois de 2.200 mortos

A long-term ceasefire has been agreed between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip.

The truce, ending seven weeks of fighting that has left more than 2,200 people - mostly Palestinians - dead, was brokered by Egypt and began at 19:00 (16:00 GMT) on Tuesday.

Hamas said the deal represented a "victory for the resistance".

Israel is to ease its blockade of Gaza to allow in aid and building materials, Israeli officials said.


Indirect talks on more contentious issues, including Israel's call for militant groups in Gaza to disarm, will begin in Cairo within a month.

The US gave the full backing to the deal, with State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki saying: "We strongly support the ceasefire announcement."

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon also welcomed the truce. But in a statement via his spokesman, Mr Ban warned that "any peace effort that does not tackle the root causes of the crisis will do little more than set the stage for the next cycle of violence".

The breakthrough came as both Israel and the Palestinians continued to trade fire.

A last-minute volley of mortar shells from Gaza killed two Israeli civilians in Eshkol Regional Council, medics told the BBC.

Earlier on Tuesday, at least six Palestinians were killed in a series of Israeli air strikes in Gaza, Palestinian officials said.
BBC

26.8.14

Líbia: Os Emiratos passaram ao ataque

The US was "caught off guard" by air strikes against Islamist militia in Libya, a senior official has told the BBC.

The attacks on militia positions around Tripoli airport were reportedly carried out by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) from bases in Egypt.

Egypt has denied any involvement and the UAE has not commented.

A militia alliance recently captured the capital's international airport after a battle lasting nearly a month.

The official told the BBC that the US had not been consulted about the air strikes and that it was concerned that US weapons may have been used, violating agreements under which they were sold.

The unidentified war planes attacked twice in the past week during a battle for Tripoli's airport between Islamist and nationalist militias.

A report in The New York Times on Monday said the UAE had provided the military aircraft, aerial refuelling planes and crews while Egypt gave access to its air bases.

Damaged plane at Tripoli airport. 25 Aug 2014 Planes and buildings have been badly damaged by fighting at the airport

On Monday, the US, France, Germany, Italy and the UK issued a joint statement denouncing "outside interference" in Libya which it said "exacerbates current divisions and undermines Libya's democratic transition".
Weak police and army
The BBC's Barbara Plett Usher in Washington says the air strikes have exposed another battleground in a regional struggle for power between Arab autocrats and Islamist movements.

Qatar has provided weapons and money to Islamist forces in Libya and elsewhere, she says, while Egypt and the UAE along with Saudi Arabia are trying to roll back Islamist advances.

Violence in Libya has surged recently between the rival groups who overthrew Muammar Gaddafi in the 2011 uprising.

Libya's police and army remain weak in comparison with the militias.

Over the weekend, Islamist-affiliated forces from Misrata and other cities took over Tripoli airport from the Zintan militia, which has held it for three years.

The airport, Libya's largest, has been closed for more than a month because of the fighting.

Hundreds of people have died since clashes broke out in Tripoli in July.

Islamist fighter at Tripoli airport. 25 Aug 2014 Islamist fighters are now in control of the international airport in Tripoli
Rival parliaments
In another development on Monday, Libya's previous Islamist-dominated parliament reconvened and voted to disband the country's interim government.

Correspondents say it leaves Libya with two rival parliaments, each backed by armed factions.

Elections in June saw the old General National Congress (GNC), where Islamists had a strong voice, replaced by the House of Representatives, dominated by liberals and federalists.

The GNC, which reconvened in Tripoli on Monday, has refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of its successor assembly, which is based in Tobruk.

The House of Representatives says the groups now in control of Tripoli airport are "terrorist organisations".

But the Misrata-led brigade, now in control of Tripoli airport, has called on the GNC to resume work.

Libya's government has repeatedly called for the militia groups to disband and join the national army. But so far, few have shown a willingness to disarm.  BBC

---   Eis a triste Líbia que resultou do derrube de Kadhafi por uma tropa fandanga apoiada pelas NATO!

23.8.14

Afganistão: Mais de 90 % da heroína mundial

Afghanistan now supplies over 90 percent of the world’s heroin, generating nearly $200 billion in revenue. Since the U.S. invasion on Oct. 7, 2001, opium output has increased 33-fold (to over 8,250 metric tons a year).
The U.S. has been in Afghanistan for over seven years, has spent $177 billion in that country alone, and has the most powerful and technologically advanced military on Earth. GPS tracking devices can locate any spot imaginable by simply pushing a few buttons.
Still, bumper crops keep flourishing year after year, even though heroin production is a laborious, intricate process. The poppies must be planted, grown and harvested; then after the morphine is extracted it has to be cooked, refined, packaged into bricks and transported from rural locales across national borders. To make heroin from morphine requires another 12-14 hours of laborious chemical reactions. Thousands of people are involved, yet—despite the massive resources at our disposal—heroin keeps flowing at record levels.
Common sense suggests that such prolific trade over an extended period of time is no accident, especially when the history of what has transpired in that region is considered. While the CIA ran its operations during the Vietnam War, the Golden Triangle supplied the world with most of its heroin. After that war ended in 1975, an intriguing event took place in 1979 when Zbigniew Brzezinski covertly manipulated the Soviet Union into invading Afghanistan.Behind the scenes, the CIA, along with Pakistan’s ISI, were secretly funding Afghanistan’s mujahideen to fight their Russian foes. Prior to this war, opium production in Afghanistan was minimal. But according to historian Alfred McCoy, an expert on the subject, a shift in focus took place. “Within two years of the onslaught of the CIA operation in Afghanistan, the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderlands became the world’s top heroin producer.”
When the history of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan is written, Washington's sordid involvement in the heroin trade and its alliance with drug lords and war criminals of the Afghan Communist Party will be one of the most shameful chapters.
The Huffington Post, October 15, 2008
Soon, as Professor Michel Chossudovsky notes, “CIA assets again controlled the heroin trade. As the mujahideen guerrillas seized territory inside Afghanistan, they ordered peasants to plant poppies as a revolutionary tax. Across the border in Pakistan, Afghan leaders and local syndicates under the protection of Pakistan intelligence operated hundreds of heroin laboratories.”
Eventually, the Soviet Union was defeated (their version of Vietnam), and ultimately lost the Cold War. The aftermath, however, proved to be an entirely new can of worms. During his research, McCoy discovered that “the CIA supported various Afghan drug lords, for instance Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. The CIA did not handle heroin, but it did provide its drug lord allies with transport, arms, and political protection.”
By 1994, a new force emerged in the region—the Taliban—that took over the drug trade. Chossudovsky again discovered that “the Americans had secretly, and through the Pakistanis [specifically the ISI], supported the Taliban’s assumption of power.”
These strange bedfellows endured a rocky relationship until July 2000 when Taliban leaders banned the planting of poppies. This alarming development, along with other disagreements over proposed oil pipelines through Eurasia, posed a serious problem for power centers in the West. Without heroin money at their disposal, billions of dollars could not be funneled into various CIA black budget projects. Already sensing trouble in this volatile region, 18 influential neo-cons signed a letter in 1998 which became a blueprint for war—the infamous Project for a New American Century (PNAC).
Fifteen days after 9-11, CIA Director George Tenet sent his top-secret Special Operations Group (SOG) into Afghanistan. One of the biggest revelations in Tenet’s book, At the Center of the Storm, was that CIA forces directed the Afghanistan invasion, not the Pentagon.
In the Jan. 26, 2003, issue of Time magazine, Douglas Waller describes Donald Rumsfeld’s reaction to this development. “When aides told Rumsfeld that his Army Green Beret A-Teams couldn’t go into Afghanistan until the CIA contingent had lain the groundwork with local warlords, he erupted, ‘I have all these guys under arms, and we’ve got to wait like little birds in a nest for the CIA to let us go in?’”
ARMITAGE A MAJOR PLAYER
But the real operator in Afghanistan was Richard Armitage, a man whose legend includes being the biggest heroin trafficker in Cambodia and Laos during the Vietnam War; director of the State Department’s Foreign Narcotics Control Office (a front for CIA drug dealing); head of the Far East Company (used to funnel drug money out of the Golden Triangle); a close liaison with Oliver North during the Iran-Contra cocaine-for-guns scandal; a primary Pentagon official in the terror and covert ops field under George Bush the Elder; one of the original signatories of the infamous PNAC document; and the man who helped CIA Director William Casey run weapons to the mujahideen during their war against the Soviet Union. Armitage was also stationed in Iran during the mid-1970s right before Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini overthrew the shah. Armitage may well be the greatest covert operator in U.S. history.
On Sept. 10, 2001, Armitage met with the UK’s national security advisor, Sir David Manning. Was Armitage “passing on specific intelligence information about the impending terrorist attacks”? The scenario is plausible because one day later—on 9-11—Dick Cheney directly called for Armitage’s presence down in his bunker. Immediately after WTC 2 was struck, Armitage told BBC Radio, “I was told to go to the operations center [where] I spent the rest of the day in the ops center with the vice president.”
These two share a long history together. Not only was Armitage employed by Cheney’s former company Halliburton (via Brown & Root), he was also a deputy when Cheney was secretary of defense under Bush the Elder. More importantly, Cheney and Armitage had joint business and consulting interests in the Central Asian pipeline which had been contracted by Unocal. The only problem standing between them and the Caspian Sea’s vast energy reserves was the Taliban.
Since the 1980s, Armitage amassed a huge roster of allies in Pakistan’s ISI. He was also one of the “Vulcans”—along with Condi Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and Rabbi Dov Zakheim—who coordinated Bush’s geo-strategic foreign policy initiatives. Then, after 9-11, he negotiated with the Pakistanis prior to our invasion of Afghanistan, while also becoming Bush’s deputy secretary of state stationed in Afghanistan.
Our “enemy,” or course, was the Taliban “terrorists.” But George Tenet, Colin Powell, Porter Goss, and Armitage had developed a close relationship with Pakistan’s military head of the ISI—General Mahmoud Ahmad— who was cited in a Sept. 2001 FBI report as “supporting and financing the alleged 9-11 terrorists, as well as having links to al Qaeda and the Taliban.”
The line between friend and foe gets even murkier. Afghan President Hamid Karzai not only collaborated with the Taliban, but he was also on Unocal’s payroll in the mid-1990s. He is also described by Saudi Arabia’s Al-Watan newspaper as being “a Central Intelligence Agency covert operator since the 1980s that collaborated with the CIA in funding U.S. aid to the Taliban.”
Capturing a new, abundant source for heroin was an integral part of the U.S. “war on terror.” Hamid Karzai is a puppet ruler of the CIA; Afghanistan is a full-fledged narco-state; and the poppies that flourish there have yet to be eradicated, as was proven in 2003 when the Bush administration refused to destroy the crops, despite having the chance to do so. Major drug dealers are rarely arrested, smugglers enjoy carte blanche immunity, and Nushin Arbabzadah, writing for The Guardian, theorized that “U.S. Army planes leave Afghanistan carrying coffins empty of bodies, but filled with drugs.” Is that why the military protested so vehemently when reporters tried to photograph returning caskets?


Read more: http://www.rawa.org/temp/runews/2008/11/24/cia-heroin-still-rule-day-in-afghanistan.html#ixzz3BEqrJHaW

Nigéria: A importante escolha do Emir de Kano

Ancien patron de la Banque centrale du Nigéria, Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi vient d’être couronné

Émir de Kano, dimanche dernier. Il s’agit néanmoins du banquier le plus célèbre d’Afrique, récemment

limogé au forceps par le régime actuel.


Le banquier Sanusi Lamido a été coopté dimanche 8 juin 2014 par un collège de dignitaires de l’Emirat de Kano pour succéder à

son oncle Ado Bayero, décédé à la suite d’une maladie, vendredi dernier. Face à l’ancien gouverneur, qui entretient depuis son

limogeage à la tête de la Banque centrale du Nigéria des rapports exécrables avec l’entourage du président nigérian, Jonathan

Goodluck, il y a eu 3 candidatures (Abbass Sanusi, oncle de Lamido, le gouverneur luimême, Ado Bayero, fils du défunt Émir)

pour prétendre à la couronne laissée vacante. Le profil du nouvel Émir de Kano devait sortir des clans Bayero et les Sanusi,

auxquels appartient l’ancien gouverneur.

Quatre membres du Conseil des sages traditionnels de l’Émirat se sont concertés plusieurs heures pour départager les candidats

à la succession d'Ado Bayero. Le banquier Sanusi Lamido avait le meilleur profil pour se faire introniser. Le verdict des sages n’a

pas été du goût des fidèles des candidats déchus. Des affrontements violents ont éclaté aussitôt après l’annonce du choix

d’introniser le banquier Sanusi Lamido à la tête de l'Émirat religieux de Kano (État situé au nord du Nigéria).

Le tout nouvel Émir Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, petit-fils du 11ème Émir de Kano, Sir Muhammadou Sanusi, auquel beaucoup de

spécialistes politiques nigérians prêtent de fortes ambitions présidentielles en 2015, a été suspendu de ses fonctions par le

président Goodluck Jonathan le 20 février 2014, après avoir évoqué une fraude de 20 milliards de dollars commise par les

associés du président de la Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC).
ISMAEL AIDARA

22.8.14

Timor-Leste: Por onde é que anda a Liberdade?

Timor-Leste tends to largely stay out of the international spotlight these days, much to the relief of those who have seen it in the headlines for the wrong reasons in the past.
Yet Timor’s proposed media law [pdf] has turned into news itself, raising international ire among NGOs, activists and media organisations.
The law would require all journalists to be certified, including bloggers. Foreign journalists would require government permission to report in the country. It would also require the media to “promote the national culture, values and identity” and would create a five-member Press Council that could exercise disciplinary authority, among other tasks.
Human Rights Watch has labelled the law “repressive”, while Time wrote of the threat in Timor that “if a government was able to influence broadcast content and put pressure on journalists, it would stand a good chance of disseminating its messages unchallenged”.
Drafts and redrafts have left campaigners unsatisfied, yet Parliament approved the law in May. President Taur Matan Ruak sent the law to the country’s top court to assess whether it was constitutional, and this week, the court found that it was not. The law now goes back to Parliament, giving activists another chance to push for changes.
In Timor, prominent journalist Jose Belo is leading the charge against the new law, along with think tank La’o Hamutuk (which is helpfully compiling developments and translations here).
Belo wrote on Crikey that the new media law is a “story of insiders versus outsiders, of the rich versus the poor” and that he would refuse to register as a journalist, no matter the consequences.
Belo is no stranger to controversy and has long been an outspoken activist. His Tempo Semanal newspaper has broken a number of large corruption stories and has had a major role in the state building process in Timor-Leste by pushing for transparency and accountability.
For a presentation to an international anti-corruption conference held in Dili in July last year, Belo wrote about the newspaper’s history and the challenges it has faced in its work, lambasting those who were more interested in protecting their own interests instead of supporting independent journalism.
… This is no joke. We at Tempo Semanal are considering closing the newspaper because we receive little or no support from those that claim to stand against corruption… The government chokes us like a chicken’s neck, the national and international business community here are too scared to advertise with us because they get all their contracts from the government, and the donor community is too scared to support us because they are afraid by doing so they will undermine their cosy relationship with Government.
But the problems with Timor’s press run even deeper, despite the tenacity of individual reporters.
For starters, the media in Timor is not yet in a position to be profitable, hamstringing its independence. The tiny nation, with a population of around 1.17 million, represents an even tinier media market—radio has the highest audience penetration, but even its weekly reach is only around 55 percent (UNMIT, 2011 [pdf]). Low literacy levels combined with linguistic diversity, and high production costs leading to high cover prices for papers, mean that newspaper audiences represent just a sliver of the total population and are mostly limited to Dili. It’s little wonder that there is limited advertising revenue for newsprint, especially for papers that may be annoying those in power.
So how do the papers and other media organisations survive? Well, one answer is that they simply run on the smell of an oily rag. Another answer is that UN agencies and NGOs operating in the country have set a precedent of paying to place press releases in newspapers and for the papers, television and radio stations to come out to cover their events, announcements, ceremonies and handshakes. While this may have subsided in line with the reduced presence of the international community in Dili in the last two years, actions by donors in the past have led to the business model of a number of media outlets becoming dependent on a steady stream of, what are essentially (often unidentified), advertorials. You can still get coverage without paying, but some agencies don’t want to take the risk of missing out.
On the one hand, this practice can be seen as a financial stop-gap while other elements needed to support a free and properly functioning media continue to develop. On the other hand, it is pervasive. It allows donors to influence the news agenda and raises them above questioning, when there are a lot of questions that could be asked. The journalists covering these stories are under no inducement to ask interesting questions, making the content dull. It encourages a culture within the media of polite deference instead of inquiry and investigation. And it aids and abets a government that is sensitive to any critical coverage—when content is supplied by agencies and NGOs that are keen to maintain their relations with the government, it is hardly going to be critical, as Belo argues.
Consequently, it seems that there is even less scrutiny of the machinery of aid in much of Timor-Leste’s media than there is of the government. But is heavy-handed regulation the only solution left after the media has failed to be capacity-built into professionalism through workshops?
Belo himself has criticised some of the media development initiatives run by donors, as have other organisations. For example, Freedom House writes that there is evidence to suggest that internationally funded media assistance “has contributed to what some Timorese journalists call a “project mentality,” in which news organisations become dependent on grants from non-state actors and find it difficult to be independently sustainable”.
Besides advertising from business and the international community, the government itself is the major financial backer of the Timor-Leste media, through advertising, through direct state support and through subsidies [in Tetum]. While our ABC shows that it is possible to have independent state-funded media, this is a more precarious proposition in Timor, given the sensitivity of the government to criticism. There are also problems in the relationships between government officials and journalists—there are reports of poorly-paid journalists receiving kick-backs from government officials for positive coverage, while other journalists and bloggers cannot access the information they need to accurately report.
On top of all this, the mobile revolution has been slow to take off due to a long-running telco monopoly (only broken by the entry of Telkomsel at the beginning of 2013). So unlike other countries in the region, where strong public momentum on social media and blogs has subsequently challenged the mainstream media to better perform, this counter voice is still subdued. The future development of online citizen journalism could also be threatened by the proposed law.
In a context of increasing concern around corruption and public spending, the arguments of the government about the law being necessary for quality ring hollow, as does the reasoning that the law will enshrine journalism as a profession with protections.
This law will not solve the quality challenge facing the Timor press. New voices, increased competition and stronger demands from audiences are probably the best hopes, and they cannot be legislated into existence.
Instead, there is a real threat of increasing self-censorship by publications and individual journalists to mitigate their financial and legal risk in the face of the new sanctions that can be imposed under the law, and a real threat to the freedom and diversity of the Timor-Leste media. As media ethicist Mark Pearson advised in a speech in Dili last year, “once media laws have been introduced it is hard to claw back eroded freedoms”.
As the resources boom offers up a once in a lifetime opportunity for Timorese to climb out of extreme poverty, the country needs independent watch dogs and checks and balances on government spending and actions. In light of all the progress that has been made since the dark days before independence, a new law threatening press freedom would be a troubling backward step.
Ashlee Betteridge , Research Officer at the Development Policy Centre.