An American woman named Sidney Jones has hit the news
An American woman named Sidney Jones has hit the news
headlines recently. Her statements and her very existence have
drawn a range of views.
Many say that Jones, who is the Southeast Asian director of
the International Crisis Group (ICG), has contributed to the
promotion of human rights in the country. Where as many others
accused Jones of helping to 'disintegrate' the nation.
State Intelligence Agency (BIN) chief Hendropriyono said the
ICG and some other non-governmental organizations (NGOs) had sold
important information to certain parties for money. Hendro said
that information could damage Indonesia's reputation.
The press and NGOs have become important pillars of democracy.
Unfortunately, there are times when NGOs use their reports to get
funds from donor countries. Worse, the reports of the NGOs have
been used as references by international donors to give financial
aid.
In the case of Jones, the Islamic community in Indonesia had
been disturbed by her reports over Jamaah Islamiyah (JI) in
relation to the Bali bombings. It was Jones who introduced Jamaah
Islamiyah terminology to the world as if she was the most well-
informed person about Islam and Muslims in Indonesia. And Jones'
reports have apparently been used as a reference by the U.S.
Congress. The result is that Indonesians have since found it
difficult to enter America and some other Western countries.
We do need a free and critical press and NGOs to uphold
democracy, but their freedom and criticism must be based on their
love for the country.
-- Republika, Jakarta
Terrorists' attacks
in Saudi Arabia
After the bloody weekend terror attacks, officials in Saudi
Arabia persistently asserted that the country's oil production
and its ability to provide crude to world markets had not been
jeopardized. According to them, the terrorists attacked housing
areas of foreign workers precisely because the "hard" targets of
oil production plants are so well protected.
Nevertheless, the successful terror strike was a serious blow
to the ruling Saudi monarchy whose inability to safeguard its own
homeland from terrorism was again evident.
For the United States, the situation is almost as distressful.
Washington wanted a strong foothold in the oil-producing
country. But the war in Iraq seems merely to have increased
restlessness in Saudi Arabia. And Iraq's own domestic situation
remains extremely shaky.
Instability in the crude market is likely to continue for a
long time. One has no faith in an improvement in the Saudi state
of affairs or political developments in Iraq. And, more
importantly, there is no confidence that the United States is
able to control the increasingly complicated situation in the
Middle East. -- Helsingin Sanomat, Helsinki, Finland
Efforts to repair Iraq
After more than a year of bloody turmoil in Iraq, the United
States should have changed tack and made genuine efforts to
repair its seriously damaged image. Its mishandling of the
transfer of power to the Iraqis, slated for June 30, is a case in
point.
The U.S.-installed Interim Governing Council named Iyad
Allawi, a member of the IGC, to head the government that takes
over on June 30. The IGC has been unpopular with most Iraqis for
comprising Iraqi exiles. Even Lakhdar Ibrahimi, the U.N. envoy to
Iraq, was taken aback by the announcement of Allawi as the new
prime minister. Allawi's selection could be seen as a pre-emptive
bid to consolidate the council's grip on power and turn the
transitional government into a U.S. puppet. It is a slap in the
face for the U.N. as well.
Neither Iraq nor the United States stands to benefit from this
skullduggery. Washington is widely perceived as meddling in the
formation of Iraq's new caretaker administration. The United
States, being the occupier power, should be acting in good faith
to help Iraq become an example of democracy in the Middle East -
as President George W. Bush has promised on several occasions.
Ibrahimi's efforts are being stymied by the United States'
surreptitious tactics and willy-nilly insistence on retaining its
massive army and firepower in Iraq.
-- The Egyptian Gazette, Cairo, Egypt
Attacks in Saudi Arabia
The terrorists are apparently trying not only to topple or
undermine the Saudi royal family, which rules the country, but
also to destabilize the international community through Saudi
Arabia. Every measure must be taken to prevent this from
happening.
The Saudi government must beef up its counterterrorism
measures. It has failed to prevent a series of terrorist bombings
that have occurred in its oil industry cities and in the capital
Riyadh since last year. It needs to take tougher steps than
before, including finding terrorist bases and cutting off their
financial support.
According to some observers, a backdrop to the incident is the
fact that the Saudi public is frustrated by a domestic political
system that has seldom seen reforms and an unemployment rate for
younger Saudis that is reported to be more than 20 percent. Along
with reinforcing counterterrorism measure, the Saudi government
may have to stabilize the domestic situation through political
and social reforms.
The terrorist problem is not one that Saudi Arabia can handle
alone. The international community must support Riyadh by further
expanding the global coalition against terrorism.
-- Yomuri Shimbun, Tokyo
------------------------------------------
Le Figaro, Paris, on the 60th anniversary of the June 6, 1944
D-Day landings:
Women and men of today have discovered the atrocious nature of
this period. The soldiers stacked up in rowboats throwing
themselves toward concrete walls spitting fire, the young men
from America and Great Britain who are often poorly understood on
this side of the Atlantic, the incessant bombings that razed
towns - Caen, Saint-Lo, Cherbourg and so many others. ...
Sixty years later, this is the last moment to reunite the
survivors. And for the first time it is possible to invite the
Germans.
... The history of today is conducted with the Germans of our
time. The generations who from now on inhabit our neighboring
country consider themselves innocent of the crimes of their
fathers and grandfathers. As a result, June 6 has turned into a
celebration of freedom. ...
The bad news is that the ceremonies require thousands of
policemen and soldiers to block the route from bombers. Without
any doubt they will be there, concealed, dreaming of the
spectacular assassinations of heads of state. These twilight
killers are proof that the battle for liberty has still not been
won. ...
---
El Mundo, Madrid, Spain, on Bush-Iraq:
The pressing need that the Iraqi officials feel of distancing
themselves from the White House in order to gain credibility was
made clear in the appointment process of the new Iraqi president.
Adnan Pachachi had to turn down the post for the stream of
criticisms he received for being (L. Paul) Bremer's favorite
candidate, which paved the way to the theoretically more
independent(Ghazi Mashal Ajil) al-Yawer. But don't fall into the
trap: The latter as much as Prime Minister (Iyad) Allawi are in
greater or lesser measure, also men of the Bush administration.
Like Pachachi, al-Yawer studied at George Washington University
and lived comfortably in exile until the fall of Saddam.
The speech he made after his appointment demanding "full
sovereignty" for Iraq is much of a show. To stop the spiral of
violence, which yesterday (June 1) caused the oil price to
skyrocket to its highest in 14 years, the new Iraqi government
will have to truly break off with whom still pulls the strings.
--- MORE[
GetAP 1.00 -- JUN 4, 2004 01:24:56
;AP;
ANPA ..r..
Editorial Roundup
UNDATED: the strings.
JP/
UNDATED: the strings.
---
The Jordan Times, Amman, Jordan, on the Khobar attack and
other terror strikes in Saudi Arabia:
The "masterminds" of such attacks may have deluded themselves
into believing that their senseless actions can force the
disruption of oil supplies from an area which is close to the
core of the Saudi oil industry.
With international oil prices surging to new heights and
threatening, in the process, the fragile global economic order,
the attackers expect to wreak havoc with the supply and price of
oil worldwide.
But despite the current of tensions between the U.S. and Saudi
Arabia, the top crude oil exporter had promised to increase
production. Following the attacks in Khobar, the Saudi government
reiterated that pledge, saying such terrorist actions would not
deter its "commitment to the world and to our friends in
America."
...These attacks are not new. But they are now more frequent.
Therefore, Saudi Arabia deserves all manner of support from the
Arab and international community.
---
Il Sole 24 Ore, Milan, Italy, on Italy-U.S. relations:
If Italy rose again from dictatorship to democracy and came
out from the abyss of the war that the fascist regime put it
into, it owes it first of all to the decisive role of the U.S. as
much in the victorious military campaign against the Nazi forces
occupying the peninsula and as the postwar reconstruction of the
of the country.
But today this fact risks being submerged and overshadowed by
a wave of indiscriminate and instrumental anti-Americanism,
already present in Italy before the arrival of George W. Bush in
the White House and the war in Iraq.
So much so that even with the 60th anniversary of the
liberation of Rome by the allied forces, just because the
American president will visit to celebrate this, the radical left
have organized a series of protests with motives that do not seem
focused on contesting the unilateral policies of the Republican
administration and its unhappy management of the post-Saddam
period, but rather from a general intolerance and rejection of
what America has represented in the last half century.
There is ... more than one good reason to remember how much
Italy owes the U.S.
---
Expressen, Stockholm, Sweden, on the attacks in Khobar, Saudi
Arabia:
Saudi Arabia has finally begun to take seriously the threats
of terror, hitting suspected al-Qaida cells with a rod of iron.
But the security efforts will not be enough to check the
terror wave. The Royal Family must also have a look at its own -
in many respects - rotten construction.
There are good and progressive forces within the dynasty, like
the Crown Prince himself, Abdullah, but there are also
reactionary forces who put obstacles in the way of all reformists
and scoop from the same well as al-Qaida.
As long as this power struggle continues, it will be hard to
achieve lasting progress when it comes to ... women's rights ,
political participation and religious tolerance. The United
States should take a look at its alliance with the royal family.
To scale down its own dependence of oil and to increase the
pressure for reforms would be a good first step.
---
Dayton Daily News, Dayton, Ohio, on planned terrorist attacks:
Bad as the Iraq war has been, at least this country has had no
major terrorist attacks since 9/11. But Tuesday brought two
pieces of bad news.
Government officials said they think terrorists are planning a
major attack this summer and are already deployed here.
Meanwhile, a respected British-based think tank offered its
guess that al-Qaida still has 18,000 terrorists scattered around
the world.
The 340-page survey rejects completely the Bush notion that
Iraq is the front line of the war against terror. The Bush
administration has, of course, rejected the institute's criticism
of the Iraq war.
But, given the administration's own need to keep pressing the
anti-terrorist campaign in this country to keep funding it, to
keep warning people, the White House cannot convincingly argue
that the situation is much better than the institute suggests, a
year after the fall of Saddam.
---
The Herald, Rock Hill, South Carolina, on John Kerry's
decision to accept the Democratic nomination:
John Kerry's trial balloon about delaying his nomination as
the Democratic presidential candidate apparently popped. ...
Delaying the nomination would have been a logical tactic.
Would Democrats really care if Kerry failed to utter the words
"... and I accept the nomination," especially if it helped level
the playing field?
Well, maybe. Some Democrats reportedly thought such a move
would appear too calculated and might backfire. Officials in
Boston, where the convention will be held, were miffed. And the
Republicans were beginning to make hay with the idea, saying only
Kerry could be both for the nomination and against it.
So, on Wednesday, Kerry announced that he would, indeed,
accept the nomination when offered in Beantown.
"Boston is the place where America's freedom began, and it's
where I want the journey to the Democratic nomination to be
completed," Kerry said in a prepared statement.
Voters might well ask themselves whether any of this matters
one way or the other. The nominating conventions, once events of
high political drama where real battles for the nomination took
place, now are little more than glorified campaign commercials
for the respective candidates.
We would advise Kerry to hold off on announcing who his
running mate will be. That's about the only suspense left in the
process.
---
The Democrat and Chronicle, Rochester, New York, on global
warming:
Perhaps a movie threatening tsunamis, wind storms, grapefruit-
sized hailstones, flash freezings and a flooded Manhattan can get
people to pay attention to an environmental threat that's too
often ignored.
At least that's what environmentalists are hoping after last
week's opening of "The Day After Tomorrow." This film offers a
catastrophic picture of man-made global climate change.
Granted, real-life global warming will look nothing like this
movie, in which the Earth's temperature rises in a matter of
days.
In fact, the Earth's temperature is rising about one degree
per year. But the effects, including rising oceans and melting
ice caps, are building up. They will eventually affect plant,
animal and human life.
Unfortunately, the Bush administration's allegiance to
nonrenewable energy industries is undermining efforts to curb
global warming. That shortsighted attitude should change. Cleaner
energy sources, which do not emit gases that are increasing the
Earth's temperature, deserve greater support. ...
We may never live to see the effects of global warming. But
preserving the Earth for our descendants should still matter.
GetAP 1.00 -- JUN 4, 2004 01:29:17