Press Review [Archives:2001/40/Press Review]
Articles, commentaries and analyzes in the local press of this are still focusing on the recent events that took place in the U.S, and their subsequent developments all over the world. Concentration and emphasis this week is also put on reviving the 39th anniversary of the 26 September revolution of 1962 in Yemen. Other themes tackled in newspapers articles have focused on many local issues the Yemeni society is experiencing.
Here we present you in this edition of our weekly press review some excerpts from articles published in a number of local newspapers. Al-Ayyam newspaper, 27 September 2001 Mr Ahmed Saleh Al-Faqieh has written an article saying the September 11 events have provided for the Americans such scenes their most efficient directors of science fiction have failed to imagine. Amidst stunning responses and anger and the American desire for vengeance, the world has lived very crucial hours of expectations in precaution of of uncalculated responses by the wounded giant. What have made it worse are the press analyzes that nominated most of Arab and Muslim countries as targets of the American vengeance. It seems that discussion inside the U.S. administration have later given way for reason calculations to prevail and the American official statements began to talk about a long-term war for fighting terrorism using mostly the weapons of intelligence, diplomacy and economic pressures. THe American immediate response to September 11 attacks divulged plans of securing bases for its troops on Pakistan’s territories, a matter categorically rejected by majority of Pakistani people. It was clear that if America did that and transferred its military equipment into Pakistan, it would have then aroused internal reactions that might have led the hard-line groups supporting Afghanistan to control Pkistan’s nuclear capabilities. Such a development would have been an introduction to dangers too superior to what happened in the attacks in America.
Al-Isboua weekly, 27 September 2001 Political editor of the newspaper says the People of Yemen have received the 39th anniversary of 26 September revolution with the welcome it deserves as an accomplishment that has drawn for Yemen a new course to cross from despotism to freedom, to progress and to unity.
Currently there are many difficulties before the Yemenis produced from contradictions between limited potentials and high level of hopes and aspirations created by the revolution. Before the 26 of September 1962 there was no renaissance blocked with hardships. There was an isolation and there was ignorance. After the revolution the Yemenis discarded their fear from tyranny and found access to civilization and science. The Yemenis have begun building with one hand and and struggling against remnants of the past with the other hand. Following years of the revolution Yemen is no longer that unknown part of the world.
Al-Jamaheer weekly, organ of the arab Baath Socialist party, Syrian organization, 23 September 2001
The newspaper’s Editor in Chief has said in an article that economists are unanimous that any conflict taking place in the world is an economic one, as it had been confirmed in the first and second world wars the result of which had been the changing of old economic systems to be replaced by new systems.
As is the case of any war, it begins as political but with an economic content. The political directions of the crisis was initially created with the collapse of the Eastern bloc in order that the countdown begins to take the shape of an alliance aimed at other power centers in the world adopting independent trend with the aim of weakening them, instigating racial and sectarian feuds to liquidate Islamic movements and groups in Bosnia-Hersagovina, Chechnya and Afghanistan and others. These goals have not deviated rom the economic objective. Weakening of these countries and movements would enable the spread of control on major keystones in the world. Now the Caspian Sea and the petroleum wealth it contains can be the next target following domination over Arab petroleum after the Gulf war.
Building on this image, the events of America and hitting the World Trade Center, is targeting capitalism. By who and how is another matter. The important thing is that indicators confirm that the blow has caused great confusion in international financial market, drop in value of stocks and severe collapse in investments.
RAY weekly, organ of the Sons of Yemen League party, 25 September 2001
Mr Abdulwasie al-Nakhlani says in his article this week that the recent events of America were not expected in minds and thought of many but it had happened. What have accompanied those events of strategic losses of a materialistic civilization and other painful casualties make us issue suppositions based on information issued by event- makers drawing us to think in a subservient way having no clues either in time or venue. The event is within the boundaries of America and the punishment is meant against a ”perpetrator” thousands of kilometers away, in a cave in one of Afghanistan mountains. Many heads nod in acceptance of harmonious to chaos and never stop even for one moment to resort to logic.
The the vision became confused, the tyrant is the aggrieved and vice versa. The strongest military arsenal in the world is tattered on its own ground and to re-assemble its power to pour its anger and vengeance on defenseless people considered tobe the weakest in the world. Such illogic mentality makes us believe that the lamb has really preyed upon the lion in its den. We do not even give an opportunity to reason and to think that there is another lion getting ready to prey or there is a savage conflict inside the lion itself.
Saut Ashoura weekly, organ of Yemeni Popular Forces Union 23 September 2001
Columnist Dr Abdulmalik al-Mutawakil has this week commented on the recent attacks in the U.S. by expressing strongly his sympathy with the people of America in their ordeal and feeling pity and sorry for the innocent victims killed under the rubble. He says that at the same time he holds the American administration and its unjust foreign policy responsible for what happened. He who accepts and supports injustice befalling others should expect that one day he would be target of that injustice. Dr al-Mutawakil maintains that the U.S.administration has been practicing injustice against the Palestinian people through its indefinite backing of the racial zionist entity that is killing everyday children, women and the elderly; destroying farms and homes in addition to shelling savagely Palestinian town and villages using the U.S.-made weaponry. Against all that the American president pops his head on TV. screens to condemn violence of the Palestinian stone-throwers on Israeli tanks and his government puts all its weight to prevent the UN security council from taking a resolution of sending forces to protect the Palestinian people groaning under oppression, intimidation and impoverishment.
The other face of the American arrogance is the iniquitous blockade on the people of Iraq, in place for more than eleven years, and the daily American-British air shelling of the country inflicting casualties and destruction of civilian institutions.
American blockade against Iraq has up to now caused the death of more than a million children. Don’t these children deserve to cried on as the world does today for victims of the Pentagon and the World Trade Centre? Aren’t the children of Palestine and Iraq human beings deserve to stand by them and condemn the aggressor attacking them as we condemn the innocent victims aboard the the kidnapped planes attacking the World Trade Centre?
It is time for the American people to realize that the policy of their administration is behind what all that happened in the United States, in Palestine and in Iraq and others.
Al-Wahdawi weekly, organ of the Nasserite Popular Unionist Organization, 25 September 2001
In its statement on the recent events in America, Nasserite Popular Unionist Organization says that with multiplicity of those tat can be behind the attacks on the U.S. motivated with revenge or with interest, it is regrettable that the American administration has held the Arabs and Muslims responsible for the attacks and rendered all of them into terrorists just because of ethnical or religious affiliation although it does not possess any evidence. It began preparing for what the American president has described as a crusade war against the Arabs and Muslims, rather against Islam under allegations of fighting terror. It has started its war with campaigns of hatred against American Muslims and Arabs followed by massing up arms and forces for an open war against every Arab and Muslim country that would not submit to the American policy, and also on all the groups that resist the zionist entity or refuse the American policy under pretext of being ”terrorist”. The statement mentions that Afghanistan is listed as the prime suspect as it harbors Usama bin Laden, whom America accuses as mastermind of New York blasts, though without any evidence, and that other Arab countries are listed as probable targets.
The United States must understand that its mistaken policy is the factor that brought for it enmity and that its endeavor for an international alliance against terror would not be achieved through pressure and and the state terror, but through changing its policy and elimination of injustices committed throughout the world. These are particularly embodied in its support for zionists and its stand against the right of the Palestinian people to freedom and independence, its unjust blockade against the people of Iraq that resulted in the annihilation of more than two million people because of sanctions, shortage in food and medicine and its blockade against Libya and the Sudan.
The United States must on the other hand realize that the world could not be forced to adopt the American concept of terror. For there must be a correct and just definition of terrorism, differentiating between it and the struggle of peoples for freedom. This should be in advance of talking about cooperation of the world nations, especially Arab and Muslim countries, with the United States. America has also to understand and remember its terroristic crimes and crimes of its ally, the zionist entity against the civilians all over the Arab and Islamic world, before giving itself the right to describe the Arabs and Muslims as terrorists and to prepare itself for a racial and sectarian war against them the world over.
Al-Ihya’a al-Arabi weekly, organ of the Arab Baath Socialist party, Iraqi organization, 25 September 2001
The newspaper’s editorial is this week devoted to mark the 39th anniversary of Yemen’s revolution of 26 September 1962. It says the people of Yemen and the Arab nation have the right to celebrate the anniversary of September glorious revolution because its both regional and pan-Arab dimensions are strongly interlinked across the long march of struggle the strugglers have fought.
The editorial maintains that the roots of this blessed revolution extend deep into the national and pan-Arab soil , beginning from the revolution of 1948 through August 1955 to 1961 till September 26, 1962. Celebrating this occasion is an expression of gratitude and loyalty to the revolution and its heroes and martyrs and also a stage for political parties and organizations and intellectuals to inspire the rich meanings and indications of it, renewing the pledge and determination to continue on the road leading to achieving its great objectives.
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