Ralf Goergens

Strange news:

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Syria’s interior minister, who ran Lebanon as security chief until 2003, died Wednesday, and Syria’s official news agency said he had committed suicide.

His death was reported days before the expected release of a U.N. report into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Some readers might remember that only last month Syrian officials had answered questions from German UN investigator Detlef Mehlis on the murder of Rafik Hariri. Syria had at first refused to cooperate outright, but finally caved in to international pressure:

The UN has reached a deal with Syria, allowing it to question witnesses in the probe into the killing of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

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The agreement on legal procedures was reached during talks between chief UN investigator Detlev Mehlis in Damascus, Syrian officials said.

Mr Mehlis and a legal advisor from Syria’s foreign ministry had agreed “on the measures and preparations for hearing the Syrian witnesses,” a Syrian official told the state news agency, Sana.

The official added that Mr Mehlis would return to Damascus “at the end of next week”.

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Lebanese media has been reporting that Mr Mehlis wants to speak to Rustom Ghazaleh, Syria’s intelligence chief in Lebanon at the time of the assassination, as well as two of his aides.

The German prosecutor is also said to want to interview Mr Ghazaleh’s predecessor, Jhazi Kanann, now the minister of interior, says the BBC’s Kim Ghattas in Damascus.

The circumstances of Kannan’s death are very curious, to say the least:

Hours before his death, he had been interviewed by a Lebanese radio station after he called to refute allegations that he accepted bribes and payoffs while in the Lebanon post.

“I think this is the last statement I might give,” Kanaan said at the end of the phone interview with Voice of Lebanon, Reuters said.

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A report from the U.N. inquiry is expected to be released within the next 10 days.

Just before news of Kanaan’s death, Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in an exclusive interview that Syria had no involvement in Hariri’s death, and it was impossible for him to have ordered it.

But, he said, if the U.N. probe concluded that Syrians were involved, then they would be regarded as traitors and should be charged with treason and face punishment, either through the Syrian judicial process or by an international court.

That latter bit is very interesting. Kannan categorically denies wrongdoing which pales to insignificance in comparison to Hariri’s murder, but commits suicide (or so the Syrian government claims) as soon as Assad is telling CNN that Syrians involved in said murder would be considered traitors, and maybe handed over to foreign authorities.

Assad explained that potential Syrian conspirators would be treated as traitors because the Hariri murder was very much against Syrian interest.

I see several possibilities here:

Read more

There are still many thousands of lost or abandoned pets in need of rescue in the areas hit by Hurricane Katrina. This post at the Cityrag blog has links to blogs covering the rescue efforts and also information where and how you can help.

Link by email from David J. Theroux of the Independent Institute

Alvaro Vargas Llosa refutes the ten myths the legend of Che Guevara is based on. Here are some examples:

1.HE WAS AGAINST CAPITALISM. In fact, Guevara was for state capitalism. He opposed the wage labor system of “appropriating surplus value” (in Marxist jargon) only when it came to private corporations. But he turned the “appropriation of the workers’ surplus value” into a state system. One example of this is the forced labor camps he supported, starting with Guanahacabibes in 1961.

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3. HE STOOD FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE. In fact, he helped ruin the economy by diverting resources to industries that ended up in failure and reduced the sugar harvest, Cuba’s mainstay, by half in two years. Rationing started under his stewardship of the island’s economy.

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6. HE WAS A GUERRILLA GENIUS. With the exception of Cuba, every guerrilla effort he helped set up failed pitifully. After the triumph of the Cuban revolution, Guevara set up revolutionary armies in Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Panama, and Haiti, all of which were crushed. … Finally, his incursion in Bolivia ended up in his death, which his followers are commemorating this Sunday.

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10. HE WAS RIGHT ABOUT THE UNITED STATES. He predicted Cuba would surpass the GDP per capita of the U.S. by 1980. Today, Cuba’s economy can barely survive thanks to Venezuela’s oil subsidy (about 100,000 barrels a day), a form of international alms that does not speak too well of the regime’s dignity.

Read the whole thing, and also don’t miss Llosa’s article The Killing Machine: Che Guevara, from Communist Firebrand to Capitalist Brand.

From Deutsche Welle:

Germany’s long wait for a new chancellor is coming to an end after sources from both the Social Democrat and Christian Democratic Union parties said on Monday that Angela Merkel is set to become Germany’s first female chancellor, and the first to have been raised in the former communist east, under a deal struck with the SPD.

A Social Democrat spokesman told reporters that Gerhard Schröder’s party had agreed that Merkel should replace the incumbent as chancellor at the head of a coalition government. The spokesperson said party members had approved by a large majority the deal that would make Merkel the first female chancellor in German history.

The CDU later formally approved the deal making Merkel chancellor at the head of a coalition government with the Social Democrats. A source within the CDU told AFP the party leadership “unanimously” supported the agreement

It took a while, but the superglue had to be dissolved first so that Schröder could finally be pried out of his seat of power.

From Deutsche Welle

The East German secret police spied on the man who would become Pope Benedict XVI for 15 years, targeting him as one of the Vatican’s fiercest opponents of communism, according to a report published Sunday.

From April 1974 until the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, the feared Ministry for State Security kept close tabs on the then theology professor Joseph Ratzinger, according to documents from the so-called Stasi archives printed Sunday in the weekly Bild am Sonntag.

“Ratzinger is seen at the Vatican as one of the staunchest opponents of communism,” a Stasi spy noted in his file after the late John Paul II named Ratzinger prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1981. The report said the Stasi also attempted in vain to unearth damaging documents from Ratzinger’s involvement in the Hitler Youth under the Third Reich.

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“Ratzinger is currently, after the pope and Secretary of State (Agostino) Casaroli, the most influential political and leading ideologue at the Vatican,” a Stasi spy wrote in the 1980s.

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At least eight Stasi spies tracked Ratzinger over the years, although only two have been identified.

The former Cardinal Ratzinger had worked very closely with John Paul II. in formulating Church doctrine and policies as well as in day-to-day business, so it isn’t surprising at all that he came under the same scrutiny by communist spies as the former Pope.

Btw, their principals might have gone out of business, but I’d love to know who the as yet undiscovered spies are. If they had been citizens of East Germany I have no wish to see them punished, nor could they be legally punished for working for their country (even if it doesn’t exist anymore), but if they were West Germans they definitively should serve some time in jail.