Fishing in troubled waters

An article by the editor or the Washington Post's Outlook section that displays not only arrogance but, if one is feeling generous, ignorance for one who should know better:



In China, Following General Tso's Imperial Recipe

By John Pomfret
Washington Post
Saturday, July 11, 2009 4:32 PM

Most Americans have never heard of Gen. Zuo Zongtang, but when they hit the local Chinese takeout and order a greasy carton of General Tso's chicken, they're invoking his name. By 1878, Zuo, or Tso, marching west from his base in Shaanxi province with 120,000 troops, had extended China's imperial reach deep into Central Asia. The boundaries set by Zuo's campaign in a region called Xinjiang, or the New Territories, have remained essentially untouched to this day.

Chinese like to point out that Zuo's victories in Xinjiang occurred just two years after Gen. George Armstrong Custer died at the Battle of Little Bighorn trying to corral members of the Lakota and Cheyenne tribes back into their reservations. They compare their treatment of China's minorities such as the Tibetans or the Uighurs -- who speak a Turkic language, read Arabic script and are culturally if not altogether religiously Muslim -- and the white man's handling of Native Americans. See, I've been told countless times by Chinese friends, it's not just the white man's burden to bring civilization to the "natives," it's the yellow man's burden, too.

The violence last week in Xinjiang between Uighurs and Han Chinese underscores two nettlesome issues for China. First, despite its world-beating economic growth rate, its maglev trains in Shanghai and its postmodern Olympic Village in Beijing, China is still an empire in the throes of becoming a country. And second, if this empire really is going to "rule the world" someday, as a recent book predicts, is its treatment of Xinjiang a harbinger of how it plans to deal with us? And are the violent reactions to China's power something that will erupt not just on China's streets but around the world?

Continuing the policies of the Qing Dynasty, China's Communist leaders have always treated Xinjiang more like an imperial outpost than a province. In 1949, Chairman Mao dispatched one of his most trusted generals to tame it. Wang Zhen then became its first governor, and its economy remains dominated by a state farm system established by the People's Liberation Army. Millions of Han Chinese were initially forced and then encouraged to populate Xinjiang in a scheme to dilute its Uighur majority. In 1949, Han were 6 percent of Xinjiang's population; in 2000, the year of the last census, they made up 40 percent.

A program to develop China's west launched in the early years of this century has had the air of an imperial edict to settle savage lands -- and extract all the available oil, gas and minerals while you're at it. Chinese scholars invoked America's concept of Manifest Destiny and its Wild West when writing about the plan. Others saw a parallel to Israel's Jewish settlements in the West Bank; even the irrigation technology Han settlers use is designed by Israeli engineers.

Xinjiang isn't the only place where, for better or worse, China seems more empire than nation-state. There's Tibet, of course, which has been under military occupation since the 1950s and erupts spasmodically in anti-Chinese violence, most recently last year. And there is Hong Kong. The city passed from British to Chinese control in 1997, but it remains a colony -- except its overlords are no longer in Whitehall, they're in Beijing. Meanwhile, the deal China is offering Taiwan, the final piece in China's decades-old imperial dream to unite the motherland, parallels the one in place for the old British colony.

As for Manifest Destiny, the Han commonly view Uighurs in stereotypical terms. Landing at Kashgar's airport once, I asked a Han cabbie whether his wife was Uighur, knowing full well that mixed marriages are as common there as they were in the segregated American South. The guy practically veered into an oncoming truck and then proceeded to regale me with anecdotes about the wanton sexuality of Uighur girls. "But we're civilizing them!" he assured me.

As China rises, what will be the face of its civilizing mission to the rest of the world? And how will the world respond? Will we chafe at China's power like the Uighurs did in Xinjiang? They countered violently, wantonly killing Han Chinese, burning cars and ransacking stores. And if that happens, will the face of Beijing's reaction mirror those chilling photographs of grim-faced Han men armed with big sticks, prowling the streets of Xinjiang's capital, Urumqi?

Earlier this year, an American chief executive mused that he'd rather be China's President Hu Jintao, who cancelled his participation in the G-8 summit to deal with the Xinjiang crisis, than President Obama. But Hu has got the tougher job. Leading an empire in the 21st century is no joke, especially if that empire is the People's Republic of China.



John Pomfret is the editor of The Washington Post's Outlook section and the author of "Chinese Lessons: Five Classmates and the Story of the New China."

On the Iranaian Elections

In Fraud We Trust?
June 25, 2009
Foreign Policy Journal
by Nima Shirazi

Douter de tout ou tout croire, ce sont deux solutions également commodes, qui l’une et l’autre nous dispensent de réfléchir.

To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the need for thought.

- Jules Henri Poincaré, La Science et l’Hypothèse (1901)

By now, we all know the story:

[…]

The turnout was a massive 85% by most estimates, resulting in almost forty million ballots cast by the eligible Iranian voting public.

Before the polls even closed, Mousavi had already claimed victory. “In line with the information we have received, I am the winner of this election by a substantial margin,” he said. “We expect to celebrate with people soon.”
And so it was. Ahmadinejad won. By a lot. Some said by too much.

It didn’t take long before accusations started flying, knee-jerk reactions were reported as expert analysis, and rumor became fact. As Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei congratulated Ahmadinejad on his landslide victory, calling it a “divine assessment,” the opposition candidates all cried foul. Mousavi called the results “treason to the votes of the people” and the election a “dangerous charade.” Karroubi described Ahmadinejad’s reelection as “illegitimate and unacceptable.”

The Western media immediately jumped on board, calling the election a “fraud,” “theft,” and “a crime scene” in both news reports and editorial commentary. Even so-called progressive analysts, from Juan Cole to Stephen Zunes to Dave Zirin to Amy Goodman to Trita Parsi to the New Yorker’s Laura Secor, opined on the illegitimacy of the results. They cited purported violations, dissident testimony from inside sources, leaked “real” results, and seeming inconsistencies, incongruities, and irregularities with Iran’s electoral history all with the intention of proving that the election was clumsily stolen from Mousavi by Ahmadinejad. These commentators all call the continuing groundswell of protest to the poll results an “unprecedented” show of courage, resistance, and people power, not seen in Iran since the 1979 revolution.

To me, the only thing unprecedented about what we’re seeing in Iran seems to be the constant media hysteria, righteous indignation, and hypocritical pseudo-solidarity of the West; a bogus, biased, and altogether presumptuous and uncritical reaction to hearsay and conjecture, almost totally decontextualized in order to promote sensational headlines and build international consensus for foreign intervention in Iran.

WSW


An unmistakable indicator of the real attitude of the Obama administration to the events in Honduras is the response of the US media. The media, led by the New York Times, immediately embraced the claims of the Iranian opposition that the election had been rigged and a coup had been carried out, without presenting any concrete evidence to support the allegations. It provided nonstop coverage of antigovernment demonstrations, and proclaimed the dissident faction of the clerical regime to be heading a “green revolution” for democracy.

In contrast, the US media has provided only minimal coverage of a real coup in Honduras. It has barely reported the police-state measures, arrests and beatings carried out by the Honduran military, and treated the anti-coup protests with utter indifference. On Monday evening, the events in Honduras were relegated to a mere mention on all three network news broadcasts, well behind the death of Michael Jackson.

What accounts for this stark contrast? The simple fact that the US government opposes the victor in the Iranian election and supports those who ousted Zelaya in Honduras.

The media, in particular the New York Times, which supported the 2002 coup attempt against Chavez, provides a further indication of US involvement in the Honduran coup. One month ago, as the political crisis in Honduras was heating up, the Times published a provocative article entitled “Chavez Seeks Tighter Grip on the Military.” The article retailed, without substantiation, claims of a massive crackdown by Chavez against dissidents within the Venezuelan military. This article, undoubtedly written on assignment from the CIA, was a certain indicator that the US was preparing subversion in the region.

From Wide Asleep in America

Lord Baltimore
Tehran | June 13, 2009

The Western press has clearly taken a side and has successfully managed to drag its uninformed audience along with it. News reports all refer to the continuing groundswell of protest to the election results as an "unprecedented" show of courage, resistance, and people power against the government not seen in Iran since the 1979 revolution.

But what we have seen this past week seems to have far more in common with the events of fifty-six years ago, rather than just thirty.

In 1953, [deleted rehash of 1053 coup]

So what have we been seeing in Iran this past week?

Whereas there is scant evidence of any actual voter fraud or ballot rigging in the recent reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the popular movement we've been seeing on the streets of Tehran and elsewhere is being treated by the American media as some sort of new revolution; an energized, grassroots, and spontaneous effort to overthrow the leaders of the Islamic Republic in favor of a secular, pro-Western "democracy."

[deleted …. Examples of US covert operations inside Iran]

Ken Timmerman, the executive director of the right-wing Foundation for Democracy in Iran, which is the Persian Service of Voice of America (VOA), "spilled the beans on activities of the other arm of US meddling overseas, the obscenely mis-named National Endowment for Democracy, in a piece written one day before the election," McAdams tells us. Timmerman apparently stated that “there’s the talk of a 'green revolution' in Tehran," prompting McAdams to "wonder where that 'talk' was coming from. Timmerman did not appear to be writing from Iran." McAdams continues,

Timmerman went on to write, with admirable candor and honesty, that:

“The National Endowment for Democracy has spent millions of dollars during the past decade promoting ‘color’ revolutions in places such as Ukraine and Serbia, training political workers in modern communications and organizational techniques.

“Some of that money appears to have made it into the hands of pro-Mousavi groups, who have ties to non-governmental organizations outside Iran that the National Endowment for Democracy funds.”

Yes, you say, but what does a blow-hard propagandist like Timmerman know about such things? Well, he should know! His very spooky Foundation for Democracy in Iran has its own snout deep in the trough of NED’s “open covert actions” against the Iranian government.

How does the “Foundation for Democracy in Iran” seek to “promote democracy” in Iran with our tax dollars? Foundation co-founder Joshua Muravchik gives us a hint in his subtly-titled LA Times piece, “Bomb Iran.”

Additionally, Weissman warns of Timmerman's devious sincerity: "Please note that this comes from a very involved right-wing critic who personally knows the expatriate Iranian community," he writes. "It is impossible to know how much government money went to these groups, since Congress has purposely exempted the National Endowment for Democracy from having to make public how it spends taxpayer money."

Even more recently, commentator Stephen Lendman reports that former Pakistani Army General Mirza Aslam Beig told Pasto Radio on June 15 that "undisputed" intelligence proves CIA interference in the internal affairs of Iran. "The documents prove that the CIA spend $400 million inside Iran to prop up a colorful-hollow revolution following the election" and to incite regime change for a pro-Western government.

So, are we finally seeing that $400 million pay off in Iran this past week?

There are plenty of clues that reveal the Iranian street protests we're seeing daily in the news may not be all we're told they are. Indeed, the sheer numbers of protesters are impressive and anyone who feels that an injustice has occurred should certainly take to the streets - and not be subject to any sort of police brutality - but much of what we've seen and heard in the past two weeks shows signs of orchestration and bears fingerprints of foreign manipulation.

Many of the protesters we have seen are well-dressed westernized young people in Tehran who are carrying signs written in English, reading, “Where is My Vote?” and other such slogans in English. If the young voters of Iran were addressing their frustrations to their own government, why weren't they speaking the same language? Protesters seen in many YouTube videos and interviewed on American television also speak perfect English. An early message received through a social networking site after the election, sent to the National Iranian American Council and subsequently reported by the American media, came from (allegedly) an Iranian in Tehran. It read:

“I am in Tehran. Its 3:40 in the morning. I’ve connected with you [by hacking past the government filter]. It’s a big mess here. People are yelling from their houses – ‘death to the dictator.’ They are setting up a military government. No one dares to go out. No one has seen Mousavi today. Rumor has it that they have arrested him. I don’t have an email but I will contact you again.

Help us.”

The idea of an Iranian, aware of the long history of US interference in Iranian affairs, beseeching an audience in America for "help" is, to put it lightly, dubious.

(The same should definitely be said about a recent OpEd featured in the New York Times last Sunday which was supposedly written by "a student in Iran." The article, clearly hoping to galvanize the American readership into strongly supporting pro-Mousavi protesters against the Iranian government, was almost surreal. In it, the author - curiously named "Shane M." which is perhaps the least Iranian name ever - denies the accuracy of pre-election polling by writing, "let’s not cloud the results with numbers that were, like bagels, stale a week later." Later, he describes a scene from the widespread pre-election pro-Mousavi street parties in Tehran, including this observation: "A girl hung off the edge of a car window “Dukes of Hazzard” style." What possible young "Iranian student" would casually reference bagels and Dukes of Hazzard is beyond me, but I can probably think of a few CIA agents that may enjoy both.)

As for the widespread claim, published in nearly every major newspaper, that Mousavi had been disappeared, imprisoned, or put under house arrest, it obviously wasn't true considering that the very next day Mousavi was addressing a crowd of tens of thousands in the middle of Tehran from the roof of his car.

Furthermore, the chants we hear of “death to the dictator, death to Ahmadinejad” don't make much sense coming from Iranian citizens. As Paul Craig Roberts points out, "Every Iranian knows that the President of Iran is a public figure with limited powers. His main role is to take the heat from the governing grand Ayatollah. No Iranian, and no informed westerner, could possibly believe that Ahmadinejad is a dictator. Even Ahmadinejad’s superior, Khamenei, is not a dictator as he is appointed by a government body that can remove him." Roberts goes on to say,

[….]

The Western media is certainly not helping matters. It should be remembered, first off, that both the BBC and New York Times played important roles in the 1953 overthrow. Bill Van Auken's The New York Times and Iran: Journalism as State Provocation tells us of the documentation of journalism as the media arm of the imperial state, including the direct military participation of one of its CIA-connected reporters in the coup against Mossadegh:

In 1953, [the New York Times] correspondent in Tehran, Kennett Love, was not only a willing conduit for CIA disinformation, but also acknowledged participating directly in the coup. He subsequently wrote of giving an Iranian Army tank column instructions to attack Mossadegh's house. Afterwards, the Times celebrated the coup and demanded unconditional support for the Shah’s regime.

The BBC is known to have spearheaded Britain's own propaganda campaign, broadcasting the code word ("exactly") that launched the coup d'état itself. Even the rise and importance of new media has to be viewed critically - something Western journalists aren't very good at. CNN recently created a new disclaimer icon to account for all the "unverified" material they've been broadcasting 'round the clock in their effort to stand with protesters and against the Iranian government.

The Iranian "twitter boom" has, to a certain extent, been engineered by a small group of anti-Ahmadinejad advocates in the United States and Israel. Whereas media organizations excitedly report about young Iranians twittering away on the streets of Tehran, it's clear that most of the activity is simply Americans "tweeting" amongst themselves. Nevertheless, the US government requested that Twitter postpone a scheduled downtime for maintenance so that tweeting from Iran could go uninterrupted. But, of course, this isn't meddling. Additionally, Caroline McCarthy of CNET News reports that "Users from around the world are resetting the location data in their profiles to Tehran, the capital of Iran, in order to confuse Iranian authorities who may be attempting to use the microblogging tool to track down opposition activity." While I'm not sure about "confusing" Iranian authorities, I am sure that actions like this serve to overhype the scope, reach, and importance of social networking and alternative media in Iranian politics and activism. The voices of the Iranian people should, of course, be heard and listened to - but the twittering mass of American, European, and Israeli support can hardly be said to speak on behalf of the Iranian public.

News for Sale

July 2, 2009
Tomothy Carr with Josh Stearns at Huffington Post


Thursday morning, Politico reported that the Washington Post was offering lobbyists "off-the-record, non-confrontational" access to the paper's own reporters and editors for a whopping fee of $25,000 to $250,000.

According to Politico's Mike Allen, a promotional flier for the first "Washington Post Salon," focusing on health care, promised lobbyists an "exclusive opportunity to participate in the health-care reform debate among the select few who will actually get it done." In addition to access to reporters and editors, the paper promised to hand-deliver Obama administration officials and members of Congress to any lobbyist willing to pay for access.

But within moments after news of the promotion hit social networks and blogs, the Post canceled the plan.

Experiment Gone Awry

"This should never have happened," Katharine Weymouth, publisher of the Post, said in an article on the paper's site. "The fliers got out and weren't vetted. They didn't represent at all what we were attempting to do. We're not going to do any dinners that would impugn the integrity of the newsroom."

The crisis in journalism has sparked unparalleled experimentation and innovation from new and old newsrooms alike. But this kind of "pay-for-access" model should be a non-starter in newsrooms, and it's good that some in leadership at the Post acted swiftly to shut down the ill-advised scheme.

With the advent of the 24-hour news cycle and an unprecedented drive to maximize profits at media conglomerates, we have seen too many examples of news organizations forgoing their independence in exchange for a place in the halls of power.

These Washington Post salons would have taken this one step further, auctioning off its access to corporate lobbyists.

If held, this kind of an event would have been an outrageous violation of journalistic standards.

Selling Integrity for Access

Journalism is in crisis around the country. The economic downturn has collided with fundamental technological, cultural and ideological changes, leaving the future of journalism in doubt.

But selling access to reporters and editors to the highest bidder should never be an option.

The backlash against the Post was swift, spread by outraged members of social networks -- whose anger was fueled in part by marketing materials that seemed blind to the inherent conflicts of interest in this model. The promotional flier for the salons said that these events "are extensions of The Washington Post brand of journalistic inquiry into the issues, a unique opportunity for stakeholders to hear and be heard."

In full damage control, Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli took up the issue of journalistic ethics in the Post's follow-up, saying, "We do not offer access to the newsroom for money. We just are not in that business." He went on to say that the newsroom was never involved in this plan, nor would it have taken part in such an event.

Yet, the fact that this idea got as far as it did is another example of how Big Media tend to put corporate profits before the public interest. The notion of holding these events suggests that for the Post, the real stakeholders in the health care debate seemed to be lobbyists and the companies they represent, not the American people whom the Post is supposed to inform, educate and represent.

Comforting the Comfortable?

It's telling that throughout the flier, the Post reassures corporate representatives that the conversation will be non-confrontational -- there will be no afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted here.

The irony of this whole debacle is that journalists and policy makers ought to be getting in the same room more often. But we need them to be working together in search of policy solutions to the crisis in journalism and to ensure that our communities get the information they need -- not to trade influence and cash for their contacts.

__________________
See also:

Pajamas

Talking Points Memo

Progressive Pulse

Truthdig

Mother Jones

Daily Kos

Washington Post sells what's left of its integrity

WaPo cancels lobbyist event
By: Mike Allen and Michael Calderone
July 2, 2009 08:04 AM EST
Politico

Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth said today she was canceling plans for an exclusive "salon" at her home where for as much as $250,000, the Post offered lobbyists and association executives off-the-record access to "those powerful few" — Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and even the paper’s own reporters and editors.

The astonishing offer was detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he felt it was a conflict for the paper to charge for access to, as the flier says, its “health care reporting and editorial staff."

…….

The Post, which lost $19.5 million in the first quarter, sees bringing together Washington figures as a future revenue source. “We do believe that there is a viable way to expand our expertise into live conferences and events that simply enhances what we do - cover Washington for Washingtonians and those interested in Washington,” she said. “ And we will begin to do live events in ways that enhance our reputation and in no way call into question our integrity.”

…….

The first "Salon" was to be called "Health-Care Reform: Better or Worse for Americans? The reform and funding debate." More were anticipated, and the flier described the opportunities for participants: “Offered at $25,000 per sponsor, per Salon. Maximum of two sponsors per Salon. Underwriters’ CEO or Executive Director participates in the discussion. Underwriters appreciatively acknowledged in printed invitations and at the dinner. Annual series sponsorship of 11 Salons offered at $250,000 … Hosts and Discussion Leaders ... Health-care reporting and editorial staff members of The Washington Post ... An exclusive opportunity to participate in the health-care reform debate among the select few who will actually get it done. ... A Washington Post Salon ... July 21, 2009 6:30 p.m. ...

"Washington Post Salons are extensions of The Washington Post brand of journalistic inquiry into the issues, a unique opportunity for stakeholders to hear and be heard," the flier says. "At the core is a critical topic of our day. Dinner and a volley of ideas unfold in an evening of intelligent, news-driven and off-the-record conversation. ... By bringing together those powerful few in business and policy-making who are forwarding, legislating and reporting on the issues, Washington Post Salons give life to the debate. Be at this nexus of business and policy with your underwriting of Washington Post Salons."

US Heavy Meddle in Iran

US Heavy Meddle in Iran

By Lord Baltimore @ "Wide Asleep in America"
(see original article for hyperlinks).

June 28, 2009 --- The Western press has clearly taken a side and has successfully managed to drag its uninformed audience along with it. News reports all refer to the continuing groundswell of protest to the election results as an "unprecedented" show of courage, resistance, and people power against the government not seen in Iran since the 1979 revolution.

But what we have seen this past week seems to have far more in common with the events of fifty-six years ago, rather than just thirty.

In 1953, the United States government, at the behest of Britain, tasked CIA operatives Kermit Roosevelt, Jr. and Donald Wilber to overthrow the democratically-elected government of Iran, in order to put an end to the process of oil nationalization by Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh. This nationalism "outraged the British, who had 'bought' the exclusive right to exploit Iranian oil from a corrupt Shah, and the Americans, who feared that allowing nationalization in Iran would encourage leftists around the world." The coup d'etat, which took a mere three weeks to execute, was accomplished in a number of stages. First, members of the Iranian Parliament and leaders of political parties were bribed to oppose Mossadegh publicly, thereby making the government appear fragmented and not unified. Newspaper owners, editors, columnists and reporters were then paid off in order to spread lies and propaganda against the Prime Minister.

Furthermore, high-ranking clerics, influential businessmen, members of the police, security forces, and military were bribed, as well. Roosevelt hired the leaders of street gangs in Tehran, using them to help create the impression that the rule of law had totally disintegrated in Iran and that the government had no control over its population. Stephen Kinzer, journalist and author of All the Shah's Men, tells us that "at one point, [Roosevelt] hired a gang to run through the streets of Tehran, beating up any pedestrian they found, breaking shop windows, firing their guns into mosques, and yelling, 'We love Mossadegh and communism.' This would naturally turn any decent citizen against him." In a stroke of manipulative genius, Roosevelt then hired a second mob to attack the first mob, thereby giving the Iranian people the impression that there was no police presence and that civil society had devolved into complete chaos, with the government totally incapable of restoring order. Kinzer elaborates,
They rampaged through the streets by the tens of thousands. Many of them, I think, never even really understood they were being paid by the C.I.A. They just knew they had been given a good day’s wage to go out in the street and chant something. Many politicians whipped up the crowds during those days...They started storming government buildings. There were gunfights in front of important buildings.

After all was said and done, Prime Minister Mossadegh had been deposed and a military coup returned the monarchy to Iran by installing the pro-western Mohammed Reza Pahlevi on the Peacock throne. The Shah's brutal, tyrannical dictatorship - established, supported, and funded by the United States - lasted 26 years. In 1979, the Iranian people returned the favor.

So what have we been seeing in Iran this past week?

Whereas there is scant evidence of any actual voter fraud or ballot rigging in the recent reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the popular movement we've been seeing on the streets of Tehran and elsewhere is being treated by the American media as some sort of new revolution; an energized, grassroots, and spontaneous effort to overthrow the leaders of the Islamic Republic in favor of a secular, pro-Western "democracy."

Yet, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that, whereas there are surely thousands of sincere and committed activists and participants in the recent protests, what we are witnessing may very well be the culmination of years of American infiltration and manipulation of both the Iranian establishment and public.

Back in 2005, the United States government was already funding groups it designated as terrorist organizations to carry out violent attacks within Iran in order to destabilize the Iranian government. In 2007, ABC News reported that George W. Bush has signed a secret "Presidential finding" which authorized the CIA to "mount a covert “black” operation to destabilize the Iranian government." These operations, according to current and former intelligence officials, included "a coordinated campaign of propaganda broadcasts, placement of negative newspaper articles, and the manipulation of Iran's currency and international banking transactions."

In May of that same year, the London Telegraph reported that Bush administration zealot John Bolton revealed that an American military attack on Iran would “be a ‘last option’ after economic sanctions and attempts to foment a popular revolution had failed.” Two weeks later, the Telegraph independently verified the ABC report, saying that, “Mr. Bush has signed an official document endorsing CIA plans for a propaganda and disinformation campaign intended to destabilize, and eventually topple, the theocratic rule of the mullahs.”

Daniel McAdams tells us that, at the time, "the president met with the Congressional Star Chamber, the “gang of 8″ House and Senate leaders, and was granted the authorization to use some $400 million for among other things, as the Washington Post reported, “activities ranging from spying on Iran’s nuclear program to supporting rebel groups opposed to the country’s ruling clerics…"

Then, in early May 2008, Counterpunch's Andrew Cockburn revealed that "Six weeks ago, President Bush signed a secret finding authorizing a covert offensive against the Iranian regime that, according to those familiar with its contents was 'unprecedented in its scope.'

"Bush’s secret directive covers actions across a huge geographic area – from Lebanon to Afghanistan – but is also far more sweeping in the type of actions permitted under its guidelines – up to and including the assassination of targeted officials. This widened scope clears the way, for example, for full support for the military arm of Mujahedin-e Khalq, the cultish Iranian opposition group, despite its enduring position on the State Department's list of terrorist groups.

Similarly, covert funds can now flow without restriction to Jundullah, or "army of god," the militant Sunni group in Iranian Baluchistan – just across the Afghan border - whose leader was featured not long ago on Dan Rather Reports cutting his brother-in-law's throat.

Other elements that will benefit from U.S. largesse and advice include Iranian Kurdish nationalists, as well the Ahwazi Arabs of southwest Iran.
Of course, US officials denied any "direct funding" of Jundallah, but admitted regular contact since 2005 with its leader Abd el Malik Regi, who was widely reputed to be involved in heroin trafficking from Afghanistan. Funding has reportedly been funneled through Iranian exiles with connections in Europe and the Gulf States.

Furthermore, on June 29, 2008, Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker confirmed all of these reports, writing, “Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and Congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership.” Among the activities Hersh cited were "gathering intelligence about Iran's suspected nuclear-weapons program", "undermining Iran's nuclear ambitions" and "trying to undermine the government through regime change [by] working with opposition groups and passing money."

But the US campaign against Iran didn't come to a halt with the ascension of President Obama. There is no evidence to conclude that the $400 million dollars Bush signed off on has been put to different use (like, say, funding public schools or healthcare.) In early June 2008, Justin Raimondo of Antiwar wrote, "Obama, with his peace overtures [to Iran], serves as the smiley-face mask for some pretty loathsome activities. The U.S. government claims to be fighting terrorism, yet is sponsoring groups that plant bombs in mosques, kidnap tourists as well as Iranian policemen, and fund their activities with drug-running in addition to covert subsidies courtesy of the U.S. taxpayers." He continues,
"What’s going on in Iran today – a sustained campaign of terrorism directed against civilians and government installations alike – is proof positive that nothing has really changed much in Washington, as far as U.S. policy toward Iran is concerned. We are on a collision course with Tehran, and both sides know it. Obama’s public "reaching out" to the Iranians is a fraud of epic proportions. While it’s true that our covert terrorist attacks on Iran were initiated under the Bush regime, under Obama we’re seeing no letup in these sorts of incidents; if anything, they’ve increased in frequency and severity."

Days before the Iranian election, a suicide-bomber killed at least 25 people, and wounded over 125 others, inside a prominent Shi'a mosque in the city of Zahedan, in the southeast province of Sistan-Baluchistan. The rebel Sunni group, Jundallah, which is linked to the US, claimed responsibility for the blast, which was immediately followed up by attacks on banks, water-treatment facilities, and other key installations in and around Zahedan, including a strike against the local campaign headquarters of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Last year, Jundallah ( which is committed to establishing a Baluchi Islamic state in southeastern Iran and parts of Pakistan and one of whose founding members is allegedly the infamously waterboarded al Qaeda operative Khalid Sheikh Mohammed) kidnapped 16 Iranian policemen and videotaped their execution. There was also recently an attempted bombing of an Iranian airplane, which took off from the southwestern city of Ahvaz on the Iraqi border, which has a heavily Arab population. These recent events add up to what Raimondo refers to as "a small-scale insurgency" arising in Iran’s southern provinces.

Both the White House and State Department immediately denounced these attacks and denied any involvement in what they called "recent terrorist attacks inside Iran." Furthermore, there were reports that the Obama administration was considering adding Jundallah to the State's Department's list of terrorist organizations. However, analyst Steve Weissman notes, "the administration suddenly backed away from making the terrorist designation or from otherwise indicating that it would stop the destabilization campaign."

(Incidentally, one of the only two provinces in Iran that went for Mousavi last Friday was Sistan-Baluchistan and crowds of about 2,000 people have taken to the streets in Ahvaz since the election.)

Support for Jundallah - which in what could be the result of a savvy public relations suggestion by the Pentagon, recently changed its name to the Iranian People's Resistance Movement - is just one way the United States has worked to foment an anti-Iranian united front within the country on the verge of the Presidential elections. As such, we are told, "the U.S. is, in effect, conducting a secret war against Tehran, a covert campaign aimed at recruiting Iran’s ethnic and religious minorities – who make up the majority of the population in certain regions, such as in the southeast borderlands near Pakistan – into a movement to topple the government in Tehran, or, at least, to create so much instability that U.S. intervention to 'keep order' in the region is justified."

Ken Timmerman, the executive director of the right-wing Foundation for Democracy in Iran, which is the Persian Service of Voice of America (VOA), "spilled the beans on activities of the other arm of US meddling overseas, the obscenely mis-named National Endowment for Democracy, in a piece written one day before the election," McAdams tells us. Timmerman apparently stated that “there’s the talk of a 'green revolution' in Tehran," prompting McAdams to "wonder where that 'talk' was coming from. Timmerman did not appear to be writing from Iran." McAdams continues, Timmerman went on to write, with admirable candor and honesty, that:

“The National Endowment for Democracy has spent millions of dollars during the past decade promoting ‘color’ revolutions in places such as Ukraine and Serbia, training political workers in modern communications and organizational techniques.

“Some of that money appears to have made it into the hands of pro-Mousavi groups, who have ties to non-governmental organizations outside Iran that the National Endowment for Democracy funds.”

Yes, you say, but what does a blow-hard propagandist like Timmerman know about such things? Well, he should know! His very spooky Foundation for Democracy in Iran has its own snout deep in the trough of NED’s “open covert actions” against the Iranian government.

How does the “Foundation for Democracy in Iran” seek to “promote democracy” in Iran with our tax dollars? Foundation co-founder Joshua Muravchik gives us a hint in his subtly-titled LA Times piece, “Bomb Iran.”

Additionally, Weissman warns of Timmerman's devious sincerity: "Please note that this comes from a very involved right-wing critic who personally knows the expatriate Iranian community," he writes. "It is impossible to know how much government money went to these groups, since Congress has purposely exempted the National Endowment for Democracy from having to make public how it spends taxpayer money."

Even more recently, commentator Stephen Lendman reports that former Pakistani Army General Mirza Aslam Beig told Pasto Radio on June 15 that "undisputed" intelligence proves CIA interference in the internal affairs of Iran. "The documents prove that the CIA spend $400 million inside Iran to prop up a colorful-hollow revolution following the election" and to incite regime change for a pro-Western government.

So, are we finally seeing that $400 million pay off in Iran this past week?

There are plenty of clues that reveal the Iranian street protests we're seeing daily in the news may not be all we're told they are. Indeed, the sheer numbers of protesters are impressive and anyone who feels that an injustice has occurred should certainly take to the streets - and not be subject to any sort of police brutality - but much of what we've seen and heard in the past two weeks shows signs of orchestration and bears fingerprints of foreign manipulation.

Many of the protesters we have seen are well-dressed westernized young people in Tehran who are carrying signs written in English, reading, “Where is My Vote?” and other such slogans in English. If the young voters of Iran were addressing their frustrations to their own government, why weren't they speaking the same language? Protesters seen in many YouTube videos and interviewed on American television also speak perfect English. An early message received through a social networking site after the election, sent to the National Iranian American Council and subsequently reported by the American media, came from (allegedly) an Iranian in Tehran. It read:
“I am in Tehran. Its 3:40 in the morning. I’ve connected with you [by hacking past the government filter]. It’s a big mess here. People are yelling from their houses – ‘death to the dictator.’ They are setting up a military government. No one dares to go out. No one has seen Mousavi today. Rumor has it that they have arrested him. I don’t have an email but I will contact you again. Help us."

The idea of an Iranian, aware of the long history of US interference in Iranian affairs, beseeching an audience in America for "help" is, to put it lightly, dubious.

(The same should definitely be said about a recent OpEd featured in the New York Times last Sunday which was supposedly written by "a student in Iran." The article, clearly hoping to galvanize the American readership into strongly supporting pro-Mousavi protesters against the Iranian government, was almost surreal. In it, the author - curiously named "Shane M." which is perhaps the least Iranian name ever - denies the accuracy of pre-election polling by writing, "let’s not cloud the results with numbers that were, like bagels, stale a week later." Later, he describes a scene from the widespread pre-election pro-Mousavi street parties in Tehran, including this observation: "A girl hung off the edge of a car window “Dukes of Hazzard” style." What possible young "Iranian student" would casually reference bagels and Dukes of Hazzard is beyond me, but I can probably think of a few CIA agents that may enjoy both.)

As for the widespread claim, published in nearly every major newspaper, that Mousavi had been disappeared, imprisoned, or put under house arrest, it obviously wasn't true considering that the very next day Mousavi was addressing a crowd of tens of thousands in the middle of Tehran from the roof of his car.

Furthermore, the chants we hear of “death to the dictator, death to Ahmadinejad” don't make much sense coming from Iranian citizens. As Paul Craig Roberts points out, "Every Iranian knows that the President of Iran is a public figure with limited powers. His main role is to take the heat from the governing grand Ayatollah. No Iranian, and no informed westerner, could possibly believe that Ahmadinejad is a dictator. Even Ahmadinejad’s superior, Khamenei, is not a dictator as he is appointed by a government body that can remove him." Roberts goes on to say, The demonstrations, like those in 1953, are intended to discredit the Iranian government and to establish for Western opinion that the government is a repressive regime that does not have the support of the Iranian people. This manipulation of opinion sets up Iran as another Iraq ruled by a dictator who must be overthrown by sanctions or an invasion.

Early reports of the Tehran rallies revealed that pro-Mousavi protesters were throwing rocks at Iranian police and security forces, as well as burning police motorcycles, city buses, and even private and government buildings. In contrast, we also heard of riot police beating protesters, gas and water cannons being used on crowds, and Basiji paramilitary groups opening fire on peaceful demonstrators. Even though Iranian officials have blamed recent street violence on Mousavi supporters and marchers point to pro-government gangs, accusing them of staging incidents in order to justify further "crackdown" of dissent, the truth may be even more sinister. As one pro-Mousavi protester, who has taken part in every single march so far this week, told Newsweek, "I think some small terrorist groups and criminal gangs are taking advantage of the situation." American money well-spent, perhaps.

According to the national intelligence services, a group of US-linked terrorists who had planned to set off twenty explosions in Tehran were discovered. Nevertheless a bomb still went off near the shrine of Iran's revolutionary founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, killing one and injuring two.

Despite the rise in violence in the past week, Khamenei has consistently differentiated between what he believes are rebel groups and non-political protesters and "the electoral fans and supporters" of Mousavi. He is quoted as saying that "those who devastate the public assets and private belongings of the people are carrying out the aggressive actions without any political purposes" and urged the defeated presidential candidates to utilize "legal venues" to voice their complaints. Khamenei stated, "the destiny of elections would be determined on the ballots, not on the palm of the streets."

Officials in the Iranian government are well-aware, and appropriately suspicious, of foreign meddling in their domestic affairs. Ali Larijani, the pragmatic, moderate conservative Speaker of Parliament and frequent Ahmadinejad opponent, said recently in a live televised speech, "those who under the mask of political fans of a certain movement or candidate impose damages to the public properties or paralyze the daily life of ordinary people are not among the protestors who want their votes to be virtuously preserved," adding that "the liberty of demonstrations should be respected, and those who are in charge of issuing certifications to legitimize the protesting rallies should cooperate and issue them constructively."


The Western media is certainly not helping matters. It should be remembered, first off, that both the BBC and New York Times played important roles in the 1953 overthrow. Bill Van Auken's The New York Times and Iran: Journalism as State Provocation tells us of the documentation of journalism as the media arm of the imperial state, including the direct military participation of one of its CIA-connected reporters in the coup against Mossadegh:

In 1953, [the New York Times] correspondent in Tehran, Kennett Love, was not only a willing conduit for CIA disinformation, but also acknowledged participating directly in the coup. He subsequently wrote of giving an Iranian Army tank column instructions to attack Mossadegh's house. Afterwards, the Times celebrated the coup and demanded unconditional support for the Shah’s regime.

The BBC is known to have spearheaded Britain's own propaganda campaign, broadcasting the code word ("exactly") that launched the coup d'état itself. Even the rise and importance of new media has to be viewed critically - something Western journalists aren't very good at. CNN recently created a new disclaimer icon to account for all the "unverified" material they've been broadcasting 'round the clock in their effort to stand with protesters and against the Iranian government.

The Iranian "twitter boom" has, to a certain extent, been engineered by a small group of anti-Ahmadinejad advocates in the United States and Israel. Whereas media organizations excitedly report about young Iranians twittering away on the streets of Tehran, it's clear that most of the activity is simply Americans "tweeting" amongst themselves. Nevertheless, the US government requested that Twitter postpone a scheduled downtime for maintenance so that tweeting from Iran could go uninterrupted. But, of course, this isn't meddling. Additionally, Caroline McCarthy of CNET News reports that "Users from around the world are resetting the location data in their profiles to Tehran, the capital of Iran, in order to confuse Iranian authorities who may be attempting to use the microblogging tool to track down opposition activity." While I'm not sure about "confusing" Iranian authorities, I am sure that actions like this serve to overhype the scope, reach, and importance of social networking and alternative media in Iranian politics and activism. The voices of the Iranian people should, of course, be heard and listened to - but the twittering mass of American, European, and Israeli support can hardly be said to speak on behalf of the Iranian public.

This disingenuous statement of President Obama may offer us some insight. In the early days of the post-election protests, he said, "It is not productive, given the history of US and Iranian relations to be seen as meddling in Iranian elections."

American meddling, Mr. Obama? Never! Especially not when our government is responsible for thirty years of sanctions, overt and covert operations designed to weaken one of the only countries that has ever successfully stood up to American imperialism in the face of aggressive efforts to foment dissent and promote regime change.

Western Media Get it wrong on Iran

Western Misconceptions Meet Iranian Reality
June 15, 2009 | 1745 GMT
Strarfor
By George Friedman


In 1979, when we were still young and starry-eyed, a revolution took place in Iran. When I asked experts what would happen, they divided into two camps.

The first group of Iran experts argued that the Shah of Iran would certainly survive, that the unrest was simply a cyclical event readily manageable by his security, and that the Iranian people were united behind the Iranian monarch’s modernization program. These experts developed this view by talking to the same Iranian officials and businessmen they had been talking to for years — Iranians who had grown wealthy and powerful under the shah and who spoke English, since Iran experts frequently didn’t speak Farsi all that well.

The second group of Iran experts regarded the shah as a repressive brute, and saw the revolution as aimed at liberalizing the country. Their sources were the professionals and academics who supported the uprising — Iranians who knew what former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini believed, but didn’t think he had much popular support. They thought the revolution would result in an increase in human rights and liberty. The experts in this group spoke even less Farsi than those in the first group.
Misreading Sentiment in Iran

Limited to information on Iran from English-speaking opponents of the regime, both groups of Iran experts got a very misleading vision of where the revolution was heading — because the Iranian revolution was not brought about by the people who spoke English. It was made by merchants in city bazaars, by rural peasants, by the clergy — people Americans didn’t speak to because they couldn’t. This demographic was unsure of the virtues of modernization and not at all clear on the virtues of liberalism. From the time they were born, its members knew the virtue of Islam, and that the Iranian state must be an Islamic state.

Americans and Europeans have been misreading Iran for 30 years. Even after the shah fell, the myth has survived that a mass movement of people exists demanding liberalization — a movement that if encouraged by the West eventually would form a majority and rule the country. We call this outlook “iPod liberalism,” the idea that anyone who listens to rock ‘n’ roll on an iPod, writes blogs and knows what it means to Twitter must be an enthusiastic supporter of Western liberalism. Even more significantly, this outlook fails to recognize that iPod owners represent a small minority in Iran — a country that is poor, pious and content on the whole with the revolution forged 30 years ago.

There are undoubtedly people who want to liberalize the Iranian regime. They are to be found among the professional classes in Tehran, as well as among students. Many speak English, making them accessible to the touring journalists, diplomats and intelligence people who pass through. They are the ones who can speak to Westerners, and they are the ones willing to speak to Westerners. And these people give Westerners a wildly distorted view of Iran. They can create the impression that a fantastic liberalization is at hand — but not when you realize that iPod-owning Anglophones are not exactly the majority in Iran.

Last Friday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was re-elected with about two-thirds of the vote. Supporters of his opponent, both inside and outside Iran, were stunned. A poll revealed that former Iranian Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi was beating Ahmadinejad. It is, of course, interesting to meditate on how you could conduct a poll in a country where phones are not universal, and making a call once you have found a phone can be a trial. A poll therefore would probably reach people who had phones and lived in Tehran and other urban areas. Among those, Mousavi probably did win. But outside Tehran, and beyond persons easy to poll, the numbers turned out quite different.

Some still charge that Ahmadinejad cheated. That is certainly a possibility, but it is difficult to see how he could have stolen the election by such a large margin. Doing so would have required the involvement of an incredible number of people, and would have risked creating numbers that quite plainly did not jibe with sentiment in each precinct. Widespread fraud would mean that Ahmadinejad manufactured numbers in Tehran without any regard for the vote. But he has many powerful enemies who would quickly have spotted this and would have called him on it. Mousavi still insists he was robbed, and we must remain open to the possibility that he was, although it is hard to see the mechanics of this.
Ahmadinejad’s Popularity

It also misses a crucial point: Ahmadinejad enjoys widespread popularity. He doesn’t speak to the issues that matter to the urban professionals, namely, the economy and liberalization. But Ahmadinejad speaks to three fundamental issues that accord with the rest of the country.

First, Ahmadinejad speaks of piety. Among vast swathes of Iranian society, the willingness to speak unaffectedly about religion is crucial. Though it may be difficult for Americans and Europeans to believe, there are people in the world to whom economic progress is not of the essence; people who want to maintain their communities as they are and live the way their grandparents lived. These are people who see modernization — whether from the shah or Mousavi — as unattractive. They forgive Ahmadinejad his economic failures.

Second, Ahmadinejad speaks of corruption. There is a sense in the countryside that the ayatollahs — who enjoy enormous wealth and power, and often have lifestyles that reflect this — have corrupted the Islamic Revolution. Ahmadinejad is disliked by many of the religious elite precisely because he has systematically raised the corruption issue, which resonates in the countryside.

Third, Ahmadinejad is a spokesman for Iranian national security, a tremendously popular stance. It must always be remembered that Iran fought a war with Iraq in the 1980s that lasted eight years, cost untold lives and suffering, and effectively ended in its defeat. Iranians, particularly the poor, experienced this war on an intimate level. They fought in the war, and lost husbands and sons in it. As in other countries, memories of a lost war don’t necessarily delegitimize the regime. Rather, they can generate hopes for a resurgent Iran, thus validating the sacrifices made in that war — something Ahmadinejad taps into. By arguing that Iran should not back down but become a major power, he speaks to the veterans and their families, who want something positive to emerge from all their sacrifices in the war.

Perhaps the greatest factor in Ahmadinejad’s favor is that Mousavi spoke for the better districts of Tehran — something akin to running a U.S. presidential election as a spokesman for Georgetown and the Upper East Side. Such a base will get you hammered, and Mousavi got hammered. Fraud or not, Ahmadinejad won and he won significantly. That he won is not the mystery; the mystery is why others thought he wouldn’t win.

For a time on Friday, it seemed that Mousavi might be able to call for an uprising in Tehran. But the moment passed when Ahmadinejad’s security forces on motorcycles intervened. And that leaves the West with its worst-case scenario: a democratically elected anti-liberal.

Western democracies assume that publics will elect liberals who will protect their rights. In reality, it’s a more complicated world. Hitler is the classic example of someone who came to power constitutionally, and then proceeded to gut the constitution. Similarly, Ahmadinejad’s victory is a triumph of both democracy and repression.
The Road Ahead: More of the Same

The question now is what will happen next. Internally, we can expect Ahmadinejad to consolidate his position under the cover of anti-corruption. He wants to clean up the ayatollahs, many of whom are his enemies. He will need the support of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. This election has made Ahmadinejad a powerful president, perhaps the most powerful in Iran since the revolution. Ahmadinejad does not want to challenge Khamenei, and we suspect that Khamenei will not want to challenge Ahmadinejad. A forced marriage is emerging, one which may place many other religious leaders in a difficult position.

Certainly, hopes that a new political leadership would cut back on Iran’s nuclear program have been dashed. The champion of that program has won, in part because he championed the program. We still see Iran as far from developing a deliverable nuclear weapon, but certainly the Obama administration’s hopes that Ahmadinejad would either be replaced — or at least weakened and forced to be more conciliatory — have been crushed. Interestingly, Ahmadinejad sent congratulations to U.S. President Barack Obama on his inauguration. We would expect Obama to reciprocate under his opening policy, which U.S. Vice President Joe Biden appears to have affirmed, assuming he was speaking for Obama. Once the vote fraud issue settles, we will have a better idea of whether Obama’s policies will continue. (We expect they will.)

What we have now are two presidents in a politically secure position, something that normally forms a basis for negotiations. The problem is that it is not clear what the Iranians are prepared to negotiate on, nor is it clear what the Americans are prepared to give the Iranians to induce them to negotiate. Iran wants greater influence in Iraq and its role as a regional leader acknowledged, something the United States doesn’t want to give them. The United States wants an end to the Iranian nuclear program, which Iran doesn’t want to give.

On the surface, this would seem to open the door for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Former U.S. President George W. Bush did not — and Obama does not — have any appetite for such an attack. Both presidents blocked the Israelis from attacking, assuming the Israelis ever actually wanted to attack.

For the moment, the election appears to have frozen the status quo in place. Neither the United States nor Iran seem prepared to move significantly, and there are no third parties that want to get involved in the issue beyond the occasional European diplomatic mission or Russian threat to sell something to Iran. In the end, this shows what we have long known: This game is locked in place, and goes on.

See also:

Has the U.S. Played a Role?

Nixon on Abortion

From the NYT

Nixon worried that greater access to abortions would foster “permissiveness,” and said that “it breaks the family.” But he also saw a need for abortion in some cases — like interracial pregnancies, he said.

“There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white,” he told an aide, before adding, “Or a rape.”

More cause for Pakistan worries

Posted by James F. Smith
Boston Globe
May 7, 2009 01:30 PM


As if there weren't enough crises in Pakistan and Afghanistan, Harvard Kennedy School fellow and Pakistan expert Hassan Abbas is offering more cause for worry.

Abbas, a former Pakistan government official who is one of the leading scholars in the United States on security issues in his homeland, says in a new article that most attention has rightly focused on the threat from the Pakistani Taliban in the border tribal areas and the North-West Frontier Province. Those are the traditional Pashtun Taliban militants, who share that ethnic heritage with Taliban fighters in southern Afghanistan (and who received US backing in the 1980s to fight the Soviets).

But in a new study in the CTC Sentinel, a publication of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, Abbas describes a growing threat with potentially even greater consequences. He explains that the loosely organized Punjabi Taliban -- from Punjab Province, Pakistan's most populous area -- is gathering strength and momentum. The Punjab is Pakistan's heartland, home to some of Pakistan's largest cities and military installations.

It was these Punjabi Taliban, Abbas notes, who attacked the visiting Sri Lankan cricket team in March, among many notorious attacks. The Punjabi Taliban are working more closely with Pashtun Taliban. The Punjabis are often better-educated, and better-trained in the use of weaponry. Abbas, who is a fellow in the Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, says it is imperative to strengthen Pakistan's law enforcement capacity to counter this threat.

Note this reporting is in start contrast to the trip being published at the Washington Post by Pamela Constable who has been dusted off and reinstalled as their Pakistan "expert."

Somini Sengupta has discovered child malnutrition

Somini Sengupta has discovered child malnutrition in India.

From the New York Times March 12: "As Indian Growth Soars, Child Hunger Persists"

“Small, sick, listless children have long been India’s scourge” she writes, “even after a decade of galloping economic growth, child malnutrition rates are worse here than in many sub-Saharan African countries, and they stand out as a paradox in a proud democracy.”

Apparently this is not a paradox in America, the worlds richest and most powerful country.

She compares India to China “China, that other Asian economic powerhouse, sharply reduced child malnutrition, and now just 7 percent of its children under 5 are underweight, a critical gauge of malnutrition. In India, by contrast, despite robust growth and good government intentions, the comparable number is 42.5 percent.”

She laments that “There are no simple explanations.” Then goes on to make the incredulous claims that “Economists and public health experts say stubborn malnutrition rates point to a central failing in this democracy of the poor.” And that “Amartya Sen, the Nobel prize-winning economist, lamented that hunger was not enough of a political priority here.”

She acknowledges that India runs the largest child feeding program in the world but then eviserarates it by saying that “experts agree it is inadequately designed”.

She makes a trip to a slum in Delhi to make these journalistic observations:

“A tour of Jahangirpuri, a slum in this richest of Indian cities, put the challenge on stark display. Shortly after daybreak, in a rented room along a narrow alley, an all-female crew prepared giant vats of savory rice and lentil porridge.

Purnima Menon, a public health researcher with the International Food Policy Research Institute, was relieved to see it was not just starch; there were even flecks of carrots thrown in. The porridge was loaded onto bicycle carts and ferried to nurseries that vet and help at-risk children and their mothers throughout the neighborhood. “

First of all khichdi – a traditional Indian dish all over the north is not “all strarch” as every Indian knows – the lentils are added to provide protein and it provides a nutritious meal if vegetables are thrown in for the vitamins.

So she deliberately misleads – its not porridge nor is it all starch.

She then provides more anecdotal evidence of how, horror or horrors, some the left over food is given to women.

Somini Sengupta then provides more recycled and some questionable statistics collected from the internet.

She observes there are beggars in Delhi: “A few blocks from the Indian Parliament, tiny, ill-fed children turn somersaults for spare change at traffic signals.”

She also seems amazed that there are rats in slums, there are open drains and malaria. I guess if you move about the five star hotel circuit this could come as a shock.

Here she makes an observation that a more astute journalist would have followed through on: “Neighborhood shops carried small bags of potato chips and soda, evidence that its residents were far from destitute.”

Yes, thanks to globalization, multinationals like Coke and Pepsi, and Indian companies too sell non-nutritious snacks and sugary water drinks. These are consumed by poor under-nourished slum dwellers as a luxury thanks to the constant advertising barrage. This further erodes their finances, which could be better used to buy fresh vegetables or meat.

But instead she moves blithely on ….
---------------

Many of the observations she makes are not new for example here is quote from a World Bank report on the subject:

The South Asian Enigma: Why is undernutrition in South Asia so much higher than in Sub Saharan Africa?

In 1997, Ramalingaswami et al. wrote, “In the public imagination, the home of the malnourished child is Sub-Saharan Africa…but … the worst affected region is not Africa but South Asia”. These statements were met with incredulity. However, undernutrition rates in South Asia, including and especially in India, are nearly double those in Sub-Saharan Africa today. This is not an artifact of different measurement standards or differing growth potential among ethnic groups: several studies have repeatedly shown that given similar opportunities, children across most ethnic groups, including Indian children, can grow to the same levels, and that the same internationally recognized growth references can be used across countries to assess the prevalence of malnutrition. This phenomenon, referred to as the “South Asian Enigma”, is real.

The “South Asian Enigma” can be explained by three key differences between South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa:
- Low birth weight is the single largest predictor of undernutrition; and over 30% Indian babies are born with low birth weights, compared to approximately 16% in Sub-Saharan Africa.
- Women in South Asia tend to have lower status and less decision-making power than women in Sub-Saharan Africa. This limits women’s ability to access the resources needed for their own and their children’s health and nutrition, and has been shown to be strongly associated with low birth weight, as well as poor child feeding behaviors in the first twelve months of life
- Hygiene and sanitation standards in South Asia are well below those in Africa, and have a major role to play in causing the infections that lead to undernutrition in the first two years of life/


Ramalingaswami V, U. Jonson and J. Rohde. 1997 “The Asian Enigma”. In, The
Progress of Nations. New York: UNICEF.

--------------------

Here are some interesting comments to the NYT Article:

Comment 1 one of my favorites reporduced in full below
Comment 2
Comment 3
Comment 4
Comment 5
Comment 6
Comment 7

--- begin comment from nyt ----


240. March 13, 2009 3:22 pm

I will try to write this in the kindest least offensive manner. I worked five years in India (99-2004) managing Unicef's supply operation. Unicef is the UN childrens fund and has been working in India over 60 years; it was the first UN agency to startup in the then newly independent country. It has worked with governments, community groups, large ngo's, religious leaderships, universities, foriegn experts, you name it, anyone and everyone who wants to help nourish India's future, her beautiful children.

We (unicef) had some of the best nutrition and child development experts on our staff and advising us. Amartya Sen, nobel winner from his work on famine in Bangladesh; arguably the world leader in these issues regularly offered assistance. I am not a nutrition or development expert, I managed the spending of money, we spent about $130 million yearly, most of that went for vaccines, most of that for polio eradication. In nutrition unicef mostly offered training and meetings called 'advocacy' a nice way of saying, trying to convince people to nourish their children better. So my naive gleanings and reactions to comments here I've just read.

1. India has plenty of food, in fact large surpluses that are a financial/market stability problem; food is not lacking; its in the wrong spots at the wrong time. Teen girls & their babies need good food now.

2. India knows more about child feeding than most; they have received the world's most dedicated specialists in this area for many years.

3. 'Corruption' in government is not nearly the issue westerners blurt out whenever they use the word India. I worked with senior, middle and lower level officials, in tendering, ajudication and contracting of all sorts of local and international contracts for five years. I worked with government donor agencies, World Bank and well intended groups with money. I'm a typical middle class American male business fellow, with years in the US drug industry before Unicef. I've worked in Europe, Africa, Latin America, former Soviet, most south and east asian govt's managing contracts that spent your hard earned donations. India is no worse, and on balance better than some in the realm of corrupted contracting. They have corruption, but so do we (America)--it seems to be part of life. But, resistance to changing how things are always done is a bigger than the usual small time grifters trying to get over. India has active anti fraud teams, and a more agressive press than we do now in America.

4. 'Government' is not the problem. All comments seem to blame govt, but India's govt is a large complex group criticized from so many sides I wonder how they carry on. India is over six hundred districts, equivalent to US counties, only these have power. Nothing affects people through govt without the district. There are 600,000 towns & villages, each with elected vested interests--sound familiar? There are 26 states, each remarkably different; each zealous in its authorities. There are at least 10 powerful 'learned societies' of nutrition and child development in India, who field real experts in all subjects of child nutrition. They gather as often as someone will pay for their visit to Delhi or Mumbai and present learned papers. In my experience they disagree more over every aspect of nutrition than I thought was possible. In hindsight I found the gov't people trying to manage this 'nutrition' process to be powerless peons caught in the middle of angry partisans.

5. 'Caste', I love how westerners write about caste. In five years of very concentrated effort in all sorts of health programs with the smartest people I ever worked with, the word & concept of caste never entered the discussions. The only people who say things like 'untouchables' are westerners. Caste is a nice conception from watching films like Gandhi--who was high caste, but not part of the educated governance culture of the country. There is caste, it is illegal, there are exceptions who make it to the top, but caste is not causing this alone, and it is taboo to discuss--no one admits they have it.

6. Religion; to my surprise none of the comments I saw mentioned what is a measurable; muslim children and mothers in India suffer, and they are the largest 'minority' group. They are also the largest muslim population within a nation excepting Indonesia, over 100 million Indians are Muslim; most of them are poor hungry and fed up--call it a security risk, these teenage moms and babies need vitamins minerals and real food now.

'India's problem' in my view? It's similar to ours in America; selfishness. When we (the well off in America), and the same 'we' in India feel the pain of our poor, we will move forward. Thank you NYT for these opportunities, John Gilmartin

— John Gilmartin, Rhode Island, USA

--- end comment from nyt ----

What happened to the $20 laptop?

BBC
6 February 09

The only problem was that the "$20 laptop" turned out to be no such thing - it's not a laptop and it's not clear exactly what it is, when it will appear or what it wil cost. But the world's technology journalists fell for the story - along with the BBC - so how did that happen?

Another Quality Washington Post Reporter!

This goes a long way towards explaining the myopic view at the WP. Jay Mattews is typical of the ill informed, supremacist, reporter that the Washington Post employs.

In contrast to this blowhard there is Bob Compton.

The segment starts at 1:00 min.

Cholera Outbreak Outcome of West’s War on Zimbabwe

December 8, 2008
Race and History

By Gowans

The crisis in Zimbabwe has intensified. Inflation is incalculably high. The central bank limits – to an inadequate level - the amount of money Zimbabweans can withdraw from their bank accounts daily. Unarmed soldiers riot, their guns kept under lock and key, to prevent an armed uprising. Hospital staff fail to show up for work. The water authority is short of chemicals to purify drinking water. Cholera, easily prevented and cured under normal circumstances, has broken out, leading the government to declare a humanitarian emergency.

In the West, state officials call for the country’s president, Robert Mugabe, to step down and yield power to the leader of the largest faction of the Movement for Democratic Change, Morgan Tsvangirai. In this, the crisis is directly linked to Mugabe, its solution to Tsvangirai, but it’s never said what Mugabe has done to cause the crisis, or how Tsvangirai’s ascension to the presidency will make it go away.

The causal chain leading to the crisis can be diagrammed roughly as follows:

• In the late 90s, Mugabe’s government provokes the hostility of the West by: (1) intervening militarily in the Democratic Republic of Congo on the side of the young government of Laurent Kabila, helping to thwart an invasion by Rwandan and Ugandan forces backed by the US and Britain; (2) it rejects a pro-foreign investment economic restructuring program the IMF establishes as a condition for balance of payment support; (3) it accelerates land redistribution by seizing white-owned farms and thereby committing the ultimate affront against owners of productive property – expropriation without compensation. To governments whose foreign policy is based in large measure on protecting their nationals’ ownership rights to foreign productive assets, expropriation, and especially expropriation without compensation, is intolerable, and must be punished to deter others from doing the same.

• In response, the United States, as prime guarantor of the imperialist system, introduces the December 2001 Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act. The act instructs US representatives to international financial institutions “to oppose and vote against any extension by the respective institution of any loan, credit, or guarantee to the Government of Zimbabwe; or any cancellation or reduction of indebtedness owed by the Government of Zimbabwe to the United States or any international financial institution.”

• The act effectively deprives Zimbabwe of foreign currency required to import necessities from abroad, including chemicals to treat drinking water. Development aid from the World Bank is also cut off, denying the country access to funds to upgrade its infrastructure. The central bank takes measures to mitigate the effects of the act, creating hyper-inflation as a by-product.

The cause of the crisis, then, can be traced directly to the West. Rather than banning the export of goods to Zimbabwe, the US denied Zimbabwe the means to import goods — not trade sanctions, but an act that had the same effect. To be sure, had the Mugabe government reversed its land reform program and abided by IMF demands, the crisis would have been averted. But the trigger was pulled in Washington, London and Brussels, and it is the West, therefore, that bears the blame.

Sanctions are effectively acts of war, with often equivalent, and sometimes more devastating, consequences. More than a million Iraqis died as a result of a decade-long sanctions regime championed by the US following the 1991 Gulf War. This prompted two political scientists, John and Karl Mueller, to coin the phrase “sanctions of mass destruction.” They noted that sanctions had “contributed to more deaths in the post Cold War era than all the weapons of mass destruction in history.”

The Western media refer to sanctions on Zimbabwe as targeted – limited only to high state officials and other individuals. This ignores the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act and conceals its devastating impact, thereby shifting responsibility for the humanitarian catastrophe from the US to Mugabe.

The cholera outbreak has a parallel in the outbreak of cholera in Iraq following the Gulf War. Thomas Nagy, a business professor at George Washington University, cited declassified documents in the September 2001 issue of The Progressive magazine showing that the United States had deliberately bombed Iraq’s drinking water and sanitation facilities, recognizing that sanctions would prevent Iraq from rebuilding its water infrastructure and that epidemics of otherwise preventable diseases, cholera among them, would ensue. Washington, in other words, deliberately created a humanitarian catastrophe to achieve its goal of regime change. There is a direct parallel with Zimbabwe – the only difference is that the United States uses the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act – that is, sanctions of mass destruction – in place of bombing.

Harare’s land reform program is one of the principal reasons the United States has gone to war with Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe has redistributed land previously owned by 4,000 white farmers to 300,000 previously landless families, descendants of black Africans whose land was stolen by white settlers. By contrast, South Africa’s ANC government has redistributed only four percent of the 87 percent of land forcibly seized from the indigenous population by Europeans.

In March, South Africa’s cabinet seemed ready to move ahead with a plan to accelerate agrarian reform. It would abandon the “willing seller, willing buyer” model insisted on by the West, following in the Mugabe government’s footsteps. Under the plan, thirty percent of farmland would be redistributed to black farmers by 2014. But the government has since backed away, its reluctance to move forward based on the following considerations.

1. Most black South Africans are generations removed from the land, and no longer have the skills and culture necessary to immediately farm at a high level. An accelerated land reform program would almost certainly lower production levels, as new farmers played catch up to acquire critical skills.

2. South Africa is no longer a net exporter of food. An accelerated land reform program would likely force the country, in the short term, to rely more heavily on agricultural imports, at a time food prices are rising globally.

3. There is a danger that fast-track land reform will create a crisis of capital flight.

4. The dangers of radical land reform in provoking a backlash from the West are richly evident in the example of Zimbabwe. South Africa would like to avoid becoming the next Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe’s economic crisis is accompanied by a political crisis. Talks on forming a government of national unity are stalled. Failure to strike a deal pivots on a single ministry – home affairs. In the West, failure to consolidate a deal between Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party and the two MDC factions is attributed to Mugabe’s intransigence in insisting that he control all key cabinet posts. It takes two to tango. Tsvangirai has shown little interest in striking an accord, preferring instead to raise objections to every solution to the impasse put forward by outside mediators, as Western ambassadors hover nearby. It’s as if, with the country teetering on the edge of collapse, he doesn’t want to do a deal, preferring instead to help hasten the collapse by throwing up obstacles to an accord, to clear the way for his ascension to the presidency. When the mediation of former South African president Thambo Mbeki failed, Tsvangirai asked the regional grouping, the SADC, to intervene. SADC ordered Zanu-PF and the MDC to share the home affairs ministry. Tsvangirai refused. Now he wants Mbeki replaced.

At the SADC meeting, Mugabe presented a report which alleges that MDC militias are being trained in Botswana by Britain, to be deployed to Zimbabwe early in 2009 to foment a civil war. The turmoil would be used as a pretext for outside military intervention. This would follow the model used to oust the Haitian government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Already, British officials and clergymen are calling for intervention. British prime minister Gordon Brown says the cholera outbreak makes Zimbabwe’s crisis international, because disease can cross borders. Since an international crisis is within the purview of the “international community,” the path is clear for the West and its satellites to step in to set matters straight

Botswana is decidedly hostile. The country’s foreign minister, Phando Skelemani, says that Zimbabwe’s neighbors should impose an oil blockade to bring the Mugabe government down.

Meanwhile, representatives of the elders, Jimmy Carter, Kofi Anan and Graca Machel sought to enter Zimbabwe to assess the humanitarian situation. Inasmuch as an adequate assessment could not be made on the whistle-stop tour the trio had planned, Harare barred their entry, recognizing that the trip would simply be used as a platform to declaim on the necessity of regime change. The elders’ humanitarian concern, however, didn’t stop the trio from agreeing that stepped up sanctions – more misery for the population — would be useful.

The Mugabe government’s pursuit of land reform, rejection of neo-liberal restructuring, and movement to eclipse US imperialism in southern Africa, has put Zimbabwe on the receiving end of a Western attack based on punitive financial sanctions. The intention, as is true of all Western destabilization efforts, has been to make the target country ungovernable, forcing the government to step down, clearing the way for the ascension of the West’s local errand boys. Owing to the West’s attack, Zimbabwe’s government is struggling to provide the population with basic necessities. It can no longer provide basic sanitation and access to potable water at a sufficient level to prevent the outbreak of otherwise preventable diseases.

The replacement of the Mugabe government with one led by the Movement for Democratic Change, a party created and directed by Western governments, if it happens, will lead to an improvement in the humanitarian situation. This won’t come about because the MDC is more competent at governing, but because sanctions will be lifted and access to balance of payment support and development aid will be restored. Zimbabwe will once again be able to import adequate amounts of water purification chemicals. The improving humanitarian situation will be cited as proof the West was right all along in insisting on a change of government.

The downside is that measures to indigenize the economy – to place the country’s agricultural and mineral wealth in the hands of the black majority – will be reversed. Mugabe and key members of the state will be shipped off to The Hague – or attempts will be made to ship them off – to send a message to others about what befalls those who threaten the dominant mode of property relations and challenge Western domination. Cowed by the example of Zimbabwe, Africans in other countries will back away from their own land reform and economic indigenization demands, and the continent will settle more firmly into a pattern of neo-colonial subjugation.

_____________________________
Zimbabwe and hypocrisy - lessons from history

From Tony McGregor
So the sham election is over and Robert Gabriel Mugabe pronounced to be duly elected President of the Republic of Zimbabwe to a chorus of condemnation from the Western powers and a significant number of African leaders also.

The gleeful condemnation from the West, under the cheerleading of the horrible two-headed monster called Bush/Brown (hereinafter called BB) is loud, vociferous and incredibly hypocritical, not to mention a-historical.

Through the 60s, 70s and 80s the US and its allies maintained Mobutu Sese Seko, the ogre of Zaire, in power while he plundered his country, exploited its people and left it in a state of undemocratic shambles, impoverished and at war with itself.

Through the 70s, 80s and 90s the US and its allies urged on the vicious exploits of Jonas Savimbi against the elected government of Angola, in a wasteful, cruel and totally unnecessary civil war which cost millions of lives.

And now they turn on Mugabe, who has not done nearly as much damage, though the damage he has done is still immense, as Mobutu and Savimbi did, not to mention other “darlings” of the West like Daniel Arap Moi.

The West conveniently forgets, while condemning Mugabe with such breath-taking hypocrisy, that the land which is now called Zimbabwe was originally stolen by chicanery and violence from its people in the late 19th Century. Then the people were again insulted and denied their rights in their own land by Ian Smith’s attempted 1000-year reich, which mercifully only lasted a few decades.

An intelligence report by an official of the British South African Company (the company owned by Cecil John Rhodes and which was the instrument he used to rob the people of Zimbabwe of their land) in a report in February 1897 wrote that the people of Zimbabwe “mean to remain independent.”

This nameless official went on in his report: “Therefore what is required are strong lessons, which we have failed to give them from the very beginning of the war. And this failure only proved to the natives that with all our men and guns we have not even been able to get at them … All this shows that our mode of fighting is not the proper one for Mashonas; even the natives laugh at it…”

The official concluded the report with these words: “In conclusion, my advice would be to give to the natives of the district as severe a lesson as possible, surprising and burning their kraals when it is possible to do so, and, at all events throughout the district, to lay waste their crops.”

Thus the “civilizing” work of the colonists! And let’s not forget that the “natives of the district” were actually the rightful owners of the land and that the lesson they were to be taught was that they should give up their land to the white settlers.

This land was being wrested from them by a combination of trickery, deceit and firepower. The deceit was in the form of the Rudd Concession which an agent of Cecil John Rhodes, one Charles Rudd, had signed with the nDebele King Jando Lopengule (Lobengula) Kumalo.

By this agreement, Lobengula had been assured, only ten settlers would be allowed to mine in his kingdom and that all people there would be considered to be living in his kingdom.

So when hundreds of settlers arrived he was, unsurprisingly, somewhat peeved!

From that time on the indigenous people of Zimbabwe suffered one depredation after another. Their land was stolen, their rights to independence were stolen, their self-esteem was stolen.

In every constitutional arrangement from then on their rights were reduced.

It should be no surprise then that Mugabe rants on about Bush and Blair wanting to rob the Zimbabwean people of their birthright. On what basis should the Zimbabweans trust the West, and Britain in particular?

The final straw for the Black people of Zimbabwe was the unfortunate so-called independence (UDI) declared by Ian Smith on 11 November 1965. This triggered a long “bush” war, known by the people of Zimbabwe as the Second Chimurenga (War of Independence). The first Chimurenga was the struggle against the colonial theft in the 19th Century.

The Second Chimurenga lasted from UDI until the signing of the Lancaster House Agreement in 1979 which led to elections and the installation of a government led by Mugabe as Prime Minister.

See also Zimbabwe Image

More Blood on West's Hands

Impact of Sanctions Downplayed in Zimbabwe Crisis
New American Media
Dec 29, 2008

NEW YORK (FinalCall.com) - John Holmes, the United Nations under secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, recently said sanctions imposed by the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union on Zimbabwe are a “side issue” and have nothing to do with the spreading cholera epidemic engulfing the small southern African nation.

Mr. Holmes, who is also the UN’s emergency relief coordinator, spoke at a Dec. 5 press conference here at the UN headquarters. By Dec. 12 there were 16,700 new cases of cholera recorded in Zimbabwe with nearly 800 deaths, mainly children and the elderly who are the most vulnerable. The World Health Organization reported an upward trend in new and suspected cases of the disease in the country.

“The degradation of the water supply and sanitation systems is one of the root causes of the cholera outbreak. There are not sufficient safe sources of drinking water,” observed Mr. Marcus Bachman, Medecins Sans Frontieres’ (Doctors Without Borders) emergency coordinator in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital.

The government of Zimbabwe has been unable to borrow money from international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank since 2001. Because of this, it cannot upgrade its sanitation and sewerage infrastructure which is necessary to halt the spread of cholera.

The Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2001, legislation enacted by the United States Congress, empowers the treasury secretary of the United States to “instruct the U.S. executive director of each international financial institution to oppose and vote against any extension by the respective institution of any loan, credit or guarantee to the government of Zimbabwe.” The effect of this infanticidal and unconscionable piece of legislation, according to economists, is the refusal of all banks to extend credit and loans to the government to pay for the country’s medical and infrastructural needs.

“I don’t think that the sanctions which are essentially imposed on individuals and particular entities can be said to be a major contributory factor to the cholera epidemic. The cholera epidemic comes from basic things like the lack of clean water and the collapse of the health system. Any link between individual sanctions and the cholera epidemic is pretty remote,” Mr. Holmes declared.

According to observers, Mr. Holmes’ ignorance of the particulars of the U.S. sanctions legislation is startling. The sanctions are not “essentially imposed on individuals.” They are imposed on the entire country. When asked whether or not he was familiar with the U.S. sanctions legislation, he admitted that he was not familiar with the bill.

Even after being appraised of the specifics of the legislation, Mr. Holmes’ obsequence to the political agenda of the U.S. towards Zimbabwe was palpable. Without offering any evidence, the under secretary-general said that, “The government of Zimbabwe has had plenty of opportunities in different ways to access goods or lines of credit from different places in the world if it chose to do so.”

Some UN diplomats, requesting anonymity, observed that only an unabashed sycophant or a blissfully ignorant individual could make such a statement. They pointed out that banks shun any country that has been blacklisted by U.S. legislation. This is so because if they engage in any commercial transactions with such countries, they will be penalized both civilly and criminally, starting with exclusion from the U.S. banking system.

Mr. Holmes’ posture towards Zimbabwe is regrettable but understandable given his political pedigree. Prior to his appointment as UN Under Secretary-General in January 2007, Mr. Holmes was the private secretary of former UK prime minister, Tony Blair. It was during Mr. Blair’s administration that relations between the UK, U.S. and the EU deteriorated, culminating in the 2001 U.S. legislation cutting off Zimbabwe from the global financial markets.

What’s unsettling is that Mr. Holmes’ attitude vis-à-vis Zimbabwe is at stark variance with his public pronouncements relating to how other humanitarian crises in other parts of the world should be solved.

“Humanitarian relief is no substitute for political action and the active search for conflict prevention and resolution. Which is why as humanitarians we must go on pressing the politicians for more proactive searches for solutions,” Mr. Holmes asserted at a conference in Dubai earlier this year.

U.S. President George Bush ought to read the above. His response to the cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe was to call on the country’s president, Robert Mugabe, to resign. “Across the continent, African voices are bravely speaking out to say now is the time for him to step down,” Mr. Bush crowed.

Not so was the sharp response from the African Union. “Only dialogue between the Zimbabwean parties, supported by the AU and other (African) regional actors, can restore peace and stability to that country,” said Salva Rweyemamu, spokesman for AU chairman and Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete.

According to press reports, President Rweyemamu said sending peacekeeping troops or removing President Mugabe by force as proposed by South African Bishop Desmond Tutu and Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga, who expressed personal opinions, were not options. “We have a serious humanitarian crisis in Zimbabwe. We have cholera. Do they think that we can eradicate cholera with guns?” he asked, incredulously.

UN diplomats say the “political action” the U.S. government must take to halt the spread of cholera in Zimbabwe is the rescinding of the sanctions legislation. The shibboleth of “bad governance” often attributed to Zimbabwe is nothing but political prestidigitation, they added.

When Iceland went bankrupt in November—the country couldn’t repay its external debts, the Icelandic currency, the krona, lost all of its value, the banking industry collapsed and businesses could no longer pay for imports—there was no call for Iceland’s president, Olafur Grimsson, to resign. There was no charge of bad governance attributed to the government of Iceland. Instead, the global community responded generously with loans totaling $10 billion. That’s about $33,000 for each of Iceland’s 300,000 citizens. Out of that $10 billion, $2.1 billion came from the IMF.

Unless it is the opinion of the UN that Iceland’s children are more worthy of being saved than the children of Zimbabwe, UN diplomats say Mr. Holmes needs to dispense with his obfuscation and call on the United States to rescind its inhumane sanctions legislation so that the children of Zimbabwe can live.

African Union urges scrapping of Zimbabwe sanctions

France24
01/02/2009

AFP - The African Union Saturday urged the lifting of sanctions against Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's regime as he prepares to share power with his opposition rival in a unity government.

The AU's executive council adopted a resolution ahead of of Sunday's summit here calling for "the lifting of sanctions against Zimbabwe to help ease the humanitarian situation in the country."

African Union head Jean Ping, when asked about sanctions levied by the United States and European Union, said: "I think that everybody today should help Zimbabwe to rebuild its economy, because an agreement has been reached.

Since disputed elections in March 2008, Zimbabwe's shattered economy has nosedived further. It has the world's highest inflation rate -- 231 million percent -- and is struggling with a cholera epidemic that has claimed some 3,000 lives.

Zimbabwe's opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai this week acceded to a decision by the Southern African Development Community (SADC) regional bloc that a unity government be formed according to a strict timeline which would see him sworn in as prime minister on February 11.

The 53-nation AU asked members and partners "to solidly back the implementation of a comprehensive pact" to end the ruinous political and economic stalemate.

Mugabe's party, which had previously threatened to set up a unity government with or without Tsvangirai, has said it will accept the timetable.

Ping said: "Imagine that you don't help Zimbabwe, who will be blamed? Everybody is expecting that today, because Tsvangirai is going to lead the economy and everything, that the economy should recover. So if you don't do that who will be blamed by the population?

"Today SADC told us they have agreed on a solution, the two parties have agreed on that solution," Ping said, adding: "In politics nothing can be forever. We hope this solution can be a lasting one."

The 84-year-old Mugabe -- in power since Zimbabwe's independence from Britain in 1980 -- has long accused Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change party of being a tool of Britain and the United States, whose governments are opposed to his regime.

Both countries offered up restrained hope in response to the announcement Friday of a unity government being installed in February.

"I've seen the reports about this agreement, but as you can understand, we are a bit skeptical. These types of things have been announced before," US State Department acting spokesman Robert Wood said.

"The key is always implementation," he added.

An equally tempered reaction emerged from London, where British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said he looked forward to seeing details of a deal that would hold Zimbabwean lawmakers accountable.

"The new government will be judged on its actions, above all by the people of Zimbabwe," he said.

EU foreign ministers on Monday tightened sanctions on Zimbabwe, freezing the assets of companies based in British tax havens for the first time and adding 26 more names of people close to the Mugabe regime or their families to a travel-ban list, bringing the number to 203.

The amount of companies whose assets in Europe must be frozen was increased sharply from four to 40 and for the first time European-based firms are included.

According to EU sources, all 18 of the European company names added are based on British territory, including tax havens Jersey, the Isle of Man and the British Virgin Islands.

Zimbabwe blames EU sanctions for cholera deaths

"The only reason I googled up those articles about Zimbabwe was a few horrifying seconds of BBC News I happened to catch in the car last week, on the public radio program "The World," about the United Nations World Food Program having to cut in half the already inadequate monthly rations it provides that country. It takes about 36 pounds of corn a month to keep an adult alive. But now, because of donor shortfalls (the United States and Europe are unwilling to lift sanctions, including famine aid, on Mugabe), the World Food Program is being forced to reduce its rations to 11 pounds of corn per person per month. They only way someone can survive on that is to scavenge enough wild fruit to stave off malnutrition and disease. Seven million people could die by April."


Zimbabwe blames EU sanctions for cholera deaths
December 7th, 2008 in Medicine & Health / Diseases
AFP

Zimbabwean state media on Sunday blamed the country's cholera outbreak, which has claimed nearly 600 lives, on European sanctions imposed on the regime of President Robert Mugabe.

"The cholera outbreak is a clear example of the effects of sanctions on innocent people," The Sunday Mail newspaper said in its editorial as the European Union prepared to tighten sanctions on the government.

"The people who are suffering most are not politicians they claim they want to punish, but poor people," the newspaper said.

"All the victims (of cholera) are as a result of the freezing of balance of payments support, depriving the country of foreign currency required to buy chemicals to treat our drinking water."

European Union foreign ministers are expected to adopt in Brussels on Monday a draft text tightening sanctions against Zimbabwe amid worries over the deteriorating humanitarian situation and political stalemate in the country.

They will add names to the EU's sanctions list of 168 members of the Zimbabwe regime, including Mugabe and his wife Grace, who are banned from entering EU nations and whose European assets have been frozen.

Meanwhile, a South African team will on Monday meet with stakeholders in Zimbabwe and assess how it can aid the nation stricken by a food crisis and cholera outbreak, a South African government spokesman said on Sunday.

"There is no change in our plans to send an official delegation to Zimbabwe tomorrow (Monday). It is going to be a one-day mission during which the team will meet all stakeholders," Themba Maseko told AFP.

He did not give further details.

Maseko had on Friday told reporters that the team would "assess the situation on the ground, determine the level of assistance required and consult with the representatives of the various stakeholders in Zimbabwe on how a multi-stakeholder distribution and monitoring mechanism could be set up."

The team would then brief South African President Kgalema Motlanthe and ministers who would decide on humanitarian aid to be provided by South Africa.

Mugabe has been under intense pressure over his country's collapse from both the West and his neighbours who have urged a stronger stance against the 84-year-old veteran leader.

© 2008 AFP

Where the Mumbai Terrorists came from

From the Independent (UK)

Swat valley schools prepare to close doors to girl students

Publish Date: Saturday,27 December, 2008, at 01:22 AM Doha Time

ISLAMABAD: The future of 40,000 girls in the Swat valley is at stake following a Taliban ban on schooling for girls.

Shah Duran, the deputy of Swat-based Taliban cleric Fazlullah, this week warned the administrations of government and private educational institutions not to enrol girls in schools.
The Taliban also issued a deadline of January 15, 2009 for the ban to be implemented, following which they said they would bomb the buildings of schools allowing girls to study.
The Taliban have blown up more than 100 girls’ schools in Swat in the past 14 months.

Locals say they are helpless and have no option but to accede to the Taliban’s pressure as the government has failed to provide securuty.
“This is terrible,” the principal of a private school in Mingora said.

He said the Taliban decision had proved that the government had lost its writ in the valley. “This is a question of the future of our children. The Taliban decision will throw more than 40,000 girls out of schools,” he said.
He said the school owners in Swat district were planning to convene a meeting and form a committee with the help of elders to have dialogue with the Taliban.

The announcement has stamped the statement of the ruling Awami National Party Senator Muhamad Adeel who had told a seminar in Peshawar a fortnight ago that the government had lost control over Swat.

A social worker said people had already started migrating from Swat following threats by the Taliban. “Things are changing dramatically. We cannot say anything because the people and the whole government is helpless before these armed people,” he said.
The man said his three daughters were studying at an English medium school. He had no other option but to shift his family to some other area to educate his children, he added.

Schools are the most vulnerable target since the beginning of trouble in Swat. According to figures provided by a Swat-based non-government organisation, Pakistan Coalition for Education, Taliban have destroyed over 100 of the 490 primary schools for girls in Swat so far.
The destruction of schools and recent threats to teachers and students have forced over 50,000 girls out of schools, the PCE figures said.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai yesterday condemned a ban on female education by Taliban extremists in troubled northwestern Pakistan, calling it un-Islamic and a way to oppress the area’s Pashtuns. A Taliban commander in Pakistan’s Swat valley has banned girls from attending school, this week threatening to kill any female students who went to class after January 15, local officials said.

Karzai called the move “un-Islamic and inhuman”, saying in a statement that Afghanistan had experienced similar “terrorist” threats against education in the south, an area where Taliban insurgents have strong influence.
“Based on Islamic responsibility and humanity for our Pashtun brothers and sisters, we condemn every step which causes this large tribe backwardness and misfortune,” he said. “These kinds of elements, through releasing such statements, want to deprive Pashtun children of education so that they will always be needy.”

Karzai is a member of Afghanistan’s Pashtun majority. The powerful tribe also dominates Pakistan’s western border area where the Taliban, also mostly ethnic Pashtuns, operate.

Education has suffered badly in Swat as a result of the ongoing fighting between Taliban-linked militants and security forces, with only a handful of schools still open in the region’s main city Mingora.

The region has been turned into a battleground since radical cleric Maulana Fazlullah, who has links to Pakistan’s Taliban movement, in 2007 launched a violent campaign for the introduction of Islamic Sharia law in the valley.

Rockets fired by Taliban militants yesterday killed one girl and injured nine people including two paramilitary soldiers in a restive northwestern tribal region bordering Afghanistan, an official said.

The rockets fired in Bajaur district hit a paramilitary post. One blew up on a road nearby, killing the girl and injuring seven civilians, local official Israr Khan said.

–Agencies

A MOSAIC OF TERROR

There are so many groups calling themselves al-Qaida, Afghan Taliban, Pakistan Taliban and other names in and near Pakistan’s tumultuous tribal belt that an anti-terrorism expert confessed that he could not remember all of them.


ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Terrorists from Pakistan's Lashkar-e-Taiba earned international infamy last month when they carried out audacious, multiple attacks on neighbouring Mumbai, India.

The Army of the Righteous, Pure, or Pious, to render Lashkar-e-Taiba's name in English, is one of many Islamic jihadi groups operating in Pakistan. In fact, there are so many jihadis calling themselves al-Qaida, Afghan Taliban, Pakistan Taliban and other names in and near this country's tumultuous tribal belt that retired major-general Jamshed Ayaz, an anti-terrorism expert at the Institute for Regional Studies in Islamabad, confessed that he could not remember all of them.

Matthew Fisher Canwest News Service

Published: Monday, December 29, 2008


Who these shadowy groups are, what motivates them to fight and where, and to which groups they are allied is of crucial importance to soldiers from Canada who are trying to understand the complex war they are fighting across the border in Afghanistan.

The Afghan Taliban, who are all Pushtuns, are led by Mullah Omar, the charismatic one-eyed preacher who is allied by marriage and theology with al-Qaida's leader Osama bin Laden and who shares with him a $10-million US bounty on his head. But there are other Afghan Taliban leaders, such as Jalaluddin Haqqani, who operate out of Pakistan's North Waziristan district as well as Afghan warlords often based in Pakistan who wrap themselves in jihadi rhetoric but are seldom regarded as men of God.

Both the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaida believe in an extremely conservative interpretation of the Koran and have long used Pakistan's tribal areas as a sanctuary. The so-called Pakistan Taliban sprang up when Mullah Omar and his followers were chased out of Afghanistan and into this country after the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. After they settled here, they used thousands of mostly Saudi-funded madrassas to inspire young Pakistanis to share their core beliefs and take up their holy war.

But groups in the border areas have always been more loyal to their tribes and clans than to any one leader. As a result, the Pakistan Taliban quickly developed so many fractious components with shifting alliances that television journalist Talat Hussain, who has spent the past few years seeking them out in their mountain redoubts, described them as "franchises more than anything else. There are very loose networks, but they are unstable structures."

Despite being only a few years old, the Pakistan Taliban as a collective already controls most of this country's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) where they have set up a number of Islamic mini-states. More troubling for Pakistan's future as a unified state, they have slowly been expanding their reign of terror into North West Frontier Province with bursts of violence in many other parts of the country.

Although Jamshed Ayaz said this was "absolute rot," U.S. intelligence agencies, western diplomats and military commanders strongly believe that the Afghan Taliban and Pakistan Taliban have fluid, generally fruitful relations with officers from the Pakistan army's powerful Inter-Service Intelligence Directorate, which nurtured the Afghan Taliban when they started in the 1990s.

But not all of the Pakistan Taliban have ties to the ISI. One of its main leaders, the mysterious 34-year-old Bailtullah Mehsud, is this country's most wanted man. He is blamed for masterminding the assassination of Benazir Bhutto as well as many suicide bombings and the kidnappings of Pakistani soldiers. However, as Mehsud's gang only fights in Pakistan, it has been spared air strikes by unmanned U.S. Predator drones.

Other important Pakistan Taliban factions are led by Mullah Nazir and the warlord, Gul Bahadur, who is a direct descendent of the legendary Faqir Api, who fought against British rule in the 1900s. Both of these groups are estranged from Mehsud and have made peace deals with the Pakistani army, but because they have fighters in Afghanistan and provide logistical support to al-Qaida and the Afghan Taliban, they have been targeted by American drones operating over Pakistan.

To fight the Pakistan Taliban, the new government of Asif Ali Zardari has recently sent the army into parts of FATA where there have been involved in several major battles. As a part of a divide and rule policy, the army has also been handing out weapons to local tribal militias known as lashkars. But this can be a tricky business in these remote regions because the Lashkars, some of whom may be Taliban by another name, could easily turn their weapons against those who gave them to them.

Lashkar-e-Taiba, which killed 164 people in India last month, is not a traditional lashkar and was not believed to have received any arms from the Pakistani government. But it has long had ties to the Pakistani military intelligence since being established in the late 1980s with the goal of conquering Indian Kashmir and its largely Muslim population. The Mumbai attack, which was directed at Israelis, Britons and Americans, as well as India, represented an ominous broadening of its ambitions.

Over time, Lashkar-e-Taiba has developed a broad following in poor rural areas across Pakistan, from which it draws many recruits. Its operations have been funded by the Dawa Islamic charity, which also has ties to the Taliban.

Opinion had been divided in Pakistan about the Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba and other terrorist groups and what, if anything, should be done by Zardari's government or the army to check their rising power. While many Pakistanis are furious at the mayhem caused by Mehsud and Lashkar-e-Taiba, and want them severely dealt with, there has also been admiration for the pluck of some Taliban factions for taking on the might of the American army and air force and for Lashkar-e-Taibi for, among other things, attacking the Indian parliament in Delhi in 2001.

"The conflict is changing," said Ahsan Iqbal, an MP and information secretary for the Pakistan Muslim League-N, the smaller half of the Pakistani People's Party-led coalition government. "The distance between Washington and Alaska is a lot less than between Islamabad and the tribal areas. The difference is 100 years. Their social structures and traditions are very different. If you do not understand this, there is little chance for success against them."

Notwithstanding the Pakistan Taliban's proven ability to cause bloody harm almost anywhere, Iqbal and others doubted that they would succeed in what has been called "the Talibanization" of the entire country.

"Things are very bad along the frontier with many different forces pitted against each other," said Syed Jaffer Ahmed of the Pakistan Study Centre in Karachi, "but I would not go so far as to say that this will shatter the nation. I do not think that Talibanization can take place everywhere here."

Afghanistan and some NATO countries such as Canada have favoured opening a dialogue with moderate Taliban. Initial talks sponsored by Saudi Arabia have already taken place.

However, Mullah Omar is a hugely influential figure among most factions of the Pakistan Taliban and, therefore, a key player in any peace deal on both sides of the border - and he can hardly be considered a moderate.

Ayaz Wazir, who was a member of a Pakistani diplomatic mission which met half a dozen times with the Afghan cleric before the 9/11 attacks, favoured including him in any negotiations.

"We have an expression in Pushto that you can fight for 100 years but eventually you will talk," said Wazir, who grew up in a tribal area and speaks the same dialect as Mullah Omar.

"His vision was already well known then, but my dealings with him were normal. He was quite easy to converse with. I originally thought that he was an ordinary mullah. But over time I learned that he was very shrewd."

Talat Hussain, the broadcaster, said "the Americans are not going to touch Mullah Omar. They have to keep a door open. If they take him out, who are they going to talk to?"

How the West lost us

If the American media rushed to internationalize 9/11, they seemed to be in an equal hurry to domesticize 26/11, as if “terror” is something that happens regularly in India, like water problems, or sly airport touts.

VAMSEE JULURI presents a critique of media coverage of the Mumbai attacks. Pix, Huffington Post.

The Hoot, Dec 14 23:24:27, 2008


It started with what, in my view, was an inappropriate preposition. In the end, what Mumbai ended up looking like to viewers and readers in the West was something far removed from the magnitude of its loss, and from the realities of fact and perspective. From the first hours of the attack on the morning (Pacific Time) of Wednesday, November 26, until the siege ended, American television channels like CNN covered the attacks live. It was Thanksgiving holiday, and "Terror in Mumbai" became the background in innumerable homes that might have had their televisions on in between meals or naps. It was also on in homes where something like outrage was being felt, at the brazenness of the attacks, and at the vested ignorance tainting its coverage.



"Terror in Mumbai." The emphasis on "in" is not mine nor is it to make a point. That is how CNN presented its headline throughout the event. In the following days, even as the networks moved slowly back to their usual Thanksgiving-ish menu of inspirational and heartwarming stories, the follow-up reports all came back under the same headline. It was used on the local news stations in the Bay Area, and in time, even The Economist went with the same words on its cover. Normally, especially in the face of a tragedy of such proportions, one would not bother to fault the media for its choice of words. But the decision to frame the event as "Terror in Mumbai" rather than an "Attack on Mumbai" was not an isolated one. It was merely one part of the broader view with which the media approached it. Nor was it inconsequential. After all, within minutes of the events of 9/11/2001, the American media were calling it an attack "on" America and comparing it to Pearl Harbor, rather than a more recent act of terrorism, the Oklahoma bombing. If the American media rushed to internationalize 9/11, they seemed to be in an equal hurry in the case of 26/11 (as we would call it in India ) to domesticize it, as if "terror" is something that happens regularly in India, like water problems, or sly airport touts. It was this prejudice that provided the locus for all else that emanated, from the awkward platitudes of inexperienced anchors filling airtime to even the more erudite writings of experts and commentators.



In the first few hours of coverage, the domestication of the attacks unfolded almost silently, by virtue of the fact that much of the concern seemed to be about the foreign nationals who were reportedly being targeted (see some of the comments posted on this website for SAJA, the South Asian Journalists Association). To a less attentive viewer, it might have well seemed as if the whole drama was about terrorists "in" India attacking hapless Western tourists. Although some efforts were made in time to address the fact that most of the victims were indeed Indian, those efforts seemed lost in a deeper inertia that seemed to preclude the naming of victims as "Indian," or indeed, the attacks as "on" Mumbai, if not "on" India. Such a step would of course have implied that the media had started to seriously address what was already well established as the likely nationality of the attackers. Instead, there seemed to be something like reluctance in the actions of some of the correspondents. In one of the earliest mentions of the sea-route taken by the attackers, a reporter virtually cried out three times (or perhaps even four) that what she was reporting about the Karachi angle was only an Indian official's accusation. Nothing more. The same sort of journalistic delicacy was also applied to higher government echelons when a "Counterterrorism Expert" on a news channel wondered if Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was having a "knee-jerk reaction" when he mentioned "outsiders."



Naturally, no one would like to see unsubstantiated allegations of such a grave sort reported as fact in the international news media in the middle of an unfolding attack of such unprecedented proportions. But all this hesitation was leading to something which in retrospect Christopher Hitchens would call a "disingenuous failure to state the obvious." Unfortunately though, it wasn't just the silence which was troubling. Even before the siege was formally ended, even as speculation and scrutiny grew, a rather strong group of voices converged in the international press on to what they saw as the obvious issue here: India.



In one of the first stories about the possible nationality of the attackers, the New York Times quoted one such expert, ironically named Ms. Fair, who insisted that "this is a domestic issue" and that it is "not India's 9/11." Interestingly, the same article also got its geography grossly mixed up, reporting that "Deccan" (part of the name that a group claiming responsibility used) was a neighborhood in my Hyderabad! And with erroneous geography, a history goof-up couldn't be far behind either. An article in the Telegraph asserted that Kashmir was gifted to India by the departing British. Perhaps geography and history weren't exactly high on the media's criteria for analyzing the event. After all, most of the experts being quoted were of neither academic persuasion. Instead, we saw mostly security and counter-terrorism experts, including one on television who had dealt with a hotel hostage crisis, somewhere in the United States, sometime long ago.



Trivialities aside, it seemed that the attacks on Mumbai were largely destined to be seen here as a part of "India's increasingly violent history," as the title of an article in the Independent, here, put it. As the days passed, that perception was somewhat complicated, but also, sadly, not really contested, by some of the op-ed pieces that followed in the august pages of the New York Times and elsewhere. Amitav Ghosh , Pankaj Mishra, and Suketu Mehta wrote op-eds which invoked in their opening paragraphs, respectively, the following: a BJP leader's attempts to label the attacks as India's 9/11, the attackers' phone calls condemning injustices in Kashmir and Ayodhya, and that "something" about Mumbai that "appalls religious extremists, Hindu and Muslim alike." In a similar vein, the Los Angeles Times published two op-eds in response to the attacks. Martha Nussbaum's piece acknowledged that the attackers may have come from outside India , but leaps off from that into a critique of what she calls "Indian terrorism." I do not believe she used the term "Pakistani terrorism" anywhere there. Another op-ed in the L.A. Times by Asra Nomani expresses her sorrow while reading a newspaper report on poverty among Indian Muslims while residing in, and this seems to be being said without irony, "Room 721 of the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower Hotel."



The irony, it seems, is all elsewhere. All the New York Times op-eds which seem to turn a critical eye on Pakistan were written by non South-Asians, like William Kristol and Thomas Friedman. I don't find this ironic in a simply nationalistic sense though. I find the irony in the fact that even progressive critiques sometimes end up with the same effect as mainstream prejudices when not made in the right time and place.



I think that the Western media has persisted for far too long with a framework of reporting that is disconnected from reality, and this showed all too sadly in its approach to Mumbai. It continues an old imperialism, unreflectively enjoying its discursive overlordship over South Asia by presenting India and Pakistan as "rivals," as if that is what a billion and a half people think of all the time. It continues a selfish cold-war era framework of false moral equivalence between India and Pakistan, reporting that the countries have fought four wars without once naming an aggressor, chirpily discounting every Indian grievance with a clever Pakistani government retort (see this piece in Times of India). And it grants a voice it seems, to only one sort of South Asian and South Asian opinion: one that finds fault in India, even when at least one cause lies elsewhere.


Vamsee Juluri is a professor of media studies at the University of San Francisco. He is the author of The Ideals of Indian Cinema and The Mythologist: A Novel (both forthcoming from Penguin India).

Inconvenient Truths

The media's disingenuous failure to state the obvious.

By Christopher Hitchens
Slate Monday, Dec. 8, 2008,

The obvious is sometimes the most difficult thing to discern, and few things are more amusing than the efforts of our journals of record to keep "open" minds about the self-evident, and thus to create mysteries when the real task of reportage is to dispel them. An all-time achiever in this category is Fernanda Santos of the New York Times, who managed to write from Bombay on Nov. 27 that the Chabad Jewish center in that city was "an unlikely target of the terrorist gunmen who unleashed a series of bloody coordinated attacks at locations in and around Mumbai's commercial center." Continuing to keep her brow heavily furrowed with the wrinkles of doubt and uncertainty, Santos went on to say that "[i]t is not known if the Jewish center was strategically chosen, or if it was an accidental hostage scene."

This same puzzled expression is currently being widely worn on the faces of all those who wonder if Pakistan is implicated in the "bloody coordinated" assault on the heart of Bombay. To get an additional if oblique perspective on this riddle that is an enigma wrapped inside a mystery, take a look at Joshua Hammer's excellent essay in the current Atlantic. The question in its title—"[Is Syria] Getting Away With Murder?"—is at least asked only at the beginning of the article and not at the end of it.

Here are the known facts: If you are a Lebanese politician or journalist or public figure, and you criticize the role played by the government of Syria in your country's internal affairs, your car will explode when you turn the ignition key, or you will be ambushed and shot or blown up by a bomb or land mine as you drive through the streets of Beirut or along the roads that lead to the mountains. The explosives and weapons used, and the skilled tactics employed, will often be reminiscent of the sort of resources available only to the secret police and army of a state machine. But I think in fairness I must stress that this is all that is known for sure. You criticize the Assad dictatorship, and either your vehicle detonates or your head is blown off. Over time, this has happened to a large and varied number of people, ranging from Sunni statesman Rafik Hariri to Druze leader Kamal Jumblatt to Communist spokesman George Hawi. One would not wish to be a "conspiracy theorist" and allege that there was any necessary connection between the criticisms in the first place and the deplorably terminal experiences in the second.

Hammer's article is good for a laugh in that it shows just how much trouble the international community will go to precisely in order not to implicate the Assad family in this string of unfortunate events. After all, does Damascus not hold the keys to peace in the region? Might not young Bashar Assad, who managed to become president after the peaceful death by natural causes of his father, become annoyed and petulant and even uncooperative if he were found to have been commissioning assassinations? Could the fabled "process" suffer if a finger of indictment were pointed at him? At the offices of the long-established and by now almost historic United Nations inquiry into the Hariri murder, feet are evidently being dragged because of considerations like these, and Hammer describes the resulting atmosphere very well.

In rather the same way, the international community is deciding to be, shall we say, nonjudgmental in the matter of Pakistani involvement in the Bombay unpleasantness. Everything from the cell phones to the training appears to be traceable to the aboveground surrogates of an ostensibly banned group known as Lashkar-i-Taiba, which practices what it preaches and preaches holy war against Hindus, as well as Jews, Christians, atheists, and other elements of the "impure." Lashkar is well-known to be a bastard child—and by no means a disowned one, either—of the Pakistani security services. But how inconvenient if this self-evident and obvious fact should have to be faced.

How inconvenient, for one thing, for the government of Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, a new and untried politician who may not exactly be in charge of his own country or of its armed forces but who nonetheless knows how to jingle those same keys of peace. How inconvenient, too, for all those who assume that the Afghan war is the "good" war when they see Pakistani army units being withdrawn from the Afghan frontier and deployed against democratic India (which has always been Pakistan's "real" enemy).

The Syrian and Pakistani situations are a great deal more similar than most people have any interest in pointing out. In both cases, there is a state within the state that exerts the real parallel power and possesses the reserve strength. In both cases, official "secularism" is a mask (as it also was with the Iraqi Baathists) for the state sponsorship of theocratic and cross-border gangster groups like Lashkar and Hezbollah. In both cases, an unknown quantity of nuclear assets are at the disposal of the official and banana republic state and also very probably of elements within the unofficial and criminal and terrorist one. (It is of huge and unremarked significance that Syria did not take the recent Israeli bombing of its hidden reactor to the United Nations or make any other public complaint.) Given these grim and worsening states of affairs, perhaps it is only small wonder that we take consolation in our illusions and in comforting doubts—such as the childlike wonder about whether Jews are deliberately targeted or just unlucky with time and place. This would all be vaguely funny if it wasn't headed straight toward our own streets.

Letter New York Times

New York Times
December 16, 2008
Letter
Mumbai’s Aftermath

To the Editor:

The perverse result of the unspeakable atrocity in Mumbai last month has been to focus attention on the failings of the Indian government, rather than on the perpetrators.

While no one doubts the need for stronger security, one immensely important question remains. With all its flaws, India has focused on the building blocks of a modern nation: secularism, democracy, education and technology. Why should India be expected to pay the price for Pakistan’s failure at nation-building?

In this context, “They Hate Us — and India Is Us,” by Patrick French (Op-Ed, Dec. 8), was a refreshing contrast to the views of commentators who steer the conversation to India’s mistakes and its need for statesmanship in the face of what is, undoubtedly, a state of war.

From people like us who grew up in Mumbai, a huge “thank you” to Mr. French for articulating our outrage at not just the incident, but at the cynical aftermath as well.

Rajesh Kumar
New York, Dec.
8, 2008

Why Cholera?

(Photo source: http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/12/11/world/20081212CHOLERA_index.html?ref=world)
According to the WHO the reasons for the cholera outbreak are: lack of clean drinking water and sanitation, weak health services, and health staff strike, mainly by nurses. Health staff are unable to obtain salaries from banks due to the acute shortage of banknotes, making it too burdensome and expensive to travel to work.

The MSF reports: The problems are long-term. The water station does not have the parts to properly repair its pumps. Even if it did, it depends on electricity to pump water from the tower to the city. Electricity depends on a coal mine that has not been paid in over a year and can no longer supply coal. There is no fuel to run the garbage trucks; there is no money to pay salaries for people to collect the garbage. There is no equipment, or supplies, to fix the sewage system, nor money to pay personnel to do it. There are no quick solutions.

________________________________

It is evident that there are very serious problems facing Zimbabwe but it cannot be said that they have simply been caused by the weaknesses of the government of Zimbabwe. Like many other countries, Zimbabwe has attempted to chart its own independent course and escape from the legacy of British colonial rule since gaining independence through armed struggle in 1980. But it has been thwarted in particular by the hostile actions of the governments of Britain and the US, which have meddled in Zimbabwe’s internal affairs and refused to honour their legal responsibilities as required by the Lancaster House agreement of 1979, which brought to an end the armed liberation struggle.


The deterioration of Zimbabwe’s economy, which is still dominated by Anglo-American monopolies, has itself been precipitated by the hostile actions of the World Bank and IMF encouraged by Britain and the US, as well as by economic sanctions especially those imposed by the US under so-called Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act.
But the British and US governments and their allies have also continued to meddle in the internal affairs of Zimbabwe, especially in its elections and political life, directly financing an opposition movement to its government through the Westminster Foundation, the Zimbabwe Democracy Trust and other similar agencies.

In these difficult circumstances, there have been attempts by the African Union and the Southern African Development Community to find a way forward. Discussions were taking place between all the major political parties until recently when the main opposition party, the MDC suddenly withdrew, leading to a renewed political impasse and the conditions were created for Britain, the US and their allies to launch their new offensive.

_____________________________________

Zimbabwe declares national health emergency
4 Dec 2008, 1950 hrs IST, AP


HARARE, Zimbabwe: Zimbabwe has declared a national emergency over a cholera epidemic and the collapse of its health care system, and is seeking more help to pay for food and drugs, the state-run newspaper said on Thursday.

"Our central hospitals are literally not functioning," minister of health David Parirenyatwa said on Wednesday at a meeting of government and international aid officials, according to The Herald newspaper.

The failure of the health care system is one of the most devastating effects of an economic collapse that has left Zimbabweans struggling to eat and find clean drinking water. Little help is coming from the government, which has been paralyzed since disputed March elections as President Robert Mugabe and the opposition wrangle over a power-sharing deal.

The United Nations said the cholera, blamed on lack of water treatment and broken sewage pipes, has killed more than 500 people across the country since August.

Matthew Cochrane, regional spokesman for the international federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said on Thursday that Zimbabwe was "absolutely" facing a cholera epidemic, and said he hoped the government's declaration of an emergency would result in international aid agencies and donors stepping up their response.

"This is about supporting the people of Zimbabwe," Cochrane said, adding that aid should include water treatment plants and more medical staff. He said the costs could climb into tens of millions of dollars.

The international Red Cross shipped in more supplies Wednesday to fight cholera in Zimbabwe.

The health minister declared the state of emergency at Wednesday's meeting, and appealed for money to pay for food, drugs, hospital equipment and salaries for doctors and nurses.

"Our staff is demotivated and we need your support to ensure that they start coming to work and our health system is revived,'' he was quoted as saying.

High levels of cholera are common in the region, but Cochrane, of the Red Cross, said it was hitting a population in Zimbabwe already weakened by hunger and poverty. The toll could be much higher than the official figures, he said, as many Zimbabweans, particularly in rural areas, were not seeking medical treatment and their deaths were not being recorded.

Cochrane said Red Cross experts were in the countryside on Thursday assessing the crisis.

Without help, the situation could get much worse. Walter Mzembi, the deputy water minister who also attended Wednesday's meeting, said the ministry has only enough chemicals to treat water nationally for 12 more weeks.

UN agencies, embassies and aid groups at the meeting pledged to help, The Herald said.

The European Commission said it would provide more than $12 million for drugs and clean water, and the International Red Cross said it would release more funds to help deal with cholera.

"We need to pool our resources together and see how best we can respond to this emergency," Agostinho Zacarias, the UN development program director in Zimbabwe, was quoted as saying.

Zimbabwe has the world's highest inflation, and Zimbabweans face daily shortages of food and other basics.

Even cash is in short supply. A new 100 million Zimbabwean dollar note went into circulation on Thursday in an attempt to ease the cash crunch. Also Thursday, the amount of cash an individual can withdraw was increased to ZW$100 million a week, enough to buy about 85 pints (40 liters) of clean water. The new bills and withdrawal limits meant long lines at banks Thursday.

In neighbouring South Africa, where increasing numbers of Zimbabweans are seeking cholera treatment, President Kgalema Motlanthe planned a Cabinet meeting to consider ways to work with other countries in the region, donor organizations and aid groups to address the urgent need for food and other humanitarian needs, government spokesman Themba Maseko said on Thursday.

Cholera Outbreak Outcome of West's War on Zimbabwe

Cholera Outbreak Outcome of West's War on Zimbabwe

by Stephen Gowans

[….]

The crisis in Zimbabwe has intensified. Inflation is incalculably high. The central bank limits - to an inadequate level - the amount of money Zimbabweans can withdraw from their bank accounts daily. Unarmed soldiers riot, their guns kept under lock and key, to prevent an armed uprising. Hospital staff fail to show up for work. The water authority is short of chemicals to purify drinking water. Cholera, easily prevented and cured under normal circumstances, has broken out, leading the government to declare a humanitarian emergency.

In the West, state officials call for the country's president, Robert Mugabe, to step down and yield power to the leader of the largest faction of the Movement for Democratic Change, Morgan Tsvangirai. In this, the crisis is directly linked to Mugabe, its solution to Tsvangirai, but it's never said what Mugabe has done to cause the crisis, or how Tsvangirai's ascension to the presidency will make it go away.

The causal chain leading to the crisis can be diagrammed roughly as follows:

· In the late 90s, Mugabe's government provokes the hostility of the West by:

1. intervening militarily in the Democratic Republic of Congo on the side of the young government of Laurent Kabila, helping to thwart an invasion by Rwandan and Ugandan forces backed by the US and Britain;
2. it rejects a pro-foreign investment economic restructuring program the IMF establishes as a condition for balance of payment support;
3. it accelerates land redistribution by seizing white-owned farms and thereby committing the ultimate affront against owners of productive property - expropriation without compensation. To governments whose foreign policy is based in large measure on protecting their nationals' ownership rights to foreign productive assets, expropriation, and especially expropriation without compensation, is intolerable, and must be punished to deter others from doing the same.



In response, the United States, as prime guarantor of the imperialist system, introduces the December 2001 Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act. The act instructs US representatives to international financial institutions "to oppose and vote against any extension by the respective institution of any loan, credit, or guarantee to the Government of Zimbabwe; or any cancellation or reduction of indebtedness owed by the Government of Zimbabwe to the United States or any international financial institution."



The act effectively deprives Zimbabwe of foreign currency required to import necessities from abroad, including chemicals to treat drinking water. Development aid from the World Bank is also cut off, denying the country access to funds to upgrade its infrastructure. The central bank takes measures to mitigate the effects of the act, creating hyper-inflation as a by-product.

"The US denied Zimbabwe the means to import goods."

The cause of the crisis, then, can be traced directly to the West. Rather than banning the export of goods to Zimbabwe, the US denied Zimbabwe the means to import goods - not trade sanctions, but an act that had the same effect. To be sure, had the Mugabe government reversed its land reform program and abided by IMF demands, the crisis would have been averted. But the trigger was pulled in Washington, London and Brussels, and it is the West, therefore, that bears the blame.

Sanctions are effectively acts of war, with often equivalent, and sometimes more devastating, consequences. More than a million Iraqis died as a result of a decade-long sanctions regime championed by the US following the 1991 Gulf War. This prompted two political scientists, John and Karl Mueller, to coin the phrase "sanctions of mass destruction." They noted that sanctions had "contributed to more deaths in the post Cold War era than all the weapons of mass destruction in history."

The Western media refer to sanctions on Zimbabwe as targeted - limited only to high state officials and other individuals. This ignores the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act and conceals its devastating impact, thereby shifting responsibility for the humanitarian catastrophe from the US to Mugabe.

The cholera outbreak has a parallel in the outbreak of cholera in Iraq following the Gulf War. Thomas Nagy, a business professor at George Washington University, cited declassified documents in the September 2001 issue of The Progressive magazine showing that the United States had deliberately bombed Iraq's drinking water and sanitation facilities, recognizing that sanctions would prevent Iraq from rebuilding its water infrastructure and that epidemics of otherwise preventable diseases, cholera among them, would ensue. Washington, in other words, deliberately created a humanitarian catastrophe to achieve its goal of regime change. There is a direct parallel with Zimbabwe - the only difference is that the United States uses the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act - that is, sanctions of mass destruction - in place of bombing.

"Sanctions ‘contributed to more deaths in the post Cold War era than all the weapons of mass destruction in history.'"

Harare's land reform program is one of the principal reasons the United States has gone to war with Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe has redistributed land previously owned by 4,000 white farmers to 300,000 previously landless families, descendants of black Africans whose land was stolen by white settlers. By contrast, South Africa's ANC government has redistributed only four percent of the 87 percent of land forcibly seized from the indigenous population by Europeans.

[…]

The Mugabe government's pursuit of land reform, rejection of neo-liberal restructuring, and movement to eclipse US imperialism in southern Africa, has put Zimbabwe on the receiving end of a Western attack based on punitive financial sanctions. The intention, as is true of all Western destabilization efforts, has been to make the target country ungovernable, forcing the government to step down, clearing the way for the ascension of the West's local errand boys. Owing to the West's attack, Zimbabwe's government is struggling to provide the population with basic necessities. It can no longer provide basic sanitation and access to potable water at a sufficient level to prevent the outbreak of otherwise preventable diseases.

"The intention has been to make the target country ungovernable."

The replacement of the Mugabe government with one led by the Movement for Democratic Change, a party created and directed by Western governments, if it happens, will lead to an improvement in the humanitarian situation. This won't come about because the MDC is more competent at governing, but because sanctions will be lifted and access to balance of payment support and development aid will be restored. Zimbabwe will once again be able to import adequate amounts of water purification chemicals. The improving humanitarian situation will be cited as proof the West was right all along in insisting on a change of government.

The downside is that measures to indigenize the economy - to place the country's agricultural and mineral wealth in the hands of the black majority - will be reversed. Mugabe and key members of the state will be shipped off to The Hague - or attempts will be made to ship them off - to send a message to others about what befalls those who threaten the dominant mode of property relations and challenge Western domination. Cowed by the example of Zimbabwe, Africans in other countries will back away from their own land reform and economic indigenization demands, and the continent will settle more firmly into a pattern of neo-colonial subjugation.

-------

See also:

Cholera Outbreak Outcome of West's War on Zimbabwe
Economic sanctions undermine Zimbabwe's economy
Sanctions on Zimbabwe: Africa Under Attack

US and Britain are starving Zimbabwe to death

Zimbabwe is slowly but surely being strangled by the Anglo-American cabal and the current "public health" crisis is a direct consequence of the sanctions.


Zimbabwe: Water crisis and cholera funerals

Harare (Zimbabwe) — "Funerals of people dying of cholera are a common feature of our daily lives," said Tapiwa Hove, a resident Budiriro, a high-density suburb of Harare. "But it seems no one cares. Sewage is flowing all over. It's like living in hell."

By Inter Press Service (IPS) | 12.04.2008

Budiriro was teeming with aid workers frantically trying to distribute water from big water bowsers to desperate residents. There is commotion and the exchange of harsh words, as children, men and women with toddlers strapped to their backs try to secure at least a bucketful of clean drinking water.

All across Harare, people tell of how healthy-looking people are dying within hours of consuming the dirty water that many residents have resorted to in the absence of clean drinking water. "People are dying at an alarming rate. There are funeral wakes in many households. The government might try to deny this, but the reality is there for all to see," said Hove.

Local rights groups such as the Zimbabwe Doctors for Human Rights estimate the death toll is already over 1000, much higher than the government admits.
And there are fears that the situation will only grow worse. "What I am afraid of is that now that the rain season has come, all faeces lying in the bushes will be washed into shallow wells and contaminate the water," health minister David Parirenyatwa told state media.

CARE International, Red Cross Society and United National Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) are building latrines, distributing medicines and hygiene kits and have taken over ZINWA's responsibility of delivering water, and repairing blocked sewers across Zimbabwe to mitigate the cholera emergency.

Most of Zimbabwe's urban areas have gone for several months without water. Many urban households are unable to use their toilets, which are completely blocked by overflowing sewage. Last month, key institutions such as the High Court and Parliament buildings in Harare had to be closed because of the acute lack of water.

Zimbabwean cities have battled to provide water and refuse collection services while the country is subject to frequent power cuts, a result of a severe foreign currency squeeze. To the daily search for currency, bread, oil and transport, Harare residents now spend much of their time looking for water. Those still fortunate enough to be in formal employment now carry with them an empty bucket of water to work every day, in case there is clean water at the work place. Those in other hard-hit areas such as Budiriro and Glen View have to walk distances of up to five kilometres to get water at local council boreholes.

Those still receiving water from the taps hardly dare risk using it. "The water comes out with a heavy smell. It's sometimes greenish in colour, other times brown. It's never helpful at all, in fact, we only use it to clean the toilet," said Tadiwa Chireya, a gardener in the upmarket suburb of Greendale.

President Robert Mugabe's government blames the water woes on sanctions that it says were imposed on Zimbabwe by Western countries. The European Union and United States have imposed targeted sanctions on senior Zimbabwean officials because of authoritarianism and human rights abuses. International donors from these countries are feeding nearly one-half of the population and in recent years have provided most of the drugs used in government health service including those that are now used to treat water and victims of cholera.

The first democratically-elected mayor of Harare, civil engineer Elias Mudzuri is just one of the experts who warned several years ago that the city's water distribution and sewage systems were on the verge of collapse and needed urgent attention. In 2004 the running of water affairs was transferred from local authorities to ZINWA.

"ZINWA took over responsibility of water provision, equipment such as cars and other engineering equipment but reneged on taking over the responsibility of repairing the infrastructure, yet it had taken away all the monetary means of meeting such responsibility which came with revenues of water usage," said a Harare City Council engineer who asked for anonymity.

Under this arrangement ZINWA would collect revenue for water usage but the responsibility of fixing and maintaining Harare's water system was left to Harare City Council engineers whose financial capacity has been drastically reduced. At one point the city council was faced with an exodus of disgruntled engineers. Many others left the country for neighbouring countries while those still in employment often refuse to take instructions from ZINWA.

Zimbabwe's Minister of Water Resources, Munacho Mutezo, under whose leadership ZINWA falls, has refused to comment on the catastrophic water shortages.


meanwhile.....



US mulls tougher sanctions against Zimbabwe

November 21, 2008

The United States Ambassador to Zimbabwe James McGee has warned of new targeted U.S. sanctions on Robert Mugabe’s government if there is no progress toward political power-sharing.

In an interview with reporters, Ambassador McGee said he saw no easing of conditions until President Robert Mugabe starts to act in good faith on power-sharing with ,the President of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.

He said despite the economic crisis, including runaway inflation, Mr. Mugabe has been able to funnel money to key allies and maintain their support, and that getting him to yield powers will not be easy.

“He has made it clear that he is not easily going to give up power here in Zimbabwe,” said McGee. “SADC, the Southern African Development Community, clearly came out with statements saying that there should be a unity government, there should be power-sharing, and Mugabe has pretty much said that Morgan Tsvangirai would never sit in a government here in Zimbabwe with any true power.”

But he nonetheless insisted that international sanctions targeted against Mugabe, family members and close associates, have had real impact. He made clear the Bush administration is ready to move on further sanctions in the absence of a political breakthrough.

“We have additional sanctions that we are prepared to roll out, if this political impasse continues,” said McGee. “Right now we continue to look carefully at what is going on here in the country. And we feel that unless something does happen in the very, very near future we have no choice but to become more, difficult, tougher, on our sanctions.”

The U.S. envoy said there will no reductions in the U.S. humanitarian aid program to Zimbabwe, which is well in excess of $200 million a year.

McGee creditedthe government for easing financial and travel curbs on non-governmental organizations trying to distribute aid in the countryside, but said he was alarmed by conditions he observed on a recent trip to Harare from South Africa.

“It is grim,” he said. “It is very, very grim. There are a lot of people standing around, doing absolutely nothing. There are a lot of distended bellies out there among small children. A lot of people picking non-nutritious foods from trees, trying to find anything to eat. When you pass through villages, it is a total look of hopelessness on the peoples’ faces there.”

Guest Post - A Rejoinder to the Financial Times

Guest Post - A Rejoinder to the Financial Times

Dear Sir or Madam:

Thank you very much for writing an editorial ("Turning Mumbai’s trial to advantage", FT Nov. 30, 2008) in your newspaper on our country’s suffering in the hands of terrorists.

Since most of us are not “native” speakers of English, I had decided to translate your editorial into simple English so that our limited intelligence could comprehend the profound insights that you had generated, for our sake.

When you called for statesmanship of a high order, I was feeling despondent how my country’s leaders would be able to act any more statesmanlike than characterising Pakistan as the victim of terrorism. I was relieved by your kind-heartedness in demystifying it in the next paragraph.

On Pakistan’s part, they have to stop its soldiers and spies from dabbling in Jihad because it now undermines Pakistan. It would be stupid – and not statesmanlike - of them to stop its soldiers and spies if it was only undermining India, as before. My untrained mind wondered if it would not be more appropriate to call it an act of self-interest on the part of Pakistan to stop their soldiers and spies from dabbling in Jihad. I quickly banished all such doubts as, after all, descendants of Englishmen who colonised the world for centuries would know more than any one else in the world the distinction between self-interest and statesmanship.

My doubts turned to gratefulness at the absence of confusion in the suggestion for India to be statesmanlike. India must settle Kashmir issue. Since it is not possible for Jihadists to be satisfied if India settled the Kashmir issue in its own favour, it goes without saying, of course, that the Kashmir issue must be settled in their favour.

A fear rose in my heart: what if the Jihadists are not satisfied and continue to attack my country? My wife chided me for entertaining such silly doubts. It was unbecoming of a native to question the Englishman’s logic. She suggested that the FT editorial board would have received credible information that the Jihadists would end their campaign against India once Kashmir is settled in their favour.

Still, I wanted to be doubly sure that my country would behave statesmanlike to the fullest extent. I asked her what if the Jihadists were not satisfied with the handover of Kashmir? Of course, she replied, then it meant that India was inadequately statesmanlike and should hand over more territories to the Jihadists until there was no more of India left to be turned over to them.

With anxiety still lingering in my mind as to whether India would still be fully discharging its responsibilities, I continued to read. But, I need not have worried. You had thought of everything.

If our behaviour was not satisfactory, you have a new Sheriff in town to ensure that errant behaviour does not go unpunished. No longer will it possible for any country in the world – except the United States and the United Kingdom – to attach its regional conflicts to the wagon of global terror. Only attacks on these two countries would be deemed unprovoked and qualify for retaliation under the global war on terror. Further, authorities only in these two countries can institute intrusive safeguards and security, watch over their citizens 24*7 with cameras installed in every corner so that FT Editors could come up with pearls of wisdom undisturbed by fears over their personal safety and security.

When terrorists strike other countries – particularly the ones you had cared to name – those countries are simply asking for it. Their only task is to act statesmanlike, settle with the terrorists and wait for their benevolence. If they even whisper about taking action, they risk damaging fragile domestic communal amity, escalating conflicts internationally and would be scaring away Western journalists and capitalists.

If we still did not understand our roles and obligations, now that the FT editors have their man in the White House, he would de-recognise the governments of Israel, India, China and Russia, install jihadists in their place and declare war on these governments.

It is always the mark of thorough analysis and articulation that not only recommends a course of action to others but also spells out consequences should lesser mortals fail to comply.

That should have been enough lessons for one day. But, I had not reckoned with your large heart. You had taken the trouble to define terrorism.

I had a stupid question. I was not sure if Mumbai was a victim of terrorism. My 7-year old son chided me that FT editors would have told us if they thought so. He said that what happened in Mumbai was not random since the targets were very carefully chosen after systematic selection and screening. There was nothing random about it. It did not have a multiplying effect. Neither did the terrorists multiply nor did their acts of terrorism multiply beyond South Mumbai.

He asked me to take another look at the title of the leader. It was about Mumbai’s trial and not about terrorism in Mumbai. The jihadists were conducting a trial-run.

I concluded my reading of your leading article wondering how much I had understood and how much I had not.

Thanking you,

Sincerely,
Anantha Nageswaran

The media's disingenuous failure to state the obvious

Inconvenient Truths

The media's disingenuous failure to state the obvious.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted on Slate Monday, Dec. 8, 2008, at 12:08 PM ET

The obvious is sometimes the most difficult thing to discern, and few things are more amusing than the efforts of our journals of record to keep "open" minds about the self-evident, and thus to create mysteries when the real task of reportage is to dispel them. An all-time achiever in this category is Fernanda Santos of the New York Times, who managed to write from Bombay on Nov. 27 that the Chabad Jewish center in that city was "an unlikely target of the terrorist gunmen who unleashed a series of bloody coordinated attacks at locations in and around Mumbai's commercial center." Continuing to keep her brow heavily furrowed with the wrinkles of doubt and uncertainty, Santos went on to say that "[i]t is not known if the Jewish center was strategically chosen, or if it was an accidental hostage scene."

This same puzzled expression is currently being widely worn on the faces of all those who wonder if Pakistan is implicated in the "bloody coordinated" assault on the heart of Bombay. To get an additional if oblique perspective on this riddle that is an enigma wrapped inside a mystery, take a look at Joshua Hammer's excellent essay in the current Atlantic. The question in its title—"[Is Syria] Getting Away With Murder?"—is at least asked only at the beginning of the article and not at the end of it.

Here are the known facts: If you are a Lebanese politician or journalist or public figure, and you criticize the role played by the government of Syria in your country's internal affairs, your car will explode when you turn the ignition key, or you will be ambushed and shot or blown up by a bomb or land mine as you drive through the streets of Beirut or along the roads that lead to the mountains. The explosives and weapons used, and the skilled tactics employed, will often be reminiscent of the sort of resources available only to the secret police and army of a state machine. But I think in fairness I must stress that this is all that is known for sure. You criticize the Assad dictatorship, and either your vehicle detonates or your head is blown off. Over time, this has happened to a large and varied number of people, ranging from Sunni statesman Rafik Hariri to Druze leader Kamal Jumblatt to Communist spokesman George Hawi. One would not wish to be a "conspiracy theorist" and allege that there was any necessary connection between the criticisms in the first place and the deplorably terminal experiences in the second.

Hammer's article is good for a laugh in that it shows just how much trouble the international community will go to precisely in order not to implicate the Assad family in this string of unfortunate events. After all, does Damascus not hold the keys to peace in the region? Might not young Bashar Assad, who managed to become president after the peaceful death by natural causes of his father, become annoyed and petulant and even uncooperative if he were found to have been commissioning assassinations? Could the fabled "process" suffer if a finger of indictment were pointed at him? At the offices of the long-established and by now almost historic United Nations inquiry into the Hariri murder, feet are evidently being dragged because of considerations like these, and Hammer describes the resulting atmosphere very well.

In rather the same way, the international community is deciding to be, shall we say, nonjudgmental in the matter of Pakistani involvement in the Bombay unpleasantness. Everything from the cell phones to the training appears to be traceable to the aboveground surrogates of an ostensibly banned group known as Lashkar-i-Taiba, which practices what it preaches and preaches holy war against Hindus, as well as Jews, Christians, atheists, and other elements of the "impure." Lashkar is well-known to be a bastard child—and by no means a disowned one, either—of the Pakistani security services. But how inconvenient if this self-evident and obvious fact should have to be faced.

How inconvenient, for one thing, for the government of Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, a new and untried politician who may not exactly be in charge of his own country or of its armed forces but who nonetheless knows how to jingle those same keys of peace. How inconvenient, too, for all those who assume that the Afghan war is the "good" war when they see Pakistani army units being withdrawn from the Afghan frontier and deployed against democratic India (which has always been Pakistan's "real" enemy).

The Syrian and Pakistani situations are a great deal more similar than most people have any interest in pointing out. In both cases, there is a state within the state that exerts the real parallel power and possesses the reserve strength. In both cases, official "secularism" is a mask (as it also was with the Iraqi Baathists) for the state sponsorship of theocratic and cross-border gangster groups like Lashkar and Hezbollah. In both cases, an unknown quantity of nuclear assets are at the disposal of the official and banana republic state and also very probably of elements within the unofficial and criminal and terrorist one. (It is of huge and unremarked significance that Syria did not take the recent Israeli bombing of its hidden reactor to the United Nations or make any other public complaint.) Given these grim and worsening states of affairs, perhaps it is only small wonder that we take consolation in our illusions and in comforting doubts—such as the childlike wonder about whether Jews are deliberately targeted or just unlucky with time and place. This would all be vaguely funny if it wasn't headed straight toward our own streets.

Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and the Roger S. Mertz media fellow at the Hoover Institution in Stanford, Calif.

Blood Diamonds

I finally saw “Blood Diamonds” last week. The movie was difficult to watch for a number of reasons and I had to stop about half way through, do something else until the nausea passed before I could finish it.

The story is fairly predictable: tough, worldly wise, white man searches for jewels and riches in jungle, meets white woman, and finally redeems himself.

The lead character in the movie Danny Archer is an Afrikaner, or “Rhodesian” as he euphemistically prefers to call himself, who smuggles weapons into Sierra Leone, trades them to the RUF guerrillas for uncut diamonds and smuggles the diamonds out. He had also served in Angola as part of the South African military presumably during the 80’s when the South African Defense Forces entered Angola to fight with UNITA and were accused of repeatedly of atrocities against civilians. For example in a 1978 attack South African troops killed more than six hundred Namibians at a SWAPO camp in Angola. South Africa's Truth Commission called it "one of the biggest single incidents of gross [human rights] violations." For many veterans of the South African military, however, it is still celebrated as the largest paratroop drop since World War II and "a complete success," with "at least 608 SWAPO fighters killed" and only four dead among the attackers. More recently mass graves have been found near SADF camps.

Nice guy.

To make this despicable man palatable, the director casts one of Hollywood’s heart throbs Leonardo DiCaprio in this role. The baby faced Archer shows up in a plane – tough talks to a bunch of RUF militia and commander – who you cant help thinking would have this guy for breakfast in real life if he didn’t have the white establishment behind him.

He’s caught trying to cross the border on foot with the diamonds sown into a goat’s back. One is left wondering why they didn’t fly over the border using the same plane they came in. In the meantime, the devastiatingly handsome model, Djimon Hounsou, who plays Solomon Vandy has also been captured, first by the RUF to work in the diamond fields then by the Army and they both arrive at the same prison. Archer interest in Solomon is piqued when overhears a RUF commander accuse Solomon of hiding a large “pink diamond.”

The contrast between these two characters is striking – Archer is calculating, able to make decision and take actions to protect himself and his interests both financial and personal. Solomon on the other hand seems incapable of any thought or action to save himself or his family. Even though he finds the diamond and tries to hide it, he’s found out and only saved by fate as the army attacks the rebels at that exact moment. As the movie unfolds he falls from one disaster into the next unable to save himself and seems on the verge of despair until he finally accepts Danny’s offer of help in exchange for showing him where he hid the diamond.

Probably the only sympathetic black character with some semblance of intelligence is the savvy black bartender M’ed (Ntare Mwine). He’s obviously the kind of person westerners relate to when they are in Africa – people in the service industry who “befriend” then and who get them things not otherwise easily accessible, drugs, women, and guns in the case of Danny. According to the script: “Every war zone has a place like this. Soldiers, smugglers, opportunist of every stripe stand shoulder to shoulder at a bamboo bar. Bad guys and do-gooders, UN workers and eco-backpackers drink overpriced, watered down liquor, trade gossip and hook up for desperate expatriate sex.”

At one point when the bar is damaged by some shelling Danny tells M’ed that it “Might be time to get your family out my friend.” M’ed : “And go where, mahn? Jus’ fire up de chopper and fly away like you people? No, mahn, dis my country. We here long ‘fore you came and long after you gone.” You know then that M’ed has just become another of Hollywood expendable black man. Later we see him dead in the background.

At the bar we are introduced to Maddy(Jennifer Connelly) – an American journalist. Perhaps unwittingly, Zwick shows us an uncomfortable reality - the way most American journalists work nowadays – from their hotels in an alcoholic haze talking with other expatriates. Maddy has only been there four months but seems to know all of Archer’s professional history as well as his connections to the underground diamond trade – names, places everything. Even as she sanctimoniously lectures him, you know she will be falling for the white lead in the movie. Within minutes of meeting him she peppers him with questions and asks for his help with a hint of sex to trade for it. Embedded American journalists! Later she offers to help Solomon find his family – but only because Archer promises her a scoop – waving his notebook that presumably documents names, dates and places.

At one point in the movie Archer is telling her how his parents were brutally murdered and she melts into his arms all of his repugnant past actions are justified and forgiven.

As with Archer and Solomon, the contrast between the two main military commanders, one black and the other white, couldn’t be more cartoonish. On the one side is the hilariously named RUF commander Captain Poison, and the South African Mercenary Colonel Theo Coetsee. One is 60, suave, handsome, cultured and drinks martinis, the other is vicious, young, ugly with a deformed eye, covered by a pirate eye patch and smokes joints. In reality Coetsee would have mutilated and killed many more people than Poison ever could yet he painted with a sympathetic brush while Poison in spite of his emancipating rhetoric is shown as pure evil. Towards the end of the movie, Coetsee gives orders to snuff out the population in a whole area while the RUF lives among them. The South African lives comfortably on a farm, surrounded by wealth and status, putting him in the same class as the other whites portrayed in the movie and one can imagine him easily mixing with the hypocritical western diplomats seen in the movie. Poison on the other hand is a man who scrapes out an uncomfortable existence never sure if he will live to see another day. Coetsee is coldly efficient and professional while Poison is volatile, disorganized and impulsive. Yet the real exploiters of Africa are portrayed sympathetically while those who, however misguided, fight for their land’s self determination are vilified.

There are instances of racism depicted casually throughout the movie, it would seem to provide the same dirty pleasure provided by documentaries on “sex trade” and “prostitutes in Thailand, Philippines or Russia” type documentaries on TV or the sexploitation movies that exploit and moralize simultaneously. Archer brushing off girl prostitutes callously, African getting out of a white man’s path, Archer telling Solomon, “I know people, white people. Without me, you’re just another black man in Africa, all right?” Perhaps the worst incident occurs during march through the countryside as the dynamic between Archer and Solomon changes imperceptibly to that of master and slave. When Archer commands Solomon to head in a particular direction (toward the diamond) rather than the camp where Dia might be staying, the father refuses to follow orders. “You gonna need some of that old discipline, eh?” taunts Archer. Again, Solomon denies him, “You are not the master.” But then Archer reveals what’s at stake, not just power and wealth, but racism, calling Solomon “kaffir.” But Zwick shows its true colors when he has Solomon say “I know good people who say there is something wrong with us, besides our black skin, that we were better off when the white men ruled.”

As Rebecca Beirne states: It is this statement that echoes across the film, acting as a justification of and incitement to colonialism, disavowing the role colonialism has played in creating Africa's problems, and proclaiming that Africans are childlike or savage beings that need white masters to rule over them in order to stop them from killing one another: a chilling message from a contemporary Hollywood feature film, and a reflection of how much western societies' attitudes have cycled back to the colonialist mentalities of time past.


Here is another review

Somini Sengupta - another zinger

“Jornalist” Somini Sengupta has another “scoop” in the NY Tines. Ms. Sengupta has apparently just discovered that there are disparities in Indian society that extend, to the rapidly privatizing,health delivery system.

She starts with this bizarre statement: “To get the best care,” Robin Steeles said gamely, “you gotta pay for it.”

If Mr. Steele is willing to pay for it, why then is he in India? One would think Ms. Sengupta is making the argument that people come to India because, even though health care there is more expensive than their own countries, it is so much better that they are willing to pay extra for it. Not so. In the very next sentence she states that the reason Mr. Steel is in India is to get a Mitral valve repaired “at a price he could pay.”

As she nears the end of her short piece the quality improves, but not much. She recognizes somewhat obliquely that the American health system has disparities too and that “the American health care system could no more care for Mr. Steele’s than the Indian system could for Mr. Amin” (a poor laborer in India).

Ms. “Gunga Din” Sengupta is following in a long line of Indian sycophants who will speak to power with deference and admiration. To do that, however they must first internalize their values and despise themselves. If you find in hear article a curious similarity to those in the US press about health disparity in America its because, she follows in a footsteps many of India Journalists who recycle news ideas from the west into Indian versions for local consumption.

Although to be fair she has come a long way from her “four men facing their monkey god” days only a couple of years ago.
____________
An interesting discussion on her can be read here.
A blog post here.

Angelina Joli - should this person be allowed to adopt?

From Heroin to Heroine

ANGELINA JOLIE hangs out at a drugs den – in a grainy video of the Hollywood babe before she spectacularly turned her life around.

The Tomb Raider beauty is seen wide-eyed and babbling in the seedy amateur footage – as a woman next to her casually smokes heroin.

Angelina, now 32, pregnant and a model mum of four, has admitted turning to drugs when she was an up-and-coming actress.

She said: “I’ve done coke, heroin, ecstasy, LSD, everything. I gave them up long ago.”

Angelina does not take any drugs herself in the video.

But the shocking scenes show just how far she has come to now travel the Third World as a UN ambassador.

At times her eyelids are so heavy she can barely keep them open. She is also seen with dishevelled hair as she rubs her teeth.

In the video, shot in 1999 when she was 23, the actress brags about loving sado-masochistic SEX – and KILLING her pets.

She says of taking part in sex games where someone is tied down or hurt: “It’s just a cool thing.”

She tells how her mouse met a tragic fate after she dyed it blue – and how a hamster and lizards also died.

The hamster got pneumonia after she took it into the shower while the lizards were left too long in the sun.

Angelina continues: “My snake I had – I tried killing him.” She recalls how at 12 she was “a bad girl – beating up my friends.”

The star was said to have been a regular at the filthy drugs den in New York’s Chelsea Hotel – where junkie SEX PISTOL SID VICIOUS stabbed his girlfriend to death.

Angelina, who has a daughter Shiloh, one, is pregnant with twins. She and actor BRAD PITT, 44, also adopted Maddox, six, Pax, four, and Zahara, three.

A fellow den regular said: “Even back then I remember her talking about how she’d adopt a huge family from around the world.”

more here: http://gawker.com/391692/young-angelina-jolies-greatest-sin-its-not-sm-or-heroin

What the west wants from Mugabe

...

"I have the gumption to say that the West hates the Zimbabwe Government precisely because they are not happy that it seized the land from the "White" farmers. The rule of law, human rights, democracy, method of land reform arguments they use are mere smokescreens to conceal their real aim: they did not want the land to be seized from the White farmers, and the White farmers themselves did not want to give back the land they inherited, even if the inheritance was stolen. They did not however, have the audacity to say so, because their unjust stand would be transparently untenable. So their desire to keep the land manifests via indirect avenues that impress most...they don't fool me. I say so because the timing of the USA and EU sanctions closely corresponded with the first land takeovers. Second, the Zimbabwe Democracy Bill was partly sponsored by Senator Jesse Helms, who has long supported the Rhodesians' cause and opposed the independence of Zimbabwe. Third, the Lancaster House Constitution barred the Zimbabwean Government from re-claiming privately owned land for the first 10 years after independence perhaps to buy time. Fourth, it is important to understand that all the White countries in the World have always made a united stand against Zimbabwe since the land takeovers - USA, EU, Canada, New Zealand, and Britain. It is perfectly sensible to believe that it is only the above countries that care about the democracy and human rights of Zimbabweans."
....

complete article
____________other stories___________
See also this article for examples of western media bias regarding Mugabe.

‘We’ve beaten Mugabe’, said a frontpage headline in the London Evening Standard yesterday.

More at Zimbabwe Watch

Zimbabwe's Lonely Fight for Justice

By Stephen Gowans
Stephen Gowans's Blog
March 31, 2007

Ever since veterans of the guerrilla war against apartheid Rhodesia violently seized white-owned farms in Zimbabwe, the country's president, Robert Mugabe, has been demonized by politicians, human rights organizations and the media in the West. His crimes, according to right-wing sources, are numerous: human rights abuses, election rigging, repression of political opponents, corruption, and mismanagement of the economy. Leftist detractors say Mugabe talks left and walks right, and that his anti-imperialist rhetoric is pure demagogy.

And the leftist press is not far behind

Grassroots Lieutenants of Imperialism?

April 2, 2007

10:27 pm

By Stephen Gowans

Patrick Bond would probably never balk at being accused of contributing to the barrage of negative publicity against the Mugabe government. Bond appears to hate Mugabe with a passion.

Nor, I suspect, would he object to anyone pointing out that, where he can, he acts to alienate left support for Mugabe’s government by portraying Mugabe as a reactionary who dishonestly exploits anti-imperialist rhetoric to cling to power at any cost.

Bond doesn’t believe Mugabe is engaged in an anti-neo-colonial struggle. He sees Mugabe as nothing more than a corrupt demagogue who has become so addicted to the perks of power that he’ll never give them up willingly.

Bond’s argument resonates with some progressives because it gives them an easy way out of the dilemma of feeling obliged to support a beleaguered leader everyone says is a brutal dictator who steals elections and mismanages the economy. No one wants to be known as a thug-hugger. When Bond reinforces the crudest CNN and BBC propaganda, and tells progressives that Mugabe is a phony, he signals it’s okay to join in the two minutes hate.

While there may be an emotional appeal to what Bond has to say, his argument, examined dispassionately, is weak. If Mugabe is the crypto reactionary, pro-imperialist Bond says he is, why are the openly reactionary, imperialists in London and Washington so agitated about Mugabe and his policies?

In an article posted at Counterpunch.org, and subsequently reposted at MRZine, Bond urges readers to look to the “independent” left to find out what’s really going on in Zimbabwe.

Bond doesn’t say what the “independent” left is independent of. What’s clear, however, is that it isn’t independent of the governments and foundations that want to replace Mugabe’s economic and land reform policies with a neo-liberal tyranny and return to a glacial pace of land reform. Indeed, Bond’s “independent” left appears to be as much a part of the US and British foreign policy apparatus as the Foreign Office, the Voice of America and the National Endowment for Democracy.

Consider, for example, Sokwanele, one of the groups Bond urges progressives to check out to find out what’s really going on in Zimbabwe.

Sokwanele is an offspring of Otpor, the underground movement that was established, funded, trained and organized by the US State Department, USAID, and the US Congress-funded National Endowment for Democracy (which is said to do overtly what the CIA used to do covertly) to bring down the Milosevic government in 2000.

Here’s how it worked: The West ordered the formal political opposition to unite under a single banner, and to select a name that emphasized the word “democracy,” to invest the united party with moral gravitas. In Serbia, the anti-Milosevic opposition became known as the Democratic Opposition of Serbia. (In Zimbabwe, the opposition, following the same game plan, calls itself the Movement for Democratic Change.) The opposition’s anointing itself as the champion of democracy serves the additional function of calling the government’s commitment to democracy into question. If the opposition is “the democratic opposition” then what must the government be? The answer, of course, is undemocratic.

The plan called for the opposition to accuse the government of electoral fraud to justify a transition from electoral to insurrectionary politics. The accusations built and built as the day of the vote approached, until, by sheer repetition, they were accepted as a matter of indisputable truth. The failure of the opposition candidate, Kostunica, to win the election on the first ballot, provided the pretext for people to take to the streets to force the government to step down. Otpor was central to organizing the planned “spontaneous” demonstrations.

Wherever Washington is engaged in regime change operations, known now as color revolutions, the same plan is put into play. And where Washington is interfering in a country’s internal politics to oust governments it doesn’t like, you’ll also find Sokwanele’s sister organizations: Zubr in Belarus, Khmara in Georgia, Pora in the Ukraine. All translate into the same English phrase: enough is enough.

Zvakwana, “an underground movement that aims to …. undermine” the Mugabe government, is another Optor offspring. (Sokwanele, “specialize(s) in anonymous acts of civil disobedience.”) (1) Both groups receive generous financing from Western sources. (2) While the original, Otpor, was largely a youth-oriented anarchist-leaning movement, at least one member of Sokwanele is “A conservative white businessman expressing a passion for freedom, tradition, polite manners and the British Royals.” (3) That, in Bond’s view, counts as the independent left.

Not surprisingly, the Bond-recommended Sokwanele Web site links to Zvakwana’s Web site. Members of Zvakwana say their movement is homegrown and free of foreign control (4), but free from foreign control doesn’t mean free from foreign funding. The US Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act, signed into law by US President George W. Bush in December 2001, empowers the president under the US Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 to “support democratic institutions, the free press and independent media” in Zimbabwe – which is to say, groups like Sokwanele and Zvakwana.

Movements, political parties and media elsewhere have knowingly accepted funding from Western governments, their agencies and pro-imperialist foundations, while proclaiming their complete independence. (5) Members of these groups may genuinely believe they remain aloof from their backer’s aims (and in the West it is often the very groups that claim not to take sides that are the favored recipients of this lucre), but self-deception is an insidious thing – and the promise of oodles of cash is hard to resist.

There’s no doubt Sokwanele and Zvakwana are well-financed. Their Web sites alone betray a level of funding and organization that goes well beyond what the meager self-financing of truly independent grassroots movements — even in the far more affluent West – are able to scrape together.

If Zvakwana denies its links to the US, other elements of the Western-backed anti-Mugabe apparatus are less secretive. Studio 7, an anti-ZANU-PF radio program carries programming by the Voice of America, an agency whose existence can hardly be said to be left-oriented or independent. Studio 7 is carried on SW Radio Africa, a shortwave radio station operating from the UK, also endorsed by the Bond-recommended Sokwanele. The station is funded by “international pro-democracy groups” (6) (i.e., US ruling class foundations and Western governments.)

Groups like Sokwanele, Zvakwane and SW Radio Africa – and the arguments of individuals like Bond who promote them as the independent left – should be examined with a fair degree of skepticism. Are they really “independent”? If not, and they’re bound up with the foreign policy apparatus of imperialist countries, are they really left, or do they simply talk left, to hide a fundamentally pro-imperialist orientation?

1. “Grass-Roots Effort Aims to Upend Mugabe in Zimbabwe,” The New York Times, (March 28, 2005)
2. Los Angeles Times (July 8, 2005)
3. Ibid.
4. New York Times (March 27, 2005)
5. See Frances Stonor Saunders, “The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters,” New Press, April 2000; and “The Economics and Politics or the World Social Forum,” Aspects of India’s Economy, No. 35, September 2003, http://www.rupe-india.org/35/contents.html
6. Globe and Mail (March 26, 2005)

Robert Mugabe is Still the Better "Devil"

Zimbabwe: Robert Mugabe is Still the Better "Devil"
By Peter Okema Otika
April 26, 2002
Posted: October 19, 2004

The question of Zimbabwe is not about lack of Western form of democracy or human rights. Rather, it is about whether Zimbabweans and Africans at large should correct injustices done to them by their former European colonizers.

The world should not judge President Robert Mugabe and Zimbabwe as a nation from the bias and fabricated reports of British and American media. We should not forget that Mugabe liberated Zimbabwe from colonialism. Do not also forget that he is an elected president and is ruling on the mandate and the trust of the very Zimbabwean people the media claim he is suppressing.

As former US ambassador to the United Nations and first black mayor of Atlanta city Andrew Young said in an interview with the Zimbabwean Herald on June 6, 2001, demonizing Mugabe is betraying Africa's cause. Whoever is trying to accuse Mugabe should first look at Mugabe's political and economic records. Mugabe is an international statesman, true Pan-Africanist and a dedicated anti-imperialist who stood tough against forces of Western imperialism in Africa. The truth is, this is why Britain and US hate Mugabe. Mugabe is still a darling and remains the only most outstanding continental African liberation fighter. This is why very few African leaders are willing to raise a finger against Mugabe and can also explain the reason why sensible ones have kept mum.

Britain has no moral credibility to denounce Mugabe. It should be remembered that Britain has been the world's trouble causer using colonialism as the major tool. The blood and sweat of people from other nations citizens around the world has for centuries serviced the economy of Britain as Britain colonized, enslaved and siphoned resources from them. Britain heavily benefited from the slave trade and other unscrupulous business activities like dealing in animal and mineral resources in Africa.

To add pain to injuries, Britain went a head and grabbed lands in Kenya, Zimbabwe, South Africa, United States and the Caribbean islands. Now Britain shamelessly wants to deceive the whole world that she is morally better off than Mugabe who is fighting back so that his fellow African people can reclaim the land that had been forcefully taken away from them. What a stupid shame!

I am a great advocate for democracy and human rights in Africa. If Britain wants to talk about human rights, she should first start by apologizing and compensating all peoples and nations she has exploited. Britain should know that the time for such hypocrisy has run out and it is now time to face reality and truth. Stop meddling in the affairs of other nations. Leave Zimbabwe alone. Leave Northern Ireland alone because you are fueling chaos instead of solving the conflicts.

In Zimbabwe 70% of the land is owned by white people who comprise less than 1% of the total population. Mugabe is not grabbing land for his own greed. It is his people who want their land back. I wonder why some people want to turn things that are clear and portray it in colors as a form of injustice. Is recovering someone's property from a thief a form of injustice to the owner of the property or rather justice served to the plaintiff? The native Zimbabweans don't eat ballot boxes and they cannot comfortably vote without having a roof to live under. Give them back their land and let them decide who should be their leaders.

It is time we Africans stand strong and decide our destinies. We should divert from the imperialistic mentality of letting America or Britain decide who heads our countries or who gets kicked out of power. We should put our priorities first and for this case, the land first and elections later. You remember recently when Tony Blair, because of the mad cow disease, put off election in Britain in order to solve the mad cow tragedy? This is what Zimbabwe should do. Get the landless natives resettled and mobilize them to vote their leaders. If Mugabe is voted back to power for his land redistribution policy, that's good for him. This will not be because he will have rigged the election but rather because his manifesto has appealed to the electorate. For the need for getting back their ancestral land, many native Zimbabweans will no doubt vote Mugabe to remain in power as long as he wants. Monies from foreign backed opposition may entice locals but it will also not be a surprise to see that they eat the monies and instead vote the devil they know well. In Uganda they say, eat the money but vote the candidate of your choice.

Opposition parties in Zimbabwe like the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) could be very good at using Western media to propagate their propaganda against Mugabe. But what the local native Zimbabweans will vote for is whether they want 1% of the population control 70% of their land or whether they want to take back the lands that were grabbed away from them years ago. Some members of the opposition are working to put food in their individual stomachs or serve the interest of their white sponsors. But Mugabe is putting a roof on every homeless and a meal on the tables of all deprived Zimbabweans. This is what a good leader does and this is why US President George Bush recently gave back each American a tax return because he believes that would help them pick up with life and improve the economy.

Today Britain, European Union and the Bush administration are busy persecuting Mugabe's supporters around the world by freezing their financial accounts or locating where their children are going to school so that they can terminate their sources of finances. They believe that freezing their accounts and frustrating their supporters will bring down Mugabe. If this is what they are employing against Mugabe, then what is wrong in Mugabe taking back the lands from whites that have become powerful in Zimbabwe after grabbing lands from natives who owned the land?

Many critics have argued that taking white settlers land is racism. But this is missing the crux of the matter. Getting back the land is not racism and those who are confusing it should know they are the ones who are racist. It is purely justice being served in an attempt to correct the atrocities white colonialists perpetuated on Africans. Whether the settlers were whites, blacks, Chinese or any other race, the natives still would have wanted their lands back. No one including myself should in his or her normal senses condone lawlessness, tyranny and human rights abuse. But when a double standard is being openly played in disguise of a quest for cosmetic Western democracy, people should be careful. Mugabe was not a "dictator" in the eyes of Britain and USA before he started implementing his land redistribution program. But now he is a dictator because he is taking away land from the white people? Wasn't the same Britain the one that praised Mugabe all through the 1980s? Tell me if I am wrong. If this is what Western democracy is all about then I think Zimbabweans should rather do without it.

During his last years' visit to Africa, first African American US Secretary of State General Colin Powell intentionally skipped Zimbabwe, citing Zimbabwe, Angola and Democratic Republic of Congo as "trouble spots" in southern Africa. Ironically Powell visited Uganda and Kenya among others, which he described as "vibrant democracies." This is the worse form of hypocrisy I have ever seen. How could Powell call Uganda a vibrant democracy when election had just been rigged and it was even US embassy in Kampala that had just helped Uganda opposition leader Kiiza Besigye escape from Yoweri Museveni's persecution and come to the US? Museveni has been the worse aggressor Africa has ever seen. He has fought all his neighbors except Tanzania. He has muzzled opposition in the country, abused human rights especially in the north and east of the country where an estimated 500,000 have been killed or disappeared. Today, Museveni has holed up over 500,000 ethnic Acholi people in concentration camps in northern Uganda with very deplorable human conditions. Unlike Mugabe who has let his party compete with other parties, Museveni has constitutionally outlawed all other political parties and is ruling Uganda using his militarized one party dictatorship. If this is democracy in the face of Colin Powell and Americans, then I think America's democracy is as good as the dictatorship in Uganda and Zimbabwe.

The same Powell shamelessly went to Kenya and also called Kenya a "vibrant" democracy. Powell knows very well that just like Mugabe, president Arap Moi of Kenya has been in power since the 1980s and has remained in power by liquidating his opponents. Is this because Moi is not repossessing native African lands from white British settlers? Powell, think about the 40 acres and a mule that white America promised your ancestors centuries ago before you castigate Mugabe. At least if the white people cannot compensate Africans for slavery, Africans should remain owners of their lands. What else do Africans have to own anyways? What else shall Africans control other than their own lands? No doubt then that Kenyan demonstrators in Nairobi called him " a house slave" meaning Powel is serving the interest of his master.

The situation in Zimbabwe was a time bomb that was temporally defused when Mugabe ascended to power in 1980. But this bomb has been rekindled to full proportion. Similar situation is eminent in Kenya for lands along the Kenya highlands and also in Namibia where also a very little population of white people control over 90% of fertile lands. Now President Sam Njoma of Namibia is still referred to by the West as a true democratic leader. Wait when he starts to redistribute land to poor land-less black whether he will still be a friend to the West. Regardless, Kenyans and Namibians will soon or later ask for their lands too and they should be given back what was taken away from them. They say what goes up must come down.

So just like America and Britain have strongly supported the 1999 Pakistani military coup leader and dictator General Pervez Musharraf during the American war against terror in Afghanistan, Africans should stand strong and defend their interests. Britain is fighting for her interest in Zimbabwe and native Zimbabweans should also fight for what is good for them. You may like it or hate it. But this is the new reality that Britain and the US should come to terms with. As for now my friends, Mugabe is still by far a better devil for Zimbabweans.

comments from another blog...

comments from another blog....

The black thugs of Mugabe are chasing whites off their farms again. Whites have bought their land over and over and that black Hitler - Mugabe wants them out while the West shamefully sits by and does nothing. Mugabe is brain dead and needs to be evicted by white Imperialist forces as the Africans will do nothing in order to reclaim their dignity. The whites deserve better than constant threats and turmoil. I have no sympathy for blacks in Zimbabwe but I do have sympathy for the suffering whites.

Posted by: Nicholas Folkes | Tuesday, 08 April 2008 at 11:20



May we repent and restore proper rule, having learned our lessons, so help us God.

Posted by: David Ben-Ariel | Tuesday, 08 April 2008 at 15:19

... and the US faithfully follows England in matters of imperialism...

Bush attacks Zimbabwe with sanctions

By Monica Moorehead
March 20, 2003

The Bush administration has issued an executive order imposing economic sanctions upon President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and 76 officials representing his government. The sanctions, which began on March 7, prohibit any U.S. corporations from making business deals with Zimbabwe and also freeze any assets these Zimbabwean officials may have in U.S. banking institutions. The U.S. action follows a similar edict carried out by the European Union last year.

In a statement justifying the sanctions, President George W. Bush remarked, "Over the course of more than two years, the government of Zimbabwe has systematically undermined that nation's democratic institutions, employing violence, intimidation and repressive means including legislation to stifle opposition to its rule."

Like so many of Bush's utterances, this turns reality upside down. The Bush ad min istration is doing everything in its power to undermine and destabilize Zim ba bwe because Mugabe has taken a strong stance against U.S. and British imperialist designs on that country and region.

The U.S. and British governments are working overtime attempting to replace Mugabe with a regime that will be more loyal to the aims and objectives of imperialism. The imperialists are filling the coffers of Zimbabwean oppositionist forces in hopes they can carry out a successful coup.

Why the Brits hate Mugabe

Racist, colonial fantasies of superiority and white privilege are alive and well among the English. The recent news coverage and rabid hatred of Mugabe shines a bright light on their inner deamons. White-washed (no pun intended) as a human rights exercise the roots of this hatred are a reaction to his audacity in attempting address and remove white privilege in his country.

____________________________________
The reason whites hate Mugabe.
#1802094382 - 19/11/07 10:44 PM


Do you want to know the real reason Whites governments and their followers hate Mugabe? Let me walk you through the real reason they hate our Legend. Whites governments world wide have always worked as a team to accomplish slavery, genocides in Africa, America, Australia, New Zealand, India and elsewhere. Just like yesterday they worked as a team to accomplish those sad and inhuman crimes, just like today they still work as a team to further their selfish, illegal, criminal and oppressive goals in Zimbabwe, against the people of Zimbabwe.

From UK to the USA via France, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and the EU, you hear the same message about Mugabe and the same tone about Mugabe. The reason you hear that same message and tone it is because they work as a team to maintain their illegally and criminally acquired supremacy in the world.

If you stop relying on their propaganda on TV’s, radios, news papers, magazines and the internet about human right, and take your time to do some research on the internet and other source of information that they have no influence on, and by observing events as they pass by, you will discover that these governments hates Africans deeply and are the only cause of the past and current problems of the African people, and they are actually happy when we are starving.

So why are they giving the false impression about human right violation in Zimbabwe when they are the masters of human right violation in the world. There is no government in the world that violates human right like whites governments do.

Racial discrimination, racial attacks, racial oppression, racial invasions and racial exploitations are the pillars of their progress, yet they want to give the impression to the African people who paid heavily and ruthlessly in their hands for centuries and up to today that they care about our Zimbabweans brothers’ human right.

It is a mockery that the meaning of oppression and human right violation dare to accuse a man that has dedicated all his life to fight against human right violation and oppression.
They, white’s government and their followers are not honest enough to tell the African people that we hate Mugabe because he did justice by liberating the land our kin and kith use to illegal occupy.

How can they talk about human right when they do not condemn the human right violation against us when our land were stolen and are still occupied by their kith and kin?

You and I know whites governments do not care about browns “blacks”, they are the reason we are in this situation of poverty, disease and desperation in many part of Africa. So why are they not ashamed to talk about human right in Zimbabwe?

The answer is, if they dare to act openly, they will not be able to advance their criminal cause by even an inch.

So to achieve their traditional goal of domination, neo-colonialism and oppression, they play with your emotion about human right in Zimbabwe.

Did they tell you that they are the one who almost collapsed Zimbabwe economy with their illegal sanction, declared and undeclared and economic sabotage?

Did they tell you that it is them who want regime change in Zimbabwe and not the Zimbabwean people?

No, they would not because they know the African people will get so angry and cut all ties with them and ban them by law never to even look at us ever again.

So I am calling on you African people, to stand with your own people, whether in the Zimbabwe, Brazil or the USA, because our enemy is one and he is the devil with a long history of enslaving our people.

We must help Zimbabwe where we can, we must form our united state of Africa and we must work for justice.

Viva President Mugabe, Viva Zimbabwe, Viva Africa and to hell with the devils


Our Racist Demonology

Mugabe's Crimes Pale Next to What Black Small Farmers Endure in the Name of Development

by George Monbiot


The most evil man on earth, after Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, is Robert Mugabe, the president of Zimbabwe. That, at least, is the view of most of the western world's press.

Yesterday Mugabe insisted that 2,900 white farmers will have to leave their land. He claims to be redistributing their property to landless peasants, but many of the farms he has seized have been handed instead to army officers and party loyalists. Twelve white farmers have been killed and many others beaten. He stole the elections in March through ballot-rigging and the intimidation of his political rivals.

His assault on white-owned farms has been cited by the Daily Telegraph as the principal reason for the current famine. Now, the paper maintains, he is using "food aid as a political weapon". As a candidate for the post of World's Third Most Evil Man, he appears to possess all the right credentials.

There is no doubt that Mugabe is a ruthless man, or that his policies are contributing to the further impoverishment of the Zimbabweans. But to suggest that his land seizures are largely responsible for the nation's hunger is fanciful.

Though the 4,500 white farmers there own two-thirds of of the best land, many of them grow not food but tobacco. Seventy per cent of the nation's maize - its primary staple crop - is grown by black peasant farmers hacking a living from the marginal lands they were left by the whites.

The seizure of the white farms is both brutal and illegal. But it is merely one small scene in the tragedy now playing all over the world. Every year, some tens of millions of peasant farmers are forced to leave their land, with devastating consequences for food security.

For them there are no tear-stained descriptions of a last visit to the graves of their children. If they are mentioned at all, they are dismissed by most of the press as the necessary casualties of development.

Ten years ago, I investigated the expropriations being funded and organized in Africa by another member of the Commonwealth. Canada had paid for the ploughing and planting with wheat of the Basotu Plains in Tanzania.

Wheat was eaten in that country only by the rich, but by planting that crop, rather than maize or beans or cassava, Canada could secure contracts for its chemical and machinery companies, which were world leaders in wheat technology.

The scheme required the dispossession of the 40,000 members of the Barabaig tribe. Those who tried to return to their lands were beaten by the project's workers, imprisoned and tortured with electric shocks. The women were gang-raped.

For the first time in a century, the Barabaig were malnourished. When I raised these issues with one of the people running the project, she told me: "I won't shed a tear for anybody if it means development." The rich world's press took much the same attitude: only the Guardian carried the story.

Now yet another member of the Commonwealth, the United Kingdom, is funding a much bigger scheme in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. Some 20 million people will be dispossessed. Again this atrocity has been ignored by most of the media.

These are dark-skinned people being expelled by whites, rather than whites being expelled by black people. They are, as such, assuming their rightful place, as invisible obstacles to the rich world's projects. Mugabe is a monster because he has usurped the natural order.

Throughout the coverage of Zimbabwe there is an undercurrent of racism and of regret that Britain ever let Rhodesia go. Some of the articles in the Telegraph may as well have been headlined "The plucky men and women holding darkest Africa at bay". Readers are led to conclude that Ian Smith was right all along: the only people who know how to run Africa are the whites.

But, through the IMF, the World Bank and the bilateral aid programs, with their extraordinary conditions, the whites do run Africa, and a right hash they are making of it.

Over the past 10 years, according to the UN's latest human development report, the number of people in sub-Saharan Africa living on less than a dollar a day has risen from 242 million to 300 million. The more rigorously Africa's governments apply the policies demanded by the whites, the poorer their people become.

Just like Mugabe, the rich world has also been using "food aid as a political weapon". The United States has just succeeded in forcing Zimbabwe and Zambia, both suffering from the southern African famine, to accept GM maize as food relief.

Both nations had fiercely resisted GM crops, partly because they feared that the technology would grant multinational companies control over the foodchain, leaving their people still more vulnerable to hunger. But the US, seizing the opportunity for its biotech firms, told them that they must either accept this consignment or starve.

Malawi has also been obliged to take GM maize from the US, partly because of the loss of its own strategic grain reserve. In 1999, the IMF and the European Union instructed Malawi to privatize the reserve.

The private body was not capitalized, so it had to borrow from commercial banks to buy grain. Predictably enough, by 2001 it found that it couldn't service its debt. The IMF told it to sell most of the reserve.

The private body sold it all, and Malawi ran out of stored grain just as its crops failed. The IMF, having learnt nothing from this catastrophe, continues to prevent that country from helping its farmers, subsidizing food or stabilizing prices.

The same agency also forces weak nations to open their borders to subsidized food from abroad, destroying their own farming industries. Perhaps most importantly, it prevents state spending on land reform.

Land distribution is the key determinant of food security. Small farms are up to 10 times as productive as large ones, as they tend to be cultivated more intensively. Small farmers are more likely to supply local people with staple crops than western supermarkets with mangetout.

The governments of the rich world don't like land reform. It requires state intervention, which offends the god of free markets, and it hurts big farmers and the companies that supply them. Indeed, it was Britain's refusal either to permit or to fund an adequate reform program in Zimbabwe that created the political opportunities Mugabe has so ruthlessly exploited. The Lancaster House agreement gave the state to the black population but the nation to the whites. Mugabe manipulates the genuine frustrations of a dispossessed people.

The president of Zimbabwe is a very minor devil in the hellish politics of land and food. The sainted Nelson Mandela has arguably done just as much harm to the people of Africa, by surrendering his powers to the IMF as soon as he had wrested them from apartheid.

Let us condemn Mugabe's attacks upon Zimbabwe's whites by all means, but only if we are also prepared to condemn the far bloodier war that the rich world wages against the poor.
_____________________________________


We Share the Blame for Zimbabwe

Posted April 20, 2000

Britain’s Debt to its People Runs into Billions

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 20th April 2000

The British establishment is poorly qualified to lecture Robert Mugabe about racism. The government’s condemnation of the murders of two white Zimbabwean farmers contrasts oddly with the blandishments with which it greeted Vladimir Putin, the killer of thousands of Chechens. Just as it revealed that Zimbabwe’s white refugees are welcome, for “reasons of ancestry”, to settle here permanently, it announced that it would expel 3,000 Kosovan Albanians. While the newspapers devoted hundreds of column inches to the horrible killings of the two white farmers, they scarcely mentioned the equally horrible killing of the black foreman who worked for one of them. The dispute between London and Harare is a dispute between racists.

Like Jack Straw and William Hague, Mugabe is using racism as a cheap - and not very effective - means of winning votes. But while he has made life miserable for Zimbabwe’s white population, he has also compromised the survival of millions of blacks. For he is destroying the very cause he claims to espouse: Robert Mugabe has become the enemy of land reform.

The recent land seizures mirror the thefts which first enabled the whites to control so much of Zimbabwe’s economy. In the 1890s, Cecil Rhodes and the settlers he led first cheated and then forcibly dispossessed the Shona and the Ndebele. The whites stole their land, their cattle and, through taxation, their labour. When they rebelled against these impositions, the blacks were cruelly suppressed and their leaders were hanged. From 1930 onwards, blacks were forbidden to own land outside the barren and crowded “reserves”. Even the cities were secured by the settlers: native people were confined to rented property in peripheral townships.

Today, though the laws have changed, the distribution of land has scarcely altered. Zimbabwe’s 4,500 white farmers occupy 70 per cent of the best land, while some seven million blacks still inhabit the old reserves. Some of the white farmers claim that if this dispensation were to change, Zimbabwe would starve, but any visit to a British supermarket shows that this is nonsense. Much of Zimbabwe’s most fertile land is used to grow not necessities for the hungry, but luxuries for the sated: mange tout, radicchio, french beans and tobacco. Redistribution would enable the poor both to support themselves and to produce staple crops for the landless: all over the Third World it is smallholders who keep their own countries fed.

Land reform in Zimbabwe, in other words, is an urgent necessity. But by manipulating the distribution programme to secure his own survival, Mugabe is keeping his people hungry. He is, however, not solely to blame for its failures.

The 1979 Lancaster House Agreement, which oversaw the transition to majority rule in Zimbabwe, ensured that the Zimbabwean government could use local currency only to buy land from farmers who were willing to sell. If it were to expropriate their property, it would have to compensate them with scarce and precious foreign exchange. The agreement bound the country to a programme of land reform, in other words, whose comprehensive implementation would have cost billions. Having hinted that we would pay for it, our government handed over only a fraction of the money required - £44 million - to make it happen.

Had a sterner settlement been struck, in other words, or had Britain been more generous, there might not have been a land distribution problem in Zimbabwe today. Our meanness, compounded perhaps by an unwillingness to undermine the white economic hegemony, perpetuated Zimbabwe’s racial segregation. Mugabe, unable to oversee a full and fair redistribution, acquired an excuse to turn land into a gift, to be deployed as political imperatives demanded. When the Lancaster House Agreement expired, he changed the constitution to allow the government to make compulsory purchases in Zimbabwe dollars, but he used the new power to reward his friends and purchase his enemies.

So Robert Mugabe is right about one thing: Britain does have a moral obligation to pay for a comprehensive land reform programme in Zimbabwe, to absolve not only the theft of land and labour by British-born farmers, but also to correct the inequitable settlement of 1979. And the foreign office minister, Peter Hain, is right to suggest that any money we hand over should bypass Mugabe’s regime. But he is wrong to imagine that he can implement “a programme of genuine land reform” with “some millions of pounds.” Our debt to the people of Zimbabwe runs into billions.

If we fail to recognise that Britain sits at the heart of this problem, then we condemn Zimbabwe’s poor to decades of manipulation, segregation and starvation. If our politics are to be distinguished from Mr Mugabe’s, then we must extend to Zimbabwe’s blacks the munificence we have offered the whites.

BILL MOYERS on Journalists

Journalists As Truth-Tellers

by BILL MOYERS

from the Nation Magazine

Editor's Note: Bill Moyers delivered these remarks in Washington, DC April 3 at the fifth annual Ridenhour Prize awards ceremony, sponsored by The Nation Institute and the Fertel Foundation. Moyers received the Courage Prize; author James D. Scurlock, received the Book Prize, and former Navy JAG officer Matthew Diaz received the Prize for Truth-Telling. The text of his speech appears here as part of the ongoing Moral Compass series, highlighting the spoken word.

Thank you very much, Sissy Farenthold, for those very generous words, spoken like one Texan to another--extravagantly. Thank you for the spirit of kinship. I could swear that I sensed our good Molly Ivins standing there beside you.

I am as surprised to be here as I am grateful. I never thought of myself as courageous, and still don't. Ron Ridenhour was courageous. To get the story out, he had to defy the whole might and power of the United States government, including its war machine. I was then publisher of Newsday, having left the White House some two years earlier. Our editor Bill McIlwain played the My Lai story big, as he should, much to the chagrin of the owner who couldn't believe Americans were capable of such atrocities. Our readers couldn't believe it either. Some of them picketed outside my office for days, their signs accusing the paper of being anti-American for publishing repugnant news about our troops. Some things never change.

A few years later, I gave the commencement at a nearby university, and when I finished the speech, a woman who had just been graduated came up to me and said, "Mr. Moyers, you've been in both government and journalism; that makes everything you say twice as hard to believe." She was on to something.

After my government experience, it took me a while to get my footing back in journalism. I had to learn all over again that what is important for the journalist is not how close you are to power, but how close you are to reality. Over the last forty years, I would find that reality in assignment after assignment, from covering famine in Africa and war in Central America to inner-city families trapped in urban ghettos and middle-class families struggling to survive in an era of downsizing across the heartland. I also had to learn one of journalism's basic lessons. The job of trying to tell the truth about people whose job it is to hide the truth is almost as complicated and difficult as trying to hide it in the first place. We journalists are of course obliged to cover the news, but our deeper mission is to uncover the news that powerful people would prefer to keep hidden.

Unless you are willing to fight and re-fight the same battles until you go blue in the face, drive the people you work with nuts going over every last detail to make certain you've got it right, and then take all of the slings and arrows directed at you by the powers that be--corporate and political and sometimes journalistic--there is no use even trying. You have to love it and I do. I.F. Stone once said, after years of catching the government's lies and contradictions, "I have so much fun, I ought to be arrested." Journalism 101.

So it wasn't courage I counted on; it was exhilaration and good luck. When the road forked, I somehow stumbled into the right path, thanks to mentors like Eric Sevareid, Fred Friendly, Walter Cronkite and scores of producers, researchers and editors who lifted me to see further than one can see unless one is standing on the shoulders of others.

The quintessential lesson of my life came from another Texan named John Henry Faulk. He was a graduate, as am I, of the University of Texas. He served in the Merchant Marines, the American Red Cross and the U.S. Army during World War II, and came home to become a celebrated raconteur and popular national radio host whose career was shattered when right-wingers inspired by Joseph McCarthy smeared him as a communist. He lost his sponsors and was fired. But he fought back with a lawsuit that lasted five years and cost him every penny he owned. Financial help from Edward R. Murrow and a few others helped him to hang on. In the end, John Henry Faulk won, and his courage helped to end the Hollywood era of blacklisting. You should read his book, Fear on Trial, and see the movie starring George C. Scott. John Henry's courage was contagious.

Before his death I produced a documentary about him, and during our interview he told me the story of how he and his friend, Boots Cooper, were playing in the chicken house there in central Texas when they were about twelve years old. They spotted a chicken snake in the top tier of the nest, so close it looked like a boa constrictor. As John Henry told it, "All of our frontier courage drained out of our heels. Actually, it trickled down our overall legs. And Boots and I made a new door through the hen house." His momma came out to see what all of the fuss was about, and she said to Boots and John Henry, "Don't you know chicken snakes are harmless? They can't hurt you." Rubbing his forehead and his behind at the same time, Boots said, "Yes, Mrs. Faulk, I know, but they can scare you so bad you'll hurt yourself."

John Henry Faulk never forgot that lesson. I'm always ashamed when I do. Temptation to co-option is the original sin of journalism, and we're always finding fig leaves to cover it: economics, ideology, awe of authority, secrecy, the claims of empire. In the buildup to the invasion of Iraq we were reminded of what the late great reporter A.J. Liebling meant when he said the press is "the weak slat under the bed of democracy." The slat broke after the invasion and some strange bedfellows fell to the floor: establishment journalists, neo-con polemicists, beltway pundits, right-wing warmongers flying the skull and bones of the "balanced and fair brigade," administration flacks whose classified leaks were manufactured lies--all romping on the same mattress in the foreplay to disaster.

Five years, thousands of casualties, and hundreds of billion dollars later, most of the media co-conspirators caught in flagrante delicto are still prominent, still celebrated, and still holding forth with no more contrition than a weathercaster who made a wrong prediction as to the next day's temperature. The biblical injunction, "Go and sin no more," is the one we most frequently forget in the press. Collectively, we don't seem to learn that all it takes to transform an ordinary politician and a braying ass into the modern incarnation of Zeus and the oracle of Delphi is an oath on the Bible, a flag in the lapel, and the invocation of national security.

There are, fortunately, always exceptions to whatever our latest dismal collective performance yields. America produces some world-class journalism, including coverage of the Iraq War by men and women as brave as Ernie Pyle. But I still wish we had a professional Hippocratic Oath of our own that might stir us in the night when we stray from our mission. And yes, I believe journalism has a mission.

Walter Lippman was prescient on this long before most of you were born. Lippman, who became the ultimate Washington insider--someone to whom I regularly leaked--acknowledged that while the press may be a weak reed to lean on, it is the indispensable support for freedom. He wrote, "The present crisis of Western democracy is a crisis of journalism. Everywhere men and women are conscious that somehow they must deal with questions more intricate than any that church or school had prepared them to understand. Increasingly, they know that they cannot understand them if the facts are not quickly and steadily available. All the sharpest critics of democracy have alleged is true if there is no steady supply of trustworthy and relevant news. Incompetence and aimlessness, corruption and disloyalty, panic and ultimate disaster must come to any people denied an assured access to the facts."

So for all the blunders for which we are culpable; for all the disillusionment that has set in among journalists with every fresh report of job cuts and disappearing news space; for all the barons and buccaneers turning the press into a karaoke of power; for all the desecration visited on broadcast journalism by the corporate networks; for all the nonsense to which so many aspiring young journalists are consigned; and for all the fears about the eroding quality of the craft, I still answer emphatically when young people ask me, "Should I go into journalism today?" Sometimes it is difficult to urge them on, especially when serious questions are being asked about how loyal our society is to the reality as well as to the idea of an independent and free press. But I almost always answer, "Yes, if you have a fire in your belly, you can still make a difference."

I remind them of how often investigative reporting has played a crucial role in making the crooked straight. I remind them how news bureaus abroad are a form of national security that can tell us what our government won't. I remind them that as America grows more diverse, it's essential to have reporters, editors, producers and writers who reflect these new rising voices and concerns. And I remind them that facts can still drive the argument and tug us in the direction of greater equality and a more democratic society. Journalism still matters.

But I also tell them there is something more important than journalism, and that is the truth. They aren't necessarily one and the same because the truth is often obscured in the news. In his new novel, The Appeal, John Grisham tells us more about corporate, political and legal jihads than most newspapers or network news ever will; more about Wall Street shenanigans than all the cable business channels combined; more about Manchurian candidates than you will ever hear on the Sunday morning talk shows.

For that matter, you will learn more about who wins and who loses in the real business of politics, which is governance, from the public interest truth-tellers of Washington than you will from an established press tethered to official sources. The Government Accountability Project, POGO, the Sunlight Foundation, Citizens Against Government Waste, Taxpayers for Common Sense, the Center for Responsible Politics, the National Security Archive, CREW, the Center for Public Integrity, just to name a few--and from whistleblowers of all sorts who never went to journalism school, never flashed a press pass, and never attended a gridiron dinner.

Ron Ridenhour was not a journalist when he came upon the truth of My Lai. He was in the Army. He later became a pioneering investigative reporter and--this is the irony--had trouble making a living in a calling where truth-telling can be a liability to the bottom line. Matthew Diaz and James Scurlock, whom you honored today, are truth-tellers without a license, reminding us that the most important credential of all is a conscience that cannot be purchased or silenced.

So I tell inquisitive and inquiring young people: "Journalism still makes a difference, but the truth matters more. And if you can't get to the truth through journalism, there are other ways to go."

To The Nation Institute and the Fertel Foundation, to the Ridenhour judges and to all of you, thank you again for this moment and, above all, for the courage of your own convictions.

NPR

So it would appear that the dismantling of the public airwaves begun in the 80’s by the republicans is finally bearing fruit.With the number of "announcements" from the likes of ADM and GE increasing is it any wonder that it has come to this?

__________
NPR: National Pentagon Radio?

By Norman Solomon, AlterNet
Posted on March 27, 2008,



While the Iraqi government continued its large-scale military assault in Basra, the NPR reporter's voice from Iraq was unequivocal on the morning of March 27: "There is no doubt that this operation needed to happen."

Such flat-out statements, uttered with journalistic tones and without attribution, are routine for the U.S. media establishment. In the War Made Easy documentary film, I put it this way: "If you're pro-war, you're objective. But if you're anti-war, you're biased. And often, a news anchor will get no flak at all for making statements that are supportive of a war and wouldn't dream of making a statement that's against a war."

So it goes at NPR News, where -- on Morning Edition as well as the evening program All Things Considered -- the sense and sensibilities tend to be neatly aligned with the outlooks of official Washington. The critical aspects of reporting largely amount to complaints about policy shortcomings that are tactical; the underlying and shared assumptions are imperial. Washington's prerogatives are evident when the media window on the world is tinted red-white-and-blue.

Earlier in the week -- a few days into the sixth year of the Iraq war -- All Things Considered aired a discussion with a familiar guest.

"To talk about the state of the war and how the U.S. military changes tactics to deal with it," said longtime anchor Robert Siegel, "we turn now to retired Gen. Robert Scales, who's talked with us many times over the course of the conflict."

This is the sort of introduction that elevates a guest to truly expert status -- conveying to the listeners that expertise and wisdom, not just opinions, are being sought.

Siegel asked about the progression of assaults on U.S. troops over the years: "How have the attacks and the countermeasures to them evolved?"

Naturally, Gen. Scales responded with the language of a military man. "The enemy has built ever-larger explosives," he said. "They've found clever ways to hide their IEDs, their roadside bombs, and even more diabolical means for detonating these devices."

We'd expect a retired American general to speak in such categorical terms -- referring to "the enemy" and declaring in a matter-of-fact tone that attacks on U.S. troops became even more "diabolical." But what about an American journalist?

Well, if the American journalist is careful to function with independence instead of deference to the Pentagon, then the journalist's assumptions will sound different than the outlooks of a high-ranking U.S. military officer.

In this case, an independent reporter might even be willing to ask a pointed question along these lines: You just used the word "diabolical" to describe attacks on the U.S. military by Iraqis, but would that ever be an appropriate adjective to use to describe attacks on Iraqis by the U.S. military?

In sharp contrast, what happened during the All Things Considered discussion on March 24 was a conversation of shared sensibilities. The retired U.S. Army general discussed the war effort in terms notably similar to those of the ostensibly independent journalist -- who, along the way, made the phrase "the enemy" his own in a followup question.

It wouldn't be fair to judge an entire news program on the basis of a couple of segments. But I'm a frequent listener of All Things Considered and Morning Edition. Such cozy proximity of world views, blanketing the war maker and the war reporter, is symptomatic of what ails NPR's war coverage -- especially from Washington.

Of course there are exceptions. Occasional news reports stray from the narrow baseline. But the essence of the propaganda function is repetition, and the exceptional does not undermine that function.

To add insult to injury, NPR calls itself public radio. It's supposed to be willing to go where commercial networks fear to tread. But overall, when it comes to politics and war, the range of perspectives on National Public Radio isn't any wider than what we encounter on the avowedly commercial networks.

Our Man in Islamabad

Its indicative of how far we have come from the lies and obfuscations spread by the Washington Posts regional reporters (Pamela Constable for example), that today even Mr. Novak, one of the most reptilian of American journalists can clearly see the truth.
____________________

By Robert D. Novak
Thursday, February 21, 2008; A15

Overwhelming repudiation of President Pervez Musharraf by Pakistan's voters did not immediately dilute the Bush administration's support for him. On the contrary, the first election returns were barely in Monday night when the U.S. government began pressing victorious opposition leaders not to impeach the former military strongman.

Publicly, State Department spokesman Tom Casey said that Musharraf "is still the president of Pakistan" and expressed hope that "whoever winds up in charge of the new government would be able to work with him."

Privately, U.S. diplomats pushed hard against any effort to dislodge the retired army general who had just suffered a public rejection, unprecedented in Pakistan's 60 years, from the office he retained last year through nefarious means.

The United States again guessed wrong in pinning its hopes on an authoritarian, anti-democratic foreign leader. Musharraf follows the pattern of South Korea's Syngman Rhee, the shah of Iran and Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, all of whom went into exile after public rejection. But Musharraf remains our man in Islamabad, counted on by Washington to battle Islamist terrorists -- including Osama bin Laden -- despite his inconstant efforts.

Foggy Bottom's stubborn policymakers are frozen in an irrelevant mind-set, dating to their effort last year to broker a partnership between Musharraf, as president, and Benazir Bhutto, as prime minister. In her memoir, "Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy, and the West," which she worked on before her assassination in December, Bhutto detailed Musharraf's perfidy in reneging on power-sharing agreements made with her in two meetings last year. Instead, Musharraf engineered his election as president by a lame-duck parliament, purged the judiciary, imposed martial law and refused to resign from the army until virtually forced to do so by Washington.

Since Bhutto's murder, Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher has antagonized Pakistan's opposition leaders by insisting that Musharraf was committed to a "good" election while in fact the voting rolls were being rigged. Minimal Election Day fraud can be attributed to Musharraf's weakness rather than his strength. The army refused to provide the cooperation needed to really steal votes. According to Pakistani sources, the high command was alarmed that Musharraf's unpopularity had undermined public esteem for the military.

These changes apparently escaped the notice of the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, which on election eve reported to Washington that Musharraf's Pakistan Muslim League-Q would do well enough to force a coalition government. Vote-rigging probably cost the opposition 25 seats, mainly in Baluchistan -- not enough to prevent a substantial majority by opposition parties that could overturn Musharraf's policies.

Officials of Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP) say that while Musharraf deserves to be impeached, they would not move against him if he shows any humility. But the retired general has not departed from his habitual arrogance, even at the moment of humiliation.

In "Reconciliation" (concluded shortly before her death and published this week), Bhutto was careful to avoid an anti-American posture but still detailed Washington's long record of support for military regimes that overturned democratically elected leaders in Pakistan. I must report that my late partner, Rowland Evans, and I followed that line of reasoning as necessary to enlist Pakistan as an ally against the Soviet Union in the Cold War.

This government outlook has persisted in the war against Islamist terrorism, though it has been increasingly clear that Musharraf would not vigorously pursue that conflict. I was impressed when I talked to Bhutto in New York last summer to find her committed against the extremists inside Pakistan in a way Musharraf never has been. "The core of my being as a Muslim," she wrote in her memoir, "rejects those using Islam to justify acts of terror to pervert, manipulate, and exploit religion for their own political agenda."

Those sentiments reflect how much Benazir Bhutto will be missed.

Her widower, Asif Ali Zardari, who has succeeded her as PPP leader, will not take the prime minister's post. Whoever does head the new Pakistani government cannot be counted on to pursue the risky course that Bhutto promised of closing madrassas and fighting al-Qaeda in tribal lands. No Pakistani expects help from Musharraf, who has been repudiated by the public and is not backed by the army now that he has removed his uniform. Only the State Department still takes him seriously.

The Archbisop of Cant

Rowan Williams suggested American leadership had broken down: "We have only
one global hegemonic power. It is not accumulating territory: it is
trying to accumulate influence and control. That's not working."

He contrasted it unfavourably with how the British Empire governed
India. "It is one thing to take over a territory and then pour energy
and resources into administering it and normalising it. Rightly or
wrongly, that's what the British Empire did — in India, for example.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article2937068.ece

Deniall Ferguson - Demogague

Denial Ferguson has another puff piece on Demagoguery.

Its quite admirable how this pompous ass can get absolute tripe published by the best newspapers. Deniall is a right wing apologist for the erswhile British Empire, peddling himself to gullible Americans as an expert who can help them with their own imperialist adventures.

In this article he states that “The ancient Greek word "demagogos" means simply a spokesman for the people or, more pejoratively, a leader of the mob. Modern usage implies rhetorical gifts and the ability to arouse an audience, usually with the promise of radical measures. It is to the baser impulses of the public that a demagogue usually appeals -- hence the tendency to identify and denounce enemies of the people.”

Here is the Wikipedia definition:

“Demagogy (from Greek demos, "people", and agogos, "leading") refers to a political strategy for obtaining and gaining political power by appealing to the popular prejudices, fears, and expectations of the public — typically via impassioned rhetoric and propaganda, and often using nationalistic or populist themes.

The term is commonly used as a political pejorative: political opponents are described as "demagogues", while politicians approved of are "men of the people", or "statesmen".”

And the wiki article has this quote by H. L. Mencken, who defined a demagogue as "one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots."

So this in an interesting word that is being used to demonize those you disagree with. Demagogue. For Deniall Ferguson, GWB, TB, Ronald Regan (remember the Big Lie technique?) Margaret Thatcher, or that great fascist, Winston Churchill, don’t fall into this category, but anyone who denounces British / American imperialism is clearly a one. It’s this kind of simple minded propaganda that failed the Brits again and again as their empire unraveled.

_______________________

The New Demagogues
By Niall Ferguson
Washington Post
Sunday, December 3, 2006

"We are confronting the devil -- and we will hit a home run off the devil!"

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was at it again last week, demonizing his archenemy in front of throngs of loyal supporters in downtown Caracas. Forget his opponent in today's presidential elections -- that's not the "devil" he has in mind. Instead, following the example of another great Latin American demagogue, Fidel Castro, Chavez directs his rhetorical fire against the United States and President Bush.

The world over, demagogues are back, yelling their slogans and thumping their tubs.
In Latin America, Bolivia's Evo Morales and Mexico's Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador have joined Chvvez in heaping opprobrium on the diabolical gringo imperialists. In the Middle East, Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hezbollah's Hasan Nasrallah denounce the demonic Yankee crusaders and their Zionist confederates with equal fervor. Others have different targets, but their language is no less inflammatory. In Germany, Udo Pastoers of the xenophobic National Democratic Party won a regional election after calling Europe "a cultural space for white people." In South Africa, former deputy president Jacob Zuma belts out "Mshini Wami," an anti-apartheid anthem that includes the line, "Bring me my machine gun."

Their rhetoric may seem overblown, but no one should underestimate the threat these new demagogues pose -- especially to the United States. Irrelevant in Latin America, impotent in the Middle East, ignored in Africa and isolated in Europe, Washington may be facing its biggest foreign policy crisis since the late 1970s, when the Iranian Revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan rocked Jimmy Carter's presidency. And this new generation of rabble-rousers is seizing the moment. The more unpopular the United States becomes, the easier it is for them to win votes by bad-mouthing Uncle Sam.

We have been here before, and it wasn't pretty. When an elected president expresses skepticism about the Holocaust and threatens to wipe the state of Israel from the map, it is not hyperbole to draw comparisons with that most disastrous of demagogues, Adolf Hitler. Like Hitler, Ahmadinejad knows that anti-Semitism is one of the aces in the demagogue's deck, a tried-and-true means of inspiring hatred and suspicion of others -- and of staying in power himself. Hitler also frequently expressed his contempt for the United States, which he dismissed as "a decayed country," racially and culturally inferior to Germany -- and, of course, ruled by Jews. Read Ahmadinejad's latest letter to "the American people," released last week, for a reprise of that theme.

And today, the conditions for truly dangerous demagogues to emerge are almost ideal.
The classic breeding grounds for demagogy are war and revolution. It is no coincidence that Ahmadinejad is a veteran of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran and the war between Iran and Iraq. In a new mood of "realism," the United States would now like Iran to help prevent its neighbor Iraq from collapsing into civil war. Fat chance. Ahmadinejad is bidding for Iranian hegemony in the Middle East. The last thing he needs is to be seen bailing out the Great Satan.
Severe economic volatility can also create a popular appetite for rousing rhetoric. It is significant that economic growth has been so much more variable in Latin America and the Middle East over the past 20 years than it has been in the United States. When people are buffeted by wild fluctuations in income, prices and job security, they are more likely to lose confidence in the political status quo and to heed the words of messianic leaders such as Ch?vez and Morales.
Also relevant is the level of average income. Today, per capita incomes in poorer Latin American countries and most of the Middle East are similar to those of Central Europe between the wars. (That's important, because studies suggest that a democracy's chances of survival are much higher when per capita income is above $6,000.) Illiteracy rates are probably higher than they were in Central Europe. Urbanization rates certainly are. It's an ideal environment for demagogy: masses of people, stuck between the grinding poverty of agrarian societies and the affluence of today's richest countries, living in crowded cities with lousy schools. In such settings, the center seldom holds for long. Soon the maverick speechmaker is strutting in presidential regalia.

That helps explain why so many demagogues swept to power in Central and Eastern Europe in the 1920s and '30s. Hitler was only one of a host of dictators who combined fiery rhetoric with colored shirts, shiny boots -- and an utter disregard for civil liberties, especially those of ethnic minorities. And that's the critical point.

History's lesson is that personal freedom is all too often the demagogue's first victim, especially when popular sentiment is whipped up against some internal or foreign enemy.

The ancient Greek word "demagogos" means simply a spokesman for the people or, more pejoratively, a leader of the mob. Modern usage implies rhetorical gifts and the ability to arouse an audience, usually with the promise of radical measures. It is to the baser impulses of the public that a demagogue usually appeals -- hence the tendency to identify and denounce enemies of the people.

Demagogy is as old as democracy, but not all democracies produce demagogues. The best known of the ancient Greek demagogues was Alcibiades, who sold his fellow Athenians the (bad) idea of conquering Sicily. The Roman Republic produced Marcus Tullius Cicero, whose devastating Philippics sought to thwart the ambitions of Julius Caesar's friend and Cleopatra's lover Mark Antony. (Cicero called Antony a "madman" who wanted a "bloodbath" in Rome.)
The term took on a new significance in the 17th century. If the English Civil War had its demagogue, it was the Puritan parliamentarian John Pym, Charles I's most vehement critic in the House of Commons -- though it was the plainspoken man of action Oliver Cromwell who emerged as dictator.

Not all revolutions produce demagogues. The American Revolution owed more to lawyerly draftsmen and amateur soldiers than to masters of rhetoric. In France, though, intemperate speechifying was the essence of the revolution. Demagogues such as Georges Danton -- nicknamed "Jove the thunderer" and one of the leaders of the Reign of Terror -- gave firebrand oratory a bad name for the better part of a century.

From the 1880s on, the widening of franchises to include poorer, less educated voters combined with a major economic slowdown to produce a new kind of demagogue: not so much a warmonger or a revolutionary as a vote-winner. The defining moment was William Ewart Gladstone's 1878 Midlothian campaign, when the British Liberal leader made a series of inspirational stump speeches aimed not just at local voters but at the nation.

But as the boom years of the industrial age gave way to deflation and depression, demagogues turned against liberalism. On the left and right alike, from socialists to anti-Semites, radical politicians discovered that the best way to mobilize new voters was to blame economic volatility on enemies of the people. In Austria, the anti-Semite Karl Lueger blamed the troubles of the Viennese petty bourgeoisie after the stock market crash of 1873 on the city's supposedly all-powerful Jews. In Russia, radical socialists such as Leon Trotsky fulminated with equal vehemence against czarism and capitalism. In every case, the demagogue pointed an accusatory finger, blaming this or that group for the sufferings of the masses. Success meant power for the demagogue, and persecution for his targets.

Small wonder, then, that the years between World Wars I and II proved to be the zenith of demagogic politics. After 1914, the world was swept first by war, then by revolutions and finally by the worst depression in economic history. Hitler was of course the arch-demagogue, a hate-filled monster and false Messiah who promised the German people redemption after years of humiliation. But in Italy, Benito Mussolini also strutted and stormed; Oswald Mosley, the renegade socialist who founded the British Union of Fascists, tried the same tricks in England. Central Europe resounded to the diatribes of a horde of similar rabble-rousers. In Poland, National Democrat leader Roman Dmowski prophesied an "international pogrom of the Jews." In Romania, the founder of the Legion of the Archangel Michael, Corneliu Codreanu, pledged to "destroy the Jews before they can destroy us." Hitler was very far from the only demagogue in the 1930s to scapegoat the Jews. When he took Europe to war, he found willing collaborators all over the continent.

The good news about demagogues is that they often find it harder to deliver on election pledges than to deliver election speeches. In September, Morales's deputy, Vice President ?lvaro Garc?a Linera, called on Bolivia's indigenous people to defend Morales's government "with your chest, with your hand, with your Mauser" in response to opposition in the eastern city of Santa Cruz. Such language belies the reality that the Morales government has been forced to modify its plan to nationalize the country's energy sector (though last week it did succeed in pushing through a radical land reform bill). Economic instability and backwardness may bring demagogues to power. But they also constrain them once they get there.

Still, the fact that Chavez and Ahmadinejad sit on top of 6 percent and 11 percent of proven global oil reserves must give us pause. Perhaps the greatest strategic weakness of the interwar demagogues was their lack of fuel. That, indeed, was one of their motives for conquering what Hitler called "living space" from neighboring countries.

Today's demagogues, by contrast, rule oil-rich countries. This may reduce their need to acquire territory. But with oil prices stuck above $60 a barrel, it also guarantees them large payments from oil-importing countries such as the United States and gives them the means to back up their words with action. And you don't need to know a lot of history to know that hot air plus petroleum is a potentially explosive combination.

Crabby Leftists and frat boys

"I thought I was talking to an uneducated man, maybe from a tribal community, I mean, that's how it seemed to me.

"In our earnestness, we were trying to help women around the world."

- Linda Stein (crabby feminist)

How patronizing can you get?

Musharraf's record and the "peace treaty"

One step forward, two back
October 13, 2006
The Dawn (Pakistan)

By Pervez Hoodbhoy


SOME had feared — while others had hoped — that General Pervez Musharraf’s coup of October 12, 1999, would bring the revolution of Kemal Ataturk to a Pakistan in the iron grip of mullahs. But years later, a definitive truth has emerged. Like the other insecure governments before it, both military and civilian, the present regime also has a single-point agenda — to stay in power at all costs. It, therefore, does whatever it must and Pakistan moves further away from any prospect of acquiring modern values, and of building and strengthening democratic institutions.

The requirements for survival of the present regime are clear. On the one hand, the army leadership knows that its critical dependence upon the West requires that it be perceived abroad as a liberal regime pitted against radical Islamists. On the other hand, and in actual fact, to safeguard and extend its grip on power, it must preserve the status quo.

The staged conflicts between General Musharraf and the mullahs are, therefore, a regular part of Pakistani politics. This September, nearly seven years later, the religious parties needed no demonstration of muscle power for winning two major victories in less than a fortnight; just a few noisy threats sufficed. From experience they knew that the Pakistan army and its sagacious leader — of “enlightened moderation” fame — would stick to their predictable pattern of dealing with the Islamists. In a nutshell: provoke a fight, get the excitement going, let diplomatic missions in Islamabad make their notes and CNN and BBC get their clips — and then beat a retreat. At the end of it all, the mullahs would get what they want, but so would the general.

Examples abound. On April 21, 2000, General Musharraf announced a new administrative procedure for registration of cases under the blasphemy law. This law, under which the minimum penalty is death, has frequently been used to harass personal and political opponents. To reduce such occurrences, Musharraf’s modified procedure would have required the local district magistrate’s approval for the registration of a blasphemy case. It would have been an improvement, albeit a modest one. But 25 days later, on May 16, 2000, under the watchful glare of the mullahs, Musharraf hastily climbed down: “As it was the unanimous demand of the ulema, mashaikh and the people...I have decided to do away with the procedural change in the registration of FIR under the blasphemy law.”

Another example. In October 2004, as a new system for issuing machine readable passports was being installed, Musharraf’s government declared that henceforth it would not be necessary for passport holders to specify their religion. As expected, this was denounced by the Islamic parties as a grand conspiracy aimed at secularising Pakistan and destroying its Islamic character. But even before the mullahs actually took to the streets, the government lost nerve and announced its volte-face on March 24, 2005. Information Minister Sheikh Rashid said the decision to revive the religion column was made else, “Qadianis and apostates would be able to pose as Muslims and perform pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia.”

But even these climbdowns, significant as they are, are less dramatic than the astonishing recent retreat over reforming the Hudood Ordinance, a grotesque imposition of General Ziaul Haq’s government, unparalleled both for its cruelty and irrationality.

Enacted into the law in 1979, it was conceived as part of a more comprehensive process for converting Pakistan into a theocracy governed by Shariah laws. These laws prescribe death by stoning for married Muslims who are found guilty of extra-marital sex (for unmarried couples or non-Muslims, the penalty is 100 lashes). The law is exact in stating how the death penalty is to be administered: “Such of the witnesses who deposed against the convict as may be available shall start stoning him and, while stoning is being carried on, he may be shot dead, whereupon stoning and shooting shall be stopped.”

Rape is still more problematic. A woman who fails to prove that she has been raped is automatically charged with fornication and adultery. Under the Hudood law, she is considered guilty unless she can prove her innocence. Proof of innocence requires that the rape victim must produce “at least four Muslim adult male witnesses, about whom the court is satisfied” who saw the actual act of penetration. Inability to do so may result in her being jailed, or perhaps even sentenced to death for adultery.

General Musharraf, and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, proposed amending the Hudood Ordinance. They sent a draft for parliamentary discussion in early September, 2006. As expected, it outraged the fundamentalists of the MMA, the main Islamic parliamentary opposition, whose members tore up copies of the proposed amendments on the floor of the National Assembly and threatened to resign en masse. The government cowered abjectly and withdrew.

Musharraf’s government proved no more enlightened, or more moderate or more resolute, and behaved no differently from the more than half a dozen previous civilian administrations, including two under Benazir Bhutto and several ‘technocrat’ regimes. No one made a serious effort to confront or reform these laws. But the pattern is broader than deference to the mullahs. General Musharraf has been willing to use the iron fist in other circumstances. Two examples stand out: Waziristan and Balochistan. Each offers instruction.

In 2002, presumably on Washington’s instructions, the Pakistan army established military bases in South Waziristan which had become a refuge for Taliban and Al Qaeda fleeing Afghanistan. It unleashed artillery and US-supplied Cobra gunships. By 2005, heavy fighting had spread to North Waziristan and the army was bogged down.

The generals, safely removed from combat areas, and busy in building their personal empires, ascribed the resistance to “a few hundred foreign militants and terrorists”. But the army was taking losses (how serious is suggested by the fact that casualty figures were not revealed) and soldiers rarely ventured from their forts. Reportedly, local clerics refused to conduct funeral prayers for soldiers killed in action.

In 2004, the army made peace with the militants of South Waziristan. It conceded the territory to them, which made the militants immensely stronger. A similar “peace treaty” was signed on September 5, 2006, in the town of Miramshah in North Waziristan, now firmly in the grip of the Pakistani Taliban.

The Miramshah treaty met all the demands made by the militants: the release of all jailed militants; dismantling of army checkpoints; return of seized weapons and vehicles; the right of the Taliban to display weapons (except heavy weapons); and residence rights for fellow fighters from other Islamic countries. As for “foreign militants” — who Musharraf had blamed exclusively for the resistance, the militants were nonchalant: we will let you know if we find any! The financial compensation demanded by the Taliban for loss of property and life has not been revealed, but some officials have remarked that it is “astronomical”. In turn they promised to cease their attacks on civil and military installations, and to give the army a safe passage out.

While the army has extricated itself, the locals have been left to pay the price. The militants have closed girls’ schools and are enforcing harsh Shariah laws in both North and South Waziristan. Barbers have been told “shave and die”. Taliban vigilante groups patrol the streets of Miramshah. They check such things as the length of beards, whether the “shalwars” are worn at an appropriate height above the ankles and the attendance of individuals in the mosques.

And then there is Balochistan. In 1999, when the army seized power, there was no visible separatist movement in Balochistan, which makes up nearly 44 per cent of Pakistan’s land mass and is the repository of its gas and oil resources. Now there is a full-blown insurgency built upon Baloch grievances, most of which arise from a perception of being ruled from Islamabad and of being denied a fair share of the benefits of the natural resources extracted from their land.

The army has spurned negotiations. Force is the only answer: “They won’t know what hit them,” boasted Musharraf, after threatening to crush the insurgency. The army has used everything it can, including its American-supplied F-16 jet fighters. The crisis worsened when the charismatic 79-year old Baloch chieftain and former governor of Balochistan, Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, was killed by army bombs. Musharraf outraged the Baloch by calling it “a great victory”. Reconciliation in Balochistan now seems a distant dream.

Musharraf and his generals are determined to stay in power. They will protect the source of their power — the army. They will accommodate those they must — the Americans. They will pander to the mullahs. They will crush those who threaten their power and privilege, and ignore the rest. No price is too high for them. They are the reason why Pakistan fails.

The writer is a professor at the Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad.

Europe's growing Problem

Europe and the Islamic World’s relations are becoming increasingly strained as incident after incident exposes the inherent contradictions between an inflexible religious fundamentalism and liberal democracy.

The European view is summarized in an October 11 article from the New York Times and the Islamic view presented in the report in a Pakistani newspaper.
_________________________________________

Across Europe, Worries on Islam Spread to Center
New York Times

October 11, 2006

By DAN BILEFSKY and IAN FISHER

BRUSSELS, Oct. 10 — Europe appears to be crossing an invisible line regarding its Muslim minorities: more people in the political mainstream are arguing that Islam cannot be reconciled with European values.

“You saw what happened with the pope,” said Patrick Gonman, 43, the owner of Raga, a funky wine bar in downtown Antwerp, 25 miles from here. “He said Islam is an aggressive religion. And the next day they kill a nun somewhere and make his point.

“Rationality is gone.”

Mr. Gonman is hardly an extremist. In fact, he organized a protest last week in which 20 bars and restaurants closed on the night when a far-right party with an anti-Muslim message held a rally nearby.

His worry is shared by centrists across Europe angry at terror attacks in the name of religion on a continent that has largely abandoned it, and disturbed that any criticism of Islam or Muslim immigration provokes threats of violence.

For years those who raised their voices were mostly on the far right. Now those normally seen as moderates — ordinary people as well as politicians — are asking whether once unquestioned values of tolerance and multiculturalism should have limits.

Former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw of Britain, a prominent Labor politician, seemed to sum up the moment when he wrote last week that he felt uncomfortable addressing women whose faces were covered with a veil. The veil, he wrote, is a “visible statement of separation and difference.”

When Pope Benedict XVI made the speech last month that included a quotation calling aspects of Islam “evil and inhuman,” it seemed to unleash such feelings. Muslims berated him for stigmatizing their culture, while non-Muslims applauded him for bravely speaking a hard truth.

The line between open criticism of another group or religion and bigotry can be a thin one, and many Muslims worry that it is being crossed more and more.

Whatever the motivations, “the reality is that views on both sides are becoming more extreme,” said Imam Wahid Pedersen, a prominent Dane who is a convert to Islam. “It has become politically correct to attack Islam, and this is making it hard for moderates on both sides to remain reasonable.” Mr. Pedersen fears that onetime moderates are baiting Muslims, the very people they say should integrate into Europe.

The worries about extremism are real. The Belgian far-right party, Vlaams Belang, took 20.5 percent of the vote in city elections last Sunday, five percentage points higher than in 2000. In Antwerp, its base, though, its performance improved barely, suggesting to some experts that its power might be peaking.

In Austria this month, right-wing parties also polled well, on a campaign promise that had rarely been made openly: that Austria should start to deport its immigrants. Vlaams Belang, too, has suggested “repatriation” for immigrants who do not made greater efforts to integrate.

The idea is unthinkable to mainstream leaders, but many Muslims still fear that the day — or at least a debate on the topic — may be a terror attack away.

“I think the time will come,” said Amir Shafe, 34, a Pakistani who earns a good living selling clothes at a market in Antwerp. He deplores terrorism and said he himself did not sense hostility in Belgium. But he said, “We are now thinking of going back to our country, before that time comes.”

Many experts note that there is a deep and troubled history between Islam and Europe, with the Crusaders and the Ottoman Empire jostling each other for centuries and bloodily defining the boundaries of Christianity and Islam. A sense of guilt over Europe’s colonial past and then World War II, when intolerance exploded into mass murder, allowed a large migration to occur without any uncomfortable debates over the real differences between migrant and host.

Then the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, jolted Europe into new awareness and worry.

The subsequent bombings in Madrid and London, and the murder of the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a Dutch-born Moroccan stand as examples of the extreme. But many Europeans — even those who generally support immigration — have begun talking more bluntly about cultural differences, specifically about Muslims’ deep religious beliefs and social values, which are far more conservative than those of most Europeans on issues like women’s rights and homosexuality.

“A lot of people, progressive ones — we are not talking about nationalists or the extreme right — are saying, ‘Now we have this religion, it plays a role and it challenges our assumptions about what we learned in the 60’s and 70’s,’ ” said Joost Lagendik, a Dutch member of the European Parliament for the Green Left Party, who is active on Muslim issues.

“So there is this fear,” he said, “that we are being transported back in a time machine where we have to explain to our immigrants that there is equality between men and women, and gays should be treated properly. Now there is the idea we have to do it again.”

Now Europeans are discussing the limits of tolerance, the right with increasing stridency and the left with trepidation.

Austrians in their recent election complained about public schools in Vienna being nearly full with Muslim students and blamed the successive governments that allowed it to happen.

Some Dutch Muslims have expressed support for insurgents in Iraq over Dutch peacekeepers there, on the theory that their prime loyalty is to a Muslim country under invasion.

So strong is the fear that Dutch values of tolerance are under siege that the government last winter introduced a primer on those values for prospective newcomers to Dutch life: a DVD briefly showing topless women and two men kissing. The film does not explicitly mention Muslims, but its target audience is as clear as its message: embrace our culture or leave.

Perhaps most wrenching has been the issue of free speech and expression, and the growing fear that any criticism of Islam could provoke violence.

In France last month, a high school teacher went into hiding after receiving death threats for writing an article calling the Prophet Muhammad “a merciless warlord, a looter, a mass murderer of Jews and a polygamist.” In Germany a Mozart opera with a scene of Muhammad’s severed head was canceled because of security fears.

With each incident, mainstream leaders are speaking more plainly. “Self-censorship does not help us against people who want to practice violence in the name of Islam,” Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said in criticizing the opera’s cancellation. “It makes no sense to retreat.”

The backlash is revealing itself in other ways. Last month the British home secretary, John Reid, called on Muslim parents to keep a close watch on their children. “There’s no nice way of saying this,” he told a Muslim group in East London. “These fanatics are looking to groom and brainwash children, including your children, for suicide bombing, grooming them to kill themselves to murder others.”

Many Muslims say this new mood is suddenly imposing expectations that never existed before that Muslims be exactly like their European hosts.

Dyab Abou Jahjah, a Lebanese-born activist here in Belgium, said that for years Europeans had emphasized “citizenship and human rights,” the notion that Muslim immigrants had the responsibility to obey the law but could otherwise live with their traditions.

“Then someone comes and says it’s different than that,” said Mr. Jahjah, who opposes assimilation. “You have to dump your culture and religion. It’s a different deal now.”

Lianne Duinberke, 34, who works at a market in the racially mixed northern section of Antwerp, said: “Before I was very eager to tell people I was married to a Muslim. Now I hesitate.” She has been with her husband, a Tunisian, for 12 years, and they have three children.

Many Europeans, she said, have not been accepting of Muslims, especially since 9/11. On the other hand, she said, Muslims truly are different culturally: No amount of explanation about free speech could convince her husband that the publication of cartoons lampooning Muhammad in a Danish newspaper was in any way justified.

When asked if she was optimistic or pessimistic about the future of Muslim immigration in Europe , she found it hard to answer. She finally gave a defeated smile. “I am trying to be optimistic,” she said. “But if you see the global problems before the people, then you really can’t be.”

Dan Bilefsky reported from Brussels, and Ian Fisher from Rome. Contributing were Sarah Lyall and Alan Cowell from London, Mark Landler from Frankfurt, Peter Kiefer from Rome, Renwick McLean from Madrid and Maia de la Baume from Paris.

___________________________________________________________

Islam, Muslims and Europe

The News (Pakistan)
October 6, 2006

By Dr Muzaffar Iqbal

As we entered the mosque of Córdoba I realised its isolation from its historical environ that once housed almost eighty thousand shops and workshops of artisans; there was nothing left of the marvellous public baths and inns which once surrounded the mosque. The multitudes of citizens, merchants, and mules passing over the bridge over the Great River (Guadalquiver) into the centre of the city were nowhere to be seen. Instead, there were throngs of tourists. In spite of this, the mosque still opens doorways to the numerous connections it once had with Islamic spirituality and sciences and practical arts.

Now, however, one has to use one's imagination to understand these intricate connections, because even the interior of this monumental mosque is not what it used to be; the presence of a "dark church structure that was built between the Renaissance and Baroque periods, and arbitrarily placed at the centre of the light forest of pillars like a giant black spider", as Titus Burchardt once remarked, makes it extremely difficult to clearly distinguish the features of the mosque which once looked like a broad grove of palm trees.

The mosque also stands today without the fabulous royal city, Madinat al-Zahrah, which once provided the backdrop to the city of Cordoba. The famous library of al-Hakam II, with its 400,000 volumes -- many of them containing annotations about their authors in his own hand -- is also gone. The mosque now lacks the traditional courtyard with fountains where the faithful once performed ablution before prayers. But some things still remain, and among them are the prayer niche and the marvellous array of columns and arches with their hypnotic symmetry.

Throngs of tourists take pictures and drift slowly toward the front part of the mosque, through hundreds of pillars, linked by horseshoe-shaped arches. The upper arches are heavier than the lower ones and the abutments of both increases in size with the height of the pillars. The pillars are reminiscent of palm branches, which the Arab rulers of al-Andalus missed in their new land. As we move toward the famed prayer niche the darkness of the interior of the building increases. Once, the area near the prayer niche was the brightest in the mosque.

As we arrive at the seven-sided prayer niche, its many intricate features become obvious. So many aspects of traditional Islamic sciences, arts, and architectural motifs are built into that small area that one can still see a whole civilisation reflected in the prayer niche of the mosque. There is a unique space inside the niche, where the word of God was once recited, a space that evokes awe and reminds one of the mysterious niche of light passage in the celebrated 'Light Verse' of the Holy Quran (24:35).

The fluted shell-like vault, designed to create extraordinary acoustics for the transmission of the recitation of the Holy Quran to the far corners of the mosque, and the horseshoe shaped arch that seems to breathe "as if expanding with a surfeit of inner beatitude, while the rectangular frame enclosing it acts as a counterbalance. The radiating energy and the perfect stillness from an unsurpassable equilibrium."

Today, the mosque of Cordoba stands as a symbol of something far greater than Islamic architecture. This extraordinary mosque, which has remained an enduring source of inspiration and reflection for countless poets and writers (including Iqbal whose poem on the mosque is a masterpiece), today stands as a symbol of Europe's dilemma which it has unwittingly created for itself: what to do with Islam and Muslims. As if to present an immediate example of European intolerance, a Spanish guard rushes toward my fourteen-year-old son as he stands in a corner to offer two rakah prayers.

The Spanish guard incessantly argues that this is not a mosque. I point toward the prayer niche, the beautiful columns, and the entire layout of the marvellous structure where once hundreds of men, women and children prayed, but he sees nothing but the artificially placed dark spider-like building of the Church in the middle of the mosque. "It is a church," he insists.

Our arguments become heated; many other guards rush toward us. I insist on our inalienable right to pray in a building that was constructed for that purpose; they insist that it is not allowed. "Who does not allow it?" I ask. "The authorities." "Can I talk to the authorities?" "No, they are not available".

Finally, they physically stop the prayer and surround us wherever we go inside the mosque. They cannot throw us out of the building, but that is exactly what is on their minds. One more move on our part, and they will have the excuse needed to take that ultimate step.

This episode is a reflection in miniature of the situation of Muslims in Europe today. Some twenty millions of men, women, and children living in this self-proclaimed centre of the civilised world are facing a slow and steady build-up of intolerance, mass hysteria, and state laws which may cut-short their precarious lives built on dreams, hopes, and sheer hard labour over three generations.

Islam and Muslims in Europe have become a dilemma for Europe, which it does not quite know how to deal. After the reconquest of Spain, summary executions, forced conversions, and mass deportations were chosen as the solution to eliminate Muslim presence from this part of Europe. Today, the sheer number of Muslims makes this an impossibility. Yet, state after state, Europe is passing laws that are making it harder for Muslims to practice their religion. The extent of intolerance is such that even a little piece of cloth on the head is considered a threat. Where would this situation lead to?

When the German-born Pope Benedict XVI, known as Joseph Alois Ratzinger prior to his assumption of the highest office of the Catholic Church, insisted that Turkey must not aspire to become a member of the European Union, his reasoning was that Turkey belongs to the Islamic world, whereas Europe belongs to Christianity. This reasoning was based on a historical situation that, in the Pope's mind, is inviolable. Absurd as it may seem, the Pope seems to believe that the earth is divided into religious zones which cannot change. One is reminded of Musailmah the Liar, who once wrote to the Prophet of Islam that "God has divided the world into two; one half belongs to you, the other to me". The Prophet's response was to remind him that the earth belongs to God alone, He gives dominion over it to whomsoever He chooses, and woe unto the liars.

Historical as well as contemporary realities are somewhat different from the pope's version of Europe. Muslim presence in Europe is not new. It is true that the wave of conquest that brought Islam to much of the old world stopped just inside the doorsteps of Europe, but Muslims have remained inside that threshold for centuries. Albania is a European country, with a population of 3.1 million out of which 2.2 million are Muslim. Muslim presence in Spain was violently cut short in the fifteenth century, but it has left permanent reminders of Islam and Muslims in that beautiful land. This may be history the pope does not want to recall, but what can be done about some twenty million Muslims now living in Europe? This situation is increasingly gaining centre-stage in Europe as state after state confronts its Muslim population with repressive laws.

For Muslims, the current situation is unprecedented in their long history; they have always gone to new lands as conquerors and rulers. For the first time in history, some twenty million Muslims are now living in non-Muslim societies as minorities, struggling to have basic rights. They arrived as immigrants from colonized lands, they worked hard to establish themselves, and their second and third generations have known no home other than Europe. They speak local languages, been educated in state institutions and despite everything, most have kept their faith, and that is the real issue.

Most western European countries insist on "integration". This insistence is in direct conflict with their own claims of being civilised and enlightened societies, for what they are actually asking is for some of their citizens to become invisible members of a society in which every other group is visible; even those who belong to the fringes of society have rights to be visible, but not Muslims. Hence the little piece of cloth on a woman's head becomes a great issue.

France and Germany are two frontline states struggling to "integrate" their Muslim citizens into mainstream society. Both countries are insisting on total integration. This could be considered another name for religious cleansing, for "integration" in this context means loss of identity as members of the Muslim community. By insisting on "integration" these states are actually demanding that millions of their citizens give up a large part of their religious beliefs and practices. This is a sophisticated form of inquisition.

Under the disguise of fighting extremism and terrorism, these European states have invented their own form of terrorism. An elaborate system of espionage, infiltration into the community, and visible and invisible control of mosques and mosque-committees has been devised to ensure that Muslim communities remain under state surveillance. In France, where every tenth person is a Muslim, the state has actually succeeded in controlling the appointment of imams and, through them, the Friday khutbas, Sunday school curriculum, and many other aspects of community life.

For European Muslims, the present situation demands that they learn to survive in a hostile environment. Their communities are composed of diverse racial and cultural elements, with a great deal of internal disharmony, and certain voices from within are actually calling for a "European Islam"--just the kind of thing the state wants to see. These sinister elements are attempting to mould Islam to fit Europe

No Muslim country has paid much attention to the plight of European Muslims. Beyond the violent, irrational, and short-term street demonstrations against cartoons or the pope's recent speech, there is little understanding of the real issues involved. One does not expect any government in the Muslim world to take a stand on this issue, but at least non-governmental institutions, so-called Islamic political parties, and the media should take up this issue at national and international levels. It is an issue concerned with human rights; an issue which warrants greater attention than what it has received so far.

It can be argued that the plight of European Muslims is an internal matter of those states and thus cannot be taken up at any international forum. This argument is false for two reasons. Europe (and the United States) has never respected the boundaries set by this international code, as countless interventions--even regime changes--testify. Second, and more importantly, Muslims cannot remain aloof from the situation of their brethren and sisters in faith because to do so itself compromises their religious duties; both the Holy Quran and Sunnah require them to actively participate in each other's lives.

Muslim communities in Europe need support against the tyranny of their own states; their plight is not the internal issue of these states but a human rights issue. They face a situation which has far-reaching consequences for the entire Muslim world.

The last Straw

Sir,

Presumably these young women who espouse the veil do not wish to take examinations where their identity needs to be ascertained. They will go through life without taking a driving test, driving a car, going through passport control or approaching a bank counter.

I have stayed in several Middle Eastern countries. I would have followed local customs through courtesy, but the local laws defined what I could wear, where I could eat, forbade me driving, and forbade any non-Islamic religious activity.

JO BOOTH DAVEY
Swindon

Daniel Pearl

A new documentary titled "The Journalist and the Jihadi: The Death of Daniel Pearl," will air October 10 on HBO at 8:00 PM.

The documentary follows the lives of Daniel Pearl and the terrorist Sheikh Omar before they crossed paths in Karachi.

German journalists shot dead

Oct. 8, 2006. 01:00 AM

KABUL—Two German freelance journalists working for the country's national broadcaster and travelling on their own through northern Afghanistan were killed by gunmen yesterday, the first foreign journalists slain in the country since late 2001, officials said.

Journalist Karen Fischer, 30, and technician Christian Struwe, 38, were conducting private research for a documentary when they were shot in the province of Baghlan, according to a spokesman for the Afghan Interior Ministry, which handles police affairs.

Erik Bettermann, director general of German broadcaster Deutsche Welle, said: "Karen Fischer and Christian Struwe did groundbreaking work to reconstruct a functioning media apparatus in Afghanistan. It is tragic (they) ... had to die in the country that they have personally supported over the past years."

The Taliban insurgent movement denied any involvement in the deaths.

Fischer and Struwe had set up a tent to spend the night and were killed by AK-47 gunfire in the early hours, said Mohammad Azim Hashami, the provincial police chief.

"The sound of the shooting was heard by some of the villagers, who ran toward that area," said Hashami. "They found a tent and they found the two journalists dead."

Associated Press.

Frontiline special on Taliban

Can be viewed online

View of pakistan sanctuary and "peace deal."

Interesting footage of billboads with woment's faces wiped clean!

Lots of comments by Steve Coll - who has now become sort of an expert on the taliban - he used to be the Pamela Constable of the 90s - when all this was taking place - clueless and holed up in his hotel.

In addition to the unfortunate murder of Pakistani Journalist Hayatullah Khan Pakistan has a long history of media repression.

Foley a democrat?

Brad Blog reported this first as far as I can tell - Fox news labelled Foley as a Democract from Florida.

And then Wonkette followed up with this hilarious post on FOX News' subsequent mislabellings.

rose coloured glasses

How Empires Die

Toadies and Timid Men

Published on Friday, September 29, 2006
by Niranjan Ramakrishnan



"When Government undertakes a repressive policy, the innocent are not safe. Men like me would not be considered innocent. The innocent then is he who forswears politics, who takes no part in the public movements of the times, who retires into his house, mumbles his prayers, pays his taxes, and salaams all the government officials all round. The man who interferes in politics, the man who goes about collecting money for any public purpose, the man who addresses a public meeting, then becomes a suspect. I am always on the borderland and I, therefore, for personal reasons, if for nothing else, undertake to say that the possession, in the hands of the Executive, of powers of this drastic nature will not hurt only the wicked. It will hurt the good as well as the bad, and there will be such a lowering of public spirit, there will be such a lowering of the political tone in the country, that all your talk of responsible government will be mere mockery... "Much better that a few rascals should walk abroad than that the honest man should be obliged for fear of the law of the land to remain shut up in his house, to refrain from the activities which it is in his nature to indulge in, to abstain from all political and public work merely because there is a dreadful law in the land."

--Rt. Hon. Srinivasa Sastri, speaking in the Imperial Legislative Council, at the introduction of the Rowlatt Bill, Feb 7, 1919

It was bad enough, when the bill doing away with habeas corpus and adherence to the Geneva Conventions was being discussed this week, that its supporters actually said that only those who had done wrong need worry. It is further testament to our standard of political discourse that the rebuttal was often equally pathetic -- we can't trust this president to exercise good judgement! Few statesman in today's debate can capture the issue as succinctly as did Rt. Hon. Sastri nearly a century ago.

All of this is moot, in another sense. This is just one more slide, albeit a huge one, in a long list of slippages our people and politicians have allowed over the last decade, always with the exhortation to 'put it behind us'.

We set out to make Iraq in America's image. We have succeeded splendidly in achieving a certain mutual resemblance. Today there is no difference between disappearing in Iraq and disappearing in America. In one place you might be held incognito by a militia, in the other by the government.

Until yesterday, the difference was that in America, the governent was obliged to produce you before a magistrate, to let you have a lawyer, to allow your family to know.
The mobs in the middle east may raise a million cries of, "Death to America", but it is George W. Bush and his pocket Congress that are carrying out their wishes.

'Na Vakeel, Na Daleel, Na Appeal', was the slogan raised by Indians against the imposition of the Rowlatt Act in 1919. Translation "No lawyer, No Trial, No Appeal".

"The Rowlatt Act was passed in 1919, indefinitely extending wartime "emergency meaures" in order to control public unrest and root out conspiracy. This act effectively authorised the government to imprison without trial, any person suspected of terrorism living in the Raj." (From Wikipedia)

There was anger in India -- and shock. Whatever one's dislike of British rule, it had the perceived merit of standing fast by notions such as open trials, prisoner's rights, appeals, due process, impressive in a country which had mainly known princely whim for justice in earlier times. The Rowlatt Act tore the veil of moral superiority from the public face of British rule.

Indian opposition to the Act, voiced by many well-meaning and eloquent legislators such as Sastri, was ignored. Public outrage was widespread, but unfocused. Gandhi was then a relatively fresh face in India, having returned from South Africa less than four years before. His exploits in South Africa and more recently in Bihar had won him fair renown, but he was by no means yet pre-eminent.

Though on unfamilar political terrain and younger than many other leaders in a country where age equated to deference, Gandhi had two attributes that set him apart from most other leaders --daring and faith. Only he could have had the nerve to call for a general strike throughout India, as he did. Only he could have grasped that a draconian law was an insult to the country, and that to not counter it in the fullest measure was to betray an article of faith. He was in Madras, at the home of his host Rajagopalachari (later to be the first Indian Governor General), when, as he writes in his autobiography, "The idea came last night in a dream that we should call upon the country to observe a general hartal (strike)". On April 6, without any formal organization, in an era without phones, photocopiers, or computers, word spread, and the entire country came to a standstill!

If Gandhi found a law permitting detention without trail by a foreign government abhorrent enough to launch a nationwide general strike, what is America doing when similar laws are being passed by its own government?

Answer: Not even a filibuster. Are there political leaders holding town hall meetings (electronic and otherwise) telling the people what this draconian legislation means? They are far too busy trying to dodge the accusation of being 'soft on terror'. As in 2002, this will not save them. Tony Snow warned today that their statements of doubt during the debate can and will be used against them in the campaign (proof that Miranda at least still lives, after a fashion). They are, in Sastri's words, "Toadies, Timid Men".

Following the hartal, in Punjab (where the Lt. Governor would shortly impose indignities such as a crawling lane where Indians could not walk, but only crawl), people assembled in a park in Amritsar on Baisakhi Day (the Punjabi New Year) on April 13, 1919, to protest the arrest of two activists. Known to history as Jallianwalla Bagh, the garden was enclosed all around by a wall. Gen. Reginald Dyer, head of the army in Punjab, said he wanted to provide Indians a "moral lesson", and had his troops fire into the enclosed space, resulting in the death of 379 people (by official count).

The rest (no pun intended) is history. After the Rowlatt Act and Jallianwala Bagh, the English lost any moral hold they had over the minds of Indians. The Great Hartal also signified the beginning of the Gandhi Era. Within thirty years, the Empire was finished. As a booklet on Jallianwalla Bagh says, "If at Plassey the foundations of the British Empire were laid, at Amritsar they were broken". In our times, having already disdained the law and being caught out by the Supreme Court, our Emperors are trying to rewrite the statute retroactively, assisted by a conscience-free Congress. That a reportedly sick man hiding in a cave in Waziristan has brought about the abolition of habeas corpus in America is the clearest verdict on who is winning the War on Terror.

In India, in 1976, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi passed a similar law, abolishing habeas corpus and setting herself unpunishable for any crimes committed before or during her office (it was repealed, lock stock and barrel, when a new government came to power). But before she could do so, the entire opposition had been arrested, the press had censorship clamped on it, and the jails filled with a hundred thousand dissenters picked up in midnight sweeps. India's parliament does not have a filibuster. The Democrats and Republicans who sold the country down the river have no similar defense, other than to say it has become a habit.

Where is the Martin Luther King today to call for civil disobedience? Where are the crowds outside the White House and Congress? The fight is no longer aganist the Bush administration or its minions in the other estates. Their Empire is headed for the abyss. The question, is, will it take the Republic along? Gandhi wrote in his Satyagraha in South Africa (whose 100th Anniverary fell on 9-11-2006!), that people came to him saying, "We are ready to follow you to the gallows". He replied, "Jail is enough for me." If the Republic is to be saved, those who love it must ask themselves what they are ready to give up in return. As for the rest, Samuel Adams (yes, the beer guy) had this answer:

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude than the animating contest of freedom, — go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!"

Why we are still getting it so wrong in the 'war on terror'

The ill-conceived and badly executed campaign in Iraq is directly responsible for spawning a new generation of terrorists

Henry Porter
Sunday October 1, 2006
The Observer

When Alexander the Great swept through Asia Minor in 337BC, he came to the impregnable mountain fortress of Termessos, not far from the modern-day Turkish city of Antalya. Termessos possessed a network of huge underground reservoirs and storerooms and, realising he would not bring the city to submission in a short time, Alexander ordered that the olive groves which provided Termessos with much of its income be levelled. It was an unusually spiteful act that was remembered for centuries afterwards.

I was reminded of the story when reading Patrick Cockburn's The Occupation, a vivid account of war and resistance in Iraq which is published by Verso this week. Cockburn describes a visit to Dhuluaya, a fruit-growing region 50 miles north of Baghdad, where, early on in the occupation, the American military cut down ancient date palms and orange and lemon trees as part of a collective punishment for farmers who had failed to inform them about guerrilla attacks. This vandalism will be remembered for generations because it was senseless and to the Iraqi mind powerfully symbolises the malice of the occupiers.

'At times,' Cockburn says of the period just after the invasion, 'it seemed as if the American military was determined to provoke an uprising.' Well, now they've got it, a ferocious war that in the last three months alone has cost 10,000 lives, most of them Iraqi. There seems no end to it and as Cockburn writes in his conclusion, instead of asserting America's position as the sole superpower, the occupation has amply demonstrated the limits of US power.

The precise opposite of the desired effect was also achieved in the idiotically named 'War on Terror'. By the admission of intelligence services on both sides of the Atlantic, Iraq has galvanised terrorism. Sections of a US National Intelligence estimate that were declassified last week say the war has become the 'cause celebre for jihadist' and that 'jihadists regard Europe as an important venue for attacking Western interests'. This is not the view of a few CIA desk officers, but the shared verdict of 16 branches of US intelligence.

At the end of bad week in publicity terms, the White House has to deal with Bob Woodward's new book, State of Denial, which reveals that Bush ignored the mounting insurrection in Iraq and that the White House was riven with disputes over the war between the Cheney/Rumsfeld faction and the former Secretary of State, Colin Powell, and Andrew Card, a former chief of staff. Rumsfeld is depicted as arrogant and contemptuous of other members of the administration as well as being totally disengaged from the details of occupying and reconstructing Iraq, which was then the Pentagon's responsibility.

There is an alarming sense of drift in the policy-making on both sides of the Atlantic, an unreality and, to use Woodward's word, denial. A leaked document, believed to have been written by a British MI6 officer attached to the Ministry of Defence, pulls no punches: 'The war on Iraq,' it says, 'has acted as a recruiting sergeant for extremists across the Muslim world... Iraq has served to radicalise an already disillusioned youth and al-Qaeda has given them the will, intent, purpose and ideology to act.'

Any number of commentators and some politicians, for instance, Al Gore, Senator Robert Byrd in the US and Ken Clarke and Robin Cook in Britain, predicted precisely this outcome in the run-up to the war. Bush and Blair never heeded the advice.

Only a tenth of the US document was published, but it is enough to undermine the campaign by the administration over the last few weeks to portray Iraq as an essential part of the war on terror and of making Americans safe at home. It's a lie of monumental proportions which exceeds even Downing Street's manipulation of the September 2002 WMD dossier.

Iraq has done the opposite of making America safe and with five weeks to go to the mid-term congressional elections, the Democrats now have an opportunity to make that case. Bill Clinton has urged his party to go on the offensive about the war and on Bush's woeful negligence over the threat posed by bin Laden. He went on Fox TV last Sunday and made the case about bin Laden in a pugnacious interview with Chris Wallace, pointing out that it was his successor, not he, who had downgraded the al-Qaeda threat and demoted the counterterror expert who so feared bin Laden.

Confirmation of the Bush administration's lassitude comes in Woodward's book. In July of 2001, two months before the September attacks, he reveals that the head of the CIA, George Tenet, and his counterterrorism chief, J Cofer Black, met Condoleezza Rice, then National Security Adviser, to impress upon her the seriousness of the intelligence about an attack. Both men felt that she had not taken the warnings seriously.

Five years on, it is still terribly important to fight for the accurate record of what happened. For instance, last week Jack Straw appeared on Question Time and stated that Tony Blair did not know until 'late' of America's plans to attack Iraq. That is not true. It has been established that on 22 September 2001, 11 days after the al-Qaeda attacks, Blair attended a dinner with Bush, Colin Powell and Christopher Meyer during which the attack on Iraq was raised not just as matter of idle speculation. Is that late? No, Blair was on board from a very early stage.

Given the state of Iraq, the diaspora of terror cells, the scandals of torture and extra- judicial punishment in Guantanomo and Britain, it is remarkable that Blair is still Prime Minister, that no member of the war cabinet has apologised for this calamitous record and that the Labour party has not signalled its remorse in the slightest way. Last week's conference was devoted to a series of setpieces in which those responsible for the greatest foreign policy disaster since the Second World War were allowed to posture in front of a largely compliant audience.

I had the advantage of reading and not seeing Blair's speech, which meant that I wasn't exposed to his demonic charm and did not fall into the swoon that afflicted so many colleagues. I urge you to find the speech on the Labour party website and read exactly what he said and, while you're about it, look up John Reid's speech, too. Both their statements on liberty are enough to give you an idea of the profound threat they represent to British democracy, to the traditions of open and accountable government, to the previous requirement that politicians accept responsibility for failed policies.

Blair's speech dealt with terrorism in the following sentences. 'This terrorism isn't our fault. We didn't cause it. It's not the consequence of foreign policy. It's an attack on our way of life.' He might have said that on 12 September 2001 and he would have been right, but five years later, it is his and Bush's response to the threat - the invasion of Iraq - that has provided stimulus to the growth of terrorism and made the clash of civilisations a frightening possibility. Nowhere in his speech did he acknowledge this. How could he without interfering with the delicate business of moulding his legacy?

Apparently, he wasn't heckled and no one in the hall fell off their chair laughing when he said he would dedicate the rest of his time in office to advancing peace between Israel and Palestinians. That agenda was his reason for wiring British foreign policy into the White House. But he got nowhere with Israel at a time when Bush needed him, which leads one to suppose that he doesn't have a hope in hell now that he has served Bush's purpose.

The only satisfaction to take out of this terrible episode is that the true account of what happened before the invasion of Iraq and why is being assembled despite Bush and Blair's efforts to distort the record. What we do now is an altogether harder task. It will need a new generation of leaders to attempt to right the wrongs and set the West on a new course. But they will always have the memories of senseless destruction to contend with.

SAVING AFGHANISTAN

Five Years Later
The Wild East

SPIEGEL Online
September 29, 2006


By Susanne Koelbl

Sheer desperation is driving many Afghans back into the arms of the fanatical Taliban movement. Once again, the holy warriors have taken control of entire regions and are seeking to ensnare the Western allies in a bloody guerilla war.

The two Western intelligence agents in Kabul can finally breathe a sigh of relief. This day, this bloody, violent day, is finally drawing to a close. It seems like the beginning of the end.

Bombs went off at hourly intervals in the Afghan capital. The first struck a military bus ferrying young Afghan soldiers downtown. Screaming, the blood-soaked officers scrambled through the shattered windows, flames licking at their uniforms. In all, 39 people were hurt. The next exploded beside a bus filled with employees from the Trade Ministry. Six civilians were seriously injured; one didn't make it to the hospital. A third blast in the eastern part of the city ripped apart another army transporter.


The two agents are sitting on the terrace fronting their office in the southwestern district of Karta-i-Se, sipping whisky. It's 8 p.m. The air is sultry as twilight slips its dark veil across the sky, creating the beguiling illusion of peace in the valley of Kabul 6,000 feet below. "I've got the solution," the younger of the two men says. He walks over to the map, takes a blue marker and colors in his deployment zone. It's an area he knows well, having reported on it every day for more than two years. "Kabul River," he scrawls across the shaded area. "Flood the place!" he says, taking another swig.

The other man nods. There are days when you feel like throwing in the towel.

The U.S. ambassador in Kabul, Ronald Neumann, knew that trouble was brewing. "It will be a bloody summer," he told SPIEGEL in May. And that's exactly how it turned out. There were four suicide attacks in 2004 and 17 in 2005. The Taliban's target for 2006: 500.

Neumann is a veteran among the diplomats in Kabul, the latest posting in his career. He has spent long periods in the Orient. Today he's sitting in his office in the newly-built U.S. Embassy on Great Massoud Road - in Kabul's government district. The compound resembles a fortress. A security detail in black shades and body armor, clutching semiautomatic weapons, keeps the ambassador from harm's way. U.S. diplomats only venture out as a last resort. Inside, surrounded by bullet-proof glass, is the United States: brown leather armchairs, the Stars and Stripes, photos of U.S. presidents on the wall.

Despite their sweeping conclusions and earth-shattering decisions, few Western politicians know much about Afghanistan. But Neumann knows it very well: as a young man, he traveled around the country. His father too was once ambassador here. Back then, at the end of the 1960s, this was a peaceful place, a backpacker's paradise. But it was also extremely poor and undeveloped. Outside the big cities, there were neither roads nor electricity. There are limits, Neumann knows, to how much progress this medieval society can make in such a short space of time. In those days, the Afghans had very few poppy fields. Today their country is a major drug producer.


Neumann had a brush with death in January. A suicide bomber blew himself up near a U.S. military base in the southern Pashtun province of Oruzgan - during one of Neumann's visits. There were 10 dead and 50 injured, but Neumann escaped unharmed. "These are difficult times," he says, chewing pensively on his pipe. But the diplomat still believes that this is "the path of progress."

Back at the end of 2001, toppling the Taliban was a cinch. The fundamentalists had no answer to the West's high-tech weaponry. Just a month after the Americans and British invaded, the religious fanatics slunk off to their hideouts in the mountains.

Now they are back.

Security experts refer to them as the neo-Taliban: a resurgent, motley crew consisting of Mullah Omar's former holy warriors, the mighty drug mafia, the troops of Islamist terror lord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Arabian and central Asian jihadists, and al Qaeda. All of them have gathered in the tribal areas bordering Pakistan and Afghanistan. And they have brought in new blood too: over the past few years, thousands of young fighters have been drafted from the refugee camps and impoverished villages, and drilled in boot camps in the Pashtun border region. The first major units are now ready for deployment.

The militias still receive infusions of cash from sponsors in Saudi Arabia and Egypt; both rich private donors and religious foundations generously fund their cause. But the poppy fields remain the Taliban's biggest money spinners. The spokesman for the one-eyed Mullah Omar announced the summer offensive to a British reporter via satellite telephone: "When the foreigners arrive, we will turn the country into a river of blood."

In the north of the country, Germany has assumed command of NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). It is responsible for nine provinces stretching along five borders between Turkmenistan and Pakistan. With its 2,800 soldiers, the unit has been targeted by repeated attacks. On June 27, a German officer noted in his field diary: "Today's attack points to a perpetrator as soulless as a butcher's dog."

That afternoon, a man had blown himself up in the middle of a busy street, not far from the hospital in eastern Kunduz province. He was trying to kill the Germans, but only managed to damage their vehicle. Two locals died; eight were seriously injured, the majority of them children.

The longer the Germans are here, the better they bond with the Afghans, the more the drug mafia and other powersthat-be see their interests threatened. "This conflict has taken on a new quality!" the officer concludes in his diary entry for that day. "We haven't lost heart yet, but our sparkling new vehicle has acquired some dents."

The British, who have command of the south, moved their troops into the Helmand province in May. They now talk openly of "war." A 63-page study by the Senlis Council - a British security and policy group - confirms the reports of people on the ground since the beginning of the year: heavily armed militiamen sporting long beards are now standing guard over the poppy fields. They are equipped with state-of-the-art satellite phones, new semiautomatic weapons and the gleaming Toyota pickups familiar from the days when the Taliban ran the show. The fundamentalists once again control large parts of Afghanistan's southern and eastern provinces. Their law now applies in Disho, Sangin and Baghran, all districts of Helmand. Music and Western clothing are forbidden, men are not permitted to shave, and praying five times a day is mandatory. Women are not allowed to work and may only leave home wearing veils and in the company of men.

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A vicious circle has driven the population back into the arms of the Islamists: the Taliban's withdrawal created a power vacuum in the country's main opium hub. The central government, international troops and aid organizations showed little interest in the residents - who live in miserable conditions, cut off from civilization and dependent for survival on feudal overlords. The only outsiders passing through the region were U.S. soldiers on missions and American warplanes that bombed villages suspected of harboring terrorists. This past spring, international teams arrived to destroy the poppy harvest, threatening the locals' livelihoods without offering viable alternatives.

Whenever foreigners came, they were hostile. The Taliban offered protection.

The dusty mountains on the border to Pakistan are the setting for a lopsided conflict. On one side are the Afghan guerrillas with their hit-and-run tactics: fast, mobile, with light equipment and a capability for self-sacrifice that beggars belief in the West. On the other is the ultra-modern army from the West, NATO and the United States. This force enjoys technological superiority. But there's a chink in its armor: its low tolerance of casualties. Military experts refer to this as asymmetrical warfare.

"Are we on a slippery slope?" a German security adviser asks in Berlin. The man is paying a flying visit to the capital; his desk is located somewhere abroad - he declines to specify where. He has been more deeply involved in the Afghanistan operation than almost anyone else. He knows all the data, the facts and the key players. His counsel is in high demand among government officials. He restates his rhetorical question: "Are we already losing control?"

The security expert knows all the bad tidings from Afghanistan. But the mission has also been a success, he claims. The Afghanistan that was once a haven for international terrorism has disappeared from the map. The Taliban may hope to dominate the country and its drugs, he says, but they never had much time for Osama bin Laden's political ambitions. Although bin Laden remains at large, he is no longer running al Qaeda. He's a marked man, in hiding, the adviser says.

The German was sitting at the table at the Petersberg Conference outside Bonn nearly five years ago, as officials talked of nation building - bringing democracy and civil institutions to the badlands of Afghanistan. Out of thin air, they conjured up the transitional government headed by the universally respected Pashtun leader Hamid Karzai. After more than 23 years of war and chaos, the Loya Jirga - the country's traditional forum for tribal representatives - reconvened. King Zahir Shah returned from exile in Italy, a symbol of unity in a fragmented state that more than 20 ethnic factions call their home. Each faction dispatched representatives to greet the returning monarch at the airport. The first presidential elections in the country's history were largely free and fair. People traveled on foot for days to cast their votes in the nearest city.

The Afghans believed wholeheartedly in a new dawn. A parliament was elected, the new constitution adopted. A police force, army and department of justice are currently being established. The books show that the plan dreamed up at the Petersberg Conference has been implemented. "But it's all a sham. There's no substance," says the security expert,

slowly emptying a sachet of sugar into his coffee. He was in Somalia. He was in the Balkans. He has no illusions. It was a good plan. Countries gave generously. To date, $6 billion have been spent on the reconstruction effort, an additional $10.5 billion earmarked for the next five years.

Then the international relief workers descended on Kabul. Suddenly, hundreds of foreigners were racing around the city in new Toyota land cruisers and setting up home in Wazir Akbar Khan, the old villa district. Noisy generators run day and night in this skeleton of a city - producing electricity for its foreigners and water pumps. Monthly rents for houses have soared to an average of $5,000 - 20 times the annual income of most Afghans.

Now hordes of Westerners are chauffeured to the ministries of a morning, and picked up in air-conditioned vehicles of an afternoon. The foreigners have brought new customs to the capital as well; jeans are now on sale, although many women still walk the streets in burkas. Every Thursday, before the Afghan weekend starts, UNHAS - the UN air service that transports embassy and aid organization employees around the country - registers a miraculous spike in passengers to Kabul from the provinces: It's party time! And the revelry behind the façades of the capital's aging mansions is as riotous as anything to be found in Berlin or New York.

At a French shipping company's toga bash, men donned fake laurel wreathes, bared their torsos, wrapped themselves in sheets and pranced around like Roman emperors. At the garden party arranged by an international consulting firm, hundreds of foreigners whooped it up until the wee hours, dancing amid a decorative backdrop of camels. Strictly outlawed in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, alcohol flowed freely.

The Afghans have always been conservative but moderate Muslims. They are accepting toward different cultures and willing to share their last meal with guests: "He who does not share his bread will die alone," a proverb states. The outlanders are far less magnanimous: a Turkish road construction company with a contract from the Americans pays its Afghan employees $90 a month. The company's Turkish workers earn 10 times as much. "They don't appreciate us," an indignant Afghan engineer complains.

A major in the 203rd Afghan Corps in the eastern province of Paktia can find few charitable words for his U.S. comrades in arms. He bemoans their arrogance, the way they treat the locals. Afghans traveling in open trucks are used as human shields for convoys, while the GIs sit secure in their Humvees, he complains. And in the evening, the Americans tuck into turkey washed down with Coca-Cola, while the Afghans survive off dry nan bread and green tea: "The Soviet occupying forces treated my father better than our American friends treat us."

A leading consultant imported from the United States or Europe costs up to $500,000 a year. This includes security arrangements, living expenses, and his company's cut. Former deputy finance minister Seema Ghani Masomi fired no less than six consultants for "incompetence." In its report on Afghanistan, CorpWatch - a U.S.-based corporate watchdog - concluded that the companies were more interested in making money than helping the people. Thousands of foreign experts have been dispatched to Afghanistan.

The consulting firms in Kabul have been given multi-million-dollar budgets from their governments to establish a central bank and three ministries: Finance, Justice and Commerce. They have also been tasked with slowing poppy cultivation and finding alternative sources of income for the farmers. Their remit further extends to building schools, roads and hospitals.

Today Kabul boasts a few glitzy malls and a five-star hotel. International restaurants have sprung up. Store shelves are overflowing with products from Pakistan and Iran. And the construction business is booming. Children - including plenty of girls - have gone back to school. But the daily lot of most Afghans has scarcely improved. Water is only available by the hour in the capital. The cratered roads still look like moonscapes. And in many areas, electricity is an infrequent privilege. Outside the cities, the situation is even grimmer. Afghanistan remains one of the poorest countries on earth. It has the world's highest child mortality rate; life expectancy is very low.

Any Afghan wanting to register a car or apply for a phone line needs to bribe half a dozen officials. Even today, court proceedings are often unfair: people have to buy their jailed relatives' freedom. The experiences of Abdul Rahman Jawid, who was threatened with the death penalty for converting to Christianity, sparked outrage worldwide. The case was an eyeopener for Afghanistan's Western patrons, underscoring the difficulties of creating credible institutions, and highlighting how far the country is from affording basic human rights - equality, religious freedom, and personal liberties.

American taxpayers would be stunned to hear where their tax dollars were actually going, the CorpWatch report says: beyond being wasted on failed projects, it helped pay for "contractors' prostitutes and imported cheeses." The CorpWatch investigators spent months monitoring the flow of international funds and concluded that business-savvy representatives of donor nations rather than Afghans were the real beneficiaries.

The U.S. government lavished $150 million on the private security firm DynCorp. Its mission: to close down Afghanistan's poppy fields. Ninety Americans and 550 Afghans set about the task. The result: thousands of extremely irate farmers who - despite having their crops destroyed - were denied realistic compensation.

The Rendon Group from Washington, D.C. was charged with winning public support for the United States and its military in Afghanistan. According to CorpWatch, the PR firm - which reportedly has close ties to the Bush administration - has received contracts worth more than $56 million since September 11, 2001. It has failed miserably in Afghanistan: never before have the Americans and their allies been as unpopular as they are today.

The euphoria that greeted Americans in Kabul on Nov. 13, 2001 has long been replaced by suspicion. Today many Afghans regard the erstwhile liberators as occupiers.

The disenchantment is mutual: Afghans are convinced that the world's only superpower views their country as a base for pursuing its geostrategic interests. The Americans, in turn, have lost patience with a corrupt, feudalistic society that is turning increasingly to crime and showing no intention of metamorphosing into a modern, Western-style democracy - least of all at the desired pace. Even Hamid Karzai's star appears to be fading rapidly. Once the country's beacon of hope, the Afghan president now seems weak and ineffectual. Karzai is trying to keep everyone happy - the Americans, the warlords and the drug czars - many of whom have been given powerful positions in the interests of political stability.

"Any man dealing with drugs cannot be honorable. He will be prosecuted, no matter what position he holds," Karzai pledged in a SPIEGEL interview two years ago. But no drug runner has been indicted or sentenced to this day, although the Afghan secret service knows their identities and reportedly has actionable evidence against 48 of the National Assembly's 351 members.

The newly restructured NATO has tied its fate to the success of the Afghan mission. That may not have been the wisest of moves. But what hope is there for NATO as a global police force if it cannot even bring peace to Afghanistan?

A total of 80,000 Pakistani troops patrol the 1,500 mile-long Afghan border, but the terrorists have no problems slipping through their lines. The mountainous terrain is regarded as a safe haven for the endless streams of jihadists and, more recently, for fighters from the Muslim part of Kashmir.

The Afghans claim that Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, encourages terrorism so that he can weaken, and thus easily influence, his neighbor. As a result, the two heads of state are now at loggerheads. Musharraf, however, cannot control many parts of his own country, most notably the self-governing tribal areas in the North-West Frontier Province and Balochistan.

Almost all the adversaries of NATO and the Americans in Afghanistan today are old friends. In the 1980s, the United States supported and venerated Taliban leader Mullah Omar as a Mujahideen commander. In those days, the Pashtun terror overlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar received the lion's share of the foreign military aid. And the Taliban's new field commander, Jalaluddin Haqqani, also earned his spurs as a so-called freedom fighter against the Soviets. In December 1979, the communists launched their invasion of Afghanistan. The nightmarish conflict lasted a decade and cost some 14,000 Soviet soldiers their lives - dealing a severe body blow to the world's second superpower and heralding its final collapse.

So what should we do? German officials have frequently asked the security adviser this question. His answer is always the same: We should set more modest goals and, having attained them, bring the German soldiers home. Perhaps that would be enough to prevent Afghanistan from sliding back into civil war and serving as a hub of international terrorism: "Why should we impose our democratic ideals on Afghanistan, a country with rich traditions of its own?" he asks.

Exhausted, he rubs his eyes. He knows how politics work. The politicians, of course, will ignore his advice, and we will carry on regardless, he says. "Because we never ask ourselves the right questions."

Is your daughter a future detainee?

What the media didn't tell you about the new anti-terror bill or Bush's power grab

Satire by Evan Eisenberg

We'll Always Have Geneva

From The Nation Magazine
posted September 29, 2006 (web only)
Evan Eisenberg

"A senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said in an interview that Bush essentially got what he asked for in a different formulation that allows both sides [Bush and dissident Republican senators] to maintain their concerns were addressed. 'We kind of take the scenic route, but we get there,' the official said." --Washington Post

MILITARY COMMISSIONS ACT OF 2006

SEC. 8 - IMPLEMENTATION OF TREATY OBLIGATIONS

(a) IN GENERAL. -- For the purposes of all proceedings in courts of law, whether domestic, foreign, or international, to which the United States, or a current or former officer, employee, member of the Armed Forces, or other agent of the United States, is a party, the term "Violations of the Geneva Conventions" shall be replaced by the term "Violations of the Geneva Conventions Even By American Standards."

(b) REVISION TO WAR CRIMES OFFENSE UNDER FEDERAL CRIMINAL CODE.--(1) Section 2441 of title 18, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the following new subsection:

ACTIONS WHICH MAY OR MAY NOT CONSTITUTE VIOLATIONS OF THE GENEVA CONVENTIONS EVEN BY AMERICAN STANDARDS.

(A) INDUCED HYPOTHERMIA--No prisoner shall be kept for a period exceeding forty-eight (48) hours at a temperature below that of the meat locker of a Safeway, Stop & Shop, or other major supermarket chain, and doused with cold water at a frequency greater than twice per hour, unless permitted to wear appropriate clothing.
(i) For the purposes of paragraph (A), "appropriate clothing" shall be defined as follows: (a) For male prisoners, thong panties and strapless brassieres, or, in the case of low-value suspects, teddies; (b) for female prisoners, cowboy boots.

(B) SIMULATED DROWNING--No prisoner shall be continuously subjected to simulated drowning ("waterboarding") for a period longer than sixty (60) minutes by an interrogator who has not, during the previous thirty (30) years, engaged on at least one occasion in (a) skateboarding, (b) surfboarding, (c) wakeboarding, (d) boogieboarding, or (e) sitting for a College Board examination.

(C) LONG-TIME STANDING--No prisoner shall be forced to stand erect for a period exceeding forty-eight (48) hours, unless permitted to shift his or her weight from foot to foot.

(D) EAR-SPLITTING MUSIC--No prisoner shall be subjected, for a period exceeding twenty-four (24) hours, to music at a volume exceeding that of the explosion of a two-ton cruise missile heard from a distance of fifteen (15) yards.
(i) For the purposes of paragraph (D), "music" shall be defined as recordings by (a) the Oak Ridge Boys, (b) the Knack, (c) John Fogerty, (d) Joni Mitchell, (e) George Jones, (f) John Hiatt, and (g) such other artists as the President may, from time to time, choose to download.
(ii) Recordings and live performances by other artists, such as Eminem or the Red Hot Chili Peppers, are not restricted under the terms of paragraph (D).

(E) ATTENTION SLAP--No prisoner shall be struck brutally in the face more than once in a ten-minute period unless (i) the interrogator determines that the prisoner's attention has wandered; (ii) the prisoner says, "Thanks, I needed that"; or (iii) the interrogator determines that the prisoner would have said "Thanks, I needed that," were said prisoner conversant with the conventions of John Wayne movies.

(F) ACTIONS THAT SHOCK THE CONSCIENCE--No prisoner shall be subjected to actions that shock the conscience.
(i) In order to meet the standard set out in paragraph (F), the shock sustained by the specified conscience must be the equivalent of that sustained by a person whose testicles have been wired to a 120-volt power source.
(ii) The conscience to be shocked shall be that of the less susceptible to shock of the following: (a) the person holding the office of Vice President of the United States as of September 20, 2006, or (b) Quentin Tarantino.

(G) EVIDENCE WITHHELD FROM THE ACCUSED -- The accused shall have the right to see all evidence presented against him or her, except for evidence classified as secret for reasons of national security, in which case the accused shall have the right to see a faithful translation of the evidence into (i) Akkadian, (ii) Sumerian, or (iii) Ugaritic.

(H) CONVICTION ON THE BASIS OF EVIDENCE OBTAINED BY PROHIBITED MEANS--No person shall be convicted on the basis of information obtained by means prohibited in subsection (d), paragraphs (A) through (G), unless such person (i) cannot be convicted on the basis of information obtained by other means, or (ii) is just obviously guilty.

(I) OUTSOURCING OF TORTURE--No prisoner shall be transferred into the custody of a foreign government unless a determination has been made, by the relevant agency, that such prisoner cannot be tortured perfectly well by an American.

(c) INTERPRETATION BY THE PRESIDENT.--The actions specified by nullifying conditions in Subsection (d) shall constitute Violations of the Geneva Conventions Even By American Standards until such time as the President shall determine that they shall not.

(d) HABEAS CORPUS MATTERS.--Section 2241 of Title 28, United States Code, is amended--
(1) by striking subsection (e) (as added by section 1005(e)(1) of Public Law 109-148 (119 Stat. 2742)) and by striking subsection (e) (as added by added by section 1405(e)(1) of Public Law 109-163 (119 Stat. 3477)); and
(2) On second thought, let's save everyone a lot of paperwork and just strike the whole Constitution.

(e) COVERING OUR ASS.--The amendments made by this section shall apply retroactively to any act committed, commanded, encouraged, condoned, winked at, or blithely ignored by any current or former officer, employee, agent, consultant, contractor, subcontractor, or Chief Executive of the United States after 12 o'clock noon (Eastern Time) on January 20, 2001.

Profiles in Cowardice

On prisoner abuse and detention, President Bush finds enablers in both parties.

Washington Post
Editorial

Sunday, October 1, 2006

ONCE AGAIN, with a midterm election looming, President Bush stoked and won a major legislative confrontation over a complex national security question. Four years ago, it was the Iraq war resolution and reorganization of the government's homeland security functions. In both cases, hindsight suggests that haste and political pressure foreclosed the kind of nuanced debate that might have served the nation well. The same is likely to prove true of legislation passed last week on the treatment, detention and trial of enemy combatants.

But the artificial emergency Mr. Bush created has served his political purpose. His goal was to press opponents to cave to his will, against their better judgment, or to create an issue allowing his party to tar the opposition as soft on terrorism. In this case, thanks in part to the Democrats' weak-hearted abdication, he got both.

Congress had to act immediately, Mr. Bush insisted, or else terrorists could not face justice and the CIA could not interrogate the enemy. But the president says the CIA is not holding anyone, and the administration has dawdled for years without getting military trials off the ground. The only relevant deadline was Nov. 7.

Mr. Bush must bear responsibility for his cynical pursuit of the wrong answer, but he could not have prevailed without a lot of help. Republicans in both chambers, forgetting that Congress is supposed to be an independent branch, snapped to attention when the president told them what to do. At least some of them obviously knew better. Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) courageously championed an amendment to restore the judicial oversight that Mr. Bush opposed. When his amendment failed on a 51 to 48 vote, the senator said he would vote against the bill, calling it "patently unconstitutional on its face." Then he voted for it. The bill, he explained, had good points, and the courts "will clean it up."

Democrats hoped that they could duck behind Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and two other Republicans who for a time fought a lonely fight for a better bill. When the three renegades settled for very little, the Democrats were left exposed, and it wasn't pretty. Nearly all of them voted for Mr. Specter's amendment, yet 12 -- including Joe Lieberman (Conn.) and three other senators facing reelection -- voted for the bill afterward. The rest contented themselves by voting no but did not lift a finger to slow it down or stop it.

"By allowing this administration to further stretch the definition of what is and is not torture," Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) said, "we lower our moral standards to those whom we despise, undermine the values of our flag wherever it flies, put our troops in danger and jeopardize our moral strength in a conflict that cannot be won simply with military might." Stirring words -- but apparently not stirring enough to justify a filibuster.

Only a couple of weeks ago, the Senate was poised to move constructive legislation that would have given the administration the tools it needs but not the power to disappear people into secret prisons and interrogate them using techniques too shameful to name in public. Yet Mr. Bush's pressure tactics worked again. He has the lamentable legislation he wanted -- which will bring discredit onto this country in any number of ways -- and Republicans are busily blasting Democrats as terrorist-coddlers anyway.

Amnesty Slams Pakistan for torture

Terror suspects tortured, claims Amnesty report

Declan Walsh in Kabul
Friday September 29, 2006
The Guardian

Amnesty International accused Pakistan of widespread human rights violations in support of America's "war on terror" as the Pakistani president, General Pervez Musharraf, visited the UK today.

Hundreds of terrorism suspects have been arbitrarily detained since 2001, many of whom have been tortured or forcibly "disappeared", according to Amnesty. The allegations add to the controversy surrounding Gen Musharraf.

The Amnesty report focuses on Pakistan's capture of more than 600 al-Qaida suspects since 2001. Gen Musharraf has boasted of the arrests as proof of his commitment to the fight against al-Qaida. In his new memoirs, In the Line of Fire, he claims that the CIA has paid Pakistan hundreds of millions of dollars in bounty payments for the capture of 369 al-Qaida suspects since 2001.

Article continues
The US justice department has denied making the payments.

This year Gen Musharraf and his chief spokesman have variously claimed 500-1,000 arrests. But Amnesty says the arrests were outside the law and led into the world of secretive detention, where torture and extrajudicial killing are rife.

Typically detainees are held at safe houses in Pakistan run by the ISI intelligence agency before being moved to US-controlled facilities in Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay or Middle Eastern countries.

American officials participated in some arrests and may have been involved in torture, according to Amnesty.

Pakistani officials deny wrongdoing and point to their successes, including the arrests of the 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Muhammad and Abu Farj al-Libbi, described as al-Qaida's number three. But Pakistani officials have also picked up hundreds of small figures, some of whom have disappeared or been killed.

Racing to allow torture

Rushing Off a Cliff

New York Times
Editorial
September 28, 2006


Here’s what happens when this irresponsible Congress railroads a profoundly important bill to serve the mindless politics of a midterm election: The Bush administration uses Republicans’ fear of losing their majority to push through ghastly ideas about antiterrorism that will make American troops less safe and do lasting damage to our 217-year-old nation of laws — while actually doing nothing to protect the nation from terrorists. Democrats betray their principles to avoid last-minute attack ads. Our democracy is the big loser.

Republicans say Congress must act right now to create procedures for charging and trying terrorists — because the men accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks are available for trial. That’s pure propaganda. Those men could have been tried and convicted long ago, but President Bush chose not to. He held them in illegal detention, had them questioned in ways that will make real trials very hard, and invented a transparently illegal system of kangaroo courts to convict them.

It was only after the Supreme Court issued the inevitable ruling striking down Mr. Bush’s shadow penal system that he adopted his tone of urgency. It serves a cynical goal: Republican strategists think they can win this fall, not by passing a good law but by forcing Democrats to vote against a bad one so they could be made to look soft on terrorism.

Last week, the White House and three Republican senators announced a terrible deal on this legislation that gave Mr. Bush most of what he wanted, including a blanket waiver for crimes Americans may have committed in the service of his antiterrorism policies. Then Vice President Dick Cheney and his willing lawmakers rewrote the rest of the measure so that it would give Mr. Bush the power to jail pretty much anyone he wants for as long as he wants without charging them, to unilaterally reinterpret the Geneva Conventions, to authorize what normal people consider torture, and to deny justice to hundreds of men captured in error.

These are some of the bill’s biggest flaws:

Enemy Combatants: A dangerously broad definition of “illegal enemy combatant” in the bill could subject legal residents of the United States, as well as foreign citizens living in their own countries, to summary arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of appeal. The president could give the power to apply this label to anyone he wanted.

The Geneva Conventions: The bill would repudiate a half-century of international precedent by allowing Mr. Bush to decide on his own what abusive interrogation methods he considered permissible. And his decision could stay secret — there’s no requirement that this list be published.

Habeas Corpus: Detainees in U.S. military prisons would lose the basic right to challenge their imprisonment. These cases do not clog the courts, nor coddle terrorists. They simply give wrongly imprisoned people a chance to prove their innocence.

Judicial Review: The courts would have no power to review any aspect of this new system, except verdicts by military tribunals. The bill would limit appeals and bar legal actions based on the Geneva Conventions, directly or indirectly. All Mr. Bush would have to do to lock anyone up forever is to declare him an illegal combatant and not have a trial.

Coerced Evidence: Coerced evidence would be permissible if a judge considered it reliable — already a contradiction in terms — and relevant. Coercion is defined in a way that exempts anything done before the passage of the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act, and anything else Mr. Bush chooses.

Secret Evidence: American standards of justice prohibit evidence and testimony that is kept secret from the defendant, whether the accused is a corporate executive or a mass murderer. But the bill as redrafted by Mr. Cheney seems to weaken protections against such evidence.

Offenses: The definition of torture is unacceptably narrow, a virtual reprise of the deeply cynical memos the administration produced after 9/11. Rape and sexual assault are defined in a retrograde way that covers only forced or coerced activity, and not other forms of nonconsensual sex. The bill would effectively eliminate the idea of rape as torture.

There is not enough time to fix these bills, especially since the few Republicans who call themselves moderates have been whipped into line, and the Democratic leadership in the Senate seems to have misplaced its spine. If there was ever a moment for a filibuster, this was it.

We don’t blame the Democrats for being frightened. The Republicans have made it clear that they’ll use any opportunity to brand anyone who votes against this bill as a terrorist enabler. But Americans of the future won’t remember the pragmatic arguments for caving in to the administration.

They’ll know that in 2006, Congress passed a tyrannical law that will be ranked with the low points in American democracy, our generation’s version of the Alien and Sedition Acts.

But, before we blame Jon Stewart .....

But, before we blame Jon Stewart for the Mushy episode

Did Jon really have any choice in the matter?

Comedy Central is owned by Viacom, which also owns CBS and Simon & Schuster, you know, the publisher of Musharraf’s fictionalized account.

See a Pattern?

Jon Stewart and Mush have tea

for the record - I (MsMitty) love the Daily Show



Jon Stewart Praises a Dictator
David Wallechinsky

It is bad enough that the Bush administration is buddy-buddy with Pakistan's dictator, General Pervez Musharraf, but now we have to deal someone respectable, Jon Stewart, acting the same way. On The Daily Show on September 26, Stewart told Musharraf, "You're doing a wonderful job." Really?

In my book, Tyrants: The World's 20 Worst Living Dictators, I include a chapter on Gen.
Musharraf.

Among the facts about him worth keeping in mind:

• Musharraf seized power in a military coup that overthrew an elected government.
• Before 9/11, Musharraf was the leading foreign supporter of the Taliban.
• He gave a full pardon to Abdul Qadeer Khan after it was revealed that Khan had shared nuclear technology with the dictatorships of North Korea, Iran and Libya.
• According to the U.S. State Department's most recent report on human rights practices in Pakistan, "The government's human rights record was poor, and serious problems remained. The following human rights problems were reported:
• restrictions on citizens' right to change their government
• extrajudicial killings, torture, and rape
• poor prison conditions, arbitrary arrest, and lengthy pretrial detention
• violations of due process and privacy rights
• lack of judicial independence
• harassment, intimidation, and arrest of journalists
• limits on freedom of association, religion, and movement
• imprisonment of political leaders
• corruption
• legal and societal discrimination against women
• child abuse
• trafficking in women and children, and child prostitution
• discrimination against persons with disabilities
• indentured, bonded, and child labor
• restriction of worker rights"

The U.S. State Department goes on to add, "Security force personnel continued to torture persons in custody throughout the country. Human rights organizations reported that methods included beating, burning with cigarettes, whipping the soles of the feet, prolonged isolation, electric shock, denial of food or sleep, hanging upside down, and forced spreading of the legs with bar fetters. Security force personnel reportedly raped women and children during interrogations. The nongovernmental organization (NGO) Lawyers for Human Rights and Legal Aid recorded 1,356 cases of torture during the year."

With all due respect to Jon Stewart, I hope that he will reconsider his claim that Musharraf is "doing a wonderful job."
__________________

Human Rights Watch asks Bush not to Turn Blind Eye on Torture, Discrimination Against Women

All the News Our Tiny Minds Can Manage

By Tom Engelhardt
Nation BLOG | Posted 09/26/2006 @ 08:00am

For a little thought experiment, go to the website of Newsweek's international edition. There, running down the left side of the page, are three covers, all the same, for the European, Asian, and Latin American editions of the October 2 issue.

Each has a dramatic shot of a Taliban fighter shouldering an RPG (rocket-propelled grenade). The cover headline is: "Losing Afghanistan," pointing to a devastating piece on our Afghan War by Ron Moreau, Sami Yousafzai, and Michael Hirsh, "The Rise of Jihadistan." which sports this subhead: "Five years after the Afghan invasion, the Taliban are fighting back hard, carving out a sanctuary where they--and Al Qaeda's leaders--can operate freely." The piece begins: "You don't have to drive very far from Kabul these days to find the Taliban." (In fact, the magazine's reporters found a gathering of 100 of them in a village just a two-hour drive south of the Afghan capital.)

Now, go back to the international edition and take another look. Scroll down the page to the cover which doesn't match the others. That's the one for Newsweek's US edition. No Taliban fighter. No RPG. Instead, a photo of an ash-blond woman with three young children dressed in white, one in her arms, and the headline: "My Life in Pictures." The woman turns out to be Annie Liebovitz, photographer of the stars, and the story by Cathleen McGuigan, "Through Her Lens," has this Taliban-free first line: "Annie Leibovitz is tired and nursing a cold, and she' s just flown back to New York on the red-eye from Los Angeles, where she spent two days shooting Angelina Jolie for Vogue."

"The Rise of Jihadism" is still inside, of course; now, a secondary story. After all, Angelina Jolie is ours, while a distant botch of a war in Afghanistan..? As the magazine's editors clearly concluded, while the rest of the world considers the return of the Taliban, let us eat cake.

.....a day later the Washington Post carries the same story.

NB: the Washington Post and Newsweek are commonly owned.

……meanwhile in England

Reid meets the furious face of Islam

By Philip Johnston,
Filed: 21/09/2006

John Reid, the Home Secretary, came face to face with the intolerance of militant Islam yesterday as he urged Muslim parents to stand up to the extremists and keep their children from being "groomed" to be suicide bombers.

During a speech in east London he was shouted down by Abu Izzadeen, a well-known fundamentalist who has been linked to a now banned organisation and who praised the ''martyrdom" of suicide bombers after the July 7 attacks in London last year.

The speech had been trailed by the Home Office and protesters were waiting at a youth centre in Leytonstone waving placards with the slogans ''John Reid go to Hell" and ''John Reid you will pay".

Mr Izzadeen, dressed in a long white robe and turban, told Mr Reid: "How dare you come to a Muslim area when you have arrested so many Muslims in this area?

"I am furious. I am absolutely furious — John Reid should not come to a Muslim area. We do not want to see him. Shame on all of us for sitting down and listening to him."

He shouted: "John Reid, Tony Blair and George Bush's crusade can all go to Hell."

The outburst lasted about five minutes before the heavily built Mr Izzadeen, 30, was ushered out of the building to continue his demonstration in the street.

Mr Reid was addressing a small group of Muslims about the dangers of fundamentalism, while praising the commitment of the majority to the ''shared values" of equality and justice.

It was as he was listing the Muslim countries that had been attacked by terrorists that Mr Izzadeen started to berate him. A woman who tried to intervene was told to shut up.

Mr Reid said he was used to being heckled but was angered by the suggestion that he should not be in "a Muslim area". He said there were no places in Britain where a home secretary could not go.

''We must never allow ourselves to be intimidated or shouted down," he said. "There will always be people who are not prepared to take part in a dialogue… They are not confined to the Muslim community."

In his first speech to a Muslim audience since he became Home Secretary, Mr Reid sought to join Cabinet colleagues in "a hearts and minds" assault aimed at separating the mainstream Muslims from the extremists.

He dismissed the idea of "a clash of civilisations" between the West and Islam, a debate that has been renewed since Pope Benedict's comments last week.

Mr Reid said the perception of Islam had been hijacked by activists who used religion to cloak their militancy. He said they were not Muslims "in the true sense of the word" but were waging a violent and indiscriminate war.

The communities that harboured them should be more aware of their presence and be prepared to stand up to them, although he knew that was not easy.

Mr Reid was especially anxious to send a message to Muslim parents about the dangers posed by extremists.

"These fanatics are looking to groom and brainwash children, including your children, for suicide bombings," he said. "Grooming them to kill themselves to murder others.

"Look for the tell-tale signs now and talk to them before their hatred grows and you risk losing them for ever."

Mr Reid was then interrupted by Anjem Choudary, a leading Islamic militant, who held up a placard and shouted: "Enemy of Islam and the Muslims."

Mr Choudary said later that he objected to the insinuation that Muslim children might be brainwashed.

"Muslims do not need British values," he said. ''We believe that Islam is superior; we believe Islam will be implemented one day.

"It is very rich for you to come here and say we need to monitor our children when your Government is murdering people in Iraq and Afghanistan." Residents were also unconvinced by the message. Shankat Khan, 55, said that Mr Reid should not single out Muslims. "What about the British parents?" he asked. "We are as worried as other parents but we need to be part of a wider society."

[..]

______________________

Dialogue?

Abu Izzadeen is not interested in the dialogue that the heckle by its very nature is supposed to encourage. He simply wants to shut down free speech. A rabble-rouser, he has praised the "courage" of the July 7 bombers, described their victims as "animals" and "cowards", and said that Christians and Jews are bound for "hell-fire".


Just the sort of man, you would have thought, who should be dealt with under the 2006 Terrorism Act, which makes it an offence to say anything which "glorifies the commission or preparation" of acts of terrorism. Fat chance. There has not been a single prosecution under this legislation, so pusillanimous are the authorities when dealing with Muslim fanaticism.

Yet while Abu Izzadeen is free to preach his loathsome message, he reacts like a scalded cat when the Home Secretary delivers an uncompromising message to the Muslim community. [.]

Regrettably, Abu Izzadeen's objection to Mr Reid's "lecturing" Muslims is shared by many in the wider Muslim community who argue that they are being unfairly targeted. It is easy to appreciate their frustrations but the sad truth is that it was Muslim fanatics – not Christian or Jewish or Hindu – who murdered 52 people last July, and the notion that this reality cannot be recognised for fear of offending Muslim sensibilities is dangerous.

Pre-emptive surrender

So the Pope apologizes, Germany cancels a Mozart Opera… who’s winning the war on terrorism?

At least some in Germany don’t think censorship a good idea.

Spiegel calls it a “ shocking example of pre-emptive surrender: At this point, it seems, terrorists don't even need to issue a specific threat in order to intimidate us.”

---------------------
Rushdie, Hirsi Ali, the Pope -- Who's Next?

SPIEGEL ONLINE - September 18, 2006, 03:34 PM



By Claus Christian Malzahn in Berlin

The pope has apologized for the outrage amongst Muslims sparked by his recent comments. But the episode proves once again that criticizing Islam is dangerous.

Twenty years ago in the German city of Bremen, Dutch comedian Rudi Carrell's life depended on police protection. His offense? In a satirical program on German television, he let fly with a lewd joke about the then leader of the Iranian revolution Ayatollah Khomeini. Mass demonstrations in Iran -- orchestrated, no doubt, by the government -- were the result. The threats of violence led to an apology by Carrell, and he never again made a joke about any Muslim -- at least not on television.

In February 1989, the Ayatollah then released a fatwa calling for the murder of Salman Rushdie for his novel "The Satanic Verses." The book, he and other Muslim leaders claimed, was a grave misrepresentation of Islam. Rushdie's Japanese translator lost his life as a result of the fatwa and Rushdie himself went into hiding, though the Iranian leadership distanced itself from the fatwa in 1998. There remain, however, a number of fanatical Muslims who yearn to see Rushdie dead.

Feminist and Islam critic Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the former Dutch parliamentarian who recently left Holland, also lives under threat of murder. In addition to a number of interesting books about the oppression faced by women in the Muslim world, she also wrote the screenplay for the short film "Submission." In one scene, a verse from the Koran -- demanding that women bend to the will of their husbands -- is projected onto a woman's naked body. The film was provocative, and the filmmaker Theo van Gogh paid for it with his life. He was killed on the streets of Amsterdam by a Muslim fanatic.

And then there's Flemming Rose, the Danish editor who a year ago published a series of Muhammad caricatures in his newspaper. Months after they originally appeared, the Muslim world erupted in protest against the drawings. He too must fear for his life.

One thing should be kept in mind, however: The often violent protests that erupted in the Muslim world in the wake of the cartoon controversy have often been manipulated and fuelled by Islamists. The bile currently being flung at the pope is no different.


But the attacks against the pope are especially grotesque. The severe criticism -- often coupled with threats of violence -- directed at the speech held last Tuesday by Benedict XVI is not just an attack on the head of the Catholic Church. The malicious twisting of the pope's words and the absurd allegations made by representatives of Islam represent a frontal attack on open religious and philosophical dialogue.

That so many in the Muslim world joined the protests against the pope merely show just how influential Islamist extremist groups have become. The political goal of the Islamists is clear: any dispute between Christianity and Islam must obey the rules handed down by political Islamism.

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Bending to this demand would be a mistake -- indeed it would be tantamount to turning one's back on freedom of expression and opinion. What will come next? Perhaps a complaint that Allah feels insulted by the numerous European women who don bikinis during a summer trip to the beach. It could be anything really -- militant Islamists will always find something. But the response needs to be firm. Freedom of speech, after all, is a vital value and needs to be defended. Any attempt to make political speech hostage to some imagined will of God must be resisted.

There are -- few -- critical voices that should be taken seriously when it comes to the pope's comments. Shouldn't Benedict XVI have known that the quote he included in his speech -- a passage he himself described as "brusque" -- might be misunderstood? Couldn't he have made his meaning a bit clearer? Even if he had, it should be welcomed by all, including leftist atheists and agnostics, that we now have a pope who can pose challenging academic questions. In any case, a close reading of his speech reveals not a single insult directed at a single Muslim.

And there's no reason to respond to every presumed insult. Consider an example from Denmark. Recently, a paper there published a number of rather tasteless Holocaust cartoons which had been shown in Tehran. The reaction of Copenhagen's rabbi was instructive when considered against the bloody response to the Muhammad cartoons -- outrage which ended up costing lives. When asked if he would call for protests, the rabbi merely said: "You know, I've seen worse."

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Reactions to Musharraf'sbook

Heights of deception

K. Subrahmanyam

Posted online: Wednesday, September 27, 2006 at 0000 hrs IST


It has taken seven years after the event for General Pervez Musharraf to come out with his version of the Kargil war. What an imaginative version! He tells us now that it was a great victory. It helped to internationalise the Kashmir issue. It was undertaken because the Indian side was preparing an offensive operation. He expects the Pakistanis and the rest of the world to accept this version after dozens of books have been written on the war, an overwhelming number of which give a very different version of the event. The general either has very great confidence in his persuasive powers or harbours utter contempt for the people of Pakistan, who are the primary audience of this book.

If India was preparing for an offensive action and this move was undertaken as a countermeasure, why was this charge not made earlier when the then Pakistani foreign minister, Sartaj Aziz, visited India in June 1999? Why did it not feature in the conversations of the director-generals of military operations? Why did not Prime Minster Nawaz Sharif raise the issue in his conversations with Atal Bihari Vajpayee? The general claims it was a great victory for his army. Why then is it that the officers and men of the Pakistan army who fought valiantly and got killed did not get the decent burial that was their due? Why were their bodies abandoned on Indian territory? There is no precedent in the history of warfare of a victorious army behaving this way. Why did Pakistan not own up to this victory? Why was it not advertised to the great pride of the Pakistani people till this book was published?

If Pakistan’s action was a preventive or preemptive action against a planned Indian offensive, there should have been no difficulty in it owning up to the presence of its Northern Light infantrymen across the LoC. But the myth of “mujahideen” was maintained even at the time of withdrawal. There was no need for Foreign Minister Sartaj Aziz to cover himself with ridicule by claiming that the LoC was not clear, with the Indian side throwing at him the demarcation maps signed by General Hamid of Pakistan and General Bhagat of India.

Musharraf is economical with the truth when he claims that he told Nawaz Sharif, as he was leaving for Washington on July 3, 1999, that the military situation was favourable to Pakistan. Tololing was recaptured on June 17, Point 5149 in the Dras section on June 20, and Tiger Hill in the Dras sector was retaken even as Sharif was flying to Washington. Presumably the Americans did not share the general’s assessment of the military situation being favourable.

According to Bruce Riedel’s account, the Pakistani army was attempting to escalate the conflict while being pushed back, by attempting to deploy presumably nuclear missiles, as the Americans assessed. General Musharraf denies this and says that at that stage the Pakistani nuclear arsenal was not in a position to be deployed. He may well be right on that point.

However, the Americans with their satellite information were not confirming General Musharraf’s assessment to Prime Minister Sharif on the night of July 3, 1999 that the military situation was favourable to Pakistan.

General Musharraf claims Kargil as a great diplomatic success since it internationalised Kashmir. In fact, it was the first time India found that neither China nor the United States was prepared to back Pakistan on its misadventure and in a sense Kargil marked a turning point in Indo-US relations. President Clinton’s firm stand that there was no point in Sharif coming to Washington unless he was prepared to withdraw his forces impressed India favourably. Subsequently, in March 2000, on General Musharraf’s watch, Clinton said in his TV address to the entire Pakistani nation that borders could not be redrawn in blood. Evidently these developments count as favourable ones from General Musharraf’s point of view. No need for India to quarrel with him on this issue.

General Musharraf confirms the conclusion of the Kargil Committee report that the balance of probability suggested that Nawaz Sharif was fully in the picture. This, it may be recalled, was against the wisdom of the then top Indian political leadership who maintained that Sharif, who had signed the Lahore Declaration, could not have approved the Kargil aggression. While the general may not necessarily be truthful on all points in recounting the Kargil misadventure, it is clear that Sharif too has not been telling the truth on Kargil.

Obviously the book is a kind of election manifesto for the general to stand for election as president next year. Among the previous military rulers of Pakistan, President Ayub Khan and President Yahya Khan did not survive defeats in the military adventures they launched. In this case, the war was launched by Sharif, no doubt instigated by General Musharraf. Sharif has paid the penalty for launching the Kargil war.

General Musharraf is trying to salvage his position after having survived the aftermath of the Kargil debacle for seven years. His version of events is not likely to impress political leaders, analysts or military establishments around the globe. On the issue of Kargil, the audience he is aiming at is Pakistani servicemen and common people. Presumably he relies on public memory being proverbially short. Still he has taken high risks of being challenged in his own country. India has to deal with General Musharraf as a ruler of neighbouring Pakistan. There is no alternative to that. In doing that we have to bear in mind the mindset of the leader we are dealing with. In this case, he seems to be a person who is not highly concerned about his own credibility.

The writer was chairman of the Kargil Review Committee set up by the Government of India in 1999

___________________________
Hogwash: Brajesh, Gen MalikAdd to Clippings
Rajat Pandit
[ 26 Sep, 2006 0034hrs ISTTIMES NEWS NETWORK ]
RSS Feeds| SMS NEWS to 8888 for latest updates

NEW DELHI: Having served with Pakistan's elite Special Service Group as a commando, General Pervez Musharraf knows the importance of psychological operations.

But this time, he's clearly overreached by trying to pin the blame on India for the 1999 Kargil conflict. In his book, In the Line of Fire: A Memoir, Musharraf claims aggressive moves by Indian Army along the contentious LoC in 1998 forced Pakistan to reinforce its forward positions in the Kargil region, which eventually led to the conflict.

Plain hogwash by a person used to peddling lies, say the then national security advisor Brajesh Mishra and the then Army chief General V P Malik.

"I have read the chapter on Kargil in Musharraf's book...There are a lot of untruths in it. The book will further expose Musharraf as someone who cannot be believed," General Malik told TOI on Monday.

"Musharraf is trying to whitewash all the harm he did to Pakistan's polity and international standing by undertaking the Kargil misadventure. In the book, he tries to shift all the blame for the ceasefire and subsequent withdrawal of Pakistani forces from Kargil to Nawaz Sharif," he added.

Brajesh Mishra dismissed as a "bundle of lies" Musharraf's description of the Kargil conflict as a "landmark in the history of Pakistani Army" and said: "India did not cross the Line of Control... Pakistan Army did and it was defeated."

Mishra said: "According to estimates, Pak Army lost between 1,000 and 2,000 personnel."

___________________

'Musharraf's book harming Pak'
Wednesday, September 27, 2006 09:05:41 am
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IN THE LINE OF FIRE: President Musharraf’s book has not been well received by senior bureaucrats in Pakistan
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf' is very much the man of the moment - courting controversy as pre release hype for his memoir 'In the line of Fire', which is up best seller lists a day after its release.

However, in Pakistan, people have not taken to his supposed revelations too kindly. Some even questioning his right to publish the memoir saying it may have breached the oath of office.

‘Musharraf has no achievement to his credit’

"I think he wrote this book at a time when he is thoroughly discredited; he has really no achievement to his credit," Roedad Khan, a former senior bureaucrat and analyst, told Reuters on Tuesday (September 26).

General Musharraf, who has controversially retained his role as army chief, has had to walk a tightrope since forging an alliance with the United States after Sept 11, 2001, as the majority of Pakistanis disagree strongly with US foreign policy.

But for foreign readers, Musharraf's chapters dealing with the war on terrorism could generate a sense of relief that the general is still at the helm. "He (Musharraf) is telling the West: "You have kept me there, you know, if you want to win the war on terror. And you have to allow me to keep my uniform, you know, as Chief of Army Staff if you want me to win this war,"' Khan said, adding, "These are the arguments he is using, and I think he is succeeding."

The Pakistani president claimed he wrote the book as he wanted the world to understand Pakistan better, but his own people don't seem to be buying his claim.

Analysts in Pakistan are also worried about the president writing about security issues and relations with other countries.

‘Musharraf the only one benefited’

Lieutenant-General Asad Durrani, Former Chief Of Pakistan's Top Spy Agency, ISI, says, "I've thought a great deal about it. Does it (Musharraf's Book) help Pakistan, its image or its policies, its relations with anyone at all? And I still have to find a positive answer."

Durrani further adds, "When we talk about Kargil of course we will end up annoying very many people in India, which may have been alright if we had actually talked about Kargil in a manner in which we generally have known it. But trying to defend Kargil was not going to be helpful."

"All that I can conclude is the book only helps one man and that is Pervez Musharraf," says Durrani.

But as the controversies pile up so do the book sales. It’s already No. 7 on the Amazon.com bestseller list. Booksellers both in Islamabad and in the West say despite the high retail cost of the book, people were still buying it, boosting the capital's flagging book business.

________________

Now for some ghazals too

September 26, 2006
Hindustan Times (India)


It is standard practice for leading public figures to write their memoirs after they have reached the climax of their careers. They either unveil themselves and the goings-on during their time after they have stepped down from office (the memoirs of Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger, Jaswant Singh, etc.), or their writings steer clear from their day job (Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s poems, Abdul Kalam’s soul-stirrers, etc). The author of In The Line of Fire does away with such niceties and, á la Hillary Clinton, Nicolas Sarkozy et al, writes a campaign manifesto-as-memoir. The President of Pakistan presents a dictatorial perspective of his handling of the ongoing war on terror, the ‘real’ reason behind the 1999 “counter-coup”, the shenanigans within Pakistani polity and the ‘personal bits’ with which he wants us to know that the dictator can become a cuddly elected President in 2007.

But the real bits that jump out and are the USP of the book are Pervez Musharraf’s observations involving India. He insists that it was India, not Pakistan, that started the Kargil conflict, which in turn led to “the initiative” being “wrested from India” and creating an imbalance in the “Indian system of forces”. Never mind the propaganda or empirical evidence, the General insists that India lost the war it had started. Strangely, though, he writes in the last line of the chapter: “... whatever movement has taken place so far in the direction of finding a solution to Kashmir is due considerably to the Kargil conflict.” Does this mean that he is giving India credit for leading the way via Kargil to an India-Pakistan peace process? Even the most rumbustious hawk in New Delhi will feel embarrassed to take such credit. Mr Musharraf also writes about a Dubai-based cartel that provided Pakistan’s A.Q. Khan-led nuclear programme with the wherewithals. A confession that is late is better than no confession. But to get to the bottom of his claim that India’s uranium enrichment programme could have come from the same network requires another set of memoirs — perhaps those of Dr Khan.

All this ‘remembrance of things past’ has already upset many in India. It is too early to tell whether J.K. Rowling is worried about competition. But Mr Musharraf is the man with whom Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will be talking about India-Pakistan ties. This is a serious issue that requires both tact and facts — not the subject of a future foray into a new sub-genre of fantasy fiction. For Mr Singh to find himself as the subject of Mr Musharraf’s next presidential memoir — as Richard Armitage finds himself in this one — could make him rethink opening his mouth. History is supposedly written by the victor. But history as presented by a fabulist in a memoir can be an effective spanner in the works. Forget Indian diplomats. Would you invite Mr Musharraf, the latest magic realist from the subcontinent, to dinner?


___________________________

Will Musharraf's book reopen old wounds?
By Shahzeb Jillani
BBC News, Washington

Not surprisingly, Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf's memoirs has generated a strong reaction.

Now he must respond to some of the strongest criticism and denials about his sensational claims made in In The Line of Fire.

In an interview with an American TV network before the book launch, Gen Musharraf said that the US had threatened to bomb Pakistan "back to the Stone Age" if it did not cooperate in the war on terror.

In a joint press briefing after meeting President Bush at the White House on Friday, he refused to clarify the comments saying "he was honour-bound" to the publishers not to discuss the book before the launch.

For his part, President Bush said he is not aware of his country making such a threat to Pakistan.

Startling claims

Moreover, Richard Armitage, the former US official Gen Musharraf names as having delivered the threat to his intelligence chief, has denied the remarks attributed to him.

Mr Armitage, however, admits that soon after 9/11 he did deliver "a strong message" to the Pakistanis that either they were with the US or against it in the US-led war on terror.

In his book, Gen Musharraf has also made some startling claims about the 1999 Kargil conflict with India.

He lauds Pakistan army's "landmark" performance during the Kargil conflict and claims that it was the Indian army which wanted to capture Pakistani territory in 1999 that finally led to the Kargil war.

For many Indians, Kargil is a painful episode of betrayal and military adventure by Pakistan.

No wonder then, that President Musharraf's latest claims have drawn bitter reaction from Indian politicians and the media.

"All that he is saying is a pack of lies. He attacked us and then lost. That's the reality," is how India's former national security advisor, Brajesh Mishra, sums up the popular Indian sentiment.

The renewed controversy over what led to the Kargil conflict and who was responsible for it comes at a time when nearly more than a week ago the two countries decided to resume the suspended peace talks.

During the recent meeting in Havana, Gen Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh pledged to work together to resolve all their disputes, including Kashmir.

'Trust deficit'

For the first time, they also decided to set up a joint mechanism to fight terrorism, something Mr Singh's government is still facing a lot of criticism for from the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

According to Indian officials, in Havana, the two sides made significant progress in improving the "trust deficit" between the two South Asian rivals.

Now, analysts worry that Gen Musharraf's candid views about the Kargil conflict threaten to reopen old wounds and spoil the prevailing positive mood for dialogue between the two nations.

In Pakistan, Gen Musharraf's critics have taken strong exception to the way he is seen to be promoting his book during his official US visit.

The opposition has accused him as a self promoting military ruler seeking to make a fortune in the name of Pakistan.

But, say his supporters, like him or not, through his controversial disclosures, he has managed to sell the book as a must read on contemporary Pakistan.

Meanwhile, In The Line Of Fire, out at the book stands in the US and Pakistan since early Monday morning, is said to be selling fairly well.

The book ranked 17th and 18th on online book retailer Amazon.com and Barnes & Nobles best sellers list respectively just before its launch. Within hours, it jumped to 14th on Amazon list and 12th on Barnes & Nobles site.

Given the controversies it seems to have triggered, the book is expected to climb further on the best sellers list.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/south_asia/5380350.stm

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The coming conflict with Pakistan
Indrajeet Rai
India Post Spetember 25, 2006

Is Pervez Musharraf on his way out? Though none can predict his fate with certitude, he is facing the most serious crisis and there are signs suggesting his likely departure. If he finally departs, or just manages to survive, what are the implications for India?

The killing of Akbar Khan Bugti by the Pakistan army "sent a clear message to Musharraf that his era is over", said the Khan of Kalat-Mir Suleman Dawood, a descendant of Balochistan's earlier rulers. Bugti's killing was reportedly against the wishes of the President.

Some forces within the Pakistan army, which do not wish the continuation of the Musharraf regime, had effected the killing to create trouble and embarrass him. Rumors of a possible coup against him have been going round for some time.

An indication, apart from Bugti's killing against the General's dictates, indicative of broad disaffection with Musharraf's rule, is a letter written on July 18 by a group of retired military and government officials, calling for the military's disengagement from political power and asking Musharraf to either resign as the Chief of the Army Staff or as the President.

An opinion poll conducted by the International Republic Institute of the US which was published in the Dawn, found that 48 percent were of the opinion that Musharraf should not hold two offices simultaneously.
What was more interesting in the poll was a desire for the return of democracy in the Pakistani populace with two-thirds voting for the return of the exiled Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif to the country and taking part in the coming elections.

Boxed in by these developments, Musharraf has two options to survive: either co-opt the Right, which will compromise his continuing to support the war on terror, or extract support from the moderates that will ask him to relinquish one of his posts and let democracy be re-ushered into the country.

It seems Musharraf has decided to lean towards the Right. As a first step to please them, Pakistan has signed a peace deal with the Taliban. According to this peace deal, signed by Dr Fakr-I-Alam on behalf of Pakistan, and seven militants on behalf of the Taliban Shura (Advisory Council), Pakistani forces and local mujahideen and ulemas will stop attacking each other.

It seems Pakistan has also promised not to arrest Osama bin Laden. As reported by ABC News, "Pakistani officials told ABC News that bin Laden would be spared from being arrested if the dreaded terrorist decides to lead a peaceful life."

The troops freed as a result of the Pakistan-Taliban agreement may be used for two purposes: Either to contain the unrest in the Balochistan or undertake a Kargil type adventure against India.
The latter strategy is in the pipeline, if media reports are believed. According to India's military intelligence, the movement of 19 division and some brigades is threatening Indian positions in Gulmarg and Poonch.

A Kargil-type adventure is not a certainty, but is a possibility. India cannot ignore the repercussions of the troop movements and the Pakistan-Taliban peace deal.
Musharraf is finding the going very difficult. He needs to do something urgently to reassert his hold on power. Nothing would suit him more than a skirmish with India.

He is not a man given to irrational decisions, however, given a chance he would like to tread a safer route to ensure his survival. The meeting between him and the Indian Prime Minister on the sidelines of the NAM summit in Havana was a chance for India and Pakistan to reach some kind of deal on Kashmir.

There was no new assurance from Musharraf on restraining cross-border terror, though the joint statement recalled commitments made in previous documents from 2004 to 2005.

On Jammu and Kashmir, the joint statement said the two leaders had useful discussions and there was a 'need to build on convergences and narrow down divergences'. If the General is not able to satisfy his home constituency on progress on Kashmir issue, adventurism could become his main escape route.

For India, this is the time to strive for a democratic Pakistan. For too long India has debated the trade-offs between dealing with a dictator-a one point reference like the King of Nepal and democratically elected rulers. Experience suggests that a democratic neighborhood is better suited to India's long term interests.

The Alliance for Restoration of Democracy, formed by political rivals Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, has started gaining ground in the Pakistan. Its high time India attempted to strengthen democracy in Pakistan, notwithstanding its principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of its neighbors.

To strengthen democracy in Pakistan, India might take a clue from American democracy promotion efforts. America has allocated specific funds to promote democracy in Iran by training opposition leaders and trying to bring a regime change there.

It has been interpreted as interference in internal affairs of Iran by some, but promoting democracy has more or less come to be accepted as a universal norm in the liberal world.

Besides, India needs to raise the issue of democracy and the coming elections in Pakistan in every international forum be it the United Nations General Assembly or the Commonwealth. A democratic Pakistan is in the interests of India and South Asia and the entire world.

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Indian wounds reopened by Musharraf's memoirs

By Y.P. Rajesh (yes guess who's not writing this article our lovely Pam)
Reuters
Tuesday, September 26, 2006; 6:12 AM

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - The memoirs of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf have reopened old wounds in neighboring India and reinforced perceptions of the military ruler as a man who cannot be trusted.

Officials declined to comment immediately on the memoirs, published on Monday, but privately bridled at his criticism of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's sincerity and flexibility in pursuing the peace process between the neighbors.

They said the timing of the comments, written in June but published barely a week after Singh and Musharraf held a friendly meeting in Cuba, was unfortunate.

Analysts were also damning on Tuesday in their assessment of "In the Line of Fire."

"The book is full of chest-thumping machismo and self-aggrandizement," said Chidanand Rajghatta, the Washington-based foreign editor of the Times of India newspaper.

"Musharraf seems unrepentant about most things that matter in India, be it Kargil, terrorism or infiltration."

India accuses Pakistan of arming and training militants and sending them across the border to fight New Delhi's rule in disputed Kashmir.

The scars of a 1999 conflict in the northern Kashmir region of Kargil also still run deep in India, which blames Musharraf for pushing in separatist militants backed by Pakistani troops to seize mountain heights in an act of unprovoked aggression.

In his book, Musharraf described the operation as a military success for Pakistan, admitted for the first time that Pakistani troops were involved but maintained they did not cross a military ceasefire line.

Raking up the conflict again seven years later has only reopened old wounds.

Jaswant Singh, foreign minister in India's previous Hindu nationalist-led government at the time of Kargil, called Musharraf's version of events "incredible."

"Quite often, when you occupy high office, the distinction between fiction and fact, gets obliterated. This is fictional," Singh told the Times Now news channel.

"UNREPENTANT MILITARY ADVENTURISM"

"In the Line of Fire" was due to be available across India on Tuesday and book stores in New Delhi said they had been flooded by enquiries. But excerpts have been widely published.

Musharraf said the United States had threatened to bomb Pakistan if it did not support its war on terror but also boasted of the money which his army had earned in rewards for handing over senior members of al Qaeda.

"It seems the whole thing about being an ally in the war on terror and his peace moves is more out of convenience than conviction," Rajghatta said, adding that the book as a whole raised serious questions about Pakistan's leader.

"It reeks of unrepentant military adventurism and Washington, New Delhi and Kabul have to note that."

An Indian atomic energy official said the Pakistani president's claim that India's uranium enrichment program could be based on a Pakistani centrifuge design was laughable.

In a tongue-in-cheek editorial, the Indian Express newspaper said Musharraf could not be accused of being short on words.

"Now that the general has been there, done that ... it's the perfect time for him to head back home and turn his attention to things somewhat more substantial," it said.

"Like actually cracking down on the jehadi camps in his backyard. It could make a great bestseller some day."

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Musharraf's book infuriates India
Bruce Loudon, South Asia correspondent
September 27, 2006
HOPES for an improvement in relations between New Delhi and Islamabad appeared doomed last night as scornful Indian officials considered the contents of President Pervez Musharraf's memoir and the Pakistani ruler blundered into repeated faux pas.

In a stark reversal of the optimism following the Indo-Pakistani talks in Havana 10 days ago, promising co-operation on terrorism, Indian officials and commentators denounced the book and lambasted General Musharraf for implying that India, like his own country, is involved with terrorist groups.

"The man is nuts," said a senior commentator in New Delhi. "Talk about a bull in a china shop."

Adding to the ferment was speculation about the length of the President's absence from Pakistan on his trip to the US, and resentment in Islamabad that his book In the Line of Fire was launched in New York, rather than at home.

General Musharraf is accompanied on his trip by an entourage of more than 90 officials, including cabinet members, and the cost is said to be astronomical. Critics say the trip is a book promotion tour, with one dubbing it "royalties before loyalties".

Having won in Havana the understanding of India's respected Prime Minister Manmohan Singh -- at some personal political cost to the Indian leader -