[DAWN] They are the underbellies of Britannia; streets where the organization and sterility and order of the Western world are suddenly suspended.
Here, people take chances with the rules; throw rubbish in the streets, double-park, let their toddlers roam wild, jump before cars.
Pakistain and Paks live on in these British ghettos; where curries and conversations are reconstructed to be just like they were in the homeland, before a father, or a grandfather or even a great grandfather left to work in Britannia.
A man who rapes a child must be cursed and condemned by their community, but if the community itself cannot find the words to do so; to acknowledge the helplessness of the victim and the cruelty of the criminal; the crime does not exist. It is invisible.
They were the lucky ones, these chosen forbears, they got the chance to earn in pounds, even if the cost of doing so was far greater than they had imagined. Culture lost, morality dislocated and worse of all the disdain and indignity of serving those that were once your conquerors.
The story of the racism Paks face in Britannia has been oft told and much repeated. The ensuing generations, of original British migrants, are raised in stunted, suspicious communities. Theirs is the sentence of belonging nowhere; neither to Pakistain nor to Britian, neither present nor past.
Extremist recruiters lurk in mosques, predatory to their confusions of culture, parasitic to their fervid desires for authenticity, real Islam, true Pakistain, hyphenated Britannia.
Unwanted by mainstream British culture, whose encounter with racism and religious difference refuses to adulterate the "britishness" or include the brown-skinned or the mosque-worshiping; British Pak youth are the vulnerable progeny of the already marginalised.
It is no surprise then, that the worst, most egregious moral scourges dwell within this fetid environment of secrets and suspicion.
In a report released this week, the borough of Rotherham, which has a significant Pak British population, detailed how several men of Pak British descent have been involved in nearly 1400 cases of sexual exploitation of children between the years 1997-2013.
The report was shocking not simply for its crime stats, but also because the law enforcement officials and social service workers, who should have come to the aid of the exploited children failed to do so. Following the release of the report, several law enforcement and council officials who did not act in a timely manner, have offered their resignations.
Good. Let us hope they will thereafter be shunned by polite society... and everyone else as well.
In the aftermath, Moslem groups and Pak groups have all condemned the criminals; endorsing the consensus that concerns over racism should never have prevented local officials who could have spoken out from doing so.
That is all very well and commendable for its good intentions and meaningful outrage; but ineffective in exposing the genealogy of silence and subterfuge which allowed 1400 children to be brutalised and trafficked by ruthless criminals, belonging to their community for over a decade.
To truly address that, there must first be recognition of the fact that British Paks lack a vocabulary for having any honest conversations about sexual exploitation within their families or their communities.
Shoved under tables by taboos, the issue gets condemned to silence and in the shame-based dynamics of a culture where visible piety is equated with actual goodness.
A man who rapes a child must be cursed and condemned by their community, but if the community itself cannot find the words to do so; to acknowledge the helplessness of the victim and the cruelty of the criminal; the crime does not exist. It is invisible.
With the obscurantist clouds of undeserved blame and castigation lingering so low and so dark, the reality of actual evil cannot be seen.
It is not just the silences of the immigrant culture which helped to sustain this criminal activity.
The other factor is the trend of stigmatisation and marginalisation in Britannia, which encouraged their police to rather keep aloof of the criminals (and let them go about their business) than do the right thing and risk being labeled 'racists'.
This second silence -- which shoves immigrants in ghettos, refuses to allow cultures to evolve and poses tradition as an argument for immigrant exclusion -- is also to blame for the depth of the depravity, the sheer number of victims and just how untouched the perpetrators were for so long.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/30/2014 00:00 ||
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#1
It short, it's all the fault of the Brits. And, IMO, it is---for believing innate nature can be changed.
[Washington Post] PRESIDENT OBAMA'S acknowledgment that "we don't have a strategy yet" in Syria understandably attracted the most attention after his perplexing meeting with news hounds Thursday. But his restatement of the obvious was not the most dismaying aspect of his remarks. The president's goal, to the extent he had one, seemed to be to tamp down all the assessments of gathering dangers that his own team had been issuing over the previous days.
This argument with his own administration is alarming on three levels.
The first has to do with simple competence. One can only imagine the whiplash that foreign leaders must be suffering. They heard U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations ...boodling on the grand scale... Samantha Power denounce Russia as "today . . . they open a new front . . . Russia's force along the border is the largest it has been . . . the mask is coming off." An hour later, Mr. Obama implicitly contradicted her: "I consider the actions that we've seen in the last week a continuation of what's been taking place for months now . . . it's not really a shift."
Similarly, his senior advisers uniformly have warned of the unprecedented threat to America and Americans represented by Islamic Lions of Islam in Syria and Iraq. But Mr. Obama didn't seem to agree. "Now, ISIL [the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant ... the current version of al-Qaeda in Iraq, just as blood-thirsty and well-beloved as the original... ] poses an immediate threat to the people of Iraq and to people throughout the region," he said. "My priority at this point is to make sure that the gains that ISIL made in Iraq are rolled back." Contrast that ambition with this vow from Secretary of State John F. Kerry: "And make no mistake: We will continue to confront ISIL wherever it tries to spread its despicable hatred. The world must know that the United States of America will never back down in the face of such evil."
The discrepancies raise the question of whether Mr. Obama controls his own administration, but that's not the most disturbing element. His advisers are only stating the obvious: Russia has invaded Ukraine. The Islamic State and the Americans it is training are a danger to the United States. When Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. says the threat they pose is "in some ways . . . more frightening than anything I think I've seen as attorney general," it's not because he is a warmonger or an alarmist. He's describing the world as he sees it. When Mr. Obama refuses to acknowledge the reality, allies naturally wonder whether he will also refuse to respond to it.
Which is, in the end, the most disturbing aspect of Mr. Obama's performance. Throughout his presidency, he has excelled at explaining what the United States cannot do and cannot afford, and his remarks Thursday were no exception. "Ukraine is not a member of NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A single organization with differing goals, equipment, language, doctrine, and organization.... ," he said. "We don't have those treaty obligations with Ukraine." If Iraq doesn't form an acceptable government, it's "unrealistic" to think the United States can defeat the Islamic State.
Allies are vital; the United States overstretched in the Bush years; it can't solve every problem. All true. But it's also true that none of the basic challenges to world order can be met without U.S. leadership: not Russia's aggression, not the Islamic State's expansion, not Iran's nuclear ambition nor China's territorial bullying. Each demands a different policy response, with military action and deterrence only two tools in a basket that includes diplomatic and economic measures. It's time Mr. Obama started emphasizing what the United States can do instead of what it cannot.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/30/2014 10:50 ||
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[DAWN] THE scenario looks bleak. No compromise seems to be in sight to break the current political impasse, if you can call it that. Watching the sordid drama being played out live on TV is depressing.
Where do we go from here is a question on many minds. Don't know which stats are credible but it would be safe to say that the economy will not react well to weeks of protests and uncertainty with no clear indication of the way forward.
No matter how carefully couched, appeals for military intervention have been made whether it was the wish for the 'umpire' to raise his finger or the demand for sending home the government and packing up the assemblies, as the Constitution provides for neither action.
That the elected government, no matter how flawed some claim its mandate is, displayed inertia rather than quickly identifying the essential elements of the crisis and dealing with those added to pushing things to where they are today.
A graver blunder for the government was not to gradually build on the back of good governance a credibly durable right to civilian supremacy. This isn't to suggest its mandate didn't grant it this as did the Constitution. But the ground reality is what it is too.
It misgauged the affront the army felt over both the denial of the reportedly agreed exit to former military strongman Pervez Perv Musharraf ... former dictator of Pakistain, who was less dictatorial and corrupt than any Pak civilian government to date ... and the government seemingly coming down on the side of Geo TV in the media group's row with the ISI.
Spooked by Tahirul Qadri ...Pak politician, and would-be dictator, founder and head of Tehreek-e-Minhajul Quran and Pakistain Awami Tehrik. He usually resides in Canada, but returns to Pakistain periodically to foam at the mouth and lead demonstrations. Depending on which way the wind's blowing, Qadri claims to be the author of Pak's blasphemy law. Other times he says it wasn't him... 's motives, the government lost its head in trying to get tough with him and smeared its hands with blood when it was the one with everything to lose and its detractors of various denominations with everything to gain.
The outrage of Dr Qadri and his supporters over the killing of their workers in the Model Town tragedy and the stubbornness of Imran Khan ... aka Taliban Khan, who who convinced himself that playing cricket qualified him to lead a nuclear-armed nation with severe personality problems... , who has been led to believe that the last election was stolen from him, is also being reflected in the language being used.
While 'chor, lutere, daaku' (thieves, bandidos, etc) became the norm when the PPP was in power, the current crisis has seen the Oxford-educated Imran Khan saying his sit-in had led to 'geeli shalwarein' (wet pants) of those sitting in parliament.
The reaction of orthodox political-religious leaders such as Maulana Fazlur Rahman to the dancing and singing women activists of the PTI was predictable. It was nauseating to hear PML-N's Hamza Shahbaz saying: "Maaon, behnon ko nachwane, gawane se inqilab nahi aata". (A revolution won't come by making mothers and sisters sing and dance).
The irony of his statement was lost on the junior Sharif. If women can participate equally and publicly in political activity in an environment where bigots are at liberty to push their hate-steeped, misogyny-filled agenda and sectarian forces of Evil roam freely to draw blood it is a revolution of sorts.
In an otherwise bleak scenario, the participation of women in large numbers can be one silver lining. The other, of course, is the almost universal recognition of the need for electoral reform in a country where almost every electoral exercise has ended in disputes over the outcome.
Through the doom and gloom, it may also be worthwhile to mention another positive: the debate over governance and the focus on corruption in the country. Yes, one would have to be utterly optimistic to believe that this debate would make a huge difference but it would be right to say the next election could well be fought so much more on performance than slogans.
Another silver lining is the drawing in of a new breed of voter into the process. Where in Western societies, the lament of the observer is over the disinterest of the dispossessed on voting day, in Pakistain where the educated, more affluent sections of society fussed the most they voted the least. Now that's changed.
Equally, there is no doubt that the Pak political landscape continues to resemble a roller-coaster for just as one finishes counting the positives, recognises that there is so many hearty developments to rejoice in, there is a thud and a new ugly reality.
No matter how adamant the protesters and how unrealistic their demands, the fact that the army has been drawn in by the democratically elected government as well can only be a cause for concern if not outright shame.
Perhaps, the speech of the leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly, Syed Khurshid Shah, aptly reflected the concern of many in the country who believe in the supremacy of parliament as a representative institution.
Whether the statements by Imran Khan and Tahirul Qadri following their chat with the army chief, where one got the impression that the latter's 'mediation' made no difference at all, were mere bravado or a reflection of unchanged positions will become clear over the coming hours.
That, as these lines were being written another round of talks was on, albeit without a breakthrough, was a marked improvement on the earlier stance of the protest leaders that there was no point in talking at all till the resignation of the prime minister was on the table.
One can't see the current state of play sustaining itself for much longer but with the deeply cemented positions of Imran Khan and Dr Tahirul Qadri it'll be equally difficult to call exactly how it will end with none having to make what will be seen as a humiliating climbdown.
The only certainty the past two weeks have thrown up is that whether Nawaz Sharif ... served two non-consecutive terms as prime minister, heads the Pakistain Moslem League (Nawaz). Noted for his spectacular corruption, the 1998 Pak nuclear test, border war with India, and for being tossed by General Musharraf... completes his term or is unable to, the cause of civilian supremacy has been dealt a severe blow. The machinations of other players notwithstanding the civilian politician will have to shoulder the bulk of the blame.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/30/2014 00:00 ||
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Angelo Codevilla at The Federalist writes common sense with an inside-the-beltway look. He's right though his thinking is conventional and statist. A more magnificent bastard like Dick Cheney would call up the appropriate CIA office and let loose some substantial, quiet wet-work until the surviving rulers of Qatar, Saudi-controlled Arabia and yes, even Turkey, would do as we 'ask'.
Though there's no reason why both approaches couldn't be tried at the same time.
The idiot who wrote the other day (and who Fred methodically took apart) about our need to "understand" evil (and not call it 'evil') would miss this important codicil: yes, we need to understand evil thoroughly. We need to understand the 'context'. Then we need to kill it. Understanding it will make sure we get the killing done.
Posted by: Steve White ||
08/30/2014 00:00 ||
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#1
Warms the cockles of my bright Heart - "we need to understand evil thoroughly. We need to understand the 'context'. Then we need to kill it. Understanding it will make sure we get the killing done."
#3
What needs be done has been said. There needs to be a quiet bloodbath in some rich homes in Qatar, Riyahd, and Istanbul, with one or two very public bullet-to-head strikes pour encourager les aitres. Accompanied by a very loud and violent, no quarters battle in Sunni areas of Iraq and Syria. Kill the head and beat the thrashing body of this snake until it stops moving.
We need to impose consequences on the financiers. Permanent and severe consequences.
#4
ISIS seems to be custom made to appall Westerners, just saying.
<tinfoil hat>
Is ISIS a manufactured distraction for the West, buying Iran the time needed for nuclear breakout?
</tinfoil hat>
Even if there's no such conspiracy, isn't an aggressive, openly hostile somewhat stable islamofascistic regime with nuclear tipped ballistic missile capability a far bigger threat than 'ISIS'?
What would be easier to undo, an ISIS conquest of additional Syrian and Iraqi territories or Iran's new nuclear weaponry?
I'm not trying to defend ISIS, I just don't understand the priorities.
[Iran Press TV] In an interview with Thomas Friedman of the New York Times ...which still proudly displays Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize... on August 8, President B.O. stressed that the US was only fighting the Islamic State (IS, or ISIS) in Iraq as a partner, not as Iraq's or the Kurds' air force. Obama claims his officials are reminding everyone, "We will be your partners, but we are not going to do it for you. We're not sending a bunch of US troops back on the ground to keep a lid on things." Now, less than three weeks later, the strategic picture has changed, and emphases on "partnerships" have faded while the US military complex advances largely on its own.
US air strikes temporarily stalled the IS advance, but its expanding territorial control (now roughly equal in area size to Jordan) and the beheading of an American news hound led Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel to declare IS a threat "beyond anything we've seen." Washington has increased the number of US advisers sent to Iraq, and there is even talk of carrying out air strikes in Syria. Drones are already flying overhead.
We have witnessed this sudden turnaround many times before, haven't we? The pattern is all too familiar. First, the President and other top US leaders soft-pedal talk about a modest direct role in a conflict: no boots on the ground, just a few air strikes to create better odds for our side. Then the characterization of the threat changes, from local to regional and even global, exemplified Pentagon press secretary Rear Admiral John Kirby's warning on August 26, of the "global aspirations" of ISIS.
What was once called a terrorist group is now an insurgency with grand ambitions that may carry to our doorstep. This change in scope is followed by dropped talk of partnership and political reform in our ally's capital. Now the threat takes on highest priority. Congress follows the administration's lead by abandoning its responsibility to authorize war or otherwise challenge the commander-in-chief.
Once the stakes have risen in the minds of decision makers, the US role becomes paramount. After all, if not us, who? The US thus becomes the victim of its unilateralist impulse. When presidents of both parties have decided to intervene abroad--in Korea, Vietnam, the Dominican Republic, Leb, Grenada, Panama and Iraq, for example--they always acted in the name of national security and were quite prepared to go to war without allies. When they accepted offers of help, it was only on the condition of total US control of war making. War "by committee" was unacceptable, as Donald Rumsfeld famously said in relation to the first Gulf War. What the US wants are "coalitions of the willing"--governments willing, that is, to follow US orders.
Now the US is facing the IS largely on its own. The "we" in Obama's interview with Friedman includes no one else but us--unless, that is, you include Syria, whose dictator has already thrown down the welcome mat at the prospect of the US becoming involved in its civil war and bombing IS soldiers.
Where are US allies in this supposedly monumental battle--not just the Europeans in NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Originally it was a mutual defense pact directed against an expansionist Soviet Union. In later years it evolved into a mechanism for picking the American pocket while criticizing the cut of the American pants... but the Japanese, the Koreans, and the Australians? If the IS is an "imminent" threat to "international security," as Chuck Hagel has suggested, why haven't others clamored to join the battle? Why hasn't the US brought this global threat to the United Nations ...a formerly good idea gone bad... ?
The US is again playing sheriff without a posse and the consequences are predictable and dire. US bombs will kill a certain number of IS fighters, but how many more recruits will IS gain as a result? How much more likely will an attack on a target in the US become as Washington makes the war on IS its own? How much less likely will a political settlement of Iraq's internal struggle be?
As the US, the Lone Ranger, focuses its attention and resources on the threat du jour, political change and the development of civil society in Iraq and Syria will remain on hold. Yet those transformations are the keys to demobilizing the IS and neutralizing its grandiose ambitions. Trying to level the playing field unilaterally with bombs and advisers is a sucker's game and will only make things worse.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/30/2014 00:00 ||
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#1
Amongst our traditional allies, they will go in only to protect their interests as lone rangers also. Not to partner with Obama.
[ARABNEWS] Those who cannot remember the past, cautioned George Santayana, are condemned to repeat it.
Those who think in cliches are bound to repeat them.
I hate to sound like a conspiracy theorist but the scepter of IS -- and all such groups -- is evidently a grand conspiracy against Islam and its followers, just as Al-Qaeda had been. And you see the fingerprints of CIA, Mossad and their willing collaborators all over this baby.
So Barack ObamaI think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody... , who stood against Bush's wars and his apocalyptic visions of a world divided between Us and Them, is not just back bombing Iraq -- fourth US president to do so -- he seems to read from the self-same script.
"No just God would stand for what they (IS) did yesterday, and for what they do every single day," the US president declared, responding to the slaying of US journalist James Foley in Syria.
When was the last time you heard this invocation of the divine and the whole business of civilizational conflict, the good versus evil? We have been here before, and not long ago either.
Obama may not exactly envision himself on a 'divine mission' to save the world, as his predecessor did, but he has ended up doing just about the same. Only the pretext seems to differ.
Then it was supposedly to rid the world of Saddam Hussain's mythical weapons of mass destruction or to confront him on his support to Al-Qaeda in planning 9/11, as Bush claimed.
Now it is to save the Christians and Yazidis from the clutches of the IS bigots. Truly touching the lengths America goes to every time to save the wretched world.
Taking Obama's lead, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and even cousins across the pond have gone all hyper screaming: "Apocalypse Now . . . end-of-days . . . We must prepare for everything . . . an imminent threat to every interest we have . . . This is beyond anything we have seen . . . "
In the words of Robert Fisk ...British journalist who is invariably on the other side of any question. The logic of his prose is so shaky, the ideas so predictable, that he has given his name to the process of mocking a piece of poorly reasoned hackery. He was once beaten up by an Islamic mob and decided they had every right to thump him because he was so Western... , Hagel and Dempsey were pure Hollywood. It only needed Tom Cruise at their presser to utter the words "Mission impossible. " David Cameron ... has stated that he is certainly a big Thatcher fan, but I don't know whether that makes me a Thatcherite, which means he's not. Since he is not deeply ideological he lacks core principles and is easily led. He has been described as certainly not a Pitt, Elder or Younger, but he does wear a nice suit so maybe he's Beau Brummel ... , in the great tradition of Tony Blair who swore the UK was just 45 minute away from an Iraq WMD strike, sees the IS unleashing its terror on the UK streets. For years one saw such exaggerated nightmarish scenarios regularly spawned by the West vis-a-vis Al-Qaeda and of course Iraq and Iran.
Alas, Al-Qaeda has nearly been wiped out; Saddam and Bin Laden have been eliminated and Iran has been suitably neutralized.
So the world needed, or rather the mighty military industrial complex that drives the US economy needed, a new enemy to keep its good, old wars going. And the fearsome IS chief Abubakr Al-Baghdadi with his black, murderous mobs and their blood-curdling acts of casual brutality is perfect for the job profile. Even Al-Qaeda, or what remains of it, seems to be fearful of and is shocked by their viciousness and sheer savagery.
The tales of mass murder, rapes and abductions of Christians, Yazidis and even Moslems by the hordes of the IS or Islamic State, as it absurdly likes to call itself now, already seem to be the stuff of legends. Not surprisingly, they have shaken and outraged people around the world-- the Moslems more so. The IS and the so-called caliphate it promises is like our worst nightmare come true.
It materialized out of thin air, like clouds of locusts, taking over the vast swathes of Iraqi and Syrian territory. As Yvonne Ridley reasons, IS has achieved in a matter of weeks what the US and its allies failed to do in 10 years of occupation. This hasn't happened by accident; military victories on this scale take strategic planning and inside help.
So who, exactly, is behind IS? More importantly, who stands to benefit from this carefully calibrated mayhem in the heart of the Middle East? The same folks who created Al-Qaeda and used it ingenuously and effectively for years until Osama and his baby had exhausted their uses and were past their sell-by date.
Look at the uncanny similarity in the methods used by Al-Qaeda and IS -- from the chilling murder of Daniel Pearl to the barbaric beheading of James Foley this month, both US journalists incidentally.
I hate to sound like a conspiracy theorist but the scepter of IS -- and all such groups -- is evidently a grand conspiracy against Islam and its followers, just as Al-Qaeda had been. And you see the fingerprints of CIA, Mossad and their willing collaborators all over this baby.
As author Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya argues, the targeting of Christians and other minorities in Iraq and Syria and attempts to remap the Middle East are aimed at paving the way for the clash of civilizations that the likes of Samuel Huntington and Bernard Lewis have obsessed over for years.
So it is good that Arab and Moslem states seem to be waking up to the monster that is staring them in the face. The recent Arab ministers' brainstorming in Jeddah and the Saudi-Iran confabulations seeking a common front against IS are welcome. So are the strong denunciations by top Islamic scholars and ordinary Moslems.
The Moslem world has never in its long history faced a greater challenge. Doubtless, IS is a clear and present danger. And it wouldn't, most probably, have come into existence if it had not been for the spectacular lies and crusades of Bush and Blair. The Israeli crimes against humanity and relentless persecution of its helpless victims have also helped radicalize generations of Arabs and Moslems -- even those born in Western climes, as is apparently the case with the alleged British killer of James Foley.
One can just hear it whispered among the grander wives of Saudi Society, as they discuss the latest exploits of what now calls itself the Islamic State. "Parvenus!" they hiss, and "Nouveau riche upstarts! How dare they act just our illustrious ancestors did only a century or two ago, and claim to be equal!"
Posted by: Fred ||
08/30/2014 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[DAWN] They are the underbellies of 
[Washington Post] PRESIDENT OBAMA'S acknowledgment that "we don't have a strategy yet" in Syria understandably attracted the most attention after his perplexing meeting with 
Pervez 
...British 
