#1
Blair strikes me as the British equivalent of Joe Lieberman; I often don't agree with them, but they're both pretty consistent and understand what the truly important issues are.
Britain we be weaker without Blair and the Democrats will be weaker without Lieberman.
This is the intro to a very interesting post over on Little Green Footballs, complete with photo-animations that really demonstrate the fraud being swallowed hook, line and sinker by the Western media. Go see the whole thing. I'm not sure which category this belongs in, but figure 'Opinion' will do for now.
This Reuters photograph shows blatant evidence of manipulation. Notice the repeating patterns in the smoke; this is almost certainly caused by using the Photoshop clone tool to add more smoke to the image. (Hat tip: Mike.)
Its so incredibly obvious, it reminds me of the faked CBS memos. Smoke simply does not contain repeating symmetrical patterns like this, and you can see the repetition in both plumes of smoke. Theres really no question about it.
But its not only the plumes of smoke that were enhanced. There are also cloned buildings. (See below.)
#6
Can you or will you ever trust an Ruters or AP photograph from now on is the question? It's not like the is Weekly News of the World or something. The consequences have to be real.
#7
I've never ever even used that Photoshop software but fck eh i know i could do better then that give me just 10 fckin minutes!! Why is this not headline news i ask myself, the MSN's main source of propaganda caught out beyond all beleif and yet not a word about this. What a tragic and sad era we now live in. I was thinking last few days, this war is utterly unwinnable for the west versus islamic savages because of the fact our own medias are nearly all rooting for and activly encouraging and reporting enemy propaganda. I give up hope, no one holds these people accountable for their lies and there lies just get bigger and bolder and more sinister every time. Truly horrid beyond what my limited vocabulary can describe.
#8
Chill Shep - what you do is this; keep coming to sites like this where the truth is being found out and contribute (as you have been), keep telling it to your mates (word of mouth *does* work), keep calling Al-Reuters and the Baghdad Broadcasting Corporation out when they blatantly lie and their bias begins to show and you look out for outbreaks of sanity.
I'm massively encouraged by the situation in Lebanon; the MSM is being shown up all over the place (seen the new logo for the BBC for instance?), more people than you might think are in favour of the Israeli action (the Saudis and the Jordanians for example - although they can't say it), the UN is being played for the tools they are and that means the Israelis are getting more time to act (the Iranians really should have jumped at the chance of being a force of 'stability' as the French said, as we know, they don't take kindly to having their nuance thrown back in their face), the Syrians are bricking it, the Iranians are doing what they can, but it seems to me that their strategy is to see what some loon emerging from a well has to say about the whole situation.
And finally, GWB has said the Iranians won't be allowed nuclear weapons - so they won't
Add to that the fact that the Americans owe the Iranians some massive payback for the embassy hostages, the Beirut marines and many many more incidents that the Mullahs have had their filthy fingers in, there are carrier groups 'nearby' and we have all the ingredients for a reckoning...
So, feel better now? ;)
Posted by: Tony (UK) ||
08/06/2006 7:52 Comments ||
Top||
Posted by: DanNY ||
08/06/2006 10:35 Comments ||
Top||
#13
When I submitted this around 10 o'clock last night it was still kind of conjectural so I put it under 'Opinion'; by the time I got up around 6 this morning it had clearly moved into 'fact'. The blogosphere is FAST!
By the end of 2003, we were being told that our agencies had neutralised over 160 ISI modules counting only those outside Jammu and Kashmir and the Northeast. Since then, up to July 11, 2006, again counting only those outside Jammu and Kashmir and the Northeast, another 75 modules are reported to have been neutralized.
These are substantial achievements we can imagine how many more deaths and how much more dislocation would have been caused if these had not been got at and the persons caught or killed. But the figures have another side to them.
First, that there were that many cells to be neutralized shows that ISI had been able to set them up. Second, the cells that have been unearthed were found to exist across the entire country.
Going by the tabulation of the cells that have been located and finished just since January 2004, we see them having been found in state after state, town after town. In Andhra: Hyderabad (several), including one at the Begumpet airport, Nalgonda; in Karnataka: Alamati, Hesaraghatta on the outskirts of Bangalore, Jelenabad area in Gulbarga district; Delhi (several separate ones in several localities across the city); in Bengal and neighbouring regions: Ghosepur, Darjeeling district, Rishra, Hooghly district, Chowgacha village, Nadia district, Kaliachak, Malda, Kolkata; in Uttaranchal: Dehra Dun; in Maharashtra: Mumbai, Aurangabad, Manmad, Malegaon; in Rajasthan: Jaipur, Ajmer, Jodhpur; in Punjab, where a serious effort is being made to stoke up Sikh militancy: Jalandhar, Amritsar, Nawanshehar, Ropar, Hoshiarpur, Batala, Malerkotla; in UP: NOIDA, Lucknow, Hardoi, Lalkurti; Goa; in MP: Gwalior; Faridabad; in Gujarat: Ahmedabad; and so on.
The list of these 75 modules apart, just look at the far-flung places from which suspects of the July train blasts in Mumbai are being picked up that itself shows the long reach of the ISI and its terrorist limbs within India, of the faraway places at which they have been able to set up sanctuaries.
Finally, that the blasts and other terrorist operations have continued unabated shows that the cells which have been located are but a fraction of the ones that have been set up. Several factors have afforded such easy access for the ISI. The principal one is the near collapse of law enforcement from intelligence to investigation to combat to the courts.
As is well said, you cannot have a first class response to terrorism in a third class system of governance. Why should anyone be deterred from executing another round of blasts in Mumbai trains when he sees that those caught for the blasts executed 13 years ago are well and kicking; when he sees that their lawyers have been able, and with such ease, to ensnare Government prosecutors in the courts?
But the evaporation of governance and of the law-enforcement mechanisms is just one aspect, indeed it is in large part a consequence of complicity. In particular, of the perversion of pubic discourse by which every action against terrorists, their sponsors and their collaborators is called into question and the national resolve dissipated; second, by the ever-strengthening nexus of rulers and criminal elements. And by the permissive atmosphere that has been fomented by these factors.
Which terrorist group, which potential recruit to terrorism will be deterred when he sees the solicitude with which the prime suspect of the blasts in Coimbatore, Abdul Nasser Mahdani, is being looked after? When he sees, as The Indian Express has reported (July 24-25, 2006) the comforts that the DMK Government has arranged for him, including Ayurvedic massages with 10 masseurs and a senior physician labouring over him; and that too at the tax-payers expense? When he sees that even the elementary restrictions on Mahdanis moving about in the prison have been cancelled in the face of opposition from security services?
When he sees that the representatives of the CPI(M) come calling on him in jail to seek his help in fighting elections? When he sees the Kerala Assembly pass a unanimous resolution on his behalf and sees that that Assembly has not passed any comparable resolution for any other individual?
When he sees how doggedly the Government of Karnataka holds up the investigation into Telgis doings? When he sees a Chief Minister defend SIMI, an organization that has been banned for secessionist and anti-national activities? When he sees what happens in our Parliament how members shout each other down and cannot speak in one voice even while discussing the blasts in Mumbai? When he sees how, even after the Supreme Court has struck down the IMDT Act as unconstitutional and as a threat to national security, the Government, the principal party of which depends on votes of illegal infiltrators from Bangladesh, incorporates those very provisions in the Foreigners Act? Who would not feel emboldened to sign up for the greater glory of jihad and shahadat?
THE FATAL CONCESSION
Nor is it just the terrorist module that is encouraged. The organisers and controllers of these modules are given a free hand. In the statement that Mr Vajpayee and General Musharraf issued on 6 January, 2004, the words that Pakistan was made to agree to were very, very carefully chosen. There was great resistance from Pakistan. But, in the end, it had to agree to those words. By that declaration, Pakistan was made to commit that for sustaining the dialogue it would stop cross-border violence, and ensure that no part of the territory under its control that is, including PoK shall be used for terrorism.
By contrast, in the statement that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh signed with General Musharraf in April 2005, India agreed that to ensure that terrorism will not be allowed to thwart the peace process. This was a fatal concession for by it Pakistan was in effect enabled to continue terrorist activities at will. The onus would henceforth be on India to continue the peace process and the dialogue in spite of the terrorist attacks.
The result has been dramatically brought home in the wake of the Mumbai train blasts. The Prime Ministers address to the nation was anaemic. Perhaps that registered even in the Government. The second statement had a hue of firmness. And with much background briefing we wont put up with this nonsense forever the Foreign Secretaries meeting was called off.
And then? The Prime Minister goes to Moscow. Meets Bush. And suddenly, the official line becomes, We wont let the terrorists succeed in their design to halt the peace process!
So, Pakistan can pursue both limbs talk peace, wage war! And all we can do is to go through the ritual again.
Blasts in Mumbai. Blasts in Srinagar. Another debate in Parliament. Another slew of statements We resolutely/ strongly/unequivocally condemn this dastardly/ cowardly/treacherous/barbaric act... It shows their desperation... Government remains committed to fighting terrorism in all its forms... We will not allow them to disturb communal harmony We will not allow them to derail the peace process...
The Home Minister repeated all the standard phrases in his statement to Parliament last week. He also implied that his ministry had done its job. The Central Government has been sensitising the state governments/UTs about the plans and designs of terrorist outfits. They were asked to streamline physical and protective security of vital institutions...
And the Government is on the job even now, he assured. The Government has made an assessment of the situation following these blasts, he told Parliament. And what did the assessment yield? The security apparatus has to focus greater attention and improve intelligence-gathering capabilities particularly at the local level to collect actionable intelligence... There is also a need to further enhance physical security and access control at airports, metros, vital installations... besides accelerated border fencing, overall coastal security... State Governments have been asked to improve coordination between the Railway Police Force and the Government Railway Police to enhance security of trains and railway stations...
Should he not have said, The Government has made yet another assessment of the situation following these blasts? And did we really need yet another assessment of the situation? After all, what is new in this list? And what happened to that claim of 100 per cent of the recommendations of those Task Forces having been implemented?
THEIR SUCCESS
But while we keep repeating, Terrorists will not be allowed to succeed, the fact is that through them Pakistan has already succeeded in several respects:
It has succeeded in creating the impression I dare say, in India too that the status of Kashmir vis a vis India is not a settled issue. Indeed, that what will happen in the future, what some Government of India will do is an open question. When it is asked in Parliament, Does the Government stand by the unanimous Resolution which Parliament had passed, namely that the only unfinished business relating to J&K is that we have to get back the parts of the state that Pakistan has usurped?, the Government remains silent.
Pakistan has succeeded in establishing that it shall have an equal say in what the final solution shall be.
It has succeeded in establishing that the secessionists it has been patronising, arming, financing are the representatives of the Kashmiris, and so they are the ones to whom the Indian authorities must talk.
And the Indian authorities must talk to them without the secessionists agreeing to anything in advance in the Rajya Sabha, on July 26, the Home Minister was specifically asked by Yashwant Sinha, Has Hurriyat agreed to give up violence?; all he could claim was that they are giving the impression that they are willing to do so! As for their avowed goal of taking Kashmir out of India, they are not even giving any impression that they have diluted that goal one whit.
Pakistan and its local agents have already accomplished the ethnic cleansing of the Valley, having driven the Hindus out. They are now systematically driving them out of Doda.
Equally ominous is the fact that, while India has always maintained that issues between Pakistan and India shall be dealt with bilaterally, that we will not agree to any third party mediation, now the US is the very visible third party in everything. Recall the change in the Prime Ministers tenor after he met Bush in Moscow.
Moreover, the initiative has by now passed completely into the hands of Musharraf. He is the one who is forever proposing formulae, and we are put to reacting. Worse, he has succeeded in bringing the various political groups in Kashmir to talking his language. Omar Abdullah, the PDP leaders as well as the Mirwaiz are now lauding Musharrafs formulations, and proclaiming that these Self Rule, division into Regions are the ones that show the way forward.
FUNDAMENTALISATION OF DISCOURSE
It is because our media is so preoccupied with the controversy of the day, it is because it is so preoccupied with life-style journalism, it is because there is the censorship of political correctness that we do not realise how fundamentalist the discourse has become in Kashmir. We keep repeating nonsense about the great tolerant traditions of Kashmir, about the Sufi Islam of Kashmir, about the unique catholicity of Kashmiriat, about the incomparable blend of Shaivism and liberal Islam in Kashmir.
In fact, the very persons who are people like us are now taking positions that cannot but shock every Indian, and cannot but wreak a terrible outcome. Hari Parbat is sacred to every Kashmiri Hindu: how do you feel when Hindu refugees hear it being referred to in speeches and publications as Kohi Maaran the hill of evil? Can you imagine a person who has held high office in the state telling Kashmiris that hey must learn from Hamas? Can you imagine his leading associate denouncing the Amarnath yatra as a cultural intrusion? Can you imagine a situation, when persons holding a peaceful observance against the massacres in Doda are killed, the Chief Minister proclaims in effect that the protestors invited the deaths upon themselves? Can you imagine a person who was till the other day Chief Minister telling the second Round Table Conference that we must accept One country, two systems? Can you imagine a leading political light of the Valley tell the same conference that the Kashmir Constituent Assembly was a sovereign body, that Article 370 was a treaty between two sovereign bodies?
How do you feel as you see the glee with which a Pakistani website reports a mainstream, nationalist Kashmiri politician proclaim that New Delhi is responsible for the volatile situation in Kashmir, where its troops are killing Kashmiris unjustifiably and forcing them to take up arms? How do you feel when you read him demanding to know, Why is India killing innocents?, and declaring, By these evil designs, India forces our youth to take the gun and sacrifice their lives? When he declares that the Indian Army has been given a free hand to kill innocent people? When you see that his charge against his political rivals, that is the current Government in the state, is that it is in league with the occupation authorities to run a campaign of terror against Kashmiris?
Such rhetoric is the staple today. And the results are brought home every other day. When a Lashkar man is killed these days, four to five thousand turn up for an ostentatious demonstration in his honour. The counter-insurgency groups which had been built up with such great effort have all been abandoned by Delhi. The killings by the terrorist bands become more and more brutal by the week corpses are left with their heads hacked off, people are sent back to their homes with their limbs and parts sawn off... New technologies are introduced car bombs; grenades the man who throws it is paid when he produces the pin...
Has Pakistan not succeeded? Has its instrument, terrorism, not succeeded? And our Government applies itself to organizing yet another assessment of the situation. Actually, it does more. It is only by a hairs breadth, it is only at the very last minute that the decision that had been taken namely, to agree in the Indo-Pak meeting of May 21, 2006 to withdraw troops from Siachin was abandoned.
The terrorist infrastructure remains intact in Pakistan, and securely in the hands of ISI and the Army. Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and other such groups have been allowed a free field to operate in POK after the earthquake to organise relief, to open educational institutions. A better opportunity to pick up recruits for jihad and shahadat could not have been provided. Musharraf remains set in his singular aim.
HENCE
The first thing that is required for standing up to what is in store can be put in the words that were used by a high-up in the present Government itself:
The PM and others must see that this Government does not have the mandate to make any fundamental changes in our foreign policy, certainly not in our defence policy; that it does not have the mandate to take decisions that will jeopardise our countrys territory;
They must give up the delusion that problems that it has not been possible to solve in 55 years can be solved by out-of-the-box thinking in five weeks;
Individuals must give up the delusions of what has been rightly called the Gujranwala School of Foreign Policy the delusion, namely, that while others have failed, I will succeed because I am manifestly more sincere, because I am from that part of the sub-continent.
Next, the Government must spell out what the ultimate solution is that it has in mind for Kashmir. It must share with the people and Parliament what is happening in talks around Round and other tables.
In the alternate, Parliament must insist that it be taken into confdence. Once the deed is done, it will be too late.
Parliament must also get Government to specify what it understands by Self Rule; by making borders irrelevant; by autonomy - is the sky the limit still?; by the proposals that are being bandied about joint management for power, tourism, horticulture...
Most important, it must rescind the fatal concession it made in the April 2005 statement that we will continue the peace process irrespective of terrorism.
And a final plea to the media: report in detail what the nationalist, mainstream political leaders of J&K are saying in the Valley. Unless the country is alerted now, obituaries will be all that will be left to pen.
Arun Shourie is a former Minister
Posted by: john ||
08/06/2006 15:55 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[8 views]
Top|| File under:
Today, the United States rightly lives in fear of the Bomb it created because the decision to use it--if and when it becomes available--has already been made. But this time around, pious men with beards will decide when and where on American soil atomic weapons are to be used. Shadowy groups, propelled by fanatical hatreds, scour the globe for fissile materials. They are not in a hurry; time is on their side. They are confident they will one day breach Fortress America. And what then? The world shall plunge headlong into a bottomless abyss of reaction and counterreaction whose horror the human mind cannot comprehend.
Posted by: john ||
08/06/2006 13:31 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[9 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Interesting that if you scratch deep enough, even the most liberal and educated of Pak people will display this islamic zeal
Posted by: john ||
08/06/2006 13:36 Comments ||
Top||
#2
"Hood-boy" - apt name, methinks.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
08/06/2006 14:42 Comments ||
Top||
I can absolutely guarantee you that should your 'pious men' manage to set of a nuke in the US, that all this talk of 'reaction and counterreaction' will be rather one-sided.
(john - I agree with you, and this is a major worry)
Posted by: Tony (UK) ||
08/06/2006 18:59 Comments ||
Top||
The centrepiece of Pakistan's relationship with the West since September 11, 2001, has been dubbed "enlightened moderation" by its president and philosopher-general, Pervez Musharraf. Under his rule, Musharraf claims, Pakistan has rejected the orthodox, militant, violent Islam imposed by the previous chief of army staff to seize power in Pakistan, General Zia ul-Haq (who ruled from 1977-1988), in favour of a more 'modern' and 'moderate' Islam. But Musharraf's actions, and those of his government and its allies, are often at odds with this.
In fact, after almost five years of 'enlightened moderation,' it seems there is more continuity than change. And, with each passing day, it becomes harder to see how such a policy can hope to stem the tide of religious radicalism that is overwhelming Pakistani society.
No one doubts that there have been some changes for the good. There is a perceptible shift in institutional practices and inclinations. Heads of government organizations are no longer required to lead noon prayers as in the 1980's; female announcers with undraped heads freely appear on Pakistan Television; to the relief of many passengers thickly bearded stewards are disappearing from PIA flights; the first women fighter pilots have been inducted into the Pakistan Air Force.
More importantly, in early July 2006, Musharraf directed the Council of Islamic Ideology to draft an amendment to the controversial Hudood Ordinance, put in place by General Zia-ul-Haq and not repealed by any of the civilian governments that ruled from 1988 to 1999. This law gives women a lower legal status and punishes the victims of rape. Repeal of these anti-women laws has been a long standing demand of Pakistani women's groups. A vastly overdue - but nevertheless welcome - action was taken by the government when it released in July hundreds of women prisoners arrested under the Hudood Ordinance, many of whom had spent years awaiting their trial.
But the force of these pluses cannot outweigh the many more weighty minuses. General Musharraf has formally banned some of many Jihadi groups that the Pakistan army has helped train and arm for over two decades, but they still operate quite freely. After the October earthquake, some of these extremist groups in Kashmir seized the opportunity of relief work to fully reestablish and expand their presence.
Exploiting Musharraf's ambivalence, they openly flaunted their banners and weapons in all major towns of Azad Kashmir and fully advertised their strength. Some obtained relief materials from government stocks to pass off as their own, and used heavy vehicles that could only have been provided by the authorities. Many national and international relief organizations were left insecure by their overwhelming presence. Only recently have the jihadists moved out of full public view into more sheltered places.
Other Pakistani leaders send similar messages. Shaukat Aziz, a former Citibanker and now prime minister of Pakistan, made a call for nation-wide prayers for rain in a year of drought. This effort to improve his Islamic credentials became less laughable when, at an education conference in Islamabad, he proposed that Islamic religious education must start as soon as children enter school.
This came in response to a suggestion by the moderate Islamic scholar, Javed Ghamdi, that only school children in their fifth year and above should be given formal Islamic education. Otherwise, said Ghamdi, they would stand in danger of becoming rigid and doctrinaire. The government's 2006 education policy now requires Islamic studies to begin in the third year of school, a year earlier than in the previous policy.
Other ministers are no less determined to show Islamic zeal. The federal minister for religious affairs, Ijaz ul Haq, speaking at the launch of a book authored by a leading Islamic extremist leader on "Christian Terrorism and The Muslim World," argued that anyone who did not believe in jihad was neither a Muslim nor a Pakistani. He then declared that given the situation facing Muslims today, he was prepared to be a suicide bomber.
According to a newspaper report, Pakistani health minister, Mohammad Nasir Khan, assured the upper house of parliament that the government could consider banning female nurses looking after male patients at hospitals.
This move arose from a motion moved by female parliamentary members of the MMA, the Islamist party that commands majorities in the provincial assemblies of the Frontier and Baluchistan provinces and offered crucial support for Musharraf staying on as president. Women's bodies are of particular concern to these holy men: "We think that men could derive sexual pleasure from women`s bodies while conducting ECG or ultrasound," proclaimed Maulana Gul Naseeb Khan, provincial secretary of the MMA.
In his opinion women would be able to lure men under the pretext of these medical procedures. Therefore, he said, "to save the supreme values of Islam and the message of the Holy Prophet (PBUH), the MMA has decided to impose the ban." Destroyed or damaged billboards with women's faces can be seen in several cities of the Frontier because the MMA deems the exhibition of unveiled women as un-Islamic.
Total separation of the sexes is a central goal of the Islamists, the consequences of which have been catastrophic. For example, on April 9, 2006, 21 women and 8 children were crushed to death, and scores injured, in a stampede inside a three-storey madrassa in Karachi where a large number of women had gathered for a weekly congregation. Male rescuers, who arrived in ambulances, were prevented from moving injured women to hospitals.
One cannot dismiss this as just one incident. Soon after the October 2005 earthquake, as I walked through the destroyed city of Balakot, a student of the Frontier Medical College described to me how he and his male colleagues were stopped by religious elders from digging out injured girl students from under the rubble of their school building. The action of these elders was similar to that of Saudi Arabia`s ubiquitous religious "mutaween" police who, in March 2002, had stopped schoolgirls from leaving a blazing building because they were not wearing their abayas. In rare criticism, Saudi newspapers had blamed the mutaween for letting 15 girls burn to death.
The Saudiization of a once-vibrant Pakistani culture continues at a relentless pace. The drive to segregate is now also being found among educated women. Vigorous proselytizers bringing this message, such as Mrs. Farhat Hashmi, have been catapulted to heights of fame and fortune. Their success is evident. Two decades ago the fully veiled student was a rarity on Pakistani university and college campuses. Now she outnumbers her sisters who still dare show their faces. This has had the effect of further enhancing passivity and unquestioning obedience to the teacher, and of decreasing the self-confidence of female students.
The intensification of religious feelings has had a myriad other more significant consequences. Depoliticization and destruction of all non-religious organizations has lead to the absence of any noticeable public mobilization - even on specifically Muslim causes like US actions against Iraq, Palestine, or Iran. Events in these areas rarely bring more than a few dozen protesters on to the streets - if that.
Nevertheless large numbers of Pakistanis are driven to fury and violence when they perceive their faith has been maligned. Mobs set on fire the Punjab Assembly, as well as shops and cars in Lahore, for an act of blasphemy committed in Denmark. Even as religious fanaticism grips the population there is a curious, almost fatalistic, disconnection with the real world which suggests that fellow Muslims don't matter any more - only the Faith does.
Religious identity has also become increasingly sectarian. A suicide bomber, as yet unidentified, killed 57 people and eliminated the entire leadership of the "Sunni Movement" when he leapt on to the stage at a religious gathering in Karachi in April, 2006. Months earlier, barely a mile down from my university, at the shrine of Bari Imam, 25 Shias were killed in similar attack.
In the tribal areas, sectarian tensions have frequently exploded into open warfare: in the villages of Hangu district, Sunnis and Shias exchanged light artillery and rocket fire leaving scores dead. Earlier this year, when I traveled for lecturing in the town of Gilgit, I saw soldiers crouched in bunkers behind mounted machine guns. It looked more like a town under siege than a tourist resort.
The clearest political expression of this shift towards a more violent and intolerant religious identity is the rise of the MMA as a national force, which on key issues both supports and is supported by General Musharraf's government. A measure of its power, and the threat it poses to society and the state, is the Pakistani Taliban movement that it has helped create, especially in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan. Their success draws in large measure on the lessons they learned when working hand in the hand with the Pakistan army to create and sustain the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Unable to combat the toxic mix of religion with tribalism, the Pakistani government is rapidly losing what little authority it ever had in the tribal parts. Under US pressure, the army has been mounting military offensives against Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters who fled Afghanistan. The convenient fiction that the army is merely combating "foreign militants" from the Arab and Central Asian countries is accepted by no one. Its assaults have taken a heavy civilian toll and local resistance has grown.
The local Taliban, as well as Al-Qaida, are popular and the army is not. In the tribal areas, the local Taliban now run a parallel administration that dispenses primitive justice according to tribal and Islamic principles. A widely available Taliban-made video that I saw shows the bodies of criminals dangling from electricity poles in the town of Miranshah while thousands of appreciative spectators look on.
In Wana, a regional capital, about 20 miles from the Afghan border, Taliban supporters have decreed that men are forbidden to shave. A Pathan barber, who migrated to Islamabad, told me last month that many others like him are making their way to the big cities or abandoning their traditional occupation.
The Pakistani Taliban (like their brothers in Afghanistan) see education as insidious. Pakistani newspapers frequently carry news of schools in the tribal regions being attacked destroyed by the Taliban. But rarely are these incidents followed by angry editorials or letters-to-the editor.
Implicit sympathy for the Taliban remains strong among urban middle-class Pakistanis because they are perceived as standing up to the Americans, while the government has caved in. In Waziristan, one of the locales of a growing insurgency, the state has essentially capitulated and accepted Talibanic rule over tribal society as long as the army is allowed to maintain a spectator presence.
Stepping back, the Islamist shift underway in Pakistan becomes yet more evident. According to the Pew Global Survey (2006), the percentage of Pakistanis who expressed confidence in Osama bin Laden as a world leader grew from 45% in 2003 to 51% in 2005. This 6 point increase must be compared against responses to an identical questionnaire in Morocco, Turkey, and Lebanon, where bin Laden's popularity has sharply dropped by as much as 20 points.
It is worth asking what has changed Pakistan so and what makes it so different from other Muslim countries? What set one section of its people upon the other, created notions of morality centred on separating the sexes, and sapped the country's vitality? Some well meaning Pakistanis - particularly those who live overseas - think that it is best to avoid such difficult questions.
These days they are venturing to "repackage Pakistan" for the media. They want to change negative perceptions of Pakistan in the West while, at the same time, hesitating to call for a change in the structure of the state and its outlook.
But at the heart of Pakistan's problems lies a truth - one etched in stone - that when a state proclaims a religious identity and mission, it is bound to privilege those who organize religious life and interpret religious text. Since there are many models and interpretations within every religion, there is bound to be conflict between religious forces over whose model shall prevail. There is also the larger confrontation between religious principles and practices and what we now consider to be 'modern' ideas of society, which have emerged over the past several hundred years.
This truth, for all its simplicity, escaped the attention of several generations of soldiers, politicians, and citizens of Pakistan. It is true that there has been some learning - Musharraf's call for "enlightened moderation" is a tacit (and welcome) admission that a theocratic Pakistan cannot work. But his call conflicts with his other, more important, responsibility as chief of the Pakistan Army.
Pakistan is what it is because its army finds greater benefit in the status quo. Today the Pakistan Army is vast, and as an institution, has acquired enormous corporate interests that sprawl across real estate, manufacturing, and service sectors. It also receives large amounts of military aid, all of which would be threatened if it comes into direct conflict with the US. In the 1960s and 1980s, and again since 9/11, the army discovered its high rental value when serving the US. Each time the long-term costs to the society and state have been terrible.
The relationship between the army and religious radicals is today no longer as simple as in the 1980's. To maintain a positive image in the West, the Pakistani establishment must continue to decry Islamic radicalism, and display elements of liberalism that are deeply disliked by the orthodox. But hard actions will be taken only if the Islamists threaten the army's corporate and political interests, or if senior army commanders are targeted for assassination. The Islamists for their part hope for, and seek to incite, action by zealous officers to bring back the glory days of the military-mullah alliance led by General Zia ul Haq.
Musharraf and his corps commanders well know that they cannot afford to sleep too well. It is in the lower ranks that the Islamists are busily establishing bases. A mass of junior officers and low-ranking soldiers - whose world view is similar to that of the Taliban in most respects - feels resentful of being used as cannon fodder for fighting America's war. It is they who die, not their senior officers.
So far, army discipline has successfully squelched dissent and forced it underground. But this sleeping giant can - if and when it wakes up - tear asunder the Pakistan Army, and shake the Pakistani state from its very foundations.
Pervez Hoodbhoy is professor of physics at Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad
Posted by: john ||
08/06/2006 12:37 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[5 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
With these clowns, I think Godot will come long before enlightment.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
08/06/2006 14:45 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Meanwhile across the border...
Technologies of India has been chosen to supply software in support of Boeing's 787 program. HCL DO-178B software will be used by Turbo Power Systems to verify and validate ram fan motor controllers being supplied by Hamilton Sundstrand for the 787's power electronics cooling system. HCL software already supports a number of other 787 suppliers, including Volvo Aero, Meggitt and BAE Systems.
Posted by: john ||
08/06/2006 17:22 Comments ||
Top||
Another photo agency fakery. That is rockets being fired from Tyre not the other way around. Note the rocket launcher blast direction, the flames(there is no engine they would being at end of the range) neither they are so precise.
"Disproportion" is the concept of the moment. Do you know how to play? Let's say 150 missiles are lobbed at northern Israel from the Lebanese village of Qana and the Israelis respond with missiles of their own that kill 28 people. Whoa, man, that's way "disproportionate."
But let's say you're a northwestern American municipality -- Seattle, for example -- and you haven't lobbed missiles at anybody, but a Muslim male shows up anyway and shoots six Jewish women, one of whom tries to flee up the stairs, but he spots her, leans over the railing, fires again and kills her. He describes himself as "an American Muslim angry at Israel" and tells 911 dispatchers: ''These are Jews. I want these Jews to get out. I'm tired of getting pushed around, and our people getting pushed around by the situation in the Middle East.''
Well, that's apparently entirely "proportionate," so "proportionate" that the event is barely reported in the American media, or (if it is) it's portrayed as some kind of random convenience-store drive-by shooting. Pamela Waechter's killer informed his victims that "I'm only doing this for a statement," but the world couldn't be less interested in his statement, not compared to his lawyer's statement that he's suffering from "bipolar disorder.'' And the local FBI guy, like the Mounties in Toronto a month or so back, took the usual no-jihad-to-see-here line. ''There's nothing to indicate it's terrorism related,'' said Special Assistant Agent-In-Charge David Gomez. In America, terrorism is like dentistry and hairdressing: It doesn't count unless you're officially credentialed.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/06/2006 10:54 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[8 views]
Top|| File under:
By Ian Bremmer
Now that market experts interested in oil prices are persuaded that Israel's war on Hezbollah will not spill into Syria or Iran, their attention has shifted 900 miles to the east and three weeks into the future.
Tehran has promised to respond by Aug. 22 to a Western-sponsored incentive package intended to halt development of its nuclear program. We can expect the regime to offer either a conditional pledge to temporarily suspend uranium enrichment or a new burst of belligerence. Either way, most analysts believe, Aug. 22 will be a red-letter day for energy prices.
But the bloodshed in Lebanon and Iran's nuclear program are hardly unrelated. Israel's conflict with Hezbollah has, in fact, raised the stakes at the nuclear bargaining table, contributing to the diplomatic momentum that on July 31 produced a Security Council resolution -- the first legally binding mandate to suspend enrichment that Tehran has faced. The war in Lebanon has helped the Iranian nuclear issue become the center of gravity in a wider battle for dominance in the region.
On the eve of her recent visit to the region, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice asserted that the conflict in Lebanon should be understood as part of the "birth pangs of a new Middle East." But what kind of Middle East will emerge from this war? One in which Iran, Syria and their militant proxies hold greater regional leverage? Or one in which the United States, Israel and moderate Arab governments coordinate a more effective political response to the metastasis of regional radicalism? Which group now holds the winning hand?
Continued on Page 49
According to the German scholar Matthias Küntzel, the Berlin daily the Tagesspiegel published a letter-to-the-editor from Dr. Mounir Herzallah, a Shiite from the South of Lebanon. Dr. Herzallah reports on how Hezbollah-terrorists came to his town, dug a munitions depot and then built a school and a residence directly over it. He writes: Laughing, a local sheikh explained to me that the Jews lose either way: either because the rockets are fired at them or because, if they attack munitions depot, they are condemned by world public opinion on account of the dead civilians. Hezbollah, he says, uses the civilian population as a human shield and then when they are dead as propaganda.
Oliver Stone, Michael Shamberg, and Stacy Sher have created a Movie and that's all it is. Some of the rescuers had signed on as consultants in order to assure that the movie would be accurate to content and emotion. We did our best to provide every detail of the events of September 11, 2001 to the producers and were assured by all involved that the film would be factual. We were deceived by the director and producers of the film throughout production.. Mr. Michael Shamberg even attempted to convince me after I had already seen the film that the story was "as factual as they could make it" "with time constraints". This Movie is a far cry from a "true" story and it has nothing to do with "time constraints." Officer Jimeno had temper tantrem after temper tantrem on set in Hollywood and threatened to leave several times in order to get his way. Ssgt David Karnes, FF Tommy Asher, and myself all find the film to be very disheartening. I second Ssgt. Karne's opinion (NY Post). Fame and Fortune with no regard for the "truth". Oliver Stone, Michael Shamberg, Stacy Sher and William Jimeno have no honor. They have forced a fictional movie about the worst day in American history on us in order to glorify themselves and stuff their pocket's with the procedes from ticket sales. They are attempting pull the wool over the eye's of America. If you are interested in seeing Officer Jimeno you can tune into Country Music Television next week during his interview on what country music he enjoy's listening to "I urge American's to refrain from supporting the film until members of the media can bring the "truth" to light."
Respectfully,
Chuck Sereika
NYSAEMT-4 Paramedic
#093394
" I urge American's to refrain from supporting the film (Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center") until members of the media can bring the "truth" to light" NYSAEMT-4 Paramedic Chuck Sereika #093394
#1
I'd like to hear what, exactly, are the problems with the movie? Could he include even one example? I despise Ollie Stone, but I had heard that he'd been put on a tight leash and forced to behave himself and that the result is a film that didn't have the usual distortions, conspiracy-theories, revisionism and lefty hogwash. This is the first time I've heard otherwise but this guy didn't give any details.
Nicholas M. Guariglia - 7/15/2006
It was late 2001. Northern Alliance soldiers, aided by U.S. commandos, had ended the brutal reign of Mullah Omar. With the Taliban fleeing to the sky-high and mountainous Tora Bora terrain, the al Qaidists had been run out of their camps and bases, and the Afghan locals had reclaimed their towns. Men began listening to the radio and, if they felt so inclined, shaved their beards; women began enrolling in schools and showing their faces all once outlawed under the theocratic rule of the now-overthrown regime. A return to some semblance of normalcy was i n the air, and a yearning for respectable statehood and independence was prevalent.
Overhead, bombs largely became food packages, as the United Nations Children Fund concluded that the American intervention in Afghanistan had led to conditions as to where 35,000 additional Afghan babies a year would now survive childbirth, 10,000 additional Afghan women a year would now survive labor due to adequate prenatal care, and an additional 115,000 Afghan children a year would now make it passed the age of five due to receiving vaccinations they otherwise would not have. Yet it was around this time that Ibrahim Nafie, the leading editor of the Egyptian state-run Al Ahram newspaper, maliciously told his reading audience that the U.S. purposely dropped humanitarian products on areas with landmines to kill hungry Afghans, and genetically treated the food to poison the Afghan population.
In the present day Arab world, such cynical indoctrination is the norm, not the exception. Blatant antagonists in Tehran and Damascus boldly and directly sponsor and host our adversaries, while more blasé thugocracies, such as Egypt or Saudi Arabia, capture a few crackpot fundamentalists here and there to highlight their support, all the while indoctrinating their populace into believing warped lies. It goes without saying that this game serves a double function a continued faux friendship with the U.S. to keep us at bay, and the production of an external enemy Americans and Jews to maintain internal vulnerability.
How and why is this so customary? By walking on both sides of the fence, these peculiar autocracies claim to be our brothers in arms, and yet simultaneously generate the next generation of our killers, through state-run media and television (like a 30-part Syrian miniseries that suggested Jews drink the blood of children), nonchalance of hateful and racist rhetoric from punk imams and clerics, and inciting school curriculum (which concentrates not on mathematics, but on martyrdom). For a moment consider that most members of al Qaida are natives of nations with friendly governments Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, Kuwait, Yemen. Add this to the fact that most hostile Middle Eastern states Iran, Syria, Iraq under Hussein, Afghanistan under Omar generally have more receptive populations (at least we dont condone their dictatorial governments, the thinking may go).
What are we to make of this? The ruling families of moderate and allied Arab states may wine and dine with members of Congress, play golf with department secretaries and cabinet officials, and laugh at Seinfeld reruns with members of their Gestapo in their palace getaways, but in their madrassas and schools they point their finger to us, the Great Satan, for their peoples illiteracy, unemployment, and shame creating a fertile ground where the literature and radical interpretation of Islam looks like an attractive alternative when in actuality, the true nature of their populations distress is their enslavement.
Lets review some of the more asinine fantasies: an Israeli pledge to aid tsunami victims somehow became a theory, held by the hypnotized Arab masses, that Israels relief offerings were really designed to (get this) militarily occupy Indonesia or more comical the deadly wave was purposely caused by a super-secret Israeli submarine, lurking under the depths of the sea, with the intent on killing as many Southeast Asian Muslims as possible.
And we are all aware of the silly Islamic accusation that the World Trade Center was attacked not by nineteen fanatical jihadists, but by Israeli intelligence operatives on the orders of Sharon, bogyman Zionists, corporate lobbyists, economic globalists, and a small Jewish cabal inside the Pentagon to turn American might and fury against innocent Muslims worldwide. The humorous irony to these slanders is what they expose within the Middle Eastern mindset: apparently they believe only sophisticated intelligence agencies like the CIA or Mossad could mastermind and conduct such a large, well thought out operation not half-witted Muslim degenerates. This highlights Thomas Friedmans thesis that uneducated and unemployed Islamic youths suffer not only from a poverty of riches, but a poverty of dignity. This, coupled with rampant Third Reich-like indoctrination, creates a deadly psychosis of inferiority, in which brainwashed teenagers in the Middle East turn their celibacy, illiteracy, inadequacy, insignificance, and misdirected anger against those who have nothing to do with their poor condition like, say, New Yorkers whose tax dollars were going to their cause in the first place.
Apology is not a helpful exercise in flipping this equation. Instead our objective must be to end this neurosis of fascism, homophobia, racism, and sexism that has unfortunately manifested itself into a widespread problem all throughout the Arab world. The problem is not genetic Muslims are not inherently violent, opposed to democracy, anti-Semitic, or brutal toward women. Just look at the Muslims in democratic India, which represent the largest Muslim minority in the world. Rather than hijacking airliners and slicing throats, they are fixing the worlds computer problems in Bangalore. O ne must wonder why over half of the worlds Muslims who live outside the Middle East in free societies do not fall to barbarism, as well. Rather than bombing embassies and barracks, they are CEOs, doctors, lawyers or perhaps just peaceful family men and women who are more interested in their childs report card grades than in toppling skyscrapers.
The entire dictatorial system of the Middle East would collapse precisely our long-term goal if the masses knew the truth or, in the least, were allowed to question what they were told. The people are hushed for their fear of the tyrant, whereas the tyrant deflects hatred and criticism on us, for his fear of his people. This mode of thinking spurred former CIA Director James Woolsey who famously concluded the U.S. was now engaged in World War IV, with the Third World War being the decades-long battle against Soviet communism to explain to a small college audience that, We are on the side of those whom you (Saudi Arabia and Egypt) most fear were on the side of your own people. His premise? Iraq is the blood-spattered proje ct, Egypt is the strategic pivot, the Saudi kingdom, the prize.
Such convictions have often been caricatured in recent years. From the Left, men like Woolsey are reckless warmongers, whereas from the Old Right, they are naïve and overly idealistic interventionists. Europeans shame such positions as cow-towing to the Israeli lobby, whereas the Arab media considers these positions to be the beginning of a new American imperialism. But for a moment consider the nonviolent mechanisms used to reach Mr. Woolseys objective after all, he doesnt advocate military action against Egypt or the House of Saud.
The policy is called linkage, and has been endorsed by human rights activists, most notably Soviet prisoner and now Israeli politician Natan Sharansky. It could be described best as a kind of detail diplomacy, where U.S. diplomats highlight specific abuses that occur within adversarial regimes, treating the littlest of nuances as the end all-be all within diplomatic dialogue.
The objective? To link our relationship to foreign countries based upon how they treat their citizenry. Ignoring the grievances of the oppressed, after all, could be considered our sole (or at least, our largest) past mistake. We relied on classic Cold War realpolitik Keep the black gold flowin and the Russians out which may have helped us, strategically, to bankrupt the Soviet Union. But the price to be paid was costly. By disregarding religious indoctrination and political oppression, and by not really raising the issue of human rights abuses within Arab societies, it created a power vacuum where the supposed promises of Islamic fundamentalism seemed to be a viable option.
Which brings us to this new approach, and we can look back to recent history for a colloquium. It is often said Ronald Reagans finest moment was at Reykjavik, where Mikhail Gorbachev was willing to make huge concessions regarding strategic nuclear arms reductions agreeing with almost everything Reagan and his diplomatic team put on the table. Gorbachev and his Soviet squad had one demand: for the U.S. to abandon plans for the Strategic Defensive Initiative (SDI), the so-called Star Wars concept of a space-deployed anti-ICBM nuclear shield, which would conceivably one day give the United States immunity from a Soviet nuclear attack. Gorbachev has since admitted his cabinet was terrified of this particular American initiative, knowing his government would be unable to spend as much as Washington for such a weapon-system. Reagan knew this then and abruptly stood up, said no deal, and walked out of the meeting rendering all possible agreements regarding other issues as moot.
At the time, it was political suicide for the embattled Reagan. What politician, after all, would want to go down in history as the leader who declined the Soviet Unions greatest concession? Rather than end the meeting with a photo-op of handshakes between the two heads-of-state which could have sent his poll numbers soaring Reagan instead insisted defense spending and the SDI program would continue unabated, hoping an arms race with the Soviets would eventually bankrupt their inferior communist system. The media, at the time, castigated the decision as reckless, dangerous, and foolish.
Knowing now in retrospect how this scenario unfolded, what we need is a new core of hardliners, with Reykjavik-like moments of diplomatic brinkmanship. Instead this time, the issues we must expose center around human rights abuses, curbing religious intolerance, and highlighting political indoctrination within the nation-state we are negotiating with. If we are to receive considerable Egyptian concessions vis-à-vis Israel, we are to insist Hosni Mubarak release democratic dissident Ayman Nour from his dungeon. If we are to receive significant Syrian compromises vis-à-vis Lebanon, we are to demand democracy advocate Mohammad Ghanem be freed. If we are to get the Saudis to lower the pric e of oil, were to also demand they take the widely translated and distributed Mein Kampf out of circulation.
If our counterparts agree to our demands, then we are to boldly come out and let it be known that our request was honored, which will in turn tell the dissidents of the region that we are as serious about reform as we say we are. If released political prisoners want to know who was responsible for their discharge, they would know to look to the West. This would tell the people of the region that Americans do in fact believe our idealism and interests are at least intertwined. What other oil-importing country demands womens rights at a time of high gas prices, rising economies in China and India, and petroleum shortages?
Such a policy of linkage would do wonders for the United States even if those we were negotiating with absolutely refused to abide by our demands but only if we were to openly and unapologetically make their refusal to reform an issue on the international stage. Imagine for a moment Arab media channels covering a Condoleezza Rice press conference, in which she proclaims, Our energy deal with Saudi Arabia, to lower gas prices, will be postponed until the royal family allows its women to drive.
Contrary to popular belief, we do in fact have Lech Wałęsa-type allies in the Middle East that call for plural liberality and democratic freedom. They all tend to be suffering in the dungeons and chambers of their fascist slave masters, and under the twisted apparatus of dictatorship. Our job is to find them Amr Khaled, Omar Karsou, Ayman Nour, Hashem Aghajari, Massoud Hamid, Ali Abdallah expose their oppression, align our interests with theirs, and empower them. Anything less is reverting back to the old status quo of turning a blind eye and de f acto tolerating fascism, which has only led the Middle East to its current disgusting state.
Nicholas M. Guariglia writes on the issues of national defense and counterterrorism, specifically regarding Middle East geopolitics. He is a student at the John C. Whitehead School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University, where he is studying American foreign policy. He can be contacted at nickguar@comcast.net
Posted by: john ||
08/06/2006 12:53 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Whew -- clearly written at white heat! Let's keep an eye on this young man, he looks to be following in Dan Darling's footsteps.
#3
I sense a young, idealistic Seton Hall (bring checkbook for regular donations to the maintainance of the most valuable real estate parcels in the Garden State) student honing his writing skills;which IMHO are all over the map, but not bad.
The UN Childrens Fund, UNESCO, etc., can really lay a guilt-trip on the uninitiated; but "Hey", Most Afghans are goatherds after all. When the poppies are in bloom---Oops. Back to square one.
#4
I once owned a used car, which I've bought for 500$. One day it broke, and a garage owner wanted 1250$ to repair it. I got rid of the car instead. Now, why did I remember that?
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.
