Movement For Demcoracy Not Dead
December 29, 2007
‘The democracy movement did not start with Bhutto and will not end with her death’, Aijaz Ahmad tells the excellent Real News Network.
Israel Loses a Friend (Benazir)
December 29, 2007
The ex-Shah of Iran and Mobutu were both of the view that the road to power in Washington lies through the Israel lobby. Musharraf in his biography had forwarded the same view. It isn’t entirely surprising then that Benazir should have tried to grease her way back into power with friendly overtures to the Apartheid regime over Jerusalem. That will perhaps also explain why the quickest to mourn her departure were the US congress’s inhouse ogre, Tom Lantos, and the Lobby’s other water-boy, Arlen Specter.
YNet reports:
Israeli ambassador to UN says in weeks prior to her assassination, ‘intelligent, charismatic’ Pakistani opposition leader sent him emails saying she was afraid extremist elements wanted her dead.
Danny Gillerman, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, told Ynet Thursday that in the weeks prior to her assassination, Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto expressed fear for her life in emails she had sent him.
Fisk’s Decline — I Need a Hiro
December 29, 2007
I am disappointed at Robert Fisk’s unbelievably substandard output of late. On Lebanon he merely reproduces the US-backed Cedar Revolutionaries’ vapid gossip, and today, on Pakistan, despite a promising start, his article soon degenerates into the kind of superficial speculation that one would usually associate with Fox News.
On the other hand, Dilip Hiro eschews sensationalism to offer some sober commentary. In ‘A Tragedy Foretold‘, Hiro asks, ‘Will Bhutto’s Death Boost Her Party’s Chances?’
With the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, her family will go down in history as one where everyone, except the mother, Nusrat, died a violent death.
Her father, Zulfikar Ali, former prime minister of Pakistan, was hanged in 1979 during the rule of his successor, General Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, who had overthrown his civilian government two years earlier. Then Benazir’s younger brother, Shah Nawaz, died of poisoning in mysterious circumstances in 1985 in the south of France. And in 1996, her elder brother, Murtaza, was gunned down in a street by unknown assailants.
A Tragedy Born of Military Despotism and Anarchy
December 28, 2007
‘The assassination of Benazir Bhutto heaps despair upon Pakistan,’ writes Tariq Ali. ‘Now her party must be democratically rebuilt’ (Thanks Sabaa). Also check out Tariq Ali’s excellent analysis on Democracy Now, and his recent in-depth article on the Bhutto dynasty from the London Review of Books.
Even those of us sharply critical of Benazir Bhutto’s behaviour and policies – both while she was in office and more recently – are stunned and angered by her death. Indignation and fear stalk the country once again.
An odd coexistence of military despotism and anarchy created the conditions leading to her assassination in Rawalpindi yesterday. In the past, military rule was designed to preserve order – and did so for a few years. No longer. Today it creates disorder and promotes lawlessness. How else can one explain the sacking of the chief justice and eight other judges of the country’s supreme court for attempting to hold the government’s intelligence agencies and the police accountable to courts of law? Their replacements lack the backbone to do anything, let alone conduct a proper inquest into the misdeeds of the agencies to uncover the truth behind the carefully organised killing of a major political leader.
Pakistan’s Fractured Polity
December 27, 2007
Everyone who can locate Pakistan on the map suddenly feels qualified to offer analysis on the days events. Ironically, some of the sillier commentary comes from Pakistan itself. (BBC has suddenly discovered Husain Haqqani, a 3rd-rate political commissar, who a few years back was on the Uncle Tom circuit as the point man for the Israel Lobby’s Grand Dragon, Daniel Pipes. His schtick was warning Jewish communities in US of the looming ‘Islamic threat’, and the ‘Arab lobby’, encouraging audiences to redouble their lobbying efforts). Following is the most sensible analysis I have across so far. Muratza Shibli’s answer to the ‘Who Killed Bhutto?‘ question is informed and nuanced.
The death of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto is being mourned by millions of Pakistanis. She had a profound public base despite staying out of her country for nearly a decade and dogged by corruption and nepotism charges.
Her death, however, should not come as a surprise at all. For the past three decades, Pakistan has been turned into a “Jihad factory’ under the guidance of the US and other Western powers. After 9/11 when Pakistan launched a war on its own people in the name of “War on terror’, it was not uncanny to predict that the Jihadis who were nourished previously will turn against their old allies — the politicians and the military and the innocent people of Pakistan will get caught and entangled as a collateral.
Read the rest of this entry »
Creeping Fascism
December 27, 2007
The threat of fascism was hinted to by Norman Mailer before his death. More recently he has been echoed by Gore Vidal, Paul Craig Roberts, Naomi Wolf and Ron Paul among others. Here Ray McGovern brings to bear some ‘Lessons From the Past‘.
“There are few things as odd as the calm, superior indifference with which I and those like me watched the beginnings of the Nazi revolution in Germany, as if from a box at the theater…Perhaps the only comparably odd thing is the way that now, years later….”
These are the words of Sebastian Haffner (pen name for Raimund Pretzel), who as a young lawyer in Berlin during the 1930s experienced the Nazi takeover and wrote a first-hand account. His children found the manuscript when he died in 1999 and published it the following year as “Geschichte eines Deutschen” (The Story of a German). The book became an immediate bestseller and has been translated into 20 languages-in English as “Defying Hitler.”
I recently learned from his daughter Sarah, an artist in Berlin, that today is the 100th anniversary of Haffner’s birth. She had seen an earlier article in which I quoted her father and emailed to ask me to “write some more about the book and the comparison to Bush’s America…this is almost unbelievable.”
Benazir Bhutto Assassinated
December 27, 2007
“Benazir Bhutto ‘killed in blast’” reports the BBC. She had promised to wage the ‘war on terror’ on Bush’s behalf. It appears her adversaries have taken to Bush’s precedent of preemption and savagery with more gusto. Sadly for Benazir, her epitaph will be her last statement before the assassination: Speaking of her notoriously corrupt husband, better known as Mr. 10 percent, she said ‘Time will prove he is the Nelson Mandela of Pakistan’. So it goes.
Perhaps this would lead at least some to contemplate the meaning of ‘blowback’ in Pakistan. A thing like this was inconceivable even 5 years back when I was leaving the country.
[Note: BBC's 'security correspondent' Frank Gardner is about as knowledgeable on security issues in Pakistan as I am on gender politics in Equitorial Guinea. His expert opinion comprises of the conventional wisdom culled form Pakistan's english language press mixed with the 'Islamic threat'-mongering of Policy Exchange. His analytical vocabulary is woefully inadequate. This was a political assassination; it has nothing to do with someone wanting to establish an 'Islamic state'.]
New York Times reports that Benazir was actually shot at before the blast, so it appears like a coordinated attack with substantial pre-planning. Refreshingly enough, the following from NYT is not quite the hagiography one usually expects.
An attack on a political rally killed the Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto near the capital, Islamabad, Thursday. Witnesses said Ms. Bhutto was fired upon before the blast, and an official from her party said Ms. Bhutto was further injured by the explosion, which was apparently caused by a suicide attacker.
At least a dozen more people were killed. “At 6:16 p.m. she expired,” said Wasif Ali Khan, a member of Ms. Bhutto’s party who was at Rawalpindi General Hospital where she was taken after the attack, according to The Associated Press.
How’s al-Qaeda doing?
December 27, 2007
Former CIA head of counter terrorism Michael Scheuer presents the facts. You decide.
If an analyst in al-Qaeda’s intelligence services or a journalist friendly to al-Qaeda were asked to compile a roundup of news stories from 2007 that supported his sympathies, here is what he would write. It would be a reasonably effective and sophisticated bit of open-source reporting (or what some might even call disinformation) that would be carefully slanted to the author’s agenda, and al-Qaeda might itself publish or distribute the article as evidence of the decay of the West.
Leaving aside the claims and rhetoric of al-Qaeda and their sympathizers, this analyst or journalist might gather together the following facts available in the media to forward to his friends and colleagues. So, let us assume, for the moment, that our imagined author has completed his task and has forwarded the data below to his editors or al-Qaeda superiors. We invite the readers to peruse the following information and then form their own assessment of al-Qaeda’s end-of-2007 viability and accomplishments.
The US enemy
US deficit-spending on defense and homeland security continues to increase, with spending in Iraq alone now approaching US$12 billion per month. A former senior Ronald Reagan administration official, who is now vice chairman of Goldman Sachs (International), has said, “The US government is in a weakened financial position to respond to another major terrorist attack …” Polls in 2007 showed that 26% of US Muslims under 30 years of age believe that suicide attacks are sometimes necessary in defense of Islam. In addition, 15,000 US Muslims are attending this year’s pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia, a large proportion of whom are young professionals; this is the demographic cohort that is al-Qaeda’s most important recruitment pool. US public opinion continues to run heavily against continuing the war in Iraq and most of the 2008 presidential candidates favor ending the war; none talk of victory. Eighteen of the 19 US presidential candidates support maintaining the status quo in US foreign policy toward the Muslim world, especially regarding Saudi Arabia and Israel. One of the leading candidates has surrounded himself with neo-conservative advisers who lobbied for the US invasion of Iraq. Both US parties and most US media are attacking and trying to limit or end the rendition program run by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which has captured numerous senior al-Qaeda leaders and has, according to CIA chief General Michael Hayden, saved American lives. US Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell said in July that al-Qaeda had successfully regrouped and was capable of attacking in the United States. He added that al-Qaeda has a network of supporters there, and that the threat from homegrown terrorists is growing. The US-led coalitions in Iraq and Afghanistan continued to shrink in 2007, with, for example, South Korea and Japan withdrawing from Afghanistan, and Poland and Australia announcing they would withdraw their combat forces from Iraq in 2008. Prime ministers who supported the US invasion and occupation of Iraq were replaced or defeated for reelection in Britain, Poland and Australia.The European enemy The July 2007 attacks by Muslim doctors in Britain were not militarily effective, but both successfully defeated the British intelligence services’ multi-layered detection capabilities. The Danish and German governments broke up al-Qaeda-related cells in 2007 and claim that those arrested had ties to the main al-Qaeda organization in South Asia. In addition, the European Union’s counterterrorism coordinator said in November that al-Qaeda is now the biggest security threat to Europe. In November, the chief of Britain’s MI-5 security service said his officers knew of 2,000 al-Qaeda-linked individuals who are operating in the United Kingdom. That total is 400 more than the number provided by the MI-5 chief’s predecessor one year earlier. Europeans continue to denigrate Islam, publishing caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad depicted as a dog and honoring the books of Salman Rushdie, an author whose work blasphemes the Prophet Mohammad.
Affairs in the Muslim world
In Iraq, al-Qaeda continues to suffer from manpower losses and even more from the lingering negative impact of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s religious excesses and indiscriminate violence. Some US generals claim that al-Qaeda has been permanently defeated in al-Anbar province; other US generals say al-Qaeda has moved its forces from Anbar to Diyala province and northern Iraq. US officials believe if al-Qaeda can be defeated in Iraq, they can establish stability in the country. There is still no functioning central government in Baghdad and Shi’ite-Sunni tensions continue to simmer. In Egypt and Jordan, the governments have cracked down on Islamist political groups and leaders – jailing hundreds – and have passed measures limiting the Islamists’ participation in elections and government. The US government has not sought to moderate or stop these actions. In Pakistan, President Pervez Musharraf is trying to hold his country together. He is being threatened on the one side by rising Islamist militancy and on the other by the West’s insistence that he permit elections and a return to democracy, practices which have in the past paved the way for civilian politicians to loot the country’s economy. In Afghanistan, the Taliban gained control of more territory in 2007. The success of their insurgent campaign – US forces suffered more killed in 2007 than in any year since 2001 – forced US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in December to urge North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries to deploy more combat forces in Afghanistan. The number of non-Afghan Islamist fighters entering Afghanistan was steadily increasing at the end of 2007, as was the number of suicide attacks in the country. The strength of the Taliban insurgency has also moved some NATO leaders to suggest that Afghan Prime Minister Hamid Karzai’s government consider dealing with elements of the Taliban for peace. Afghan heroin production set new records in 2007 and the drug is now entering the United States in unprecedented amounts. Polls in the summer of 2007 showed that 76% of Muslims worldwide agree with al-Qaeda’s claim that US foreign policy is meant to undermine or destroy Islam.
The affairs of al-Qaeda and its allies
Al-Qaeda’s senior leadership suffered no serious losses in 2007 and Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Abu Yahya al-Libi and other senior leaders published an increasing number of timely audio and video tapes. By mid-December, al-Qaeda’s as-Sahab Productions had disseminated 92 videos, as compared to 58 releases in 2006. Al-Qaeda’s insurgent training camps in South Asia have been re-established and are now sending trained fighters to Afghanistan, Iraq, the Levant and Europe. In 2007, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group publicly joined al-Qaeda and pledged its loyalty to bin Laden. In addition, al-Qaeda-in-Lebanon actively engaged the Lebanese army in battle during 2007, and al-Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb carried out a series of successful attacks during the year. Israel’s government claims al-Qaeda is now well established in Gaza.
Michael Scheuer served in the CIA for 22 years before resigning in 2004. He served as the chief of the bin Laden Unit at the Counterterrorist Center from 1996 to 1999. He is the once anonymous author of Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror and Through Our Enemies’ Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America. Dr Scheuer is a senior fellow with The Jamestown Foundation.
Here’s to the Land
December 27, 2007
Eddie Vedder gives Bush Administration the finger. (cheers aLLy)
(Until I figure out how the above works, you can see the video here)
Here’s to the judges of John Roberts,
Who wear the robe of honor in their phoney legal fort.
and justice is a stranger when the partisans report,
When the court elected the president it was the beginning of this war.
Whoa here’s to the land you’ve torn out the heart of,
John Roberts, find yourself another country to be part of!And here’s to the government of Dick Cheney,
With criminals posing as advisors to the crown
And they hope that no one sees the sights and no one hears the sounds
‘Cause the speeches of the president are the ravings of a clown
Oh, here’s to the land you’ve torn out the heart of
Dick Cheney, find yourself another country to be part ofAnd here’s to the churches of Jerry Falwell,
Where the cross, once made of silver, now has turned to rust
And the Sunday morning sermons pander to the fear of men in lust
God only knows in heaven they must trust
Oh, here’s to the land you’ve torn out the heart of
Jerry Falwell, find yourself another country to be part ofAnd here’s to the laws of Alberto Gonzalez,
Congress will pass an act in the panic of the day
While the Constitution is drowning in an ocean of decay
And freedom of speech is dangerous, I’ve even heard them say
Oh, here’s to the land you’ve torn out the heart of
Alberto Gonzalez, find yourself another country to be part ofAnd here’s to the businessman of George W.,
Who want to change the focus from Halliburton and Enron
And their profits, like blood money are spilling out on the White House Lawn
TO keep their hold on power they’re using terror as a gun
While the bombs that fall on children don’t care which side that they’re on
Oh, here’s to the land you’ve torn out the heart of
George W., find yourself another country to be part of
Climate of Suspicion
December 25, 2007
The ideological assault on Muslims continues apace. Here Seumas Milne responds to the latest. ‘People who would have no problem recognising anti-semitism as a form of racism still claim Islamophobia is about ideology, not ethnicity’, he writes.
Perhaps it’s not surprising that someone who describes himself as phobic about the concept of Islamophobia and thinks that the invasion of Iraq is a “subject of purely historical interest” might struggle to grasp why the relentless campaign of hostile media stories about the Muslim community is toxic and dangerous – or recognise that it is driven by a neoconservative agenda about terror and war.
Last week Andrew Anthony, author of this year’s summer reading of choice for liberal hawks (The Fall-Out: how a guilty liberal lost his innocence), accused me of “wishful thinking and evasion” for highlighting the fabrication of evidence by the Tory-linked thinktank, Policy Exchange, in its report on “extremist literature” in British mosques – and for arguing that jihadist violence is essentially the product of western aggression, occupation and support of tyranny in the Muslim world
