A Different Kind of Compassion
January 11, 2008
As Poodle begins to reap deferred bribes for services rendered in his capacity as Prime Minister, the excellent Media Lens exposes the sordid record of his Ziocon enabler, David Aaronovitch in selling the Iraq war.
If “The wages of sin is death”, the returns must seem altogether less bleak to Tony Blair. In November, Blair was reported to have received £237,000 for a 20-minute speech before an audience of Chinese entrepreneurs. While his salary as prime minister was £186,429 a year, it now takes him two high-profile speeches to earn the same amount. Analysts estimate that he could earn £3m simply by speaking 50 nights a year. Blair will also supplement his income as an adviser to international investment bank JP Morgan - a job that could net him £500,000 a year. This is all in addition to the £4.5m he is being paid for his memoirs.
Blair also finds himself in a position to reward the journalists who loyally supported him as he deceived the public and waged his wars. A notable example is Times columnist David Aaronovitch who, last November, published an article in the Times based on a three-part BBC TV interview with Blair, The Blair Years, shown later that month. Last July, Peter Oborne commented in the Daily Mail on the news that Aaronovitch had been chosen to interview Blair:
Prophets False and Real
January 8, 2008
Ajit Hegde, a South Asian writes about false and real prophets (via Norman Finkelstein).
Who gets a profit out of it? Nobody but a parcel of usurping little monarchs and nobilities who despise you; would feel defiled if you touched them; would shut the door in your face if you proposed to call; whom you slave for, fight for, die for, and are not ashamed of it, but proud; whose existence is a perpetual insult to you and you are afraid to resent it; who are mendicants supported by your alms, yet assume toward you the airs of benefactor toward beggar; who address you in the language of master to slave, and are answered in the language of slave to master; who are worshiped by you with your mouth, while in your heart — if you have one — you despise yourselves for it.– Mark Twain in Mysterious Stranger
Benazir Bhutto’s life can be regarded as a microcosm of Third World liberal aristocracy’s betrayal of their Countries. The sordid record liberal aristocracy which she represented can be summed up as follows.
(1) Gain power promising people liberation from their sorry state of affairs and outright destitution.
(2) When in power , simply betray people who believed them and elected them, Indulge in obscene levels of corruption, behave as if the people who elected you simply doesn’t exist.Build a cult of personality which may make even Stalin green with envy.
(3) Get kicked out of power, sometimes by rightwing political parties , sometimes the military.
(4) Start all over again.
The vicious cycle continues, Ad Nauseum.
Second Thoughts on Charlie Wilson’s War
January 7, 2008
As Tom Engelhart points out, Charlie Wilson’s War is an attempt by a couple of Hollywood liberals to claim the anti-Soviet Afghan jihad for The Democratic Party. Chalmers Johnson, author of the brilliant Blowback trilogy, sets the record straight and reminds readers that this ‘Imperialist propaganda‘ is little more than comedy for loutish frat-boys. (One error I must point out: Johnson conflates the anti-Soviet Mujahideen with the Taliban, where in reality the latter for the most part are of a different generation altogether, even if some of the leadership had participated in the earlier war).
I have some personal knowledge of Congressmen like Charlie Wilson (D-2nd District, Texas, 1973-1996) because, for close to twenty years, my representative in the 50th Congressional District of California was Republican Randy “Duke” Cunningham, now serving an eight-and-a-half year prison sentence for soliciting and receiving bribes from defense contractors. Wilson and Cunningham held exactly the same plummy committee assignments in the House of Representatives — the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee plus the Intelligence Oversight Committee — from which they could dole out large sums of public money with little or no input from their colleagues or constituents.
Both men flagrantly abused their positions — but with radically different consequences. Cunningham went to jail because he was too stupid to know how to game the system — retire and become a lobbyist — whereas Wilson received the Central Intelligence Agency Clandestine Service’s first “honored colleague” award ever given to an outsider and went on to become a $360,000 per annum lobbyist for Pakistan.
Dalrymple on Benazir
January 5, 2008
You already read William Dalrymple’s comments on Benazir in an earlier post here. Here are two other pieces by Dalrymple, the first from the New York Times, and the second from Outlook (India). His assertion that Taliban were created by the ISI is inaccurate. Taliban were shored up by Benazir’s Minister of Interior in order to undermine the ISI whose protege, Gulbudin Hikmatyar had failed to deliver. Once they became successful, that is when the ISI switched support from Hikmatyar to the Taliban.
Bhutto’s Deadly Legacy, New York Times
WHEN, in May 1991, former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi of India was killed by a suicide bomber, there was an international outpouring of grief. Recent days have seen the same with the death of Benazir Bhutto: another glamorous, Western-educated scion of a great South Asian political dynasty tragically assassinated at an election rally.
There is, however, an important difference between the two deaths: while Mr. Gandhi was assassinated by Sri Lankan Hindu extremists because of his policy of confronting them, Ms. Bhutto was apparently the victim of Islamist militant groups that she allowed to flourish under her administrations in the 1980s and 1990s.
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.
Daughter of the West
December 7, 2007
A very interesting round up from Tariq Ali on developments in Pakistan. He also sheds much needed light on the West’s favorite feudal democrat, Benazir Bhutto.
Arranged marriages can be a messy business. Designed principally as a means of accumulating wealth, circumventing undesirable flirtations or transcending clandestine love affairs, they often don’t work. Where both parties are known to loathe each other, only a rash parent, desensitised by the thought of short-term gain, will continue with the process knowing full well that it will end in misery and possibly violence. That this is equally true in political life became clear in the recent attempt by Washington to tie Benazir Bhutto to Pervez Musharraf.
The single, strong parent in this case was a desperate State Department – with John Negroponte as the ghoulish go-between and Gordon Brown as the blushing bridesmaid – fearful that if it did not push this through both parties might soon be too old for recycling. The bride was certainly in a hurry, the groom less so. Brokers from both sides engaged in lengthy negotiations on the size of the dowry. Her broker was and remains Rehman Malik, a former boss of Pakistan’s FIA, who has been investigated for corruption by the National Accountability Bureau and who served nearly a year in prison after Benazir’s fall, then became one of her business partners and is currently under investigation (with her) by a Spanish court looking into a company called Petroline FZC, which made questionable payments to Iraq under Saddam Hussein. Documents, if genuine, show that she chaired the company. She may have been in a hurry but she did not wish to be seen taking the arm of a uniformed president. He was not prepared to forgive her past. The couple’s distaste for each other yielded to a mutual dependence on the United States. Neither party could say ‘no’, though Musharraf hoped the union could be effected inconspicuously. Fat chance.
Israeli Occupied Britain
December 7, 2007
As I noted earlier, the cash-for-honours hoopla was a smokescreen. The real scandal was that a known Zionist should be allowed to buy his way into a position as critical to British foreign policy as the PM’s envoy to the Middle East. Now the Abrahams story breaks and — surprise, surprise — the 800-pound gorilla, Labour Friends of Israel, escapes scrutiny, despite fleeting mention. See, for instance, this attempt by tory rag The Economist to spin the lobby group out of the narrative, replacing it with a vapid take on identity politics. To my knowledge the only mainstream commentator who has had the courage to question the UK Israel Lobby’s vice-like grip on the state’s politics is Yasmin Alibhai-Brown of the Independent. Here she looks at the ‘shadowy role of the Labour Friends of Israel‘.
Pardon me for asking. Perhaps I shouldn’t. For an easy life, some things, you learn, are best left unsaid. Nervous, am I? You bet. But these questions will not stand aside or lie down. They have been bothering me since the Labour party donor row broke last week. They are raised here in good faith. I have no wish to bring the wrath of Moses upon me and I can already hear the accusations of anti-Semitism because I dare to raise the question: Can someone explain what exactly is the role of the Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) in our political life? And its twin, the Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) too. In an open democracy, we are entitled to make such queries – indeed, it is a duty.
Tom Does Venezuela
November 12, 2007
Moisés Naím is one of the more successful Uncle Toms; he has actually risen to the rank of editor of an influential US establishment journal. It is, however, not journalistic integrity or analytical excellence that landed him this gig; instead, it is providing the harmonious accompaniment to His Master’s Voice that seems to have aided his ascent. So here he is now trying to convince us that Venezuela is the new hub of global crime, from drug and human trafficking to money laundering. This would be pretty alarming, if true, of course. But those familiar with Naím’s work would know that he is merely a reprising a fiction that he earlier published book-length in Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers and Copycats are Hijacking the Global Economy. As it happens, this subject is the focus of a very able scholar’s research, and here is what R. T. Naylor, the said scholar, had to say of Naím’s work.
Moisés Naím identifies a new connection between world economics and world politics: ‘Global criminal activities are transforming the international system.’ This transformation, he argues, requires a wholly new response: biometrics and other new technologies are needed to track perpetrators; fancier security devices will be needed to detect fakes and copies; and governments will have to make bureaucracies more flexible. These, you could say, are alarming developments, and Naím should be congratulated for bringing them so forcibly to public attention. The only problem is to find evidence that any of them is actually true.
Benazir’s Corruptions
November 12, 2007
“Trail of corruption and kickback charges still in wings for opposition leader”, reports David Pallister.
Hopes for a third term for Benazir Bhutto, twice kicked out of government for corruption and incompetence, have been thrown into turmoil by the emergency rule. But her ambitions ultimately still depend on whether the amnesty on her corruption charges, granted to her last month by the national reconciliation ordinance, will be upheld in the new supreme court.
Bhutto and her husband, Asif Ali Zardari - nicknamed Mr 10% over alleged extortion - faced eight counts of taking tens of millions of dollars in illegal kickbacks. But whatever decision the court arrives at, the couple also have to contend with money laundering proceedings in Switzerland and Spain, and a civil case in London involving an expensive Surrey mansion.
Kleptocrat in a Hermes Scarf
October 22, 2007
I don’t particularly care for Jemima Khan; but here she weighs in on Benazir Bhutto’s return and makes more sense than I would have given her credit for.
She’s back. Hurrah! She’s a woman. She’s brave. She’s a moderate. She speaks good English. She’s Oxford-educated, no less. And she’s not bad looking either.
I admit I’m biased. I don’t like Benazir Bhutto. She called me names during her election campaign in 1996 and it left a bitter taste. Petty personal grievances aside, I still find jubilant reports of her return to Pakistan depressing. Let’s be clear about this before she’s turned into a martyr.
This is no Aung San Suu Kyi, despite her repeated insistence that she’s “fighting for democracy”, or even more incredibly, “fighting for Pakistan’s poor”.
