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Monday, December 31, 2007
Nice clean shave and glasses for Bhutto assassin. Muslim extremists going "Intelligence Chic"
Not so funny money
Dollar Posts Biggest Decline Versus Euro Since 2006 on Housing
By Min Zeng
The dollar posted its biggest weekly drop against the euro since April 2006 as a slumping housing market and upheaval in Pakistan made U.S. financial assets less attractive to international investors.
The U.S. currency fell against all 16 most-actively traded currencies except Mexico's peso this week as traders raised bets that the Federal Reserve will cut borrowing costs in January. The dollar has lost 10.4 percent against the euro and 5.7 percent versus the yen in 2007, and the European currency is up 5.2 percent versus the yen, its eighth annual increase.
``The dollar is like a sore thumb getting hit by a hammer,'' said Brian Dolan, chief currency strategist at Forex.com, a unit of the online currency trading firm Gain Capital in Bedminster, New Jersey. ``U.S. housing data shows no signs of any bottom in sight.''
The U.S. currency fell 2.4 percent this week to $1.4723 per euro, 1.5 percent to 112.28 yen and 2.5 percent to 1.1263 Swiss francs. The dollar touched $1.4728 per euro, 112.28 yen and 1.1259 Swiss francs, the lowest levels since mid-December.
Sweden's krona and Norway's krone led gains against the dollar this week, rising more than 2.8 percent. The Australian currency advanced 0.5 percent, the pound strengthened about 1 percent and the New Zealand currency increased 1 percent.
The U.S. currency weakened yesterday after the Commerce Department reported that sales of new homes in the U.S. fell to a 12-year low last month. Purchases dropped 9 percent to an annual rate of 647,000, and October sales were revised down to a 711,000 pace.
Home Prices
Home prices in 20 U.S. metropolitan areas decreased 6.1 percent in October, the S&P/Case-Shiller home-price index showed Dec. 26. The decrease was the biggest since the group started keeping year-over-year records in 2001.
Investors also sold the dollar after former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto died of injuries sustained in a Dec. 27 attack on an election rally in Pakistan. She was buried yesterday in her ancestral village, and troops were deployed to quell riots in several cities. The government said al-Qaeda may be behind Bhutto's killing and ordered a judicial inquiry.
``The combination of soft U.S. data and geopolitical risks led to dollar weakness,'' said Richard Franulovich, a senior currency strategist in New York at Westpac Banking Corp. ``Data from the U.S. continued to show weakness.''
The pound fell to a record low of 73.89 pence per euro yesterday after a U.K. report showing falling house prices increased speculation that the Bank of England will cut interest rates from 5.5 percent. The pound lost 1.8 percent against the euro this week, the most since September.
Swiss Franc
The Swiss franc increased against 14 of the 16 most actively traded currencies this week, and the yen rose against the dollar, pound and currencies in Brazil, New Zealand and Australia on speculation the upheaval in Pakistan will lead to a reduction of carry trades funded in Switzerland and Japan.
In a carry trade, investors borrow in countries with low interest rates and convert the proceeds into currencies they can lend out for a higher return. They earn the spread between the borrowing and lending rates, incurring the risk that currency fluctuations may erase their profits.
Japan's benchmark lending rate is 0.5 percent and Switzerland's is 2.75 percent, the lowest among major economies.
``The Swiss franc is traditionally considered a safe-haven currency, and geopolitical risks pushed people to cut carry trades,'' said Nick Bennenbroek, head of currency strategy in New York at Wells Fargo & Co.
For the year, the dollar has declined against 14 of the 16 most actively traded currencies as the Fed cut the target rate for overnight lending between banks three times to 4.25 percent.
Payroll Report
A Labor Department report on Jan. 4 will show U.S. employers added 70,000 jobs this month, down from 94,000 in November, according to the median forecast of 58 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. The unemployment rate is expected to rise to 4.8 percent in December from 4.7 percent.
Interest-rate futures on the Chicago Board of Trade yesterday indicated 94 percent odds that the Fed will reduce its benchmark interest rate a quarter-percentage point at its Jan. 30 meeting, compared with a 76 percent chance a day earlier and 80 percent a week ago.
``In the near term, the dollar probably remains on the weak side,'' said Doug Smith, chief Americas economist in New York at Standard Chartered Bank.
The dollar's share of global foreign-exchange reserves fell to 63.8 percent last quarter, the lowest level since records began in 1999, as international demand for U.S. assets slumped after the subprime-mortgage market collapsed, the International Monetary Fund said yesterday in Washington.
The U.S. currency will rebound to $1.39 per euro by the end of 2008, according to the median forecast of 42 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. The yen will trade at 110 per dollar, according to the survey.
To contact the reporter on this story: Min Zeng in New York at mzeng2@bloomberg.net
No surprise from Faux News
Fox News Excludes Ron Paul from Presidential Debate After All Fox news eliminating debate participation of only anti-war Presidential candidate: Ron Paul
Fox News has excluded Ron Paul from participating in the last debate the weekend before the primary election begins. The debated occurs on January 6, less than one day after two back to back Republican and Democratic debates are being held at the same location sponsored by ABC News, WMUR-TV and Facebook.
Ron Paul supporters will be holding rallies, writing letters to the editor, boycotting all sponsors, calling Fox news and in an additional move there is even talk of contacting all shareholders of the company that owns Fox news (I will let you look that up yourself) and is advising everyone to sell sell sell and for those of you not able to sell, buy short. I am not offering any advice, I am only reporting what I have seen in print.
Ron Paul himself, a man who rarely gets upset over all of these decisions to oust him from events, stated "They are scared of me and don't want my message to get out, but it will," he continued "They are propagandists for this war and I challenge them on the notion that they are conservative."
As I have been saying for months, the mainstream media is not to be trusted and this is further proof of it. This is a Presidential election for goodness sake, not an election for scout master. Fox News is heavy handedly affecting the outcome of the election of the President of the Free World. The simple act of excluding Ron Paul will have a huge impact on the election. New Hampshire, although it has lost half of its delegates due to holding their primaries too soon, is still the first primary in the nation (Iowa holds the first caucus) and thus has a huge effect on who people will determine is an electable candidate.
I have never subscribed to the "who is most popular" method of picking a candidate, I prefer to choose based on substance, but there are many who still believe that it is wasting a vote to vote for the man you want to win if you think he could lose and instead choose a lesser candidate with more of a chance. Nonsense. All you get by voting for the lesser of two evils is evil. You do not get a prize for voting for the man who turned out to be the winner. If you want the war to end, then Ron Paul is the only Republican who is willing to take that stance and the only man who voted against the war in the first place. One of the reasons our economy is falling so rapidly along with the dollar is because of our government's war spending.
Those of you that are fine with Fox news choosing who are viable candidates, sit back and enjoy the propaganda. If there are any folks left with a little gumption, Ron Paul's staff is planning a rally that will take place at the same time as the 90 minute (ummm, debate?) will air on television. The Fox "debate" will be taped at Saint Anselm College in Goffstown, NH. It is hard to call it a debate when they have limited participation to only candidates who agree about the war and nearly every other neo-con un-conservative position. They cannot even claim that they are doing this by who is doing better in the polls because Ron Paul is polling higher than some of those invited. Fox is blatantly attempting to affect the outcome of this political election. (Is that legal under FCC rules?)
Of course Fox news if free to eliminate any candidate they want. They are (or should be) a free market enterprise and Ron Paul would whole-heartedly agree. However, that does not mean that the market won't respond. How that market will respond, well, I guess we will have to wait and see.
For me, I hope the market response is to tell Fox that their brand of propaganda (dishonestly described as news) isn't selling.
Original article posted here.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Keep walking, keep moving, nothing to see here . . .
Revealed: Pakistan hosed away scene after Bhutto attack
John Byrne
May have violated law by skipping autopsy
Despite official reports by Pakistan's interior ministry claiming that the government had intercepted congratulatory messages sent by al Qaeda surrounding the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, a motley of strange occurrences has sparked new suspicion of the government's official story.
On Friday, doctors at Rawalpindi General Hospital, where she died, said that Bhutto had been killed by shrapnel to the head from an explosion, not by two bullets that Bhutto supporters cited in the aftermath of the attack. Bhutto, 54, was killed as in the aftermath of a shooting and suicide bombing as she left a political rally in the city of Rawalpindi.
The government soon changed their story, saying she'd been killed by hitting the sunroof of her LandCruiser after she'd stood up to wave to a crowd. Doctors said there were no bullet marks on the former prime minister's body, and released a limited x-ray of what they said was her skull.
More alarming, however, to Bhutto supporters was the fact no autopsy was conducted prior to burial. The official line -- according to Pakistan's interim prime minister Mohammadmian Soomro -- was that Bhutto's husband had insisted no autopsy be performed.
But according to veteran lawyer Athar Minallah who spoke to McClatchy Newspapers Friday, "an autopsy is mandatory under Pakistan's criminal law in a case of this nature."
"It is absurd, because without autopsy it is not possible to investigate," Minallah told McClatchy's Saeed Shah and Warren Strobel in a little publicized piece. "Is the state not interested in reaching the perpetrators of this heinous crime or there was a cover-up?"
Autopsies are generally not conducted in Islam unless ordered by a court, because the religion calls for burial as quickly as possible. It's unclear whether Bhutto's circumstances would have warranted an exception.
According to the reporters, "the scene of the attack also was watered down with a high-pressure hose within an hour, washing away evidence."
Shah, who reported from the scene Thursday, wrote in a second piece that police rangers charged with protecting her "abandoned their posts" shortly before the bombing, leaving just a handful of Bhutto's own bodyguards protecting her.
"Police officers had frisked the 3,000 to 4,000 people attending Thursday's rally when they entered the park, but as the speakers from Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party droned on, the police abandoned many of their posts," Shah wrote. "As she drove out through the gate, her main protection appeared to be her own bodyguards, who wore their usual white T-shirts inscribed: 'Willing to die for Benazir.'"
Some of Bhutto's supporters were suspect of the "sunroof theory."
A "senior official" of Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party called the claim "false," saying he'd seen at least two bullet marks on her body after the attack.
"It was a targeted, planned killing," BPP's Babar Awan said. "The firing was from more than one side."
Another newspaper also asserted witnesses saw her shot.
Multiple reports said Bhutto had shown disregard for her personal safety by waving to the crowd.
"In her enthusiasm, she got carried away, and exposed herself in ways" she shouldn't have, a former State Department official told Shah.
Pakistan indicated Saturday it would delay January elections because of turmoil caused by Bhutto's death. Protests and looting have left at least 38 people dead.
Updated to include background on autopsies as regards Islam.
Original article posted here.Not much creeping about this fascism
Creeping Fascism: From Nazi Germany to Post 9/11 America
Americans today are seeing the same sheepish submissiveness that characterized Germany after the burning of the Reichstag.
By Ray McGovern, Consortium News.
"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 yesterday was 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."
More about Haffner below. Let's set the stage first by recapping some of what has been going on that may have resonance for readers familiar with the Nazi ascendancy, noting how "odd" it is that the frontal attack on our Constitutional rights is met with such "calm, superior indifference."
Goebbels Would be Proud
It has been two years since top New York Times officials decided to let the rest of us in on the fact that the George W. Bush administration had been eavesdropping on American citizens without the court warrants required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978. The Times had learned of this well before the election in 2004 and acquiesced to White House entreaties to suppress the damaging information.
In late fall 2005 when Times correspondent James Risen's book, "State of War: the Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration," revealing the warrantless eavesdropping was being printed, Times publisher, Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., recognized that he could procrastinate no longer. It would simply be too embarrassing to have Risen's book on the street, with Sulzberger and his associates pretending that this explosive eavesdropping story did not fit Adolph Ochs' trademark criterion: All The News That's Fit To Print. (The Times' own ombudsman, Public Editor Byron Calame, branded the newspaper's explanation for the long delay in publishing this story "woefully inadequate.")
When Sulzberger told his friends in the White House that he could no longer hold off on publishing in the newspaper, he was summoned to the Oval Office for a counseling session with the president on Dec. 5, 2005. Bush tried in vain to talk him out of putting the story in the Times. The truth would out; part of it, at least.
Glitches
There were some embarrassing glitches. For example, unfortunately for National Security Agency Director Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander, the White House neglected to tell him that the cat would soon be out of the bag. So on Dec. 6, Alexander spoke from the old talking points in assuring visiting House intelligence committee member Rush Holt (D-N.J.) that the NSA did not eavesdrop on Americans without a court order.
Still possessed of the quaint notion that generals and other senior officials are not supposed to lie to congressional oversight committees, Holt wrote a blistering letter to Gen. Alexander after the Times, on Dec. 16, front-paged a feature by Risen and Eric Lichtblau, "Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts." But House Intelligence Committee chair Pete Hoekstra (R-Michigan) apparently found Holt's scruples benighted; Hoekstra did nothing to hold Alexander accountable for misleading Holt, his most experienced committee member, who had served as an intelligence analyst at the State Department.
What followed struck me as bizarre. The day after the Dec. 16 Times feature article, the president of the United States publicly admitted to a demonstrably impeachable offense. Authorizing illegal electronic surveillance was a key provision of the second article of impeachment against President Richard Nixon. On July 27, 1974, this and two other articles of impeachment were approved by bipartisan votes in the House Committee on the Judiciary.
Bush Takes Frontal Approach
Far from expressing regret, the president bragged about having authorized the surveillance "more than 30 times since the September the 11th attacks," and said he would continue to do so. The president also said:
"Leaders in Congress have been briefed more than a dozen times on this authorization and the activities conducted under it."
On Dec. 19, 2005 then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and then-NSA Director Michael Hayden held a press conference to answer questions about the as yet unnamed surveillance program. Gonzales was asked why the White House decided to flout FISA rather than attempt to amend it, choosing instead a "backdoor approach." He answered:
"We have had discussions with Congress...as to whether or not FISA could be amended to allow us to adequately deal with this kind of threat, and we were advised that that would be difficult, if not impossible."
Hmm. Impossible? It strains credulity that a program of the limited scope described would be unable to win ready approval from a Congress that had just passed the "Patriot Act" in record time. James Risen has made the following quip about the prevailing mood: "In October 2001 you could have set up guillotines on the public streets of America." It was not difficult to infer that the surveillance program must have been of such scope and intrusiveness that, even amid highly stoked fear, it didn't have a prayer for passage.
It turns out we didn't know the half of it.
What To Call These Activities
"Illegal Surveillance Program" didn't seem quite right for White House purposes, and the PR machine was unusually slow off the blocks. It took six weeks to settle on "Terrorist Surveillance Program," with FOX News leading the way followed by the president himself. This labeling would dovetail nicely with the president's rhetoric on Dec. 17:
"In the weeks following the terrorist attacks on our nation, I authorized the National Security Agency, consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution, to intercept the international communications of people with known links to al-Qaeda and related terrorist organizations.... The authorization I gave the National Security Agency after September 11 helped address that problem..."
And Gen. Michael Hayden, who headed NSA from 1999 to 2005, was of course on the same page, dissembling as convincingly as the president. At his May 2006 confirmation hearings to become CIA director, he told of his soul-searching when, as director of NSA, he was asked to eavesdrop on Americans without a court warrant. "I had to make this personal decision in early Oct. 2001," said Hayden, "it was a personal decision...I could not not do this."
Like so much else, it was all because of 9/11. But we now know...
It Started Seven Months Before 9/11
How many times have you heard it? The mantra "after 9/11 everything changed" has given absolution to all manner of sin.
We are understandably reluctant to believe the worst of our leaders, and this tends to make us negligent. After all, we learned from former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill that drastic changes were made in U.S. foreign policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian issue and toward Iraq at the first National Security Council meeting on Jan. 30, 2001. Should we not have anticipated far-reaching changes at home, as well?
Reporting by the Rocky Mountain News and court documents and testimony in a case involving Qwest Communications strongly suggest that in February 2001 Hayden saluted smartly when the Bush administration instructed NSA to suborn AT&T, Verizon, and Qwest to spy illegally on you, me, and other Americans. Bear in mind that this would have had nothing to do with terrorism, which did not really appear on the new administration's radar screen until a week before 9/11, despite the pleading of Clinton aides that the issue deserved extremely high priority.
So this until-recently-unknown pre-9/11 facet of the "Terrorist Surveillance Program" was not related to Osama bin Laden or to whomever he and his associates might be speaking. It had to do with us. We know that the Democrats who were briefed on the "Terrorist Surveillance Program" include House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) (the one with the longest tenure on the House Intelligence Committee), Congresswoman Jane Harman (D-CA) and former and current chairmen of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Bob Graham (D-FL) and Jay Rockefeller (D-WVA). May one interpret their lack of public comment on the news that the snooping began well before 9/11 as a sign they were co-opted and then sworn to secrecy?
It is an important question. Were the appropriate leaders in Congress informed that within days of George W. Bush's first inauguration the NSA electronic vacuum cleaner began to suck up information on you and me, despite the FISA law and the Fourth Amendment?
Are They All Complicit?
And are Democratic leaders about to cave in and grant retroactive immunity to those telecommunications corporations -- AT&T and Verizon -- who made millions by winking at the law and the Constitution? (Qwest, to it's credit, heeded the advice of its general counsel who said that what NSA wanted done was clearly illegal.)
What's going on here? Have congressional leaders no sense for what is at stake? Lately the adjective "spineless" has come into vogue in describing congressional Democrats -- no offense to invertebrates.
Nazis and Those Who Enable Them
You don't have to be a Nazi. You can just be, well, a sheep.
In his journal Sebastian Haffner decries what he calls the "sheepish submissiveness" with which the German people reacted to a 9/11-like event, the burning of the German Parliament (Reichstag) on Feb. 27, 1933. Haffner finds it quite telling that none of his acquaintances "saw anything out of the ordinary in the fact that, from then on, one's telephone would be tapped, one's letters opened, and one's desk might be broken into."
But it is for the cowardly politicians that Haffner reserves his most vehement condemnation. Do you see any contemporary parallels here?
In the elections of March 4, 1933, shortly after the Reichstag fire, the Nazi party garnered only 44 percent of the vote. Only the "cowardly treachery" of the Social Democrats and other parties to whom 56 percent of the German people had entrusted their votes made it possible for the Nazis to seize full power. Haffner adds:
"It is in the final analysis only that betrayal that explains the almost inexplicable fact that a great nation, which cannot have consisted entirely of cowards, fell into ignominy without a fight."
The Social Democratic leaders betrayed their followers -- "for the most part decent, unimportant individuals." In May they sang the Nazi anthem; in June the Social Democratic party was dissolved.
The middle-class Catholic party Zentrum folded in less than a month, and in the end supplied the votes necessary for the two-thirds majority that "legalized" Hitler's dictatorship.
As for the right-wing conservatives and German nationalists: "Oh God," writes Haffner, "what an infinitely dishonorable and cowardly spectacle their leaders made in 1933 and continued to make afterward.... They went along with everything: the terror, the persecution of Jews.... They were not even bothered when their own party was banned and their own members arrested." In sum:
"There was not a single example of energetic defense, of courage or principle. There was only panic, flight, and desertion. In March 1933 millions were ready to fight the Nazis. Overnight they found themselves without leaders...At the moment of truth, when other nations rise spontaneously to the occasion, the Germans collectively and limply collapsed. They yielded and capitulated, and suffered a nervous breakdown.... The result is today the nightmare of the rest of the world."
This is what can happen when virtually all are intimidated.
Our Founding Fathers were not oblivious to this; thus, James Madison:
"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.... The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home."
We cannot say we weren't warned.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. A former Army officer and CIA analyst, he worked in Germany for five years; he is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
Original article posted here.
Americans today are seeing the same sheepish submissiveness that characterized Germany after the burning of the Reichstag.
By Ray McGovern, Consortium News.
"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 yesterday was 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."
More about Haffner below. Let's set the stage first by recapping some of what has been going on that may have resonance for readers familiar with the Nazi ascendancy, noting how "odd" it is that the frontal attack on our Constitutional rights is met with such "calm, superior indifference."
Goebbels Would be Proud
It has been two years since top New York Times officials decided to let the rest of us in on the fact that the George W. Bush administration had been eavesdropping on American citizens without the court warrants required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978. The Times had learned of this well before the election in 2004 and acquiesced to White House entreaties to suppress the damaging information.
In late fall 2005 when Times correspondent James Risen's book, "State of War: the Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration," revealing the warrantless eavesdropping was being printed, Times publisher, Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., recognized that he could procrastinate no longer. It would simply be too embarrassing to have Risen's book on the street, with Sulzberger and his associates pretending that this explosive eavesdropping story did not fit Adolph Ochs' trademark criterion: All The News That's Fit To Print. (The Times' own ombudsman, Public Editor Byron Calame, branded the newspaper's explanation for the long delay in publishing this story "woefully inadequate.")
When Sulzberger told his friends in the White House that he could no longer hold off on publishing in the newspaper, he was summoned to the Oval Office for a counseling session with the president on Dec. 5, 2005. Bush tried in vain to talk him out of putting the story in the Times. The truth would out; part of it, at least.
Glitches
There were some embarrassing glitches. For example, unfortunately for National Security Agency Director Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander, the White House neglected to tell him that the cat would soon be out of the bag. So on Dec. 6, Alexander spoke from the old talking points in assuring visiting House intelligence committee member Rush Holt (D-N.J.) that the NSA did not eavesdrop on Americans without a court order.
Still possessed of the quaint notion that generals and other senior officials are not supposed to lie to congressional oversight committees, Holt wrote a blistering letter to Gen. Alexander after the Times, on Dec. 16, front-paged a feature by Risen and Eric Lichtblau, "Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts." But House Intelligence Committee chair Pete Hoekstra (R-Michigan) apparently found Holt's scruples benighted; Hoekstra did nothing to hold Alexander accountable for misleading Holt, his most experienced committee member, who had served as an intelligence analyst at the State Department.
What followed struck me as bizarre. The day after the Dec. 16 Times feature article, the president of the United States publicly admitted to a demonstrably impeachable offense. Authorizing illegal electronic surveillance was a key provision of the second article of impeachment against President Richard Nixon. On July 27, 1974, this and two other articles of impeachment were approved by bipartisan votes in the House Committee on the Judiciary.
Bush Takes Frontal Approach
Far from expressing regret, the president bragged about having authorized the surveillance "more than 30 times since the September the 11th attacks," and said he would continue to do so. The president also said:
"Leaders in Congress have been briefed more than a dozen times on this authorization and the activities conducted under it."
On Dec. 19, 2005 then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and then-NSA Director Michael Hayden held a press conference to answer questions about the as yet unnamed surveillance program. Gonzales was asked why the White House decided to flout FISA rather than attempt to amend it, choosing instead a "backdoor approach." He answered:
"We have had discussions with Congress...as to whether or not FISA could be amended to allow us to adequately deal with this kind of threat, and we were advised that that would be difficult, if not impossible."
Hmm. Impossible? It strains credulity that a program of the limited scope described would be unable to win ready approval from a Congress that had just passed the "Patriot Act" in record time. James Risen has made the following quip about the prevailing mood: "In October 2001 you could have set up guillotines on the public streets of America." It was not difficult to infer that the surveillance program must have been of such scope and intrusiveness that, even amid highly stoked fear, it didn't have a prayer for passage.
It turns out we didn't know the half of it.
What To Call These Activities
"Illegal Surveillance Program" didn't seem quite right for White House purposes, and the PR machine was unusually slow off the blocks. It took six weeks to settle on "Terrorist Surveillance Program," with FOX News leading the way followed by the president himself. This labeling would dovetail nicely with the president's rhetoric on Dec. 17:
"In the weeks following the terrorist attacks on our nation, I authorized the National Security Agency, consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution, to intercept the international communications of people with known links to al-Qaeda and related terrorist organizations.... The authorization I gave the National Security Agency after September 11 helped address that problem..."
And Gen. Michael Hayden, who headed NSA from 1999 to 2005, was of course on the same page, dissembling as convincingly as the president. At his May 2006 confirmation hearings to become CIA director, he told of his soul-searching when, as director of NSA, he was asked to eavesdrop on Americans without a court warrant. "I had to make this personal decision in early Oct. 2001," said Hayden, "it was a personal decision...I could not not do this."
Like so much else, it was all because of 9/11. But we now know...
It Started Seven Months Before 9/11
How many times have you heard it? The mantra "after 9/11 everything changed" has given absolution to all manner of sin.
We are understandably reluctant to believe the worst of our leaders, and this tends to make us negligent. After all, we learned from former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill that drastic changes were made in U.S. foreign policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian issue and toward Iraq at the first National Security Council meeting on Jan. 30, 2001. Should we not have anticipated far-reaching changes at home, as well?
Reporting by the Rocky Mountain News and court documents and testimony in a case involving Qwest Communications strongly suggest that in February 2001 Hayden saluted smartly when the Bush administration instructed NSA to suborn AT&T, Verizon, and Qwest to spy illegally on you, me, and other Americans. Bear in mind that this would have had nothing to do with terrorism, which did not really appear on the new administration's radar screen until a week before 9/11, despite the pleading of Clinton aides that the issue deserved extremely high priority.
So this until-recently-unknown pre-9/11 facet of the "Terrorist Surveillance Program" was not related to Osama bin Laden or to whomever he and his associates might be speaking. It had to do with us. We know that the Democrats who were briefed on the "Terrorist Surveillance Program" include House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) (the one with the longest tenure on the House Intelligence Committee), Congresswoman Jane Harman (D-CA) and former and current chairmen of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Bob Graham (D-FL) and Jay Rockefeller (D-WVA). May one interpret their lack of public comment on the news that the snooping began well before 9/11 as a sign they were co-opted and then sworn to secrecy?
It is an important question. Were the appropriate leaders in Congress informed that within days of George W. Bush's first inauguration the NSA electronic vacuum cleaner began to suck up information on you and me, despite the FISA law and the Fourth Amendment?
Are They All Complicit?
And are Democratic leaders about to cave in and grant retroactive immunity to those telecommunications corporations -- AT&T and Verizon -- who made millions by winking at the law and the Constitution? (Qwest, to it's credit, heeded the advice of its general counsel who said that what NSA wanted done was clearly illegal.)
What's going on here? Have congressional leaders no sense for what is at stake? Lately the adjective "spineless" has come into vogue in describing congressional Democrats -- no offense to invertebrates.
Nazis and Those Who Enable Them
You don't have to be a Nazi. You can just be, well, a sheep.
In his journal Sebastian Haffner decries what he calls the "sheepish submissiveness" with which the German people reacted to a 9/11-like event, the burning of the German Parliament (Reichstag) on Feb. 27, 1933. Haffner finds it quite telling that none of his acquaintances "saw anything out of the ordinary in the fact that, from then on, one's telephone would be tapped, one's letters opened, and one's desk might be broken into."
But it is for the cowardly politicians that Haffner reserves his most vehement condemnation. Do you see any contemporary parallels here?
In the elections of March 4, 1933, shortly after the Reichstag fire, the Nazi party garnered only 44 percent of the vote. Only the "cowardly treachery" of the Social Democrats and other parties to whom 56 percent of the German people had entrusted their votes made it possible for the Nazis to seize full power. Haffner adds:
"It is in the final analysis only that betrayal that explains the almost inexplicable fact that a great nation, which cannot have consisted entirely of cowards, fell into ignominy without a fight."
The Social Democratic leaders betrayed their followers -- "for the most part decent, unimportant individuals." In May they sang the Nazi anthem; in June the Social Democratic party was dissolved.
The middle-class Catholic party Zentrum folded in less than a month, and in the end supplied the votes necessary for the two-thirds majority that "legalized" Hitler's dictatorship.
As for the right-wing conservatives and German nationalists: "Oh God," writes Haffner, "what an infinitely dishonorable and cowardly spectacle their leaders made in 1933 and continued to make afterward.... They went along with everything: the terror, the persecution of Jews.... They were not even bothered when their own party was banned and their own members arrested." In sum:
"There was not a single example of energetic defense, of courage or principle. There was only panic, flight, and desertion. In March 1933 millions were ready to fight the Nazis. Overnight they found themselves without leaders...At the moment of truth, when other nations rise spontaneously to the occasion, the Germans collectively and limply collapsed. They yielded and capitulated, and suffered a nervous breakdown.... The result is today the nightmare of the rest of the world."
This is what can happen when virtually all are intimidated.
Our Founding Fathers were not oblivious to this; thus, James Madison:
"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.... The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home."
We cannot say we weren't warned.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. A former Army officer and CIA analyst, he worked in Germany for five years; he is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
Original article posted here.
Lock 'em up
Activists Look for Arrest of Bush, Cheney
by Paul H. Heintz
BRATTLEBORO, Vt. - When then Vice President George H. W. Bush visited Brattleboro 23 years ago, he was greeted by protesters who booed and heckled him.
But if his son ever comes to town, some residents hope to present the sitting president with an even less friendly reception: a pair of handcuffs and a jail cell.
“We’re planning to arrest, detain and extradite him,” said Kurt Daims of Brattleboro, an activist who has sought to impeach President George W. Bush and is now trying to up the ante. “There’s a fundamental question here. If Congress doesn’t do this, shouldn’t it be done anyway?”
Daims hopes to gather the 440 signatures necessary to place an article on the Town Meeting warning that would call for the Brattleboro Police Department to arrest Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney and cart them off to unspecified foreign entities.
“Shall the Selectboard instruct the Town Attorney to draft indictments against President Bush and Vice President Cheney for crimes against our Constitution, and publish said indictment for consideration by other municipalities?” Daims’ proposed article reads.
“And shall it be the law of the Town of Brattleboro that the Brattleboro Police, pursuant to the above-mentioned indictment, arrest and detain George Bush and Richard Cheney in Brattleboro and extradite them to other authorities that may reasonably contend to prosecute them.”
Daims joined a group of eight like-minded activists Friday afternoon for their weekly impeachment march through town. Beating homemade drums and waving signs calling for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney, the protesters walked from the Brattleboro Food Co-op to the Municipal Building and dropped off a copy of the proposed article at the Town Clerk’s office.
Daims recognizes the myriad legal barriers between his goal and its coming to fruition, but pointing to the Declaration of Independence as his inspiration, he contends that sometimes the laws of the land take second seat to “a higher jurisdiction.”
“There was no legal standing to the document that was written in 1776. It was just people saying ‘we’ve got to get rid of this guy,’” Daims said. “We can’t let him get away just because we don’t have the proper forms and paperwork.”
Vermont remains the only state President Bush has neglected to visit during his seven years in office, and Daims’ proposed article is not likely to hasten a presidential trip to the Green Mountain state.
“I don’t know if Mr. Bush or Mr. Cheney are scheduled to visit Brattleboro any time in the near future,” said acting Police Chief Eugene Wrinn, whose force would presumably be charged with making an arrest. “We will wait and see if it passes and then we will check with the town of Brattleboro’s legal counsel to check out what our legal obligations would be.”
According to Town Attorney Bob Fisher, the town could place such an article on its town meeting warning for an up or down vote, but doing so would be “a waste of ink.”
“My response is if you can get me appointed to the U.S. Senate, I would be very grateful and then I would actually have standing to do something about this,” Fisher said.
“It is an absolutely unenforceable type of question. The people in Brattleboro do not have authority to impeach. I don’t have the authority to indict the president, nor do the police have the ability to arrest him based on such a vote.”
Even if Daims manages to collect the requisite signatures of 5 percent of the electorate, the Selectboard could decline to place the article on the town meeting warning.
“A Selectboard can say this is not the business of the town. We’re not going to waste our time with it,” Fisher said.
Selectboard chairwoman Audrey Garfield said she did not have enough information about the proposed article to comment on it and would speak with her fellow board members before making a decision.
According to Newfane Selectboard member Dan DeWalt, who made headlines when his town called for Bush’s impeachment in March of 2006, even if Daims is unsuccessful in throwing Bush in the clinker, his message could resonate throughout the country.
“Kurt saying ‘I’m going to arrest the president’ has no meaning. The town of Brattleboro voting to say they’re going to arrest the president does have meaning,” DeWalt said.
As to just where Brattleboro would send Bush if he was arrested, DeWalt said, “I know there are people preparing war crimes charges against him. I don’t know if they’ve officially been filed anywhere, but once they are filed that would give us a place to extradite him to next time he comes to town.”
Daims hopes other towns will be inspired by his quest and pursue similar courses of action — particularly Kennebunkport, Maine, where the Bush family spends its summers.
“We should do something Mr. Bush can feel. Maine is a very liberal state and I think this could pass in Maine, so then he couldn’t get to his million dollar family vacation resort,” Daims said. “They could arrest him there.”
Saturday, December 29, 2007
More context for the Bhutto hit
Robert Fisk: They don't blame al-Qa'ida. They blame Musharraf
Weird, isn't it, how swiftly the narrative is laid down for us. Benazir Bhutto, the courageous leader of the Pakistan People's Party, is assassinated in Rawalpindi – attached to the very capital of Islamabad wherein ex-General Pervez Musharraf lives – and we are told by George Bush that her murderers were "extremists" and "terrorists". Well, you can't dispute that.
But the implication of the Bush comment was that Islamists were behind the assassination. It was the Taliban madmen again, the al-Qa'ida spider who struck at this lone and brave woman who had dared to call for democracy in her country.
Of course, given the childish coverage of this appalling tragedy – and however corrupt Ms Bhutto may have been, let us be under no illusions that this brave lady is indeed a true martyr – it's not surprising that the "good-versus-evil" donkey can be trotted out to explain the carnage in Rawalpindi.
Who would have imagined, watching the BBC or CNN on Thursday, that her two brothers, Murtaza and Shahnawaz, hijacked a Pakistani airliner in 1981 and flew it to Kabul where Murtaza demanded the release of political prisoners in Pakistan. Here, a military officer on the plane was murdered. There were Americans aboard the flight – which is probably why the prisoners were indeed released.
Only a few days ago – in one of the most remarkable (but typically unrecognised) scoops of the year – Tariq Ali published a brilliant dissection of Pakistan (and Bhutto) corruption in the London Review of Books, focusing on Benazir and headlined: "Daughter of the West". In fact, the article was on my desk to photocopy as its subject was being murdered in Rawalpindi.
Towards the end of this report, Tariq Ali dwelt at length on the subsequent murder of Murtaza Bhutto by police close to his home at a time when Benazir was prime minister – and at a time when Benazir was enraged at Murtaza for demanding a return to PPP values and for condemning Benazir's appointment of her own husband as minister for industry, a highly lucrative post.
In a passage which may yet be applied to the aftermath of Benazir's murder, the report continues: "The fatal bullet had been fired at close range. The trap had been carefully laid, but, as is the way in Pakistan, the crudeness of the operation – false entries in police log-books, lost evidence, witnesses arrested and intimidated – a policeman killed who they feared might talk – made it obvious that the decision to execute the prime minister's brother had been taken at a very high level."
When Murtaza's 14-year-old daughter, Fatima, rang her aunt Benazir to ask why witnesses were being arrested – rather than her father's killers – she says Benazir told her: "Look, you're very young. You don't understand things." Or so Tariq Ali's exposé would have us believe. Over all this, however, looms the shocking power of Pakistan's ISI, the Inter Services Intelligence.
This vast institution – corrupt, venal and brutal – works for Musharraf.
But it also worked – and still works – for the Taliban. It also works for the Americans. In fact, it works for everybody. But it is the key which Musharraf can use to open talks with America's enemies when he feels threatened or wants to put pressure on Afghanistan or wants to appease the " extremists" and "terrorists" who so oppress George Bush. And let us remember, by the way, that Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter beheaded by his Islamist captors in Karachi, actually made his fatal appointment with his future murderers from an ISI commander's office. Ahmed Rashid's book Taliban provides riveting proof of the ISI's web of corruption and violence. Read it, and all of the above makes more sense.
But back to the official narrative. George Bush announced on Thursday he was "looking forward" to talking to his old friend Musharraf. Of course, they would talk about Benazir. They certainly would not talk about the fact that Musharraf continues to protect his old acquaintance – a certain Mr Khan – who supplied all Pakistan's nuclear secrets to Libya and Iran. No, let's not bring that bit of the "axis of evil" into this.
So, of course, we were asked to concentrate once more on all those " extremists" and "terrorists", not on the logic of questioning which many Pakistanis were feeling their way through in the aftermath of Benazir's assassination.
It doesn't, after all, take much to comprehend that the hated elections looming over Musharraf would probably be postponed indefinitely if his principal political opponent happened to be liquidated before polling day.
So let's run through this logic in the way that Inspector Ian Blair might have done in his policeman's notebook before he became the top cop in London.
Question: Who forced Benazir Bhutto to stay in London and tried to prevent her return to Pakistan? Answer: General Musharraf.
Question: Who ordered the arrest of thousands of Benazir's supporters this month? Answer: General Musharraf.
Question: Who placed Benazir under temporary house arrest this month? Answer: General Musharraf.
Question: Who declared martial law this month? Answer General Musharraf.
Question: who killed Benazir Bhutto?
Er. Yes. Well quite.
You see the problem? Yesterday, our television warriors informed us the PPP members shouting that Musharraf was a "murderer" were complaining he had not provided sufficient security for Benazir. Wrong. They were shouting this because they believe he killed her.
Original article posted here.
Weird, isn't it, how swiftly the narrative is laid down for us. Benazir Bhutto, the courageous leader of the Pakistan People's Party, is assassinated in Rawalpindi – attached to the very capital of Islamabad wherein ex-General Pervez Musharraf lives – and we are told by George Bush that her murderers were "extremists" and "terrorists". Well, you can't dispute that.
But the implication of the Bush comment was that Islamists were behind the assassination. It was the Taliban madmen again, the al-Qa'ida spider who struck at this lone and brave woman who had dared to call for democracy in her country.
Of course, given the childish coverage of this appalling tragedy – and however corrupt Ms Bhutto may have been, let us be under no illusions that this brave lady is indeed a true martyr – it's not surprising that the "good-versus-evil" donkey can be trotted out to explain the carnage in Rawalpindi.
Who would have imagined, watching the BBC or CNN on Thursday, that her two brothers, Murtaza and Shahnawaz, hijacked a Pakistani airliner in 1981 and flew it to Kabul where Murtaza demanded the release of political prisoners in Pakistan. Here, a military officer on the plane was murdered. There were Americans aboard the flight – which is probably why the prisoners were indeed released.
Only a few days ago – in one of the most remarkable (but typically unrecognised) scoops of the year – Tariq Ali published a brilliant dissection of Pakistan (and Bhutto) corruption in the London Review of Books, focusing on Benazir and headlined: "Daughter of the West". In fact, the article was on my desk to photocopy as its subject was being murdered in Rawalpindi.
Towards the end of this report, Tariq Ali dwelt at length on the subsequent murder of Murtaza Bhutto by police close to his home at a time when Benazir was prime minister – and at a time when Benazir was enraged at Murtaza for demanding a return to PPP values and for condemning Benazir's appointment of her own husband as minister for industry, a highly lucrative post.
In a passage which may yet be applied to the aftermath of Benazir's murder, the report continues: "The fatal bullet had been fired at close range. The trap had been carefully laid, but, as is the way in Pakistan, the crudeness of the operation – false entries in police log-books, lost evidence, witnesses arrested and intimidated – a policeman killed who they feared might talk – made it obvious that the decision to execute the prime minister's brother had been taken at a very high level."
When Murtaza's 14-year-old daughter, Fatima, rang her aunt Benazir to ask why witnesses were being arrested – rather than her father's killers – she says Benazir told her: "Look, you're very young. You don't understand things." Or so Tariq Ali's exposé would have us believe. Over all this, however, looms the shocking power of Pakistan's ISI, the Inter Services Intelligence.
This vast institution – corrupt, venal and brutal – works for Musharraf.
But it also worked – and still works – for the Taliban. It also works for the Americans. In fact, it works for everybody. But it is the key which Musharraf can use to open talks with America's enemies when he feels threatened or wants to put pressure on Afghanistan or wants to appease the " extremists" and "terrorists" who so oppress George Bush. And let us remember, by the way, that Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter beheaded by his Islamist captors in Karachi, actually made his fatal appointment with his future murderers from an ISI commander's office. Ahmed Rashid's book Taliban provides riveting proof of the ISI's web of corruption and violence. Read it, and all of the above makes more sense.
But back to the official narrative. George Bush announced on Thursday he was "looking forward" to talking to his old friend Musharraf. Of course, they would talk about Benazir. They certainly would not talk about the fact that Musharraf continues to protect his old acquaintance – a certain Mr Khan – who supplied all Pakistan's nuclear secrets to Libya and Iran. No, let's not bring that bit of the "axis of evil" into this.
So, of course, we were asked to concentrate once more on all those " extremists" and "terrorists", not on the logic of questioning which many Pakistanis were feeling their way through in the aftermath of Benazir's assassination.
It doesn't, after all, take much to comprehend that the hated elections looming over Musharraf would probably be postponed indefinitely if his principal political opponent happened to be liquidated before polling day.
So let's run through this logic in the way that Inspector Ian Blair might have done in his policeman's notebook before he became the top cop in London.
Question: Who forced Benazir Bhutto to stay in London and tried to prevent her return to Pakistan? Answer: General Musharraf.
Question: Who ordered the arrest of thousands of Benazir's supporters this month? Answer: General Musharraf.
Question: Who placed Benazir under temporary house arrest this month? Answer: General Musharraf.
Question: Who declared martial law this month? Answer General Musharraf.
Question: who killed Benazir Bhutto?
Er. Yes. Well quite.
You see the problem? Yesterday, our television warriors informed us the PPP members shouting that Musharraf was a "murderer" were complaining he had not provided sufficient security for Benazir. Wrong. They were shouting this because they believe he killed her.
Original article posted here.
Paul Craig Roberts pulls the curtain from Oz
We Are All Prisoners Now
Many Europeans regard 9/11 itself as an orchestrated event. Former cabinet members of the British, Canadian and German governments and the Chief of Staff of the Russian Army have publicly expressed their doubts about the official 9/11 story. Recently, former president of Italy Cossiga joined the list of skeptics, notes Paul Craig Roberts.
At Christmas time it has been my habit to write a column in remembrance of the many innocent people in prisons whose lives have been stolen by the US criminal justice (sic) system that is as inhumane as it is indifferent to justice. Usually I retell the cases of William Strong and Christophe Gaynor, two men framed in the state of Virginia by prosecutors and judges as wicked and corrupt as any who served Hitler or Stalin.
This year is different. All Americans are now imprisoned in a world of lies and deception created by the Bush Regime and the two complicit parties of Congress, by federal judges too timid or ignorant to recognize a rogue regime running roughshod over the Constitution, by a bought and paid for media that serves as propagandists for a regime of war criminals, and by a public who have forsaken their Founding Fathers.
Americans are also imprisoned by fear, a false fear created by the hoax of “terrorism.” It has turned out that headline terrorist events since 9/11 have been orchestrated by the US government. For example, the alleged terrorist plot to blow up Chicago’s Sears Tower was the brainchild of a FBI agent who searched out a few disaffected people to give lip service to the plot devised by the FBI agent. He arrested his victims, whose trial ended in acquittal and mistrial.
Many Europeans regard 9/11 itself as an orchestrated event. Former cabinet members of the British, Canadian and German governments and the Chief of Staff of the Russian Army have publicly expressed their doubts about the official 9/11 story. Recently, a former president of Italy, Francesco Cossiga, said in an interview with the newspaper, Corriere della Sera (November 30, 2007), that “democratic elements in America and Europe, with the Italian center-left in the forefront, now know that the 9/11 attack was planned and executed by the American CIA and Mossad in order to blame the Arab countries, and to persuade the Western powers to undertake military action both in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
It is unclear whether Cossiga was being sarcastic about the opinion of skeptics or merely reporting what people think. I have written to him asking for clarification and will report any reply that I receive. Apparently, the Italian media has not offered a clarification.
Cossiga’s statement has not been reported by a US newspaper or TV channel. Raising doubts among Americans about the government is not a strong point of the corporate media. Americans live in a world of propaganda designed to secure their acquiescence to war crimes, torture, searches and police state measures, military aggression, hegemony and oppression, while portraying Americans (and Israelis) as the salt of the earth who are threatened by Muslims who hate their “freedom and democracy.”
Americans cling to this “truth” while the Bush regime and a complicit Congress destroy the Bill of Rights and engineer the theft of elections.
Freedom and democracy in America have been reduced to no-fly lists, spying without warrants, arrests without warrants or evidence, permanent detention despite the constitutional protection of habeas corpus, torture despite the prohibition against self-incrimination--the list goes on and on. (1)
In today’s fearful America, a US Senator, whose elder brothers were (1) a military hero killed in action, (2) a President of the United States assassinated in office, (3) an Attorney General of the United States and likely president except he was assassinated like his brother, can find himself on the no-fly list. Present and former high government officials, with top secret security clearances, cannot fly with a tube of toothpaste or a bottle of water despite the absence of any evidence that extreme measures imposed by “airport security” makes flying safer. (2)
Elderly American citizens with walkers and young mothers with children are meticulously searched because US Homeland Security cannot tell the difference between an American citizen and a terrorist.
All Americans should note the ominous implications of the inability of Homeland Security to distinguish an American citizen from a terrorist.
When Airport Security cannot differentiate a US Marine General recipient of the Medal of Honor from a terrorist, Americans have all the information they need to know. (3)
Any and every American can be arrested by unaccountable authority, held indefinitely without charges and tortured until he or she can no longer stand the abuse and confesses.
This predicament, which can now befall any American, is our reward for our stupidity, our indifference, our gullibility, and our lack of compassion for anyone but ourselves.
Some Americans have begun to comprehend the tremendous financial costs of the “war on terror.” But few understand the cost to American liberty. Last October a Democrat-sponsored bill, “Prevention of Violent Radicalism and Homegrown Terrorism,” passed the House of Representatives 404 to 6.(4)
Only six members of the House voted against tyrannical legislation that would destroy freedom of speech and freedom of assembly and that would mandate 18 months of congressional hearings to discover Americans with “extreme” views who could be preemptively arrested.
What better indication that the US Constitution has lost its authority when elected representatives closest to the people pass a bill that permits the Bill of Rights to be overturned by the subjective opinion of members of an “Extremist Belief”.
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury for Economic Policy in the Reagan administration. He is credited with curing stagflation and eliminating “Phillips curve” trade-offs between employment and inflation, an achievement now on the verge of being lost by the worst economic mismanagement in US history.
Original article posted here
Many Europeans regard 9/11 itself as an orchestrated event. Former cabinet members of the British, Canadian and German governments and the Chief of Staff of the Russian Army have publicly expressed their doubts about the official 9/11 story. Recently, former president of Italy Cossiga joined the list of skeptics, notes Paul Craig Roberts.
At Christmas time it has been my habit to write a column in remembrance of the many innocent people in prisons whose lives have been stolen by the US criminal justice (sic) system that is as inhumane as it is indifferent to justice. Usually I retell the cases of William Strong and Christophe Gaynor, two men framed in the state of Virginia by prosecutors and judges as wicked and corrupt as any who served Hitler or Stalin.
This year is different. All Americans are now imprisoned in a world of lies and deception created by the Bush Regime and the two complicit parties of Congress, by federal judges too timid or ignorant to recognize a rogue regime running roughshod over the Constitution, by a bought and paid for media that serves as propagandists for a regime of war criminals, and by a public who have forsaken their Founding Fathers.
Americans are also imprisoned by fear, a false fear created by the hoax of “terrorism.” It has turned out that headline terrorist events since 9/11 have been orchestrated by the US government. For example, the alleged terrorist plot to blow up Chicago’s Sears Tower was the brainchild of a FBI agent who searched out a few disaffected people to give lip service to the plot devised by the FBI agent. He arrested his victims, whose trial ended in acquittal and mistrial.
Many Europeans regard 9/11 itself as an orchestrated event. Former cabinet members of the British, Canadian and German governments and the Chief of Staff of the Russian Army have publicly expressed their doubts about the official 9/11 story. Recently, a former president of Italy, Francesco Cossiga, said in an interview with the newspaper, Corriere della Sera (November 30, 2007), that “democratic elements in America and Europe, with the Italian center-left in the forefront, now know that the 9/11 attack was planned and executed by the American CIA and Mossad in order to blame the Arab countries, and to persuade the Western powers to undertake military action both in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
It is unclear whether Cossiga was being sarcastic about the opinion of skeptics or merely reporting what people think. I have written to him asking for clarification and will report any reply that I receive. Apparently, the Italian media has not offered a clarification.
Cossiga’s statement has not been reported by a US newspaper or TV channel. Raising doubts among Americans about the government is not a strong point of the corporate media. Americans live in a world of propaganda designed to secure their acquiescence to war crimes, torture, searches and police state measures, military aggression, hegemony and oppression, while portraying Americans (and Israelis) as the salt of the earth who are threatened by Muslims who hate their “freedom and democracy.”
Americans cling to this “truth” while the Bush regime and a complicit Congress destroy the Bill of Rights and engineer the theft of elections.
Freedom and democracy in America have been reduced to no-fly lists, spying without warrants, arrests without warrants or evidence, permanent detention despite the constitutional protection of habeas corpus, torture despite the prohibition against self-incrimination--the list goes on and on. (1)
In today’s fearful America, a US Senator, whose elder brothers were (1) a military hero killed in action, (2) a President of the United States assassinated in office, (3) an Attorney General of the United States and likely president except he was assassinated like his brother, can find himself on the no-fly list. Present and former high government officials, with top secret security clearances, cannot fly with a tube of toothpaste or a bottle of water despite the absence of any evidence that extreme measures imposed by “airport security” makes flying safer. (2)
Elderly American citizens with walkers and young mothers with children are meticulously searched because US Homeland Security cannot tell the difference between an American citizen and a terrorist.
All Americans should note the ominous implications of the inability of Homeland Security to distinguish an American citizen from a terrorist.
When Airport Security cannot differentiate a US Marine General recipient of the Medal of Honor from a terrorist, Americans have all the information they need to know. (3)
Any and every American can be arrested by unaccountable authority, held indefinitely without charges and tortured until he or she can no longer stand the abuse and confesses.
This predicament, which can now befall any American, is our reward for our stupidity, our indifference, our gullibility, and our lack of compassion for anyone but ourselves.
Some Americans have begun to comprehend the tremendous financial costs of the “war on terror.” But few understand the cost to American liberty. Last October a Democrat-sponsored bill, “Prevention of Violent Radicalism and Homegrown Terrorism,” passed the House of Representatives 404 to 6.(4)
Only six members of the House voted against tyrannical legislation that would destroy freedom of speech and freedom of assembly and that would mandate 18 months of congressional hearings to discover Americans with “extreme” views who could be preemptively arrested.
What better indication that the US Constitution has lost its authority when elected representatives closest to the people pass a bill that permits the Bill of Rights to be overturned by the subjective opinion of members of an “Extremist Belief”.
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury for Economic Policy in the Reagan administration. He is credited with curing stagflation and eliminating “Phillips curve” trade-offs between employment and inflation, an achievement now on the verge of being lost by the worst economic mismanagement in US history.
Original article posted here
Time Magazine as the example of the propaganda mill at work. Brainwashing minions and selling conformity.
Bhutto Conspiracy Theories Fill the Air
A Pakistani man holds a copy of the English-language daily Khaleej Times featuring a frontpage story on the assassination of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto in Dubai, 28 December 2007.
If you believe the rumors that zip around Pakistan in the aftermath of one of the country's depressingly regular outbreaks of violence, it's all America's fault. Or India's. Or Israel's. Or it's those Afghan-based militia who keep sneaking across the border. Fueled by cheap cell phone calls and the rise of 24-hour television news channels, gossip about who is to blame for Pakistan's woes runs from the reasonable to the ridiculous.
In the 24 hours since a lone attacker assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, the rumor mill has again been working overtime. In Karachi, amid reports of rioting and sabotage, stories circulated that the city's water supply had been poisoned and people were afraid to drink it. There were also the conflicting accounts of how Bhutto died — from bullet wounds or from a bomb blast that followed or from fracturing her skull against her car's sun-roof as the assailant blew himself up. In the confusion of reports, many Pakistanis are pointing the finger of blame at President Pervez Musharraf and his allies in Washington.
There is no evidence to suggest that Musharraf or Pakistan's security forces were connected to the attack. On jihadi websites, al-Qaeda claimed the assassination was their work and intelligence officials in both Pakistan and the U.S. agree that Islamic extremists from al-Qaeda or the Taliban were probably responsible for the devastating attack. But as Musharraf's popularity has slipped badly, moderate and religious Pakistanis alike have begun to blame him for the increasing chaos in their country — and to trace every incident directly to his rule and his high-profile allies. "This assassination was fabricated by the present government," says Liaqat Baloch, a senior official in Jamaat-e-Islami, one of Pakistan's main Islamic parties. "It is part of the American strategy to scare people that Pakistan is falling apart."
At a time when Pakistan does indeed seem to be falling apart, it may seem absurd and even pointless to repeat such allegations. But the sentiments provide a powerful insight into how angry Pakistanis are at their President and how mistrustful they are of the U.S. At the least, says retired Lieutenant General Hamid Gul, the former director general of Pakistani intelligence organization Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), "it's very convenient for the security forces to call it a suicide bomber because they can cover up the possibility someone else was behind the attack." Gul, who has become a harsh critic of Musharraf over the past year, believes America is partly responsible for its current predicament. "If America continues to act selfishly and unwisely, well, there is hardly any good that has come out [of their help] either for the U.S. or Pakistan, and this will continue."
[As ISI chief, Gul helped run the Afghan mujahideen as a force to counter and eventually defeat the Soviet Union in the 1980s; later he helped establish the Taliban in Afghanistan. He also organized the guerrillas fighting the Indian army in the sections of Kashmir held by New Delhi.]
With such mistrust, rumors thrive. On the streets of Lahore Friday afternoon, many blamed Musharraf and the U.S. rather than Islamic extremists for Bhutto's demise. White-haired Mohamed Sharif, 61, who runs a sidewalk barber's shop using a rusty old metal table and a worn mirror, says the "rumor is that America is involved in this with Musharraf's help." A passerby butts in with his agreement: "America and the government are in the same direction, they are allies," says Sabir Hussain. "If the government is doing this it is on the order of America."
Lahore is a stronghold of opposition leader and former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, and is home to plenty of Bhutto supporters as well. In a place that's so heavily anti-Musharraf, innuendo seems to feed on itself. On the city's main street, lined with policemen holding batons and wearing anti-riot gear, two teenagers out for a walk say they have also heard about a possible government connection to the attack but cannot offer any evidence to back up the claims. "My mother told me not to talk about this topic on my mobile or telephone because the government may tape it," says Hafiz Jamshaid, 18, a computer science student at a local college.
Across town, in a park in the tony neighborhood known as Defense Housing Authority, or DFA, four business associates discussed Pakistan's future after their regular afternoon walk. "People are afraid to air their opinions but as far as I know America sent Benazir and later killed her with the help of Pervez Musharraf," says M.A. Mohamed, who runs a car parts company. "I can confirm this idea." His friend and colleague Talat Mumtaz interjects: "No, no. no, America likes Benazir. Why would they kill her? You're being ridiculous."
"No one knows what are the facts," complains Constable Jafar Hamid, proudly showing off his English as he guards a McDonald's outlet, closed against possible rioting. So where do all the rumors come from? "We don't believe in one thing, we don't think like a nation," he says. "Everybody has his own opinion and that is part of the problem." With reporting by Khuda Yar Khan/Islamabad
Original article posted here.Friday, December 28, 2007
Benazir's own niece knew that she was a fraud
Aunt Benazir's false promises
Bhutto's return bodes poorly for Pakistan -- and for democracy there.
By Fatima Bhutto
KARACHI -- We Pakistanis live in uncertain times. Emergency rule has been imposed for the 13th time in our short 60-year history. Thousands of lawyers have been arrested, some charged with sedition and treason; the chief justice has been deposed; and a draconian media law -- shutting down all private news channels -- has been drafted.
Perhaps the most bizarre part of this circus has been the hijacking of the democratic cause by my aunt, the twice-disgraced former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto. While she was hashing out a deal to share power with Gen. Pervez Musharraf last month, she repeatedly insisted that without her, democracy in Pakistan would be a lost cause.
The reality, however, is that there is no one better placed to benefit from emergency rule than she is. Along with the leaders of prominent Islamic parties, she has been spared the violent retributions of emergency law. Yes, she now appears to be facing seven days of house arrest, but what does that really mean? While she was supposedly under house arrest at her Islamabad residence last week, 50 or so of her party members were comfortably allowed to join her. She addressed the media twice from her garden, protected by police given to her by the state, and was not reprimanded for holding a news conference. (By contrast, the very suggestion that they might hold a news conference has placed hundreds of other political activists under real arrest, in real jails.)
Ms. Bhutto's political posturing is sheer pantomime. Her negotiations with the military and her unseemly willingness until just a few days ago to take part in Musharraf's regime have signaled once and for all to the growing legions of fundamentalists across South Asia that democracy is just a guise for dictatorship.
It is widely believed that Ms. Bhutto lost both her governments on grounds of massive corruption. She and her husband, a man who came to be known in Pakistan as "Mr. 10%," have been accused of stealing more than $1 billion from Pakistan's treasury. She is appealing a money-laundering conviction by the Swiss courts involving about $11 million. Corruption cases in Britain and Spain are ongoing.
It was particularly unappealing of Ms. Bhutto to ask Musharraf to bypass the courts and drop the many corruption cases that still face her in Pakistan. He agreed, creating the odiously titled National Reconciliation Ordinance in order to do so. Her collaboration with him was so unsubtle that people on the streets are now calling her party, the Pakistan People's Party, the Pervez People's Party. Now she might like to distance herself, but it's too late.
Why did Ms. Bhutto and her party cronies demand that her corruption cases be dropped, but not demand that the cases of activists jailed during the brutal regime of dictator Zia ul-Haq (from 1977 to 1988) not be quashed? What about the sanctity of the law? When her brother Mir Murtaza Bhutto -- my father -- returned to Pakistan in 1993, he faced 99 cases against him that had been brought by Zia's military government. The cases all carried the death penalty. Yet even though his sister was serving as prime minister, he did not ask her to drop the cases. He returned, was arrested at the airport and spent the remaining years of his life clearing his name, legally and with confidence, in the courts of Pakistan.
Ms. Bhutto's repeated promises to end fundamentalism and terrorism in Pakistan strain credulity because, after all, the Taliban government that ran Afghanistan was recognized by Pakistan under her last government -- making Pakistan one of only three governments in the world to do so.
And I am suspicious of her talk of ensuring peace. My father was a member of Parliament and a vocal critic of his sister's politics. He was killed outside our home in 1996 in a carefully planned police assassination while she was prime minister. There were 70 to 100 policemen at the scene, all the streetlights had been shut off and the roads were cordoned off. Six men were killed with my father. They were shot at point-blank range, suffered multiple bullet wounds and were left to bleed on the streets.
My father was Benazir's younger brother. To this day, her role in his assassination has never been adequately answered, although the tribunal convened after his death under the leadership of three respected judges concluded that it could not have taken place without approval from a "much higher" political authority.
I have personal reasons to fear the danger that Ms. Bhutto's presence in Pakistan brings, but I am not alone. The Islamists are waiting at the gate. They have been waiting for confirmation that the reforms for which the Pakistani people have been struggling have been a farce, propped up by the White House. Since Musharraf seized power in 1999, there has been an earnest grass-roots movement for democratic reform. The last thing we need is to be tied to a neocon agenda through a puppet "democrat" like Ms. Bhutto.
By supporting Ms. Bhutto, who talks of democracy while asking to be brought to power by a military dictator, the only thing that will be accomplished is the death of the nascent secular democratic movement in my country. Democratization will forever be de-legitimized, and our progress in enacting true reforms will be quashed. We Pakistanis are certain of this.
Fatima Bhutto is a Pakistani poet and writer. She is the daughter of Mir Murtaza Bhutto, who was killed in 1996 in Karachi when his sister, Benazir, was prime minister.
Original article posted here.
Bhutto's return bodes poorly for Pakistan -- and for democracy there.
By Fatima Bhutto
KARACHI -- We Pakistanis live in uncertain times. Emergency rule has been imposed for the 13th time in our short 60-year history. Thousands of lawyers have been arrested, some charged with sedition and treason; the chief justice has been deposed; and a draconian media law -- shutting down all private news channels -- has been drafted.
Perhaps the most bizarre part of this circus has been the hijacking of the democratic cause by my aunt, the twice-disgraced former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto. While she was hashing out a deal to share power with Gen. Pervez Musharraf last month, she repeatedly insisted that without her, democracy in Pakistan would be a lost cause.
The reality, however, is that there is no one better placed to benefit from emergency rule than she is. Along with the leaders of prominent Islamic parties, she has been spared the violent retributions of emergency law. Yes, she now appears to be facing seven days of house arrest, but what does that really mean? While she was supposedly under house arrest at her Islamabad residence last week, 50 or so of her party members were comfortably allowed to join her. She addressed the media twice from her garden, protected by police given to her by the state, and was not reprimanded for holding a news conference. (By contrast, the very suggestion that they might hold a news conference has placed hundreds of other political activists under real arrest, in real jails.)
Ms. Bhutto's political posturing is sheer pantomime. Her negotiations with the military and her unseemly willingness until just a few days ago to take part in Musharraf's regime have signaled once and for all to the growing legions of fundamentalists across South Asia that democracy is just a guise for dictatorship.
It is widely believed that Ms. Bhutto lost both her governments on grounds of massive corruption. She and her husband, a man who came to be known in Pakistan as "Mr. 10%," have been accused of stealing more than $1 billion from Pakistan's treasury. She is appealing a money-laundering conviction by the Swiss courts involving about $11 million. Corruption cases in Britain and Spain are ongoing.
It was particularly unappealing of Ms. Bhutto to ask Musharraf to bypass the courts and drop the many corruption cases that still face her in Pakistan. He agreed, creating the odiously titled National Reconciliation Ordinance in order to do so. Her collaboration with him was so unsubtle that people on the streets are now calling her party, the Pakistan People's Party, the Pervez People's Party. Now she might like to distance herself, but it's too late.
Why did Ms. Bhutto and her party cronies demand that her corruption cases be dropped, but not demand that the cases of activists jailed during the brutal regime of dictator Zia ul-Haq (from 1977 to 1988) not be quashed? What about the sanctity of the law? When her brother Mir Murtaza Bhutto -- my father -- returned to Pakistan in 1993, he faced 99 cases against him that had been brought by Zia's military government. The cases all carried the death penalty. Yet even though his sister was serving as prime minister, he did not ask her to drop the cases. He returned, was arrested at the airport and spent the remaining years of his life clearing his name, legally and with confidence, in the courts of Pakistan.
Ms. Bhutto's repeated promises to end fundamentalism and terrorism in Pakistan strain credulity because, after all, the Taliban government that ran Afghanistan was recognized by Pakistan under her last government -- making Pakistan one of only three governments in the world to do so.
And I am suspicious of her talk of ensuring peace. My father was a member of Parliament and a vocal critic of his sister's politics. He was killed outside our home in 1996 in a carefully planned police assassination while she was prime minister. There were 70 to 100 policemen at the scene, all the streetlights had been shut off and the roads were cordoned off. Six men were killed with my father. They were shot at point-blank range, suffered multiple bullet wounds and were left to bleed on the streets.
My father was Benazir's younger brother. To this day, her role in his assassination has never been adequately answered, although the tribunal convened after his death under the leadership of three respected judges concluded that it could not have taken place without approval from a "much higher" political authority.
I have personal reasons to fear the danger that Ms. Bhutto's presence in Pakistan brings, but I am not alone. The Islamists are waiting at the gate. They have been waiting for confirmation that the reforms for which the Pakistani people have been struggling have been a farce, propped up by the White House. Since Musharraf seized power in 1999, there has been an earnest grass-roots movement for democratic reform. The last thing we need is to be tied to a neocon agenda through a puppet "democrat" like Ms. Bhutto.
By supporting Ms. Bhutto, who talks of democracy while asking to be brought to power by a military dictator, the only thing that will be accomplished is the death of the nascent secular democratic movement in my country. Democratization will forever be de-legitimized, and our progress in enacting true reforms will be quashed. We Pakistanis are certain of this.
Fatima Bhutto is a Pakistani poet and writer. She is the daughter of Mir Murtaza Bhutto, who was killed in 1996 in Karachi when his sister, Benazir, was prime minister.
Original article posted here.
Classic assassination droppings
Police abandoned security posts before Bhutto assassination
Nick Juliano
Published: Friday December 28, 2007
No autopsy performed on body; docs say bullet wounds not found
Police abandoned their security posts shortly before Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto's assassination Thursday, according to a journalist present at the time, and unanswerable questions remain about the cause of her death, because an autopsy was never performed.
Pakistan's Interior Minister on Friday said that Bhutto was not killed by gunshots, as had been widely reported, and doctors at Rawalpindi General Hospital, where she died, say there were no bullet marks on the former prime minister's body, according to India's IBNLive.com. Furthermore, according to the news agency, there was no formal autopsy performed on Bhutto's body before she was buried Friday.
CNN is now reporting that it wasn't gunshots or shrapnel that killed Bhutto, but that she died from hitting the sunroof of the car she was riding in. The network said sources in Pakistan's Interior Ministry said nothing entered her skull, no bullets or shrapnel.
Apparently there was some kind of lever on the sunroof she was standing through, and she hit her head on that CNN reported Friday morning.
Earlier in the day Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz told a Pakistani news channel, “The report says she had head injuries – an irregular patch – and the X-ray doesn’t show any bullet in the head. So it was probably the shrapnel or any other thing has struck her in her said. That damaged her brain, causing it to ooze and her death. The report categorically says there’s no wound other than that," according to IBNLive.
Perhaps more shockingly, an attendee at the rally where Bhutto was killed says police charged with protecting her "abandoned their posts," leaving just a handful of Bhutto's own bodyguards protecting her.
"Police officers had frisked the 3,000 to 4,000 people attending Thursday's rally when they entered the park, but as the speakers from Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party droned on, the police abandoned many of their posts," wrote Saeed Shah in an essay published by McClatchy News Service. "As she drove out through the gate, her main protection appeared to be her own bodyguards, who wore their usual white T-shirts inscribed: 'Willing to die for Benazir.'"
While some intelligence officials, especially within the US, were quick to finger al Qaeda militants as responsible for Bhutto's death, it remains unclear precisely who was responsible and some speculation has centered on Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI, its military or even forces loyal to the current president Pervez Musharraf. Rawalpindi, where Bhutto was killed, is the garrison city that houses the Pakistani military's headquarters.
"GHQ (general headquarters of the army) killed her," Sardar Saleem, a former member of parliament, told Shah at the hospital.
Whatever the case, Bhutto's precise cause of death may never be known because of the failure to administer an autopsy. The procedure was not carried out because police and local authorities in Rawalpindi did not request one, according to IBNLive, but the government plans a formal investigation why this was the case.
Musharraf initially blamed her death on unnamed Islamic militants, but Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz told The Associated Press on Friday that "we have the evidence that al-Qaida and the Taliban were behind the suicide attack on Benazir Bhutto."
He said investigators had resolved the "whole mystery" behind the opposition leader's killing and would give details at press conference later Friday.
Original article posted here.The CIA's African follies
Dyer: CIA behind Somalia's bloody occupation by Ethiopian troops
Gwynne Dyer
On Friday, it will be is exactly a year since Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, fell to Ethiopian troops and the occupation has been one of the most brutal on record. The resistance started at once, and Ethiopian counter-insurgency tactics are not gentle.
As early as last April, Germany's ambassador to Somalia, Walter Lindner, wrote a public letter condemning the indiscriminate use of air strikes and heavy artillery in densely populated parts of Mogadishu, the systematic rape of women and even the bombing of hospitals. By now, the Ethiopian army's attempts to terrorize the residents of Mogadishu into submission have driven 600,000 of them - 60 percent of the population - to flee the city.
The Ethiopians and their local allies indignantly deny these figures, but they come from the United Nations aid coordinator for Somalia, Eric Laroche, and the makeshift camps along the roads leading away from Mogadishu are there for all to see. It is, says Laroche, the worst humanitarian crisis in Africa, worse even than Darfur. But "since it is in Somalia, no one cares."
You will notice that some of the phrases used above do not appear in the agency reports about Somalia. The wire services do not talk about an Ethiopian occupation of Somalia, and they refer to the local Somali collaborators as the "transitional federal government," or TGF. This is mainly in deference to the United States, which organized and backed the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia.
The curse of Somalia is the clan system. It is the main point of reference for most Somalis, and it really became a crippling burden when long-ruling dictator Mohammed Siad Barre was overthrown in 1991. In the pre-independence days and the early years afterwards, the clans were able to unite against their Italian and British colonial rulers, but in 1991 they had to create a new government without an external enemy. They couldn't do it.
As the clans fought it out in the streets, the whole infrastructure of an organized state collapsed. By 1992 American and United Nations forces arrived to help the millions of famine-stricken refugees, but they were only drawn into the inter-clan fighting as well, and by 1994 they had all withdrawn, leaving Somalia to anarchy and civil war for the next decade. But in fact most of the country was fairly stable under the control of one clan or another, with only the Mogadishu area still a battleground between rival clan warlords.
This did not greatly inconvenience the United States, which developed a keen interest in the politics of the region after the atrocities of 9/11. At first the U.S. just made deals with the various warlords to ensure that no jihadi fanatics created a base there. But it got more upset when an organization called the Union of Islamic Courts chased all the warlords out of Mogadishu in 2006 and gave the capital its first taste of peace and good government since 1991.
The UIC was actually created by prominent merchants from the locally dominant Hawiye clan who wanted a safe environment in which to do business. The "Islamic" aspect of it was mainly there to provide a rallying point that other clans could identify with, though that obviously also attracted a certain number of earnest and bearded young men. Some of them, unfortunately, favored a rhetorical style that triggers a knee-jerk reaction in jittery post-9/11 Americans.
The people of Mogadishu, enjoying their first taste of normality in 15 years, overwhelmingly supported the UIC, but the United States decided it must be overthrown. To do the job, Washington turned to its close ally Ethiopia, Somalia's perennial enemy. The Ethiopians, who have no interest in a stable and strong Somalia, were happy to oblige - and for diplomatic cover, the U.S. could use the "transitional federal government" of Somalia.
The TFG had been created in Kenya in 2004 under UN auspices. Each of the major clans (Hawiye, Darod, Dir and Rahanweyn) appointed 61 members to a "parliament" while all the minor clans shared 31 members between them. The "parliament" then chose a president, Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed. It was the 14th attempt since the overthrow of Siad Barre to create a Somali government.
The TFG set up in the town of Baidoa in early 2006, and promptly went to war with the Union of Islamic Courts that controlled the capital. Since it had only about 5,000 soldiers of its own, the TFG depended from the start on far larger numbers of Ethiopian troops to do the actual fighting. Large numbers of government members resigned as it became clear that the TFG had fallen into the hands of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Ethiopians, but a force of about 20,000 Ethiopian troops (with some U.S. air support) fought its way into Mogadishu a year ago.
With the occupation of Mogadishu, the interval of peace ended, and the past year's fighting has driven more than half the city's population into flight. The TFG has been permanently discredited by its link to the hated Ethiopians, but it will probably take more years of war to end the occupation, and a lot more Somalis will die. All because they called it the Union of Islamic Courts.
If only they had called it the Union of Buddhist Courts. Or Protestant Courts. Anything but the "I" word.
GWYNNE DYER is a London-based independent journalist.
Original article posted here.
Gwynne Dyer
On Friday, it will be is exactly a year since Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, fell to Ethiopian troops and the occupation has been one of the most brutal on record. The resistance started at once, and Ethiopian counter-insurgency tactics are not gentle.
As early as last April, Germany's ambassador to Somalia, Walter Lindner, wrote a public letter condemning the indiscriminate use of air strikes and heavy artillery in densely populated parts of Mogadishu, the systematic rape of women and even the bombing of hospitals. By now, the Ethiopian army's attempts to terrorize the residents of Mogadishu into submission have driven 600,000 of them - 60 percent of the population - to flee the city.
The Ethiopians and their local allies indignantly deny these figures, but they come from the United Nations aid coordinator for Somalia, Eric Laroche, and the makeshift camps along the roads leading away from Mogadishu are there for all to see. It is, says Laroche, the worst humanitarian crisis in Africa, worse even than Darfur. But "since it is in Somalia, no one cares."
You will notice that some of the phrases used above do not appear in the agency reports about Somalia. The wire services do not talk about an Ethiopian occupation of Somalia, and they refer to the local Somali collaborators as the "transitional federal government," or TGF. This is mainly in deference to the United States, which organized and backed the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia.
The curse of Somalia is the clan system. It is the main point of reference for most Somalis, and it really became a crippling burden when long-ruling dictator Mohammed Siad Barre was overthrown in 1991. In the pre-independence days and the early years afterwards, the clans were able to unite against their Italian and British colonial rulers, but in 1991 they had to create a new government without an external enemy. They couldn't do it.
As the clans fought it out in the streets, the whole infrastructure of an organized state collapsed. By 1992 American and United Nations forces arrived to help the millions of famine-stricken refugees, but they were only drawn into the inter-clan fighting as well, and by 1994 they had all withdrawn, leaving Somalia to anarchy and civil war for the next decade. But in fact most of the country was fairly stable under the control of one clan or another, with only the Mogadishu area still a battleground between rival clan warlords.
This did not greatly inconvenience the United States, which developed a keen interest in the politics of the region after the atrocities of 9/11. At first the U.S. just made deals with the various warlords to ensure that no jihadi fanatics created a base there. But it got more upset when an organization called the Union of Islamic Courts chased all the warlords out of Mogadishu in 2006 and gave the capital its first taste of peace and good government since 1991.
The UIC was actually created by prominent merchants from the locally dominant Hawiye clan who wanted a safe environment in which to do business. The "Islamic" aspect of it was mainly there to provide a rallying point that other clans could identify with, though that obviously also attracted a certain number of earnest and bearded young men. Some of them, unfortunately, favored a rhetorical style that triggers a knee-jerk reaction in jittery post-9/11 Americans.
The people of Mogadishu, enjoying their first taste of normality in 15 years, overwhelmingly supported the UIC, but the United States decided it must be overthrown. To do the job, Washington turned to its close ally Ethiopia, Somalia's perennial enemy. The Ethiopians, who have no interest in a stable and strong Somalia, were happy to oblige - and for diplomatic cover, the U.S. could use the "transitional federal government" of Somalia.
The TFG had been created in Kenya in 2004 under UN auspices. Each of the major clans (Hawiye, Darod, Dir and Rahanweyn) appointed 61 members to a "parliament" while all the minor clans shared 31 members between them. The "parliament" then chose a president, Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed. It was the 14th attempt since the overthrow of Siad Barre to create a Somali government.
The TFG set up in the town of Baidoa in early 2006, and promptly went to war with the Union of Islamic Courts that controlled the capital. Since it had only about 5,000 soldiers of its own, the TFG depended from the start on far larger numbers of Ethiopian troops to do the actual fighting. Large numbers of government members resigned as it became clear that the TFG had fallen into the hands of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Ethiopians, but a force of about 20,000 Ethiopian troops (with some U.S. air support) fought its way into Mogadishu a year ago.
With the occupation of Mogadishu, the interval of peace ended, and the past year's fighting has driven more than half the city's population into flight. The TFG has been permanently discredited by its link to the hated Ethiopians, but it will probably take more years of war to end the occupation, and a lot more Somalis will die. All because they called it the Union of Islamic Courts.
If only they had called it the Union of Buddhist Courts. Or Protestant Courts. Anything but the "I" word.
GWYNNE DYER is a London-based independent journalist.
Original article posted here.
Flashbacks
Murdered by intelligence agency
supported terrorists
When Benazir Bhutto returned to Pakistan to take a stand for democratic government, 3 million Pakistanis greeted her at the airport.
Now she is dead.
At 6:15 in this video, Benazir Bhutto refers in a matter-of-fact manner to "the man who killed Osama bin Laden."
If this was a misstatement, she did not correct herself, nor did the interviewer call attention to it.
Before she was murdered, there was another attack on Benazir Bhutto's life. She told David Frost that she was not even allowed to file a police report let alone get a serious investigation of the attack.
She specifically stated that she wanted the finances of the terrorists traced.
Saeed Sheikh is the man Bhutto refers to in this interview.
He is charged with killing Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl who tracked the relationship between Pakistani intelligence and terrorist groups. He is also suspected of having wired money to Mohamed Atta on behalf of Pakistani intelligence right before the 9/11 attacks.
George Bush & Company wholeheartedly support the current Pakistani regime.
Now she is dead.
At 6:15 in this video, Benazir Bhutto refers in a matter-of-fact manner to "the man who killed Osama bin Laden."
If this was a misstatement, she did not correct herself, nor did the interviewer call attention to it.
Before she was murdered, there was another attack on Benazir Bhutto's life. She told David Frost that she was not even allowed to file a police report let alone get a serious investigation of the attack.
She specifically stated that she wanted the finances of the terrorists traced.
Saeed Sheikh is the man Bhutto refers to in this interview.
He is charged with killing Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl who tracked the relationship between Pakistani intelligence and terrorist groups. He is also suspected of having wired money to Mohamed Atta on behalf of Pakistani intelligence right before the 9/11 attacks.
George Bush & Company wholeheartedly support the current Pakistani regime.
Moron Propaganda (and, given Bhutto's own death prognostication, helps expose the charade that is Al CIAda)
Officials: Al Qaeda claims responsibility for Bhutto killing 
Original article posted here.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security issued a bulletin Thursday citing an alleged claim of responsibility by al Qaeda for former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's assassination, a DHS official told CNN.
An Italian news agency says al Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri began planning Bhutto's killing in October.
But such a claim has not appeared on radical Islamist Web sites that regularly post such messages from al Qaeda and other militant groups.
The source of the claim was apparently an obscure Italian news agency, Adnkronos International (AKI), which said that al Qaeda Afghanistan commander and spokesman Mustafa Abu Al-Yazid had telephoned the agency to make the claim.
"We terminated the most precious American asset which vowed to defeat [the] mujahadeen," AKI quoted Al-Yazid as saying.
According to AKI, al Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri set the wheels in motion for the assassination in October.
One Islamist Web site repeated the claim, but that Web site is not considered a reliable source for Islamist messages by experts in the field.
The DHS official said the claim was "an unconfirmed open source claim of responsibility" and the bulletin was sent out at about 6 p.m. to state and local law enforcement agencies.
The official characterized the bulletin as "information sharing."
Ross Feinstein, spokesman for Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, said the U.S. intelligence community is monitoring the situation and trying to figure out who is responsible for the assassination.
"We are not in a position to confirm who may be responsible," Feinstein said.
Feinstein said that the intelligence community "obviously analyze(s) open source intelligence," but he would not say whether the community believes the claim has any validity.
For now, he said, there is "no conclusion" as to who may be responsible.
Earlier, DHS spokesman Russ Knocke said Bhutto's assassination had not prompted "any adjustments to our security posture."
"Of course, we continue to closely monitor events as they unfold overseas," he said.Original article posted here.
Ron Paul still making mainstream news, but prognosticating a bit too much for weazl's tastes
Paul: 'We're getting ready to bomb Iran'
David Edwards and Jason Rhyne
Despite a recent National Intelligence Estimate finding that Iran has halted its nuclear weapons program, libertarian-leaning GOP presidential contender Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) says there is still "a great possibility" of US military action against the country.
Appearing on MSBNC's Morning Joe, Paul described what he characterized as a deteriorating situation on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, and said the US was preparing to kickstart yet another conflict -- this time in Iran.
"It is getting worse over there," he said. "Afghanistan is getting worse. Turkey is bombing Iraq. And Pakistan is blowing up and we're getting ready to bomb Iran. A bunch of those neocons want to bomb Iran."
Asked how the US could justify military action against Iran in the wake of the National Intelligence Estimate -- which determined that the country hadn't actively pursued a nuclear weapon since 2003 -- Paul said he didn't think the report would do much to deter a strike.
"I think it's a great possibility. Read Seymour Hersh. He is the expert over there," said Paul of the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist, who has previously reported that the US is preparing a preemptive strike against Iran.
"And the Iranian Revolutionary Guard has been declared a terrorist organization for the purpose of them being the targets rather than had the nuclear power plants," Paul said. "So, wait and see... there are still quite a few neoconservatives that want to go after Iran under these unbelievable conditions."
Concluded Paul, "That is the absurdity of the whole mess we have in there...stay out of entangling alliances, stay out of nation building. We ought to just get out of that place."
This video is from MSNBC's Morning Joe, broadcast on December 27, 2007.
Burning Bushes
Former Texas home of Bushes burned by arsonist
HOUSTON (Reuters) - A home where President George W. Bush lived as a young boy with his parents in Odessa, Texas, and that is now part of a presidential museum there was damaged on Thursday by a fire that investigators blamed on arson.
"I can tell you it has been determined that it was intentionally set, but I cannot discuss anything about evidence or possible suspects because this is an ongoing criminal investigation," said city of Odessa spokeswoman Andrea Goodson.
Museum administrator Lettie England said no motive for the blaze had been determined and there was no reason at this point to believe it was a political act. She said there were no notes or messages left at the scene.
England said in a telephone interview from the west Texas city that the arsonist spread some kind of flammable liquid on the door and front windows and set the fire.
The then 2-year-old Bush lived in the two-bedroom home from September 1948 to April 1949 with his father, former President George Bush, then a trainee for an oil company, and his mother, Barbara Bush.
The Bushes had come to Texas from the Northeastern United States after World War Two to get into the oil business.
The 800-square-foot (74-square-metre) wooden house was restored in 2004 and moved near the Presidential Museum and Leadership Library on the University of Texas of the Permian Basin campus.
Goodson said the front door and windows and the attic were badly damaged.
England vowed to restore the house again because of its historical significance.
"When you realize that two presidents and a first lady who is also the mother of a president and two governors all lived in this house at one time, it's important," she said.
Original article posted here.
HOUSTON (Reuters) - A home where President George W. Bush lived as a young boy with his parents in Odessa, Texas, and that is now part of a presidential museum there was damaged on Thursday by a fire that investigators blamed on arson.
"I can tell you it has been determined that it was intentionally set, but I cannot discuss anything about evidence or possible suspects because this is an ongoing criminal investigation," said city of Odessa spokeswoman Andrea Goodson.
Museum administrator Lettie England said no motive for the blaze had been determined and there was no reason at this point to believe it was a political act. She said there were no notes or messages left at the scene.
England said in a telephone interview from the west Texas city that the arsonist spread some kind of flammable liquid on the door and front windows and set the fire.
The then 2-year-old Bush lived in the two-bedroom home from September 1948 to April 1949 with his father, former President George Bush, then a trainee for an oil company, and his mother, Barbara Bush.
The Bushes had come to Texas from the Northeastern United States after World War Two to get into the oil business.
The 800-square-foot (74-square-metre) wooden house was restored in 2004 and moved near the Presidential Museum and Leadership Library on the University of Texas of the Permian Basin campus.
Goodson said the front door and windows and the attic were badly damaged.
England vowed to restore the house again because of its historical significance.
"When you realize that two presidents and a first lady who is also the mother of a president and two governors all lived in this house at one time, it's important," she said.
Original article posted here.
Turning back to the 60's. Political assassinations rear their heads again, as "intelligence" agencies lose control of the script.
Bhutto Killing Inflames Pakistan
By PETER WONACOTT and JAY SOLOMON
The world's most unstable nuclear-armed nation is plunging deeper into crisis.
Yesterday's assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has thrown into disarray Pakistan's attempt to restore democracy, eliminating a leading contender for power days before a national election and highlighting the growing reach of extremists.
Ms. Bhutto, a Harvard-educated politician who enjoyed U.S. support, had been expected to do well in elections scheduled for Jan. 8, possibly becoming prime minister once again. Her death has deprived Pakistan's embattled president, Pervez Musharraf, of his strongest potential ally in the battle against the rising tide of radical Islam in this nation of more than 160 million people.
Yesterday's attack brought home how the world's second-most-populous Muslim nation totters on the brink of becoming a failed state, with potentially devastating consequences for neighbors like India and Afghanistan, and for the West. The murder was the latest in the series of suicide attacks that now occur in Pakistan with a frequency approaching that of Iraq, as Taliban-style Islamic insurgents overtake swaths of the countryside.
Ms. Bhutto, 54 years old, was killed by a man who first shot her and then blew himself up following a campaign rally in the city of Rawalpindi near Islamabad, witnesses said. Twenty people were killed in the blast.
One of the first women to lead a modern Muslim nation, Ms. Bhutto has long attracted the ire of Islamist extremists. She was the target of another assassination attempt on Oct. 18, the day she returned to Pakistan after eight years of self-imposed exile. More than 100 people died in that bombing.
As a Western educated woman in an Islamic society, and the first female Prime Minister of a Muslim country, Bhutto forged many new paths in a career which spanned decades. Video courtesy of Reuters.
Though no one claimed responsibility for yesterday's attacks, President Musharraf blamed radicals linked with al Qaeda and the Taliban. "This is the work of those terrorists with whom we are engaged in war," he said in a nationally televised speech. "The nation faces the greatest threats from these terrorists."
The Bhutto assassination puts President Musharraf, a close U.S. ally, in a tight spot: He was counting on the participation of Ms. Bhutto and her large Pakistan People's Party to lend legitimacy to the elections.
Ms. Bhutto had bitterly criticized President Musharraf's six-week emergency rule, imposed in November and lifted Dec. 15, and his measures against the independent judiciary and the press. But she also signaled that she could work with him in a government -- a stance that distinguished her from her longtime rival and another former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif. It was Ms. Bhutto's determination to run in the upcoming election that prompted most other opposition parties, including Mr. Sharif's, to follow suit and drop threats of an electoral boycott.
Next week's election is now up in the air. Mr. Sharif, a conservative with backing from Saudi Arabia, said yesterday that his party again intends to boycott the vote. Ms. Bhutto's party doesn't have a leader of comparable stature to step into her shoes. Closely intertwined with the Bhutto family, her PPP was established by Ms. Bhutto's father, former Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who was hanged in 1979 by the country's military rulers. The party announced a 40-day mourning period as it weighs its options.
"It will be extremely difficult to hold elections now," said Hasan-Askari Rizvi, a Pakistani political analyst who was recently a visiting professor at Johns Hopkins University. "There will be violence."
Pakistan's tumult is roiling the capitals of world powers. Continuing chaos is likely to further embolden militants in Pakistan and in neighboring Afghanistan, and may undermine Islamabad's security cooperation with the U.S.
The U.S. yesterday called for the elections to be held as planned. "We believe the best way to honor Ms. Bhutto is for the democratic process to continue," State Department spokesman Tom Casey said. To delay the elections, he said, "would be a victory for the assailants."
Pakistan's army spokesman, Maj. Gen. Waheed Arshad, said the country's police can handle the security situation. Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz went on TV to call upon political parties to react peacefully. He said the government was investigating the attack.
Some of Ms. Bhutto's supporters lashed out at President Musharraf and the government's security agencies, accusing them of complicity with the killing in Rawalpindi. They questioned whether Ms. Bhutto was given adequate protection in this garrison city, the headquarters of Pakistan's military.
Ms. Bhutto knew the dangers she faced. In a commentary she contributed to The Wall Street Journal after the Oct. 18 attempt on her life, she said she had asked the government to provide security. "The attack on me was not totally unexpected. I had received credible information that I was being targeted by elements that wanted to disrupt the democratic process," she wrote.
Since Pakistan was created by 1947's partition of India, it has never fully gelled as a stable state. The nation's identity has been premised on a single religion, Islam, and Pakistan provided sanctuary for generations of Muslims who felt oppressed in India or sought their own homeland. But the people of Pakistan have also grappled with a persistent question: How large a role should Islam have in daily life? Very little, say human-rights activists. Total theocracy, counter Pakistanis inspired by the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Sixty Years of Instability
For most of its 60 years of independence, Pakistan has been run by the military, which hasn't helped resolve the question of religion and state, and in many ways planted the seeds for today's instability. Pakistan's military rulers suppressed political dissent in the 1980s and 1990s. At the same time, they provided succor to militants who fought the Soviets in Afghanistan and India in the disputed territory of Kashmir.
Pakistan's plight stands in stark contrast to its foe and neighbor, India, the world's largest democracy, which has never experienced a military coup. Since 1947, Pakistan and India have fought three full-scale wars, one resulting in the 1971 secession of East Pakistan, now called Bangladesh. After a group of militants attacked India's parliament in late 2001, the countries came to the brink of the first war between two declared nuclear powers.
WSJ Washington Bureau Chief John Bussey analyzes how the assassination of former Pakistan Prime Minister Bhutto could impact U.S. foreign policy.
Even Pakistan's civilian leaders have had to seek the tacit consent of the nation's powerful military. Ms. Bhutto's father served as a martial-law administrator under the military, before leading a grass-roots movement that made him prime minister. Mr. Sharif emerged as a national leader while a serving in a military government. The military eventually got rid of both, executing Mr. Bhutto and exiling Mr. Sharif.
Ms. Bhutto rose to prominence in the wake of her father's death, serving two terms as prime minister in the 1980s and 1990s. The military constrained her involvement in strategic and foreign affairs, and her government was criticized for alleged corruption.
President Musharraf, the former army chief of staff, came to power after ousting Mr. Sharif in a 1999 coup. As a military commander, Mr. Musharraf had cultivated contacts with militants -- typically through intelligence services -- for their forays into India.
Then came the 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S., plotted by al Qaeda from Afghanistan. President Musharraf reversed Pakistan's backing for Afghanistan's Taliban government. Instead, he provided logistic support to the U.S. military campaign there.
Continued insurgency in Afghanistan, however, has resulted in a creeping Talibanization of parts of Pakistan itself. Groups affiliated with the Taliban and al Qaeda have extended their influence well beyond tribal areas on the Afghan frontier, moving into large parts of the country. In the fall, they overran the Swat valley north of Islamabad, a onetime tourist destination and skiing resort.
Roots of the Crisis
Pakistan's current crisis began in March, when Mr. Musharraf sought to dismiss the country's Supreme Court justice, who his government accused of abusing the perks of his office. The move sparked pro-democracy protests, with lawyers and others taking to the streets against Mr. Musharraf.
At the same time, despite resistance among Pakistan's swelling urban middle class, extremism began reaching into big cities. Earlier this year, Islamic radicals occupied Islamabad's Red Mosque compound, sending out antivice patrols into the streets of the capital. The months-long occupation drew upon youth educated in religious schools. It ended in July with a bloody commando raid.
Since then, militants have launched a barrage of suicide bombings across the nation. Last Friday, a bomb exploded in a village outside of Peshawar, killing more than 50 people, an attack that apparently targeted Pakistan's former top antiterrorism official.
The incidents underscored the challenges closing in on Mr. Musharraf. Both ends of the political spectrum -- those who want civil liberties, and those seeking to establish a strict Islamic state -- wanted him gone.
WSJ's Andy Jordan visits a Pakistani community in New York to get reactions to the attack.
Ms. Bhutto's secular outlook, meanwhile, earned her admirers in Washington. U.S. officials encouraged her to discuss a possible alliance with President Musharraf. But almost as soon as she returned to Pakistan in October, after reaching a deal with President Musharraf to help guide the country toward civilian rule, friction between the two broke to the surface.
On Nov. 3, Mr. Musharraf -- buffeted by an upsurge in violence as well as a challenge to his reelection as president by a parliament stacked with his supporters -- declared emergency rule. He suspended the constitution, forced the resignation of dozens of judges, jailed opponents and took popular television broadcasters off the air.
His government suffered a backlash among critics inside Pakistan and abroad who saw the security clampdown not as way to fight militants but to sideline political opponents. Some critics say President Musharraf's unwillingness to relinquish power after eight years at the helm further fed unrest by weakening the state's legitimacy.
Ms. Bhutto was among those who condemned the president's emergency rule. In response, President Musharraf detained thousands of her supporters and thwarted her attempts to lead protest rallies. Ms. Bhutto was put under house arrest twice.
In the following weeks, after Mr. Sharif returned to Pakistan from exile in Saudi Arabia and President Musharraf stepped down as army chief, relations between Ms. Bhutto and the president showed some improvement. Ms. Bhutto was largely able to campaign freely, even holding rallies in the Northwest Frontier Province, the stronghold of Islamic conservatives.
Ms. Bhutto was struck in the head and neck yesterday as she was entering her car, according to Tariq Azim, former deputy minister of information, who said he had been briefed by Pakistan's Ministry of Interior. Ms. Bhutto was rushed to a hospital where she died from her injuries. The subsequent blast killed 20 and injured about 45, according to Mr. Azim, who called it a "sad and tragic day for Pakistan."
Yesterday evening, some roads were blocked amid the sound of gunfire in Pakistan's commercial capital of Karachi. Police said five people were killed and fires could be seen raging in some buildings. Near the site of the bombing in Rawalpindi, PPP supporters vented their grief by pounding on passing cars and shouting "Musharraf Dog."
Mr. Sharif fanned such sentiments by urging a "revenge on the rulers" for Ms. Bhutto's death.
Leadership Vacuum
Most current and former U.S. officials say Washington's Pakistan policy -- premised on a Musharraf-Bhutto alliance -- is now in trouble. These officials say the Bush administration should be working aggressively behind the scenes to try to rebuild a coalition between President Musharraf and the PPP. But they acknowledge that the approach is complicated by the leadership vacuum in Ms. Bhutto's party.
They also caution that the U.S. shouldn't be seen as too openly managing the political maneuvering due to fears this could fuel even greater anti-American sentiment. Among the PPP officials Washington would likely reach out to in the coming days are emerging leaders such as Aitzaz Ahsan, who could possibly galvanize the party. But Mr. Ahsan, a prominent lawyer, is a major opponent of President Musharraf for supporting Pakistan's ousted judges, and has been under detention himself.
Some analysts expressed fear that the fallout from the killings could also inflame separatist feelings in Pakistan's provinces, especially in Sindh -- Ms. Bhutto's home -- and in resource-rich Baluchistan.
"This will affect the very integrity of Pakistan," said Zafar Iqbal Cheema, chairman of the defense and strategic studies at Quaid-i-Azam University. "Ms. Bhutto was a symbol of Pakistan unity."
Original article posted here.
By PETER WONACOTT and JAY SOLOMON
The world's most unstable nuclear-armed nation is plunging deeper into crisis.
Yesterday's assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has thrown into disarray Pakistan's attempt to restore democracy, eliminating a leading contender for power days before a national election and highlighting the growing reach of extremists.
Ms. Bhutto, a Harvard-educated politician who enjoyed U.S. support, had been expected to do well in elections scheduled for Jan. 8, possibly becoming prime minister once again. Her death has deprived Pakistan's embattled president, Pervez Musharraf, of his strongest potential ally in the battle against the rising tide of radical Islam in this nation of more than 160 million people.
Yesterday's attack brought home how the world's second-most-populous Muslim nation totters on the brink of becoming a failed state, with potentially devastating consequences for neighbors like India and Afghanistan, and for the West. The murder was the latest in the series of suicide attacks that now occur in Pakistan with a frequency approaching that of Iraq, as Taliban-style Islamic insurgents overtake swaths of the countryside.
Ms. Bhutto, 54 years old, was killed by a man who first shot her and then blew himself up following a campaign rally in the city of Rawalpindi near Islamabad, witnesses said. Twenty people were killed in the blast.
One of the first women to lead a modern Muslim nation, Ms. Bhutto has long attracted the ire of Islamist extremists. She was the target of another assassination attempt on Oct. 18, the day she returned to Pakistan after eight years of self-imposed exile. More than 100 people died in that bombing.
As a Western educated woman in an Islamic society, and the first female Prime Minister of a Muslim country, Bhutto forged many new paths in a career which spanned decades. Video courtesy of Reuters.
Though no one claimed responsibility for yesterday's attacks, President Musharraf blamed radicals linked with al Qaeda and the Taliban. "This is the work of those terrorists with whom we are engaged in war," he said in a nationally televised speech. "The nation faces the greatest threats from these terrorists."
The Bhutto assassination puts President Musharraf, a close U.S. ally, in a tight spot: He was counting on the participation of Ms. Bhutto and her large Pakistan People's Party to lend legitimacy to the elections.
Ms. Bhutto had bitterly criticized President Musharraf's six-week emergency rule, imposed in November and lifted Dec. 15, and his measures against the independent judiciary and the press. But she also signaled that she could work with him in a government -- a stance that distinguished her from her longtime rival and another former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif. It was Ms. Bhutto's determination to run in the upcoming election that prompted most other opposition parties, including Mr. Sharif's, to follow suit and drop threats of an electoral boycott.
Next week's election is now up in the air. Mr. Sharif, a conservative with backing from Saudi Arabia, said yesterday that his party again intends to boycott the vote. Ms. Bhutto's party doesn't have a leader of comparable stature to step into her shoes. Closely intertwined with the Bhutto family, her PPP was established by Ms. Bhutto's father, former Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who was hanged in 1979 by the country's military rulers. The party announced a 40-day mourning period as it weighs its options.
"It will be extremely difficult to hold elections now," said Hasan-Askari Rizvi, a Pakistani political analyst who was recently a visiting professor at Johns Hopkins University. "There will be violence."
Pakistan's tumult is roiling the capitals of world powers. Continuing chaos is likely to further embolden militants in Pakistan and in neighboring Afghanistan, and may undermine Islamabad's security cooperation with the U.S.
The U.S. yesterday called for the elections to be held as planned. "We believe the best way to honor Ms. Bhutto is for the democratic process to continue," State Department spokesman Tom Casey said. To delay the elections, he said, "would be a victory for the assailants."
Pakistan's army spokesman, Maj. Gen. Waheed Arshad, said the country's police can handle the security situation. Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz went on TV to call upon political parties to react peacefully. He said the government was investigating the attack.
Some of Ms. Bhutto's supporters lashed out at President Musharraf and the government's security agencies, accusing them of complicity with the killing in Rawalpindi. They questioned whether Ms. Bhutto was given adequate protection in this garrison city, the headquarters of Pakistan's military.
Ms. Bhutto knew the dangers she faced. In a commentary she contributed to The Wall Street Journal after the Oct. 18 attempt on her life, she said she had asked the government to provide security. "The attack on me was not totally unexpected. I had received credible information that I was being targeted by elements that wanted to disrupt the democratic process," she wrote.
Since Pakistan was created by 1947's partition of India, it has never fully gelled as a stable state. The nation's identity has been premised on a single religion, Islam, and Pakistan provided sanctuary for generations of Muslims who felt oppressed in India or sought their own homeland. But the people of Pakistan have also grappled with a persistent question: How large a role should Islam have in daily life? Very little, say human-rights activists. Total theocracy, counter Pakistanis inspired by the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Sixty Years of Instability
For most of its 60 years of independence, Pakistan has been run by the military, which hasn't helped resolve the question of religion and state, and in many ways planted the seeds for today's instability. Pakistan's military rulers suppressed political dissent in the 1980s and 1990s. At the same time, they provided succor to militants who fought the Soviets in Afghanistan and India in the disputed territory of Kashmir.
Pakistan's plight stands in stark contrast to its foe and neighbor, India, the world's largest democracy, which has never experienced a military coup. Since 1947, Pakistan and India have fought three full-scale wars, one resulting in the 1971 secession of East Pakistan, now called Bangladesh. After a group of militants attacked India's parliament in late 2001, the countries came to the brink of the first war between two declared nuclear powers.
WSJ Washington Bureau Chief John Bussey analyzes how the assassination of former Pakistan Prime Minister Bhutto could impact U.S. foreign policy.
Even Pakistan's civilian leaders have had to seek the tacit consent of the nation's powerful military. Ms. Bhutto's father served as a martial-law administrator under the military, before leading a grass-roots movement that made him prime minister. Mr. Sharif emerged as a national leader while a serving in a military government. The military eventually got rid of both, executing Mr. Bhutto and exiling Mr. Sharif.
Ms. Bhutto rose to prominence in the wake of her father's death, serving two terms as prime minister in the 1980s and 1990s. The military constrained her involvement in strategic and foreign affairs, and her government was criticized for alleged corruption.
President Musharraf, the former army chief of staff, came to power after ousting Mr. Sharif in a 1999 coup. As a military commander, Mr. Musharraf had cultivated contacts with militants -- typically through intelligence services -- for their forays into India.
Then came the 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S., plotted by al Qaeda from Afghanistan. President Musharraf reversed Pakistan's backing for Afghanistan's Taliban government. Instead, he provided logistic support to the U.S. military campaign there.
Continued insurgency in Afghanistan, however, has resulted in a creeping Talibanization of parts of Pakistan itself. Groups affiliated with the Taliban and al Qaeda have extended their influence well beyond tribal areas on the Afghan frontier, moving into large parts of the country. In the fall, they overran the Swat valley north of Islamabad, a onetime tourist destination and skiing resort.
Roots of the Crisis
Pakistan's current crisis began in March, when Mr. Musharraf sought to dismiss the country's Supreme Court justice, who his government accused of abusing the perks of his office. The move sparked pro-democracy protests, with lawyers and others taking to the streets against Mr. Musharraf.
At the same time, despite resistance among Pakistan's swelling urban middle class, extremism began reaching into big cities. Earlier this year, Islamic radicals occupied Islamabad's Red Mosque compound, sending out antivice patrols into the streets of the capital. The months-long occupation drew upon youth educated in religious schools. It ended in July with a bloody commando raid.
Since then, militants have launched a barrage of suicide bombings across the nation. Last Friday, a bomb exploded in a village outside of Peshawar, killing more than 50 people, an attack that apparently targeted Pakistan's former top antiterrorism official.
The incidents underscored the challenges closing in on Mr. Musharraf. Both ends of the political spectrum -- those who want civil liberties, and those seeking to establish a strict Islamic state -- wanted him gone.
WSJ's Andy Jordan visits a Pakistani community in New York to get reactions to the attack.
Ms. Bhutto's secular outlook, meanwhile, earned her admirers in Washington. U.S. officials encouraged her to discuss a possible alliance with President Musharraf. But almost as soon as she returned to Pakistan in October, after reaching a deal with President Musharraf to help guide the country toward civilian rule, friction between the two broke to the surface.
On Nov. 3, Mr. Musharraf -- buffeted by an upsurge in violence as well as a challenge to his reelection as president by a parliament stacked with his supporters -- declared emergency rule. He suspended the constitution, forced the resignation of dozens of judges, jailed opponents and took popular television broadcasters off the air.
His government suffered a backlash among critics inside Pakistan and abroad who saw the security clampdown not as way to fight militants but to sideline political opponents. Some critics say President Musharraf's unwillingness to relinquish power after eight years at the helm further fed unrest by weakening the state's legitimacy.
Ms. Bhutto was among those who condemned the president's emergency rule. In response, President Musharraf detained thousands of her supporters and thwarted her attempts to lead protest rallies. Ms. Bhutto was put under house arrest twice.
In the following weeks, after Mr. Sharif returned to Pakistan from exile in Saudi Arabia and President Musharraf stepped down as army chief, relations between Ms. Bhutto and the president showed some improvement. Ms. Bhutto was largely able to campaign freely, even holding rallies in the Northwest Frontier Province, the stronghold of Islamic conservatives.
Ms. Bhutto was struck in the head and neck yesterday as she was entering her car, according to Tariq Azim, former deputy minister of information, who said he had been briefed by Pakistan's Ministry of Interior. Ms. Bhutto was rushed to a hospital where she died from her injuries. The subsequent blast killed 20 and injured about 45, according to Mr. Azim, who called it a "sad and tragic day for Pakistan."
Yesterday evening, some roads were blocked amid the sound of gunfire in Pakistan's commercial capital of Karachi. Police said five people were killed and fires could be seen raging in some buildings. Near the site of the bombing in Rawalpindi, PPP supporters vented their grief by pounding on passing cars and shouting "Musharraf Dog."
Mr. Sharif fanned such sentiments by urging a "revenge on the rulers" for Ms. Bhutto's death.
Leadership Vacuum
Most current and former U.S. officials say Washington's Pakistan policy -- premised on a Musharraf-Bhutto alliance -- is now in trouble. These officials say the Bush administration should be working aggressively behind the scenes to try to rebuild a coalition between President Musharraf and the PPP. But they acknowledge that the approach is complicated by the leadership vacuum in Ms. Bhutto's party.
They also caution that the U.S. shouldn't be seen as too openly managing the political maneuvering due to fears this could fuel even greater anti-American sentiment. Among the PPP officials Washington would likely reach out to in the coming days are emerging leaders such as Aitzaz Ahsan, who could possibly galvanize the party. But Mr. Ahsan, a prominent lawyer, is a major opponent of President Musharraf for supporting Pakistan's ousted judges, and has been under detention himself.
Some analysts expressed fear that the fallout from the killings could also inflame separatist feelings in Pakistan's provinces, especially in Sindh -- Ms. Bhutto's home -- and in resource-rich Baluchistan.
"This will affect the very integrity of Pakistan," said Zafar Iqbal Cheema, chairman of the defense and strategic studies at Quaid-i-Azam University. "Ms. Bhutto was a symbol of Pakistan unity."
Original article posted here.
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