Peace and Justice Post

From Times  online, November 22, 2007

Pakistan court rules in Musharraf’s favour

President Musharraf could step down as head of the military as soon as the end of this week

Image :1 of 2

Jenny Booth and agencies

Pakistan’s Supreme Court today cleared the last legal hurdle for President Pervez Musharraf to be confirmed in office after winning fresh presidential elections last month.

The court – stuffed with judges sympathetic to General Musharraf – today took less than an hour to throw out the sixth and final legal challenge to the constitutionality of his standing for office while still in the military.

General Musharraf is now expected to doff his uniform and quit as head of the army within days, in order to continue the appearance of moving from military dictatorship to civilian democracy.

“The petition is dismissed,” said chief justice Abdul Hameed Dogar.

Keep reading . . .

The Times of India, 22 Nov 2007

WASHINGTON: Warning that another rigged election would add “even more salt to Pakistan’s open wounds”, a prominent US expert has said political trends lines in the country are likely to grow worse the longer President Pervez Musharraf remains in any position of leadership.

“The longer Musharraf wears either of his two hats, the longer it will take for Pakistan to hold sufficiently credible elections upon which a semblance of political normalcy can resume,” Michael Krepon, the Co-Founder of The Stimson Center, says.

In the article titled, “Pakistan With or Without Musharraf”, he says the longer Musharraf stays, the greater the difficulties Washington can expect on all three fronts– counter-terrorism, control of the country’s nuclear assets, and in handling bilateral ties.

Krepon also argues that the corporate interests of the Pakistan Army with respect to the above three fronts “are unlikely to change appreciably if or when Musharraf goes”.

Pakistan’s domestic politics have become so abnormal that modest remedies now seem insufficient while near-term solutions, including the goal of free and fair national elections in January, appear improbable, he says.

SF Gate

By Anne Flaherty, Associated press Writer
Wed, November 21, 2007

Retired Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top commander in Iraq shortly after the fall of Baghdad, said this week he supports Democratic legislation that calls for most troops to come home within a year.

His comments come as welcomed ammunition for the Democratic-controlled Congress in its standoff with the White House on war spending. This month, the House passed a $50 billion bill that would pay for combat operations but sets the goal that combat end by Dec. 15, 2008. The White House threatened to veto the measure, and Senate Republicans blocked it from passing.

Keep reading . . .

If nothing else, Bush has won admiration, even from some opposed to his policies, for being a man of strong convictions, a modern-day Luther declaiming “here I stand, I can do no other.” Others, however, contend that the touted convictions are nothing more than lies.

But why not give the president the benefit of the doubt? Let us grant that he really believes that the market knows best; that global warming is a crock; that destroying embryos to save lives is wrong; that tax cuts help the poor and swell the nation’s coffers; that the more we are watched, the greater our security; that federally-administered universal health care is a plague on all houses, including those of the uninsured; that a “liberated” Iraq is the short fuse to a democratic Middle East, toppling one tyrannical Muslim regime after another, with peace between Israelis and Palestinians as icing on the cake — the world made safe for American triumphalist values.

Let us grant the president all this and pat him on the back for having convictions. But the road to hell is paved with strong convictions. Page after page of history is a register of crimes and follies perpetrated by strong-willed leaders, blood-soaked affirmations of Nietzsche’s aphorism that “convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.”

Keep reading . . .

Yahoo News, Wed Nov. 21, 9:51 AM ET BAGHDAD

(AFP) – A US general on Wednesday acknowledged Iran‘s role in helping quell the bloodshed in Iraq, saying Tehran had contributed to stopping the flow of arms across the border into the country.

Lieutenant General James Dubik, who is in charge of training Iraqi security forces, said Tehran was keeping to its pledge of stopping the smuggling of weapons to Iraqi extremists. “We are all thankfull for the commitment Iran has made to reduce the flow in weapons, explosives and training (of extremists) in Iraq,” Dubik told reporters in Baghdad’s Green Zone.

Continued . . .

BBC News, November 21, 2007

Ms Plame said Mr McClellan’s excerpt was “shocking”

A former White House press secretary has said the US president was involved in misinforming the public over the leaking of a CIA agent’s identity. In an excerpt from his book, Scott McClellan says George W Bush helped mislead the public over the role in the affair of two White House aides.

The CIA agent, Valerie Plame, says her identity was leaked because her diplomat husband opposed the Iraq war.

Keep reading . . .

Published on Tuesday, November 20, 2007 by The Guardian/UK

Despite bouts of superficial self-criticism, when it comes to war, the US media excel at following the White House line

by Norman Solomon

At times, long after laying the big flagstones on the path to war, mainstream US media outlets resolve to be more independent next time. And why not? As Mark Twain commented, “It’s easy to quit smoking. I’ve done it hundreds of times.”When the president and his team set out to prepare the media ground for war, they can rely on a repetition compulsion that’s widespread in the American press. Major outlets seem unable to resist White House agenda-setting for war. Cases in point span decades, from Vietnam and the Dominican Republic to Grenada and Panama, to Iraq and Yugoslavia, to Afghanistan and Iraq again – with Iran likely to join the list next year.

Along the way, beginning with the 1991 Gulf war, the better performances of the British press compared to the American media – high jumps over low standards – have not prevented the British government from requiting the worst aspects of the special relationship by supplying troops and weaponry for US-initiated war efforts based on deception.

The political feasibility of waging these tragic wars can be largely traced to the US media’s reflexive capitulations to the administration in Washington – providing stenographic services far more often than tough scrutiny.

Keep reading . . .

The News International, November 21, 2007

Police baton-charge journalists rally in Karachi

180 media persons arrested, freed

By Shamim Bano

KARACHI: Police on Tuesday 20 November baton-charged a rally of journalists to prevent them from reaching the Governor House to protest against curbs on the media.

The brute use of force by the police led to the arrest of 180 journalists, including women, many of whom courted arrest outside the Karachi Press Club (KPC). The rally was organised by the Karachi Union of Journalists as part of the ongoing countrywide protests called by the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ) against the curbs on the media and the ban on Geo and ARYone world TV channels.

Barricades had been erected by the police all around the Press Club building to prevent protesters from proceeding to the Governor House. The media people took to the streets chanting “Hum Chheen Key Lengey Azadi” (we will snatch freedom), “Hum Nahi Mantey Zulm Key Zabtey” (we do not accept the rule of tyranny).

As they marched towards the Governor House to register their protest against the government’s curbs against the media, the police officials tried to forcibly prevent them and a clash between journalists and police personnel started. Police arrested about 25 senior journalists, including KPC President Sabihuddin Ghousi, KUJ President Shamim-ur-Rahman, KUJ Secretary Javed Chaudhry, KPC Treasurer Amir Latif, Ahfaz-ur-Rahman, Shakil Salawat, Moosa Kaleem, and others. Following the detention of their senior colleagues, around 200 journalists, including women, courted arrest.

Those who courted arrest included Editor Reporting The News Kamal Siddiqi and Director News Geo English Owais Tauhid, Secretary Association of TV Journalists Faisal Aziz and many others including Raja Tariq, Najeeb, Afzal Nadeem, Sabina Agha, AH Khanzada, Xari Jalil, Rahma Mohammad, Asra Pasha, Shehzad Anwer, Tariq Abul Hasan, Faheem Siddiqi, Zarar Khan, Nizam Siddiqi, Dodo Chandio, Arbab Chandio, Huma Imtiaz and Asif Mehmood.

The police brutally beat up President Association of Television Journalists (ATJ) Javed Saba, when he tried to pacify the journalists. The police shifted the journalists to five police stations: Docks, Frere, Darakhshan, Clifton and Civil Lines.

Keep reading . . .

Vanity Fair

The next president will have to deal with yet another crippling legacy of George W. Bush: the economy. A Nobel laureate, Joseph E. Stiglitz, sees a generation-long struggle to recoup.

by Joseph E. Stiglitz December 2007

The American economy can take a lot of abuse, but no economy is invincible. Illustration by Edward Sorel.

When we look back someday at the catastrophe that was the Bush administration, we will think of many things: the tragedy of the Iraq war, the shame of Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib, the erosion of civil liberties. The damage done to the American economy does not make front-page headlines every day, but the repercussions will be felt beyond the lifetime of anyone reading this page.

I can hear an irritated counterthrust already. The president has not driven the United States into a recession during his almost seven years in office. Unemployment stands at a respectable 4.6 percent. Well, fine. But the other side of the ledger groans with distress: a tax code that has become hideously biased in favor of the rich; a national debt that will probably have grown 70 percent by the time this president leaves Washington; a swelling cascade of mortgage defaults; a record near-$850 billion trade deficit; oil prices that are higher than they have ever been; and a dollar so weak that for an American to buy a cup of coffee in London or Paris—or even the Yukon—becomes a venture in high finance.

And it gets worse. After almost seven years of this president, the United States is less prepared than ever to face the future. We have not been educating enough engineers and scientists, people with the skills we will need to compete with China and India. We have not been investing in the kinds of basic research that made us the technological powerhouse of the late 20th century. And although the president now understands—or so he says—that we must begin to wean ourselves from oil and coal, we have on his watch become more deeply dependent on both.

Up to now, the conventional wisdom has been that Herbert Hoover, whose policies aggravated the Great Depression, is the odds-on claimant for the mantle “worst president” when it comes to stewardship of the American economy. Once Franklin Roosevelt assumed office and reversed Hoover’s policies, the country began to recover. The economic effects of Bush’s presidency are more insidious than those of Hoover, harder to reverse, and likely to be longer-lasting. There is no threat of America’s being displaced from its position as the world’s richest economy. But our grandchildren will still be living with, and struggling with, the economic consequences of Mr. Bush.

Continued . . .