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Christians United for Israel and Attacking Iran

August 19, 2008

Dedrick Muhammad and Farrah Hassen | Foreign Policy In Focus, August 18,

2008Though the national sentiment favors wrapping up the Iraq War, there exists a small but powerful movement for starting a new military conflict with Iran. The bipartisan drumbeats for aggression reverberate throughout the corridors of Congress. House Resolution 362 and Senate Resolution 580, for example, call on the United States to prevent Iran from “acquiring a nuclear weapons capability through all appropriate economic, political, and diplomatic means.”

Christians United
Photo by Dedrick Muhammad.

The House’s Iran resolution, sponsored by Representative Gary Ackerman (D-NY), demands the president impose “stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains, and cargo entering or departing Iran.” This legislation effectively requires a blockade on Iran which is considered by international law as an act of war. The Senate’s Iran resolution, sponsored by Senator Evan Bayh (D-IN), would require a ban on “the importation of refined petroleum products to Iran.” Neither resolution offers evidence on Iran’s alleged pursuit of a nuclear weapon. Both neglect to mention any sanctions against the only country known to actually have developed nuclear weapons in the Middle East: Israel.

Evoking Orwellian 2+2=5 logic, both Congressmen have offered sanctions as the means to avoid war by applying economic pressure on Iran. Yet sanctions rarely achieve their intended objective. For instance, unilateral U.S. sanctions failed to topple the Cuban, Iraqi and Libyan governments. They punished (and in Cuba’s case, continue to punish) civilians instead.

Washington-Israel Summit

The “squeeze Iran” and “confront Iran” positions are strongly encouraged by the increasingly powerful Zionist Christian Fundamentalist community. About 5,000 people from across the United States attended the third annual Washington-Israel Summit, organized by Christians United for Israel (CUFI). There, the “Iranian threat” loomed as a pervasive theme.

“What do you do with a maniac like Ahmadinejad? I’m not sure diplomacy works,” Gary Bauer, President of American Values and a CUFI executive board member, told the crowd during the July 22 “Middle East Intelligence Briefing.” Another panelist, Representative Mike Pence (R-IN), urged the attendees to make their support for HR 362 known to their members of Congress.

We attended this “the Rapture” meets “Clash of Civilizations” session – on the only day open to the press. We listened to the never-ending chorus from Bauer, Pence, Representative Elliot Engel (D-NY), and The Weekly Standard editor William Kristol who kept telling the assembled crowd why Americans must fear “Islamo-fascists”/”Islamo-radicals”/”death worshippers,” and their other scary names for Muslims. Panels curiously closed to the press at the three-day conference included “Iran: Eye of the Storm,” “Radical Islam: In Their Own Words” and “How to Stop Funding the Enemy: Divestment, Sanctions and Boycotts.”

As Muslims, we attended the summit to learn more about CUFI. What we found was disturbing. Being well-received and courteously treated by the pleasant staff of a conference that talks of Muslims as “death worshippers” was a truly paradoxical experience. We also found it ironic that the organization’s acronym, CUFI, is pronounced like kufi, an Arabic word for the short, rounded prayer cap worn by devout Muslim men.

Continued . . .

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John McCain’s Party of Hate

August 18, 2008

Brent Budowsky | Consortiumnews.com, August 16, 2008

Editor’s Note: To many Americans who expected better from John McCain, the surprise of Campaign 2008 is that the Republicans are operating almost exactly the same as they have in previous presidential election cycles — relying on personal attacks, wedge issues, tough-guy talk, and media complacency.

In this essay, former Democratic congressional aide Brent Budowsky ponders this disturbing reality:

As Campaign 2008 unfolds, it is increasingly clear that the Republicans are a party with little left but hate, anger and the politics of slandering their opponent.

John McCain has become a candidate reduced to doing a Karl Rove imitation as a sleazy, divisive campaigner, while making bellicose pronouncements about war reminiscent of the childish Confederates at the beginning of “Gone With the Wind,” drinking their brandy and smoking their cigars with fantasies about the glorious war that they hunger to fight.

Now, right on cue, comes the latest Swift Boat attack book from one Jerome Corsi, the great white hope of modern Republicanism who has published a new book tearing down Barack Obama, much like he did four years ago in producing the thoroughly discredited Unfit for Command to demean John Kerry’s heroism in Vietnam.

In other writings, Corsi also called Pope Paul II “senile” and referred to Hillary Clinton as a “lesbo.” So enough of Corsi. He deserves no more camera, ink or bandwidth than noting his history of slanders.

There is a much larger issue than a punk like Corsi. It is that John McCain, who promised to run a civil campaign, has become an embarrassment to the notion of civil discourse in public life.

As the campaign has worn on, John McCain speaks less and less about himself and his policies and more and more about Obama, attacking his Democratic opponent in the most personal, derogatory and often slanderous ways.

For instance, McCain said Obama wanted to bring reporters on his proposed visit to wounded troops in Germany. A lie. He said Obama wanted to bring television cameras to the wounded troops visit. A lie. He said Obama wanted to bring political staff on the visit. A lie. McCain’s campaign accused Obama of refusing to see wounded troops in order to play basketball. A lie.

These are not philosophical differences or public relations spin. These are outright lies, spoken or approved by John McCain, incorporated into his television commercials, repeated endlessly by a compliant news media when the truth was immediately known to the journalists on Obama’s Germany trip who raised little objection in the first key days when the lies did their damage.

Indeed, much of the mainstream media continues to give aid, comfort and protection to McCain by repeating and perpetuating his phony image as an independent and a maverick. The mainstream media also reruns McCain’s attack ads ad nauseum, for free, only spreading the damage of the lies further.

When the news media isn’t recycling McCain false accusations, it often creates its own, reinforcing McCain’s negative campaign narratives about Obama.

The newspaper that used to be the Washington Post ran a derisive and demeaning attack on Obama by “reporter” Dana Milbank, who relied on a bogus quote by one unnamed source that no reporter at the Post, including Milbank, even talked to.

Without checking the accuracy of the quote or trying to ascertain its context, Milbank made it the centerpiece of a column portraying Obama as a megalomaniac claiming credit for the international reaction to his overseas trip, when he actually had said he could take no credit for the crowd in Berlin, that it was really about the world’s high regard for America.

So, a comment that represented modesty and patriotism was turned into its opposite, supposed proof of Obama’s arrogance and hubris.

Continued . . .

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Reflections on Twenty-First Century Socialism

August 18, 2008
by Prof. James Petras
Global Research, August 18, 2008

In order to explore the perspectives for socialism in the 21st century, it is essential to recover some of the basic postulates, which inform the socialist project. In addition, it is important to recover some of the basic advances achieved by 20th century socialist regimes as well as to critically reflect on their distorted structures and failed policies.

In the most basic sense it is important to remember that ‘socialism’ is a means to a better material life than under capitalism: Higher living standards, greater political freedom, social equality of conditions, and internal and external security. ‘Respect’, ‘dignity’ and ‘solidarity’ can only be understood as accompaniments of these basic material goals, not as substitutes. ‘Respect” and ‘dignity’ cannot be pursued in the face of long-term, large-scale deprivation, sacrifice and delayed fulfillment of material improvement. Governments claiming to be ‘socialist’ which idealize ‘sacrifice’ of material living standards in the name of abstract principles of justice, are more akin to ‘spiritual socialism’ of a religious order rather than a modern dynamic socialist government.

Social transformations and the replacement of capitalist owners by the socialist state can only be justified if the new order can improve the efficiency, working conditions and responsiveness to consumers of the socialist enterprise. For example, in some socialist regimes, under the guise of a ‘revolutionary offensive’, the state intervened and eliminated thousands of small and medium size retail urban enterprises in the name of ‘eliminating capitalists’. The result was a disaster: The stores remained closed; the state was incapable of organizing the multitude of small businesses and the great majority of workers were deprived of vital services.

Twentieth century socialist states built effective and successful medical, educational and security systems to serve the majority of the workers. The majority of socialist states eliminated foreign control and exploitation of natural resources and in some cases developed diversified industrial economies. On the whole living standards rose, crime declined, employment, pensions and welfare were secured. However 20th century socialism was divided by deep contradictions leading to profound systemic crises. Bureaucratic centralism denied freedom at the workplace and restricted public debate and popular governance. Public authority’s over-emphasis on ‘security’ blocked innovation, entrepreneurship, scientific and popular initiatives leading to technological stagnation and mass passivity. Elite material privileges based on political office led to profound inequalities, which undermined popular belief in socialist principles and led to the spread of capitalist values.

Capitalism thrives on social inequalities; socialism deepens through greater equality. Both capitalism and socialism depend on efficient, productive and innovative workers: The former in order to maximize profits, the latter to sustain an expanding welfare state.

20th Century lessons for 21st Century socialists

21st century socialist can learn from the achievements and failures of 20th century socialism.

First: Policies must be directed toward improving the living as well as working conditions of the people. That means massive investment in quality housing, household appliances, public transport, environmental concerns and infrastructure. Overseas solidarity and missions should not take priority over large-scale, long-term investments in expanding and deepening material improvements for the principal internal class base of the socialist regime. Solidarity begins at home.

Second: Development policies should focus on diversifying the economy with a special focus on industrializing the raw material, making major investment in industries producing quality goods of mass consumption (clothing, shoes, and so on) and in agriculture, especially becoming self-sufficient in basic essential foods. Under no conditions should socialist economies rely on single products for income (sugar, tourism, petroleum, nickel), which are subject to great volatility.

A Socialist government should finance education, income and infrastructure policies, which are compatible with its high economic social and cultural priorities; this means educating agronomists and skill agricultural workers, skilled construction workers (plumbers, electricians, painters) and civil engineers, transport workers and urban and rural planners of public housing to decentralize mega-cities and substitute public for private transport. They should set up popularly elected environment and consumer councils to oversee the quality of air, water and noise levels and the availability, prices and quality of food.

Twentieth century socialist governments frequently alienated their workers by diverting large of amount of aid to overseas regimes (many of whom were not even progressive!). As a result, local needs were neglected in the name of ‘international solidarity’. The first priority of 21st century socialism is solidarity at home. Twentieth century socialists emphasized ‘welfare’ from above – government as ‘giver’ and the masses as ‘receivers’ – discouraging local action and encouraging passivity. Twenty-first century socialism must encourage autonomous class action to counter privileged ‘socialist’ bourgeois ministers and functionaries who use their office to accumulate and protect private wealth through public power. Autonomous popular organizations can expose the hypocrisy of rich ministers who attack well-paid industrial workers as ‘privileged’ while riding in chauffeured Mercedes and enjoying luxurious apartments, second and third ‘vacation homes’ and who send there children to expensive and exclusive private schools at home and abroad.

Above all socialism is about social equality: Equality in income, schools and hospitals; equality between classes and within classes. Without social equality, all talk of ‘diversity’, ‘dignity’ and ‘respect’ is meaningless. Capitalists also support ‘diversity’, as long as it does not affect their profits and wealth. Socialists support income and property equality which effectively re-distributes wealth and property to all workers, white and black, Indian farmer and urban worker, men and women, and young and old. There is no ‘dignity’ in being poor and exploited; dignity comes with struggle and the achievement of socialist goals of social equality and rising living standards.

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Playing with fire in Jammu & Kashmir

August 17, 2008

Praful Bidwai | The News International, August 17, 2008

Jammu and Kashmir is burning. Jammu has witnessed an intensely chauvinist, communal and violent agitation for over seven weeks over the cancellation of an order transferring 100 acres of forest land to the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board. This is pitting Jammu against Kashmir, ethnic groups against other ethnic groups, and Hindus against Muslims in dangerous new ways.

The Bharatiya Janata Party has politicised and exploited the agitation cynically. It imposed an economic blockade which closed the Jammu-Srinagar highway for weeks and brought goods transportation to a halt, causing great public suffering.

The explosion of intolerance in Jammu is reproduced like a mirror-image in the Kashmir Valley, where mainstream parties joined separatists in marching to Muzaffarabad with the ostensible aim of selling perishable fruit in Pakistani Kashmir—just when the blockade was lifted. More than 20 people were killed in condemnable, highhanded police action.

The twin agitations threaten J&K’s unity and plural, multi-cultural, and multi-religious character in unprecedented ways. In less than two months, the BJP has succeeded in driving an emotional and political wedge between Jammu and Kashmir—something that jihadi separatists working with Pakistani agencies couldn’t achieve in the nearly 20 years of the azadi movement.

The origins of the present ferment go back to the state government’s decision to establish the SASB, thus interfering gratuitously with spontaneous Hindu-Muslim cooperation in organising the pilgrimage for decades. It has promoted this on a gigantic scale.

Matters came to a head last May when the Congress-People’s Democratic Party government illegally transferred forest land to the SASB. This triggered militant protests in the Valley.

Hurriyat moderates and the PDP joined hardline separatists in giving a communal colour to the land transfer, prompting its cancellation—only to provoke counter-protests in Jammu, which were taken over by the BJP through the Shri Amarnath Sangharsh Samiti.

The twin agitations have deepened communal polarisation, and radicalised both Hurriyat and Hindutva hardliners.

The Centre failed to enforce the law and open the Jammu-Srinagar highway until it was too late. Its belated attempt to defuse the situation through an 18-member all-party committee hasn’t made headway.

The SASS wants the land re-transferred to the SASB and Governor N N Vohra removed. Such demands are vindictive or totally devoid of political rationality. This only shows that the BJP wants to prolong the Jammu crisis and milk it politically.

The SASS, a 28-group network, is basically a Sangh Parivar enterprise. Its three top leaders—Leelakaran Sharma, Mahant Dinesh Bharti and Brig (Retd) Suchet Singh—have RSS backgrounds and are closely linked with the J&K National Front, which demands the state’s trifurcation: Jammu and Kashmir as separate states, and Ladakh a Union Territory.

The demand is despicably communal. No wonder the RSS national council backed it in 2001. In the 2002 Assembly elections, the RSS supported the Jammu State Morcha, which demands statehood for Jammu.

Any division of Jammu and Kashmir along religious lines is a recipe for the separation of the Kashmir Valley from India. It will harden and freeze two opposing identities—a “Muslim Kashmir,” and a “Hindu Jammu.” Nothing could better help the Valley’s discredited pro-Pakistan Islamic separatists like Syed Ali Shah Gilani, who oppose a pluralist, secular identity for Kashmir.

The demand for trifurcating J&K will play straight into the hands of Pakistani hardliners who want to erase whatever progress has been made in informal talks seeking a solution to the Kashmir problem without redrawing boundaries, and who want to retrogress to the perspective of securing Kashmir’s accession to Pakistan—as part of “the unfinished agendas of Partition.”

Why has the BJP embarked on this dangerous course? It’s desperate to rescue its sagging fortunes by finding any issue on which to win support. It’s organising traffic blockades on the Amarnath issue nationally and mouthing shopworn clichés like “injustice to Hindus.”

The BJP even brazenly denies that there ever was an economic blockade in J&K! General secretary Arun Jaitley calls this “a myth” and contends that the Jammu agitation is entirely peaceful.

Yet, Jammu’s protestors, who increasingly resemble Hindutva’s storm troopers in Gujarat-2002 in appearance, have indulged in stone- and acid-throwing attacks on truck drivers. According to the far-from-hostile state government, Jammu has witnessed 10,513 protests and 359 “serious incidents of violence” on the Amarnath issue, in which 28 government buildings, 15 police vehicles and 118 private vehicles were damaged.

Eighty cases of communal violence were registered, in which 20 persons were injured and 72 Gujjar homes were burnt.

As many as 117 police personnel and 78 civilians were injured in the Jammu violence, and 129 cases were registered and 1,171 arrests made. Schools, colleges, government offices and hospitals were paralysed.

Grievances in Jammu, many of them legitimate, took this regrettably violent expression thanks to communalism’s baneful effect.

The BJP was pivotal in planning and executing this violence. Its leaders have gone Back to Basics—unembellished, crude, super-sectarian Hindutva.

L K Advani just can’t wait to become prime minister. His speeches have become shrill, and his body language has changed. This is no longer the Advani who wanted to inherit the “moderate” Vajpayee legacy. This is the Advani of many past Rathyatras—aggressive, warlike, spewing communal venom, and leaving a trail of blood.

Advani will now stoop to any level to collect political brownie points, regardless of the issue. The other day, the issue was the UPA government’s alleged weakness in the face of terrorism. Then, it was the India-US nuclear deal, the culmination of a long process the BJP itself initiated, and which its urban-middle-class core constituency supports.

Now, Advani is drumming up Hindu-chauvinist hysteria over 100 acres of land, laying claim to it on the specious ground that the Hindus must have the first claim to land anywhere in India by virtue of their numerical majority—and hence primacy.

This is an egregiously, if not classically, anti-secular proposition.

Why is the BJP so desperate? Barely one month ago, after a series of Assembly wins, it had primed itself up into believing that its victory was imminent in the next Lok Sabha. It even started announcing candidates.

But the BJP was badly checkmated during the confidence vote. It lost it—despite trying every trick in the book. Worse, Advani was eclipsed by Mayawati’s dramatic emergence as an alternative.

The BJP’s plans went awry. The victorious and now aggressive Manmohan Singh couldn’t be convincingly depicted as “India’s weakest-ever prime minister.” The BJP botched up its in manipulative political act, where it’s supposedly unmatched.

It wanted to create a Bofors out of the cash-for-votes “sting.” But after the CNN-IBN tapes’ telecast, that looks like collusive but ineffective “entrapment.”

The highest number of MPs defying their party whip during the confidence vote were from the BJP. Thanks to its MPs’ involvement in the “cash-for-questions” scam, human trafficking, and the latest acts of defiance, the BJP has lost 17 of its original 137 Lok Sabha seats.

The National Democratic Alliance once had 24 members. Now it’s down to five.

As trouble brews in all of its state units, the BJP will use inflammatory tactics to buoy up its fortunes. The Indian public will have to pay the price—unless it sends the party packing.

The writer, a former newspaper editor, is a researcher and peace and human-rights
activist based in Delhi. Email: prafulbidwai1@yahoo.co.in

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State Cultivation of the Amarnath Yatra in Kashmir

August 17, 2008

by Gautam Navlakha | Monthly Review, August 8, 2008

The origins of the conflagration in June in Kashmir on forest land allocation for construction of facilities for the Amarnath yatra lie in open state promotion of the pilgrimage. The yatra has caused considerable damage to the economy and ecology of the area. The high-handed actions of the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board only aggravated the situation.

The Amarnath pilgrimage erupted into a major controversy last month entirely on account of the actions of the state. The Act setting up the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board (SASB) was passed by the National Conference government in 2001. On January 1, 2008, the SASB informed the legislature of Jammu and Kashmir, through a letter to the deputy chief minister, that “(t)he Governor is sovereign ex-officio holder of the power . . . who acts on his own personal satisfaction and not on the aid and advice of the council of ministers . . . the member (of the legislative council) may be explained that he does not enjoy the powers to question the decisions of the body” (Greater Kashmir, June 12, 2008).

Disconcertingly, the SASB, when presided over by S K Sinha when he was governor, has been engaged in some controversial transactions. The chief executive officer (CEO) of the SASB is the principal secretary to the governor. The CEO’s wife, in her capacity as principal secretary of the forest department, granted permission to the SASB on May 29, 2005 to use forest land for the pilgrimage. Because this action was not in accordance with the provision of the J&K Forest Conservation Act of 1997, the state government withdrew the order. However, a division bench of the J&K High Court stayed the withdrawal of permission to occupy forest land. But when in mid-2008, the state cabinet gave its approval to “divert” 40 ha of forest land for the yatra the issue erupted into widescale public protests. The deputy chief minister, belonging to the Progressive Democratic Party (PDP), went so far as to claim that Congress ministers “blackmailed” them into giving this approval (Indian Express, June 16, 2008).

The Indian state has often used the yatra to promote a certain kind of nationalism. During the Kargil war, in 1999, the Press Information Bureau put out a press release stating: “(the) yearning for moksha (salvation) can move the devotees to the challenging heights of Kashmir and will be a fitting gesture of solidarity with our valiant soldiers who have been fighting the enemy to defend our borders” (‘Amarnath Yatra – 99 Acid Test of Devotion’, 15-July 15, 1999).

A Little Known Shrine

Thus, what is otherwise a religious pilgrimage of the shaivite Hindus has been elevated to represent a patriotic enterprise. What is interesting is that the translator of Rajtarangini, Aurel Stein, found no reference in 1888 in either the Rajtarangini or the Nilmata Purana to the Amarnath cave. For Kashmiri Hindus the holiest site was the Haramukuta (Shiva’s Diadem) and Haramukh-Gangabal pilgrimage (see M Ashraf, ‘Aggression at Its Worst’, Greater Kashmir, June 20, 2008). The cave was in fact discovered in the 18th century and a Gujjar family and its descendants who found it were given the right to a share of the offering as a consequence. Even until the 1980s, this pilgrimage was not well known and in 1989, only 12,000 pilgrims visited the cave in a fortnight of pilgrimage. It is only after 1996 that the Amarnath cave acquired its prominence when militancy in Kashmir was at its peak.

The SASB is headed by the governor (until recently S K Sinha, a former lt general in the army) and his principal secretary, from the Indian Administrative Service, is the CEO of the SASB. Thus when the SASB pushes for movement of a larger and larger number of pilgrims and rejects the right of the legislators to even raise a question regarding the functioning of the SASB, the Indian state is sending a simple message.

Imagine if a Muslim governor of Rajasthan were to ask to set up an independent Ajmer Sharief Dargah development authority, with say, control over a large part of Ajmer city. What would be the response of Rajasthan’s BJP government or the right wing Hindutva rabble-rousers?

Ironically, it is the deposed custodian of the shrine Deependra Giri who has been crying hoarse over SASB’s promotion of pilgrimage as tourism, flouting the principle of penance inherent in such pilgrimages as laid down in the Hindu scriptures! The point is this promotion of Amarnath can be faulted on temporal, religious and secular grounds. In other words it is downright duplicitous when the Indian state promotes religious tourism (tourism in any event) in the guise of the welfare of Hindu pilgrims. This is an extension and/or part of the process of acquisition of a huge mass of land (orchard and cultivable fields, including the precious saffron fields of Pampore) by Indian security forces and water management and control through the National Hydro Power Corporation.

Continued . . .

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The Impeachment of Musharraf, Then What?

August 17, 2008

By FATIMA BHUTTO | Counterpunch, August 16 / 17, 2008

The murky abyss of Pakistani politics has been especially murky over recent months, and true to form it just keeps getting murkier. The one thing that is absolute when dealing with the dregs that run my country is this: nothing is ever as it seems. Nowhere is that more true than in the current scenario involving President Musharraf’s likely impeachment by the ruling coalition.

“It has become imperative to move for impeachment,” barked Benazir Bhutto’s widower, Asif Zardari, at a press conference in Islamabad last week. Sitting beside the new head of the Pakistan People’s party was Nawaz Sharif, twice formerly prime minister of Pakistan. Zardari snarled every time Musharraf’s name came up, seething with political rage and righteousness, while Sharif did his best to keep up with the pace of things. He nodded sombrely and harrumphed every once in a while. The two men are acting for democracy, you see. And impeaching dictators is a good thing for democracies, you know.

But Nawaz Sharif and Asif Zardari are unelected. They’re not just unrepresentative in that they don’t hold seats in the parliament – they have absolutely no mandate in Pakistan. They head the two largest, and most corrupt, parties in the state but hold no public office. Pots and kettles.

The rest of the coterie that wields power behind this administration, the attorney general and the interior minister for instance, also happen to be unelected. They serve, and I use the term ever so lightly, by appointment only. Some 170 million Pakistanis have lived under military rule of law for nine years. Musharraf stepping down from his army post has not changed that. Neither did the recent selections. Sorry, I meant elections, obviously.

The current administration – a party coalition comprising two formerly mortal enemies, the PPP and the PML – has enjoyed five months in office. And what has this thriving democratic union accomplished? It passed the National Reconciliation Ordinance, an odious piece of legislation that wipes out 15 years’ worth of corruption cases against politicians, suspiciously covering 11 years of PPP and PML rule. Bankers and bureaucrats were also given the all-clear. Worse still, the ordinance contains a clause that makes it virtually impossible for future charges to be filed against sitting parliamentarians.

But they must have done more than that, surely? Well, all that really changed is that food inflation has accelerated, oil subsidies have been cut, gas prices have doubled, and those pesky militants in the Swat district the tribal regions have turned up the fighting. Several days before the decision to impeach Musharraf hurtled through the airwaves, a small story came in from the tribal areas: the militants are close, the story said, they’ve vowed to target the government, even to the point of attacking state schools. This is a civil war, the story said.

So what does the government do when its country appears to be tearing apart at the seams? Go on the attack. Impeach the tyrant. “The period of oppression is over for ever,” declared the prime minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, at an event marking 61 years of Pakistani independence yesterday. “Dictatorship has become a story of the past.” Deny everything. Nothing is wrong, democracy is good and we hate dictators. Well done.

Pakistan is a sovereign country. We are a proud, resourceful, independent nation. We have options. Zardari is not an option. Sharif is not an option. The army is not our one and only option. The mullahs have not become an option yet. There are close to 200 million of us: I’m sure we can think of something better.

Fatima Bhutto is a poet and a columnist for the News in Pakistan

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On the Brink of a New Cold War?

August 17, 2008
Russia is playing for bigger stakes now just as America did in Iraq a few years ago.
By Deepak Tripathi | The Palestine Chronicle, August 15, 2008

The conflict between Russia and the pro-US regime of Georgia has been a decisive turning point in Russia’s relations with Washington and has taken us to the brink of a new Cold War.

For the first time in almost twenty years, the West faces a resurgent Russia that has put the trauma of the breakup of the Soviet Union and the resulting chaos behind. Today’s Russia is run by a younger leadership with autocratic efficiency, confident because of its vast energy resources and determined to resist American hegemony, by force if necessary. The crisis in Georgia goes beyond the Caucasus region. Its roots lie in America’s overwhelming ambition to expand and its tendency to make colossal miscalculations under the Bush presidency.

It is often said that the first casualty of war is truth. Behind the fog of disinformation coming from Washington, London, Tbilisi and, indeed, Moscow, the fact remains that the Russian invasion came after Georgia’s bombardment of the breakaway region of South Ossetia. The vast majority of residents in the enclave are Russian citizens and Moscow had deployed its peacekeepers there. Many experts in Europe are depressed over the events in Georgia and blame hardliners in the Bush administration for provoking the Georgian President, Mikheil Saakasvili, to adopt the aggressive posture that has brought this disaster.

What we see in Georgia is a classic proxy war between Russia and America, which has become heavily involved in the republic since a popular revolt in late 2003 ousted Eduard Shevardnadze from power, with Western help. Today, US troops occupy Georgian military bases of the Soviet era, on the southern fringe of Russia. America provides weapons, training and intelligence to the Georgian armed forces. America’s involvement, which began under the umbrella of the ‘war on terror’ after 9/11, has since become much more. If President Bush had his way, Georgia would be granted membership of NATO as part of the alliance’s expansion around Russia.

The impoverished former Soviet republic is, in effect, a pawn in the broader US design to encircle Russia. It is also located in a region which has some of the largest energy reserves in the world. For the Kremlin, the prospect of NATO coming so close to its southern borders is a step too far. Fortunately, some NATO members, most notably France and Germany, also do not see Georgia either as a full democracy or a stable country. And many in the alliance and the European Union have doubts about Saakasvili’s ability to take mature decisions.

In an era when America has assumed the right to launch pre-emptive strikes, it is difficult to see the Kremlin behaving differently. The prospect of Georgia joining NATO, which might deploy nuclear weapons on Georgian territory, is simply not acceptable to Russia. Remember the Cuban missile crisis of 1962? At the time, Russian nuclear missiles, deployed just 90 miles from the coast of Florida, brought America and the Soviet Union close to a disastrous war and the Soviets were forced to back down. Does the White House not know history? Or do the neo-conservatives in the Bush administration not care?

Saakasvili’s decision to order the bombardment of the Russian-majority South Ossetia gave the Kremlin a convenient cover to invade Georgia, just as the Bush administration had found it expedient to invade Iraq in March 2003 based on claims that Baghdad had weapons of mass destruction, which were never found. Russia is playing for bigger stakes now just as America did in Iraq a few years ago.

About one-fifth of Georgia has fallen under Russian military occupation and the Kremlin leadership seems to be in no mood to entertain the idea of Georgia’s territorial integrity in any negotiations sponsored by the West. There are daily condemnations of Moscow in the Western capitals. However, the West is powerless to prevent the Russians doing anything they want in Georgia.

This US-Russia proxy war in the Caucasus region has created a serious humanitarian crisis. President Saakasvili, the pro-US leader of Georgia, has been humiliated. Its chances of joining NATO are negligible after the latest events. They have demonstrated that the West cannot and will not intervene militarily to protect Georgia from the Russian threat. The most important clause in the NATO constitution says that an attack on one member-state will be regarded as an attack on the whole alliance, which will use all possible means to protect the member-state under threat. NATO’s inability to defend Georgia now is a defeat for the West. It is difficult to see how the alliance will accept the republic as a member.

The description by President Bush of the Russian action as ‘disproportionate and unacceptable’ is laughable in the context of America’s own conduct in its foreign wars in recent years. Washington should be more worried about the damage the crisis has done to its authority in the world. Diplomacy was never a strong point of the Bush administration. The blunders in Washington and Tbilisi have made the conduct of relations with Russia much more difficult. They may also have created other problems for the next occupant of the White House, for an increasing number of countries around the world may begin look to Russia now that it has risen again.

-Deepak Tripathi, a former BBC foreign correspondent and editor, is now a researcher and an author. He is writing a book on the Bush presidency. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Contact him at: http://deepaktripathi.wordpress.com.

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Geopolitical Chess: Background to a Mini-war in the Caucasus

August 16, 2008

Immanuel Wallerstein, Commentary No. 239, Aug. 15, 2009

The world has been witness this month to a mini-war in the Caucasus, and the rhetoric has been passionate, if largely irrelevant. Geopolitics is a gigantic series of two-player chess games, in which the players seek positional advantage. In these games, it is crucial to know the current rules that govern the moves. Knights are not allowed to move diagonally.

From 1945 to 1989, the principal chess game was that between the United States and the Soviet Union. It was called the Cold War, and the basic rules were called metaphorically “Yalta.” The most important rule concerned a line that divided Europe into two zones of influence. It was called by Winston Churchill the “Iron Curtain” and ran from Stettin to Trieste. The rule was that, no matter how much turmoil was instigated in Europe by the pawns, there was to be no actual warfare between the United States and the Soviet Union. And at the end of each instance of turmoil, the pieces were to be returned to where they were at the outset. This rule was observed meticulously right up to the collapse of the Communisms in 1989, which was most notably marked by the destruction of the Berlin wall.

It is perfectly true, as everyone observed at the time, that the Yalta rules were abrogated in 1989 and that the game between the United States and (as of 1991) Russia had changed radically. The major problem since then is that the United States misunderstood the new rules of the game. It proclaimed itself, and was proclaimed by many others, the lone superpower. In terms of chess rules, this was interpreted to mean that the United States was free to move about the chessboard as it saw fit, and in particular to transfer former Soviet pawns to its sphere of influence. Under Clinton, and even more spectacularly under George W. Bush, the United States proceeded to play the game this way.

There was only one problem with this: The United States was not the lone superpower; it was no longer even a superpower at all. The end of the Cold War meant that the United States had been demoted from being one of two superpowers to being one strong state in a truly multilateral distribution of real power in the interstate system. Many large countries were now able to play their own chess games without clearing their moves with one of the two erstwhile superpowers. And they began to do so.

Two major geopolitical decisions were made in the Clinton years. First, the United States pushed hard, and more or less successfully, for the incorporation of erstwhile Soviet satellites into NATO membership. These countries were themselves anxious to join, even though the key western European countries – Germany and France – were somewhat reluctant to go down this path. They saw the U.S. maneuver as one aimed in part at them, seeking to limit their newly-acquired freedom of geopolitical action.

The second key U.S. decision was to become an active player in the boundary realignments within the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. This culminated in a decision to sanction, and enforce with their troops, the de facto secession of Kosovo from Serbia.

Russia, even under Yeltsin, was quite unhappy about both these U.S. actions. However, the political and economic disarray of Russia during the Yeltsin years was such that the most it could do was complain, somewhat feebly it should be added.

The coming to power of George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin was more or less simultaneous. Bush decided to push the lone superpower tactics (the United States can move its pieces as it alone decides) much further than had Clinton. First, Bush in 2001 withdrew from the 1972 U.S.-Soviet Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Then he announced that the United States would not move to ratify two new treaties signed in the Clinton years: the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the agreed changes in the SALT II nuclear disarmament treaty. Then Bush announced that the United States would move forward with its National Missile Defense system.

And of course, Bush invaded Iraq in 2003. As part of this engagement, the United States sought and obtained rights to military bases and overflight rights in the Central Asian republics that formerly were part of the Soviet Union. In addition, the United States promoted the construction of pipelines for Central Asian and Caucasian oil and natural gas that would bypass Russia. And finally, the United States entered into an agreement with Poland and the Czech Republic to establish missile defense sites, ostensibly to guard against Iranian missiles. Russia, however, regarded them as aimed at her.

Putin decided to push back much more effectually than Yeltsin. As a prudent player, however, he moved first to strengthen his home base – restoring effective central authority and reinvigorating the Russian military. At this point, the tides in the world-economy changed, and Russia suddenly became a wealthy and powerful controller not only of oil production but of the natural gas so needed by western European countries.

Putin thereupon began to act. He entered into treaty relationships with China. He maintained close relations with Iran. He began to push the United States out of its Central Asian bases. And he took a very firm stand on the further extension of NATO to two key zones – Ukraine and Georgia.

The breakup of the Soviet Union had led to ethnic secessionist movements in many former republics, including Georgia. When Georgia in 1990 sought to end the autonomous status of its non-Georgian ethnic zones, they promptly proclaimed themselves independent states. They were recognized by no one but Russia guaranteed their de facto autonomy.

The immediate spurs to the current mini-war were twofold. In February, Kosovo formally transformed its de facto autonomy to de jure independence. Its move was supported by and recognized by the United States and many western European countries. Russia warned at the time that the logic of this move applied equally to the de facto secessions in the former Soviet republics. In Georgia, Russia moved immediately, for the first time, to recognize South Ossetian de jure independence in direct response to that of Kosovo.

And in April this year, the United States proposed at the NATO meeting that Georgia and Ukraine be welcomed into a so-called Membership Action Plan. Germany, France, and the United Kingdom all opposed this action, saying it would provoke Russia.

Georgia’s neoliberal and strongly pro-American president, Mikhail Saakashvili, was now desperate. He saw the reassertion of Georgian authority in South Ossetia (and Abkhazia) receding forever. So, he chose a moment of Russian inattention (Putin at the Olympics, Medvedev on vacation) to invade South Ossetia. Of course, the puny South Ossetian military collapsed completely. Saakashvili expected that he would be forcing the hand of the United States (and indeed of Germany and France as well).

Instead, he got an immediate Russian military response, overwhelming the small Georgian army. What he got from George W. Bush was rhetoric. What, after all, could Bush do? The United States was not a superpower. Its armed forces were tied down in two losing wars in the Middle East. And, most important of all, the United States needed Russia far more than Russia needed the United States. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, pointedly noted in an op-ed in the Financial Times that Russia was a “partner with the west on…the Middle East, Iran and North Korea.”

As for western Europe, Russia essentially controls its gas supplies. It is no accident that it was President Sarkozy of France, not Condoleezza Rice, who negotiated the truce between Georgia and Russia. The truce contained two essential concessions by Georgia. Georgia committed itself to no further use of force in South Ossetia, and the agreement contained no reference to Georgian territorial integrity.

So, Russia emerged far stronger than before. Saakashvili had bet everything he has and was now geopolitically bankrupt. And, as an ironic footnote, Georgia, one of the last U.S. allies in the coalition in Iraq, withdrew all its 2000 troops from Iraq. These troops had been playing a crucial role in Shi’a areas, and would now have to be replaced by U.S. troops, which will have to be withdrawn from other areas.

If one plays geopolitical chess, it is best to know the rules, or one gets out-maneuvered.

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Kashmir repression rewards Hindu far right

August 16, 2008

Nagesh Rao reports from India on the latest wave of repression in the Indian-controlled sector of Kashmir.

Socialist Worker, August 14, 2008

Kashmir activists clash with Indian security forces. (Abid Bhat | flickr)Kashmir activists clash with Indian security forces. (Abid Bhat | flickr)

AT LEAST 18 people were killed August 12 and13 by police and military bullets in the Indian-controlled section of Kashmir. Among them was a senior political leader, Sheikh Abdul Aziz of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC), a coalition of various pro-independence and separatist, but also pro-Pakistani, organizations based in Kashmir.

The brutal attacks by security forces on Kashmiri activists have been extensively reported on, even by the mainstream media. On August 11, police and paramilitary forces opened fire on a nonviolent march by Kashmiris protesting the economic blockade of Kashmir by rioting Hindu mobs in Jammu. Five people, including Abdul Aziz, were killed, and according to The Hindu newspaper, some 230 more were injured, mostly by bullet wounds. The march to Muzaffarabad in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir was stopped by the Indian forces at the Line of Control (LoC) that serves as the de facto border between Indian- and Pakistani-controlled regions.

In an effort to snuff out any protests against the killing of Sheikh Aziz, a military curfew has been imposed on all of Indian-occupied Kashmir. In protests against these repressive measures, at least 13–and perhaps as many as 24–were killed August 12.
Kashmir is on fire–and the far-right Hindutva forces are cheering on.

At the tip of the current crisis sits a controversial land transfer deal involving a Hindu pilgrimage site in the middle of Muslim-majority Kashmir. According to an article by Gautam Navlakha in the Economic and Political Weekly, the pilgrimage known as Amarnath yatra was, until recently, a little-known journey undertaken by small numbers of Shaivite (worshippers of Shiva) Hindus. As recently as 1989, only 12,000 pilgrims–in a country of nearly a billion Hindus–undertook the pilgrimage.

Earlier this year, in a move that could only be considered provocative and insensitive towards the Kashmiris, the state government decided to legitimize the demand for Hindu control of the Amarnath yatra by granting nearly 40 hectares (100 acres) of land around the Amarnath Cave to the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board (SASB).

As Navlakha writes: “The origins of the conflagration in June in Kashmir on forest land allocation for construction of facilities for the Amarnath yatra lie in open state promotion of the pilgrimage. The yatra has caused considerable damage to the economy and ecology of the area. The high-handed actions of the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board only aggravated the situation.”

The land transfer agreement was merely the latest in a series of land grabs by Hindu organizations led by the SASB. As Navlakha pointed out, “The SASB runs a virtually parallel administration and acts as a ‘sovereign body’ promoting Hindu interests, increasing the number of pilgrims from 12,000 in 1989 to over 400,000 in 2007 and extending the period of the pilgrimage from 15 days to two and half months.”

Kashmiris rightly protested against this blatant act of state promotion of a specific religion in their state, as well as the damage to the ecology of the area. Soon after, the state’s government, a coalition involving the Congress Party and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), collapsed. The PDP, a business-dominated Kashmiri party, joined the protests and withdrew from the government.

On July 1, the governor, under pressure, revoked the order transferring land to the SASB. As if on cue, Hindu activists in Jammu, which is part of Kashmir state, began protesting. On July 7, the streets of Jammu exploded, ignited by the cadres of the Hindu right. As mobs rioted in the streets demanding the “restoration” of the land to the Hindus, some of the ideologues of the Hindu right took to the airwaves in the name of the “oppressed” and “neglected” Hindus of Jammu. Others proclaimed, in Orwellian fashion, that this was a “Hindu intifada.”

Behind it all, however, was the organizational power of the forces of the Hindu extreme right, including the RSS, the Shiv Sena, the VHP and others. The Bharatiya Janatha Party (BJP), has launched a three-day “nationwide agitation” to support the demands of the Shri Amarnath Sangharsh Samiti (SASS), which is a front for the Hindu right.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

DURING THE weeks of riots that followed in Jammu, the police had showed remarkable restraint, which stands in sharp contrast to their current murderous and trigger-happy approach to Kashmiri Muslims. Cops stood by while Hindu mobs wielding crude weapons laid siege to Kashmir, blockading the Jammu-Srinagar national highway and choking off the movement of goods into and out of the valley.

A letter of protest addressed to the United Nations by prominent progressive scholars and academics from across the world rightly points out that about

95-97 percent of the population of the [Kashmir] Valley is Muslim, while Muslims are a minority in India. This has made Kashmir the target of increasingly aggressive campaigns by Hindu nationalist groups since 1947, despite guarantees of autonomy written into the Indian Constitution…To a population suffering the effects of 19 years of armed conflict, the economic crisis caused by the blockade comes as the last straw.

Kashmiri activists responded to this economic blockade with various forms of nonviolent civil disobedience. Activists like Yasin Malik, chairman of the independence-seeking, secular-democratic Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), began an indefinite hunger strike. Others, led by Kashmiri businesses, the APHC, and the PDP called for a mass march across the Line of Control and to Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir. The march took place on August 11, and it was then that security forces killed Sheikh Abdul Aziz and four others.

While Indian newspaper editorials on August 12 vilified the marchers as “extremists” and “separatists,” TV news outlets were showing live video of police firing indiscriminately into groups of unarmed protestors at Aziz’s funeral procession. Tens of thousands of men and women also protested across the Kashmir Valley against the imposition of a military curfew–the first Kashmir-wide curfew in 13 years. They too were fired upon.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

THE CRISIS is unfolding too rapidly for anyone to be able to predict its future direction. The Hindu right has begun to term this as a Jammu vs. Kashmir issue. The two regions, they claim, have disparate interests, and ought to be separated. At the same time, by demanding a Hindu takeover of the Amarnath yatra, the right wants to assert the (Hindu) Indian nation’s sovereignty over Kashmir. The demand for bifurcation of the state is a calculated effort to stir up communalism, while the agitation over Amarnath is a carefully planned nationalist and chauvinist tactic.

The Hindu right, in other words, has lit a new communalist fire that it hopes to fan into a nationalist conflagration ahead of next year’s general elections. The sheer numbers of protesters on the streets, both in Jammu and in Kashmir, indicate that the crisis will not be resolved any time soon. But the crisis does come at an opportune time for a newly resurgent Hindu fundamentalist right wing in India, as well as for the beleaguered Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, who’s clinging to power amid an effort to impeach him. Musharraf may well try to use the political crisis to try to escape his predicament.

Meanwhile, the main left-wing parties in India offer little by way of an alternative. An editorial in the Communist Party of India-Marxist newspaper, People’s Democracy, draws a simplistic equation between the Hindutva forces in Jammu and “extremist elements” in Kashmir. The editorial goes on to warn that “such a conflagration…undermines the unity and integrity of India” and puts its “national security” at risk.

The editorial makes no mention, of course, of the Kashmiris’ right to determine their own future without any interference from the Indian state and military. The editorial calls for a “process of dialogue” with the SASS, the Hindu organization spearheading the Jammu protests, while the only mention of Kashmiri activists is the passing reference to “extremists.” Small wonder that the left finds little traction in the Kashmir Valley, while the right succeeds in agitating on the streets of Jammu.

While the electoral left hedges its bets, it’s critical that progressive activists in India extend and display their solidarity with the people of Kashmir–and stand up to the communalist ideologues who currently dominate the debate.

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The NYT Finds Heroes in Tbilisi – In Baghdad, Only Terrorists

August 15, 2008

Grittv

By: Laura Flanders Tuesday August 12, 2008 3:45 pm
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The New York Times ran a feature August 12, on Georgian civilians who’ve joined the fight against the Russian invasion of that former Soviet republic. The story, by Nicholas Kulish and Michael Schwirtz is full of empathy and heart.

Nika Kharadze and Giorgi Monasalidze went to war last week, the Times report begins, “even though they were not warriors.”

It goes on to describe how the men’s parents have been searching for them ever since. They’ve gone from hospital to hospital, to the local and International Red Cross. Mom and dad even asked the cellphone company to trace the last known location of their son’s phone. No luck.

And then there’s this line: as parts of the country fell before the Russian invaders, the Times writes, “it was not only the army that rose in its defense but also regular citizens.” Resistance, we learn, was part of a tradition, inscribed in local history and culture going back to “medieval times.”

To make the point, the writers describe a government employee, standing under a statue of Stalin in the city’s main square with a rifle slung over his civilian clothes. The man is part of a group of a dozen locals who tell the reporter they’re there to defend their town.

The story also describes displacement caused by bombing. “The planes came in and they started to bomb. The ground was covered with dead people, and there was nowhere to go,” says Goderzi Zenashvili, 48. “The people that died, they died from their houses falling in on them, from the shrapnel and from concussions.”

So now we know! The New York Times can do it when they want to. They can paint a picture of war that’s hard to shake: heroic, hapless young men who take up arms to defend their homelands; moms and dads and lovers worried sick. The Times can explain how invading armies provoke righteous resistance.

But they didn’t – not when it was Baghdad instead of Tbilisi, and the statue Saddam’s, not Stalin’s. Then, local people in resistance were called dead enders, killers, terrorists. Because of course — here’s the difference: then the resisters were the enemy and the invaders were – are – us.

The F Word is a daily commentary by Laura Flanders

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