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A US-NATO War In Pakistan? – An Anatomy of the Current Crisis

September 24, 2008

Published on Tuesday, September 23, 2008 by CommonDreams.org

by Alan Nasser

On Saturday evening, the Marriott hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan, one of the city’s two most luxurious hotels, located near the presidential office, the parliament building, and a host of foreign embassies, was devastated by a bomb blast that left fifty three dead, including the Czech ambassador and two U.S. Defense Department officials.

The recent background to this latest in a series of increasingly sophisticated and bold insurgent strikes is revealing: since September 3, the U.S. has launched ground incursions and six missile attacks in Pakistan’s border regions. The U.S.-NATO aim is to cripple supporters along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border supportive of the anti-occupation resistance in Afghanistan.

The destruction of the Marriott was the latest response to Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari’s complicity with Washington in the military assaults on the perceived center of insurgent support in Pakistan, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), including the North-West Frontier Provinces (NWFP). Just hours before the Marriott blast Zardari told the country’s parliament that he is determined to free Pakistan from “the shackles of terrorism.”

This pledge confirmed Zardari’s determination to continue to order the Pakistani military, an institution harboring more than a few sympathers with the insurgents, to launch assaults on suspected insurgent -“terrorist”- strongholds. It is common knowledge that this policy is a response to pressure from Washington.

Pakistan’s ambassador to Germany, Shahid Kamal, expressed not only his own but the majority resentment against Zardari’s subservience to Washington’s demands on Pakistan when he told The New York Times “This [the Marriott bombing] is a reaction to what is going on in FATA. We have been implementing a reckless and careless policy…. What’s happening in FATA is that Pakistanis are killing Pakistanis.”

Here we see reflected both the popular indignation at the new Pakistani president’s political apeing of his predecessor, the Washington puppet and military dictator Pervez Musharraf, and the deep divisions within Pakistan’s state apparatus regarding Pakistan’s alliance with the U.S.-NATO, which the majority of Pakistanis see as waging a Western-Christian attack on global Islam.

An overview of the backgound to Washington’s stepped-up aggression in Pakistan is in order.

The Bush Doctrine Is Extended to PakistanOn September 9 George W. Bush announced that Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan were “all theatres in the same overall struggle.” This declaration was intended to justify Bush’s July approval of ground assaults by U.S. Special Operations forces inside Pakistan, without Islamabad’s approval.

Thus, the Iraq-Afghanistan disasters are to be sustained and widened to include the sixth most populous country in the world, with 20 million Muslims, the overwhelming majority of whom are known to be increasingly infuriated with the recent succession of air and ground attacks inside Pakistan, and whose government possesses a nuclear arsenal.

Continued . . .

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Pakistan blames US raids for hotel bombing

September 23, 2008

Pakistan President pleads with Bush to reverse policy as BA cancels all flights to country

By Omar Waraich in Islamabad, Anne Penketh and Andrew Buncombe
The Independent, Tuesday, 23 September 2008

Soldiers in Rawalpindi prepare to repatriate the body of the Czech ambassador, Ivo Zdarek, who died in the bombing

EPA

Soldiers in Rawalpindi prepare to repatriate the body of the Czech ambassador, Ivo Zdarek, who died in the bombing

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The Pakistani President, Asif Ali Zardari, will plead with President George Bush today to change a policy which is being blamed for one of his country’s worst terrorist atrocities.

“We hope the US will change policy because this is what is needed,” said Pakistan’s ambassador to the UK, Wajid Shamsul Hassan, after 53 people were killed and more than 250 injured in the bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad. He argued that the Bush administration’s decision to allow cross-border incursions from Afghanistan into Pakistan, including by ground forces on at least one occasion, had been counterproductive “because they are not killing high-value targets, they are killing civilians”.

Mr Zardari’s talks with President Bush in New York, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, have been scheduled amid heightened security fears in the wake of the bombing.

Yesterday BA cancelled all flights to Pakistan as a precaution, although a spokesman said there was no direct threat against the airline, which operates six flights each week. A number of foreign embassies and businesses in the country are also said to be re-examining the security situation.

In the north-western city of Peshawar, Abdul Khaliq Farahi, Afghanistan’s designated ambassador to Pakistan, was kidnapped and his driver killed by unidentified gunmen.

Overnight on Sunday there was further tension on the border when Pakistani troops reportedly fired shots to warn off two US helicopters that were attempting to cross into Pakistan at Alwara Mandi in North Waziristan.

A senior Pakistani official claimed that Pakistan’s senior leaders were to have attended a dinner at the Marriott Hotel but changed their venue to the Prime Minister’s house just hours before the massive bomb devastated the building.

The Interior Ministry chief, Rehman Malik, said the decision to move the location of the dinner for the President and Prime Minister had been kept secret but did not provide details of why the switch was made.

However, it later emerged that the invitations to the Prime Minister’s residence were sent out 10 days ago.

“The dinner was never going to be at the Marriott,” said Talat Hussain, a political analyst and director of current affairs at Aaj TV. “We were all issued invitations well in advance that it was to take place at the Prime Minister’s house. And by claiming that they had managed to move the political leadership to another location, it asks the question, if there is a security threat, is it only for VIPs? Are the rest of us children of a lesser god?”

Mr Malik could not be reached for further clarification last night.

Who carried out Saturday night’s attack remains unclear. Mr Malik had previously said the hotel was attacked by Taliban or al-Qa’ida militants simply because it was a Western target.

But his remarks raise the question as to why – if the government had received intelligence that the Marriott might be attacked – was security at the hotel not immediately increased.

The attack on the hotel and the shockwaves it has sent through Pakistan are just the latest challenges confronting the country’s civilian leadership and its recently elected president, Mr Zardari. Under pressure from the US, Mr Zardari, the widower of the former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, has vowed to continue the battle against Islamic militants operating in the country’s tribal areas despite growing resentment inside Pakistan about interference from Washington.

Mr Hassan said that the Pakistan President had gained the support of Gordon Brown in opposing the US raids on Pakistani territory, during talks in London last week.

Mr Zardari is to chair the first meeting of the Friends of Pakistan – grouping the US, Britain and the other G8 countries as well as the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and China – in New York on Friday. Pakistan is looking for short-term help for economic measures to stimulate employment, and longer-term assistance for social development in deprived areas.

53

The number of people killed in suicide bomb attack on the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad.

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Former Israeli military and intelligence officials active in Arab countries

September 20, 2008
International Middle East Media Center, Sep 19, 2008
by Saed Bannoura – IMEMC & Agencies

The Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, reported on Thursday that dozens of former Israeli military officers and a large number of Mosad (Israeli Intelligence) and Shabak (Israeli secret service) members are active in cooperation with the Israeli Security devices in several Arab countries in the Gulf.

shabak.jpeg

The countries in question have outstanding relations with the United States, and the Israeli security services are active there through specialized foreign security agencies.

The Haaretz report added that the security officials are carrying wide range of security activities in the Arab Gulf and are spending tens of millions of US Dollars.

There activities include training Arab security personnel on operating advanced weaponry, intelligence equipment, border protection techniques, techniques to counter kidnapping attempts, coups, and attempts to occupy strategic facilities such as Oil refineries.

The report mentioned several names of senior Israeli security officials who are participating in these programs such as Giora Island, the former head of the Israeli National Security Council, and General Doron Almong.  In addition, several companies and the Air Force Development Agency are active in the Arab Gulf under the direct supervision of the Israeli Security Ministry.

The Swedish AGT international company, which was formed by the Israeli-American businessman, Mani Kochavi, won a contract worth hundreds of millions of US Dollars to construct a project which belongs to the Israeli Internal Security  in one of the Arab gulf Emirates.

Haaretz added that Al Zawiya newspaper based in the Arab gulf reported on the issue in March 2008.

Kochavi is also the head of the Sentry Technology Group (STG) which is of the corporations which managed to garner fast growth in the security arena in the United States.

The STG was also a partner with the Israeli Air Force Industries which sells equipment and the required technologies specialized in airport security in the United States and other countries, including countries in the Middle East.

Recently STG purchased equipment worth tens of millions of US Dollars in Israeli companies which specialize in developing monitoring and control programs.

The former Israeli Air Force leader, Etan Bin Elyahu, said that he left STG several years ago, after it started operating outside the United States.

Kochavi is hiring dozens of officers who previously worked in the Israeli army, in addition to hiring several senior officials of the Israeli army and the air force industries, and officials who worked with the Shabak and the Mosad.

A spokesperson for  Kochavi stated that all company’s operations are conducted under the supervision of the Israeli security agency and all of its branches.

Kochavi is an Israeli who moved to live in the United States and collected his fortune in the real estate business. In Recent years, and especially after the September 11 attack, he got involved with the Homeland Security and developed relations with Israeli security agencies. He then started hiring former senior security officials.

The Israeli security agencies are very active in encouraging security industries and weapon manufacturing and are active in exporting them to several Arab Countries, especially the countries that have good relations with the United States and could find themselves threatened by Iran.

category arab world | israeli politics | news report author email saed at imemc dot org

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Chalabi: U.S. wants secret bases in Iraq

September 20, 2008

Middle East Times,  September 19, 2008

BAGHDAD, Sept. 19 (UPI) — Former Iraqi Deputy Premier Ahmad Chalabi told Iranian state-owned media Friday the United States is seeking to establish secret military bases in Iraq.

In an interview with the Islamic Republic News Agency, Chalabi, once a Washington favorite, said U.S. officials are trying to inject agreements for secret bases in Iraq as part of the long-term security contract slated to govern U.S.-Iraqi relations when the U.N. mandate there expires at the end of this year.

“Within the framework of the security pact, the United States does not wish to merely have open military bases (in Iraq), rather secret military bases (there),” he said.

He said negotiations on the deal were ongoing following the acceptance of a formal draft agreement in August but noted there were still contentious issues surrounding legal authority over U.S. military forces and the use of Iraq as a staging ground for the broader counter-terrorism effort.

Chalabi, who also served as the oil minister in 2005, said heightened diplomatic tensions between the United States and Russia made securing the deal a top priority for U.S. officials.

“If a security deal is not signed … by Dec. 31, regarding the recent U.S.-Russia row over Georgia and the Iraqi government’s decision not to extend the U.S. forces’ presence in Iraq for another year, the U.S. presence in Iraq will come across with difficulty in terms of the law,” he said.

A suicide bomber rammed his vehicle into a convoy carrying Chalabi in early September, killing six of his bodyguards.

© 2008 United Press International. All Rights Reserved.

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A Crisis of American Capitalism

September 20, 2008

Published on Friday, September 19, 2008 by CommonDreams.org

by Lawrence R. Velvel

You don’t have to be a socialist (and I certainly am not) to understand that this capitalistic country is confronting a crisis of capitalism.  This is not merely a matter of the huge losses and meltdowns that have taken place and have threatened to bring down the whole system with them.  It is also a matter of the failure of a culture, a culture that has grown and grown since the sainted Reagan introduced the twin pillars of his morning in America:  unchecked greed and militarism.

Militarism today holds high carnival:  in Iraq, on somewhere between 700 and 1,100 American bases around the world (the exact number being a secret, even if known to the Pentagon), on huge carriers patrolling seas all over the world, in Bush/Cheney ideas that we should intervene all over the world, in a Pentagon budget of what — something in the neighborhood of 500 billion dollars or more, I suppose?

Unchecked greed also held high carnival, as it drove the housing market ever higher by means visibly pregnant with failure because they defied history, economics, human comprehension and sense:  Adjustable rate mortgages, with initially low rates that one knew — I certainly knew, often said, acted accordingly, and wholly fail to grasp why everyone didn’t know — were pregnant with disaster because they would be unsustainable for the buyers when the interest rates increased, as inevitably they would because rates always rise and fall; securitization that gave rise to so-called tranches so complicated that nobody could understand what the risks and rights were; derivatives which may be even more complicated and which nobody has a real handle on apparently.  It was all nuts (as this writer often said to people), and now it has come crashing down, as was inevitable.  The acclaimed geniuses — like Alan Greenspan (who led the way) — who lived in and loved celebrification, who profited from it, have been shown the fools that they are.  In Greenspan’s case, this is at least the second burst bubble he promoted, the other being the high tech stock market which melted down at the beginning of the 2000s.  (Of course, in America, where nothing succeeds like failure, as is oft typified by celebrified coaches, baseball managers and university presidents, Greenspan remains a great man.)

The heads of major firms have likewise fallen, as their houses of cards collapsed.  The fall of titans represents a horrid, economy-threatening failure of the culture of greed, dishonesty (which often was a major part of pushing the insane instruments on uncomprehending buyers), and unchecked capitalism, the culture which has been pushed on us by conservative intellectuals, politicians and the uncomprehending mainstream media since Reagan took office in 1981.  This vile culture (and the militarism which is in some important ways associated with it (e.g., a war for oil, huge profits for contractors)), came to dominate much of the American nation.  Now the culture of unchecked greed and celebrification of its richest practitioners has come acropper (as did the war in Iraq).  That it would come acropper was inevitable, based as it was on stupidity.  Leaders have been exposed as fools — yet again.

Continued . . .

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Fidel Castro: The same lie twice over

September 19, 2008

Granma, Sep 19, 2008

Reflections of Fidel

READING the cables will suffice.


In the reflection I wrote the day before yesterday I stated that Cuba would not accept any donation from the government that is blockading us and that, in the Verbal Note handed over to the U.S. Interests Section, we had requested authorization so that U.S. companies could sell us construction materials; that same Note made no reference whatsoever to foodstuffs.  There was an additional request for trade in those materials to take place under normal conditions, including credits, something that is only logical considering that, for eight years, our country has been paying in cash for the few commodities that U.S. companies are authorized to export to Cuba.

Such a request was all the more justified in the face of the emergency situation created as a result of the ravages of the hurricanes.

It was precisely George W. Bush who, after Hurricane Michelle violently lashed the island on November 4, 2001, authorized the sale of agricultural produce to Cuba, which included lumber as a product derived from silviculture, which is highly developed in that nation.  He did not insist on any in situ inspection when, as is currently the case, we responded that we had already completed such an inspection. In the main, we imported foodstuffs.  Within a few weeks we had imported $4.4 million dollars worth, once all the relevant procedures were rapidly finalized.

In 2002, we purchased $173.6 million in goods; in 2003, $327 million; in 2004, $434.1 million; in 2005, $473 million; in 2006, $483.3 million; in 2007, $515.8 million, and during the first semester of 2008, $425 million.  As can be seen, the figures have increased year by year, and this year, after the devastating impact caused by two hurricanes, it is possible that the country would have to import a much higher volume from the United States alone, especially taking into account that prices have risen significantly and the colossal blow that has been dealt to agriculture.

The government of that country informed world public opinion that it had authorized the sale of foodstuffs and lumber, as if this was a new decision related to the two hurricanes, Gustav and Ike. A total and complete joke.
What did the State Department spokesperson say?

On Sunday, September 14 he declared that, as soon as Hurricane Gustav reached Cuba, the United States authorized $250 million in agricultural sales to the island, including lumber.  Prior to that, the U.S. secretary of commerce had ruled out any commercial credits.

Again on September 16, the State Department announced that the United States had authorized some licenses for food aid after the disaster caused by the two hurricanes, and that those agricultural licenses included “lumber, an important material for reconstruction.”

In addition to the lies, what were the arguments with which they tried to justify the prohibition on U.S. companies facilitating normal trade credits to Cuba? “The government of the United States has to respect Congress laws.” One would suppose that the blockade is a congressional law by virtue of a perfidious Platt Amendment-type provision.  The president of the United States can declare war without consulting Congress – something unheard of in the history of that country – but cannot, however, authorize a U.S. company to trade with Cuba under normal conditions.

In the message sent to Hugo Chávez, president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, which described some of the experiences of our Revolution, I wrote that, due to the “ruthless and absolute economic blockade, it is not possible to purchase one single kilogram of food.  This changed slightly 30 years later, due to pressure exerted by farmers, but this policy was accompanied by leonine financial and monetary obstacles.”  The Venezuelan revolutionary leader partially disclosed that message himself.

Everything is obvious and clear.

In resorting to the same lie twice over, the State Department has had no qualms over deceiving world public opinion, and it is doing so in a cynical manner.

Fidel Castro Ruz
September 18, 2008
12:20 p.m. •

– The financial Ike
– Reflections oF Fidel

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The war they all agree on

September 19, 2008

America’s two ruling parties came together in August to plan the escalation of the U.S. war on Afghanistan.

Sharon Smith | Socialist Worker, September 11, 2008 | Issue 680

IN EARLY September, the Pentagon closed its investigation into allegations that U.S. bombs killed 92 Afghan civilians, including as many as 60 children, as they slept peacefully in the village of Nawabad on the night of August 21.

Columnist: Sharon Smith

Sharon Smith Sharon Smith is the author of Subterranean Fire: A History of Working-Class Radicalism in the United States, a historical account of the American working-class movement, and Women and Socialism, a collection of essays on women’s oppression and the struggle against it. She is also on the board of Haymarket Books.

Despite protests from the UN, human rights organizations and the villagers themselves, Pentagon officials insisted for weeks that only seven civilians had been killed, along with 35 Taliban fighters, during a legitimate military operation aimed at capturing Taliban commander Mullah Sadiq.

Indeed, they claimed that the attack, which included bombardment with a C130 Specter gunship, was a necessary response to heavy fire emanating from a meeting of Taliban leaders in the village.

In its defense, the Pentagon cited evidence from an embedded Fox News correspondent who had substantiated its claims. Unfortunately, that correspondent turned out to be former Marine Lt. Oliver North, who has been known to bend the truth in the past.

North’s military career was cut short after his role was revealed in the Iran-contra scandal in the 1980s. At the time, North admitted to having illegally channeled guns to Iran while funneling the profits to the CIA-backed contra mercenary force fighting to overthrow Nicaragua’s democratically elected Sandinista government–and then lying to Congress about it. In recent years, North has nevertheless cultivated a lucrative broadcasting career at Fox.

U.S. soldiers take up positions in the town of Gangikhel in southeastern Afghanistan (Sgt. Sean Terry | U.S. Army)U.S. soldiers take up positions in the town of Gangikhel in southeastern Afghanistan (Sgt. Sean Terry | U.S. Army)

Although North assured Fox viewers, “Coalition forces…have not been able to find any evidence that non-combatants were killed in this engagement,” video footage taken on the scene by a local doctor showed scores of dead bodies and destroyed homes, documenting a civilian death toll at Nawabad that is the largest since the U.S. began bombing Afghanistan nearly seven years ago.

Thus, the U.S. military was forced to reopen its own investigation on September 8, only days after it had exonerated itself. A red-faced official told reporters that “emerging evidence” had convinced the Pentagon to investigate the matter further.

On that same day, Human Rights Watch issued a report that U.S. and NATO forces dropped 362 tons of bombs over Afghanistan during the first seven months of this year; bombings during June and July alone equaled the total during all of 2006.

The rising civilian death toll in Afghanistan rattled even the normally placid New York Times, which argued, “America is fast losing the battle for hearts and minds, and unless the Pentagon comes up with a better strategy, the United States and its allies may well lose the war.”

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

AS NEWS of the Nawabad massacre unfolded, another atrocity was also gaining media attention, further exposing the gangster state installed and maintained by U.S. forces to run Afghanistan since 2001.

President Hamid Karzai, the U.S.’s handpicked puppet, reportedly pardoned two men convicted of brutally raping a woman in the northern province of Samangan in September 2005.

At the time, Mawlawi Islam, the commander of a local militia, was running for a seat in Afghanistan’s first parliamentary elections. “The commander and three of his fighters came and took my wife out of our home and took her to their house about 200 meters away and, in front of these witnesses, raped her,” the woman’s husband told the Independent.

The couple has a doctor’s report that the rapists cut her private parts with a bayonet during the rape, and then forced her to stagger home without clothes from the waist down.

Mawlawi won a seat in parliament in September 2005, as the U.S. media celebrated the elections as proof that democracy was flourishing in Afghanistan thanks to U.S. occupation. But Mawlawi was assassinated, mafia-style in January of this year.

His past had caught up with him. Mawlawi had first fought as a mujahideen commander in the 1980s, but switched sides to become a Taliban governor in the 1990s. He switched sides yet again when the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001 and re-joined the former mujahideen, which had morphed into the Northern Alliance–the group of warlords installed by the U.S. to run Afghanistan as a collection of private gangster fiefdoms.

Karzai issued a press statement expressing his “deep regret” in response to Mawlawi’s death in January. Bypassing the rape charge, he expressed nothing but praise: “Mawlawi Islam Muhammadi was a prominent jihadi figure who has made great sacrifices during the years of jihad against the Soviet invasion.”

Mawlawi’s three subordinates were finally convicted for the rape this year, and one died in prison. But although they were sentenced to 11 years, Karzai reportedly issued a pardon for the other two in May, claiming the men “had been forced to confess their crimes.”

The drug-running warlords who have controlled Afghanistan since 2001 have no interest in either democracy or women’s rights. Indeed, it is not uncommon for poor poppy farmers who cannot repay loans to local warlords to offer up their daughters for marriage instead.

Gang rapes and violence against women are on the rise, according to human rights organizations. As a member of parliament, Mir Ahmad Joyenda, told the Independent, “The commanders, the war criminals, still have armed groups. They’re in the government. Karzai, the Americans, the British sit down with them. They have impunity. They’ve become very courageous and can do whatever crimes they like.” In this situation, Afghan warlords again produce 90 percent of the world’s opium, without legal repercussion.

Women’s prisons, in contrast, are teeming once again. As Sonali Kolhatkar, the author of Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords and the Propaganda of Silence, argued on Democracy Now! “Women are being imprisoned in greater numbers than ever before, for the crime of escaping from home or having, quote-unquote, ‘sexual relations’–‘illegal sexual relations.’ Most of these women are simply victims of rape.”

Continued . . .

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India’s Terror Laws and Indian Muslims

September 18, 2008

Fighting Terror the Terrorist Way

By Badri Raina | ZNet, Sep 18, 2008

Badri Raina’s ZSpace Page

I

Who doesn’t know how the Capitalist social order has worked from day one?—

By first causing monumental social upheavals in the pursuit of profit maximization, then recommending quick-fixes guaranteed to spawn still worse upheavals so that more profitable quick-fixes are in turn rendered “necessary.” And all these rooted in technologies of the newest kind that tell us what we always needed to solve our problems.

In those processes of declension, is it any wonder that the final quick-fix that we are offered should be the gun? After all, let us please remember that the biggest enterprise worldwide is the arms industry, and the biggest insurance for the continuance of this order of things not the end of warfare but its assured continuance in myriad forms and theatres. The better things get for the Capitalist class, the more they must remain the same for all the rest. And nothing ensures that result as well as warfare in perpetuity.

The coterminous “spiritual” trick that Capitalism of course employs is to ascribe all social upheavals to the “sinful” nature of man—those opposing Capitalism more sinful than others—rather than to its own ascertainable doings. An ancillary part of Capitalist ideology, so to speak, that then finds a central role for church, mosque, and temple, and takes the wretched of the earth away from either addressing rationally the sources of their condition or putting up a fight.

II

Thus it is that a resurgently Capitalist class in India is today howling for a new, “tough terror law” that would forever make propertied India safe for super-powerdom. Switch to any corporate TV channel, especially the ones in English, or read most corporate print media, or visit any upwardly-mobile urban elite home, and you will find but one strident recipe for fighting terror; namely, be like the terrorist and give them their own medicine. Only the Muslim terrorist of course, needless to say. Are there any others?

This would be fine if only it worked

The minute, however, you pose that question another ready answer follows: look at America—not a single terrorist strike there after “9/11”. Ergo, why can’t we be like America in every conceivable way, down to the colour of the toilet paper?

Not that we are not getting there, with the “strategic partnership” (read military collaboration) now in place, buttressed by junk consumerism, instinctual anti-Islamism/pro-Zionism, contempt for socialist ideas (retaining nonetheless the appellation “socialist” in the preamble of the Constitution, rather like the residual tailbone at the end of the human spine), a mighty embrace of an increasingly lethal majoritarian religiosity, professional therapy for stresses and tensions, the neighbourhood gym or godman as the answer to moral fatigue and vacuity, belief in infinite possibility for the “endowed” and karmic fate for the misery-ridden, waving the flag in the face of the sanest criticism and so forth.

Most of all, avoiding at all cost the reading of needlessly complex or critical materials that do not straightforwardly endorse the American life-style, or that drag us into considerations that have no understandable bearing on our corporate pay packages, or cloistered dens of comfort. Or, that dampen gratification with any insidious invitation to gravitas, or take our plastic smiles and sniggers away even for a bit. To wit, hey, why can’t we be like animals—kill, eat, defecate, copulate, and leave all the rest to god and nature. Gargantua, Gargantua, thou art the best.

It is another matter that, as we write, god and nature (Lehman and Hurricane Ike?) seem yet again confronted with the “spectre of Marx.” Although, be sure, we can well meet all that with a strike on some other part of the disloyal world, which, after all, remains happily full of “enemies” but with assets we can use. Why else are we “strategic partners” I ask you? Lehman may sink, but Pentagon is forever.

Continued . . .

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US drone strikes in Pakistan hours after sovereignty pledge

September 18, 2008

By Omar Waraich in Islamabad | The Independent, 18 September 2008

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A US drone attacked suspected militants inside Pakistan yesterday, only hours after the US military chief assured Pakistani leaders that the country’s sovereignty would be respected.

In an effort to calm escalating tensions between Washington and Islamabad, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, made a surprise visit to the Pakistani capital after it emerged that President George Bush had authorised US forces to attack Taliban militants in tribal areas on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The two allies have been locked in a game of brinkmanship since US special operations troops mounted the first known ground assault in Pakistan, allegedly killing up to 20 people in a village in South Waziristan. Afterwards Pakistan’s army vowed to retaliate and defend itself “at all costs”.

Admiral Mullen met Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani and the Pakistani army chief General Ashaf Kayani. Afterwards the US embassy said: “Admiral Mullen reiterated the US commitment to respect Pakistan’s sovereignty and to develop further… co-operation.”

But within hours a pilotless drone fired four missiles into South Waziristan, killing five militants, according to local intelligence officials. Reuters claimed the attack was the product of “US-Pakistani intelligence-sharing”, but government officials appeared to disagree.

“The [Mullen] visit was nice and he was very understanding,” said Ahmad Mukthar, the Defence minister. “Now these airstrikes have come as a surprise.”

The new civilian Pakistani government is fearful that increased US intervention will inflame an already hostile public. On Tuesday, President Asif Ali Zardari urged Gordon Brown to persuade the Americans to relent during a meeting at Downing Street.

“The UK agrees with us that such moves are counterproductive,” said an official. “Britain has a major role to play [here] – they know the area better than the US.”

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Antisemitism and Islamophobia rising across Europe, survey finds

September 18, 2008

Antisemitism and Islamophobia are on the rise across Europe, according to a survey of global opinion released yesterday.

In contrast to the US and Britain where unfavourable opinion of Jews has been stable and low for several years at between 7 and 9%, the Pew Survey of Global Attitudes found that hostile attitudes to Jews were rising all across continental Europe from Russia and Poland in the east to Spain and France in the west.

The survey found that suspicion of Muslims in Europe was considerably higher than hostility to Jews, but that the increase in antisemitism had taken place much more rapidly.

“Great Britain stands out as the only European country included in the survey where there has not been a substantial increase in antisemitic attitudes,” the survey found.

Antisemitism has more than doubled in Spain over the past three years, with a rise from 21% to 46%, the survey of almost 25,000 people across 24 countries found, while more than one in three Poles and Russians also had unfavourable opinions of Jews.

In the same period antisemitism in Germany and France also rose – from 21% to 25% in Germany and from 12% to 20% in France among those saying they had unfavourable opinions of Jews.

“Opinions of Muslims in almost all of these countries was were more negative than are views of Jews,” analysts said. While Americans and Britons displayed the lowest levels of antisemitism, one in four in both countries were hostile to Muslims.

Such Islamophobia was lower than in the rest of Europe. More than half of Spaniards and half of Germans said that they did not like Muslims and the figures for Poland and France were 46% and 38% for those holding unfavourable opinions of Muslims.

People who were antisemitic were likely also to be Islamophobes. Prejudice was marked among older generations and appeared to be class based. People over 50 and of low education were more likely to be prejudiced.

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