The Babbling Brook of Bullshit
May 27th, 2009 § 1 Comment
Peter Brookes on real political sleaze
Britain: the depth of corruption. John Pilger describes how the current scandal of MPs’ tax evasion and phantom mortgages conceals a deeper corruption that is traced back to the political monoculture of the United States. They are not not ‘playing into the hands of extremists’ as the New Statesman headline blared, he writes, they are the extremists, for the wars they launched in Iraq and Afghanistan, and for the torture they condoned.
The theft of public money by members of parliament, including government ministers, has given Britons a rare glimpse inside the tent of power and privilege. It is rare because not one political reporter or commentator, those who fill tombstones of column inches and dominate broadcast journalism, revealed a shred of this scandal. It was left to a public relations man to sell the “leak”. Why?
Why aid to Pakistan won’t make a difference
May 27th, 2009 § 2 Comments
Stephen Walt
Stephen Walt highlights why the House of Congress’ pledge of $1.5 billion per annum non-military aid for Pakistan isn’t going to do much to change the effect of disasterous American meddling.
At the New Yorker blog, Steve Coll reports that the U.S. Congress is preparing a five-year $1.5 billion per annum non-military aid package for Pakistan, with full support from the Obama administration. (You can read the text of the legislation, entitled the “Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act,” here.)
This step sounds impressive, until one remembers that Pakistan’s population is nearly 180 million and its GDP in 2006 was about $144 billion. So the aid package amounts to around a 1 percent increase in Pakistani GDP, which works out to about $8 for each Pakistani. In other words, the U.S. Congress is going to increase their per capita income from $850 per year to about $858. (It’s actually less than that, because some of the money goes to administrative expenses, auditing, and the like.) « Read the rest of this entry »
Crises that loom beyond the military action
May 27th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
Refugees line up for water at an IDP camp
The fragile colonial construct named Pakistan is risking its own long term survival through its myopic policy in Malakand. The difficulties faced by the refugees from Swat are well known. But according to Rahimullah Yusufzai the reugees are now also the victims of ugly ethnic chauvinism. The far-right Sindhi nationalist Jeay Sindh Qaumi Mahaz (JSQM) and the Muhajir Qaumi Movement (which has renamed itself Muttahida Qaumi Movement in order to mask its narrow factional interests) have organized two major strikes against their migration into Sindh in search of sanctuary. The violence that accompanied the strikes saw Pakhtun property being torched by Sindhi-Muhajir mobs, and one 50 year old woman being burnt alive. The MQM is part of the ruling coalition (led by the fuedal Sindhi dominated PPP of Bhutto/Zardari) and according to Yusufzai the actions have more than the tacit support of the government since the PPP-led provincial government has been sending back many refugees from the border town of Kashmore. Poignantly, Yusufzai adds:
The ruling PPP cannot absolve itself of the blame for blocking the trucks and buses bringing the IDPs to Sindh at the border town of Kashmore and for insisting that they go back to their native NWFP or stay in not-yet-ready tented camps there in the middle of nowhere. It was an insensitive act that added insult to injury and contributed to the pain suffered by the IDPs and felt by all Pakhtuns. More pain was inflicted on the Pakhtun psyche by certain PPP leaders, including its blundering spokesperson Fauzia Wahab, when the IDPs were equated to the Afghan refugees. If this isn’t a slip of tongue, then it obviously means that many politicians and also other likeminded people from different walks of life in Punjab and Sindh have come to believe that the Afghan refugees too are primarily Pakhtuns and all of them need to be kept out of Pakistan’s two biggest provinces to avoid harm…The PML-N despite its praiseworthy relief work in support of the IDPs also damaged its growing reputation as a party sympathetic to the cause of smaller provinces by hesitating to allow setting up of IDPs camps in Punjab…The apathy of some of the Sindh- and Punjab-based political forces to the woes of the IDPs looks all the more glaring when one compares it to the unparalleled generosity shown by the common people all over the country.
Yusufzai contrasts this with the generosity shown the refugees in Mardan and Swabi, and ask why the refugees — 80 percent of whom are actually living with families and well-wishers — should be ‘a matter of concern for NWFP and the Pakhtuns only. ‘If that is the case, then one should be worried about the damage this attitude is causing to the concept of nationhood in the federation of Pakistan.’
‘These colours don’t run’
May 26th, 2009 § 2 Comments
From Colombian painter Fernando Botero's series depicting US abuse of Iraqi detainees.
Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and Bagram are well known. Less so the police detention centers where the innocents caught in the ‘war on terror’ dragnet were subjected to similar abuses. Inigo Thomas reveals:
In his remarks to the American Enterprise Institute last week, Dick Cheney said that inmates at Guantánamo should remain imprisoned on Cuba because they are too dangerous to be incarcerated in American jails. What about the Americans arrested and jailed under the terms of the war on terror? Should they be incarcerated on Cuba, or does Cheney suppose that Americans are, regardless of what they have done, inherently less dangerous than other people and therefore don’t need to be jailed at Guantánamo?
Nor – surely – can Cheney have forgotten that immediately after 9/11, hundreds of men were rounded up by the FBI and other police forces in the US and imprisoned in high security American jails: 760 in total, 184 of whom were considered especially interesting by the authorities. Just over half of them were interred at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, a former warehouse on the waterfront overlooking the harbour and the Statue of Liberty. The story was covered by the New York Times, but it was treated, mostly, as local news and carried in the ‘New York Region’ section of the paper.
Destroying Gaza’s farmlands
May 26th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
A farmer holds crops destroyed by Israeli troops.
Eva Bartlett continues her excellent series of reports documenting Israeli crimes. Her latest report describes the deliberate destruction of Gaza’s farmlands by the IDF.
On the morning of 4 May 2009, Israeli troops set fire to Palestinian crops along Gaza’s eastern border with Israel. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) reported that 200,000 square meters of crops were destroyed, including wheat and barley ready for harvest, as well as vegetables, olive and pomegranate trees.
Local farmers report that the blaze carried over a four-kilometer stretch on the Palestinian side of the eastern border land. Ibrahim Hassan Safadi, 49, from one of the farming families whose crops were destroyed by the blaze, said that the fires were smoldering until early evening, despite efforts by the fire brigades to extinguish them.
Safadi says he was present when Israeli soldiers fired small bombs into his field, which soon after caught ablaze. He explained that “The Israeli soldiers fired from their jeeps, causing a fire to break out on the land. They burned the wheat, burned the pomegranate trees … The fire spread across the valley. We called the fire brigades. They came to the area and put out the fire. But in some places the fire started again.” According to Safadi, he lost 30,000 square meters to the blaze, including 300 pomegranate trees, 150 olive trees, and wheat.
Ken Loach responds to critics
May 26th, 2009 § 6 Comments
UK film legend Ken Loach
Legendary British filmmaker Ken Loach lays out succinctly the case for the cultural boycott of Israel in this response to an open letter from the Israeli film maker Tali Shalom Ezer, published below (via the Russell Tribunal on Palestine).
Dear Tali Shalom Ezer,
From the beginning, Israel and its supporters have attacked their critics as anti-semites or racists. It is a tactic to undermine rational debate.
To be crystal clear: as a film maker you will receive a warm welcome in Edinburgh. You are not censored or rejected. The opposition was to the Festival’s taking money from the Israeli state.
The call for a boycott of Israeli cultural institutions comes from many Palestinians: writers, artists, journalists, lawyers, academics, trades unionists, teachers. They see it as “a contribution to the struggle to end Israel ’s occupation, colonisation and system of apartheid.” Who are we, that we should not heed their call? Your counter arguments were used against the South African boycott yet that proved eventually to be successful.
Suheir Hammad in Palestine: poetry
May 26th, 2009 § 2 Comments
Palestinian-American artist Suheir Hammad, previously featured, is currently appearing at the second Palestine Festival of Literature, which as you may recall the zionist entity has tried to disrupt and shut down.
Thanks to Marcy Newman, who is in attendance and has a great write-up along with audio she’s recorded of Suheir’s always excellent spoken-word performances, we have more of this wonderful poetry as performed in Palestine.
Here are four of Suheir’s poetry readings at the Festival, the first three in English and the fourth short poem mostly in Arabic, as well as a video clip.
Gaza poems (8.23)
Open Veins of Latin America
May 25th, 2009 § 6 Comments
Addressing the Summit of the Americas Obama explained “I didn’t come here to debate the past, I came here to deal with the future.”
Well the past is inextricably linked with the future and Chavez created a media sensation by forcing that past into Obama’s hand in the form of a handshake with a copy of Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent. The book then shot to #2 on the Amazon bestseller list.
In case you missed all that excitement, the foreword by Isabel Allende, which is quite excellent, and a short extract of Eduardo Galeano’s work, In Defence of the Word, are included below to further entice.
Isabel Allende
Many years ago, when I was young and still believed that the world could be shaped according to our best intentions and hopes, someone gave me a book with a yellow cover that I devoured in two days with such emotion that I had to read it again a couple more times to absorb all its meaning: Open Veins of Latin America, by Eduardo Galeano.
“Tel Aviv Beach” in Vienna
May 25th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
'Tel Aviv Beach' in Vienna
Facing an increasingly critical public opinion across Europe following the brutal attack on Gaza earlier this year, Israel’s lavishly funded spin-machines are seriously stepping up their efforts to show the apartheid state’s “other face” in preparation for the summer season. Following the Tourism Ministry’s “Experience Israel” ad campaign in the London Underground, which conveniently show the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip – as well as Syria’s Golan Heights – as integral parts of Israel, in Vienna, a massive “Tel Aviv Beach” has been installed on the banks of the Danube. Organised by the Israeli Embassy in cooperation with the City Council of the Austrian capital, the project promises to its vistors a “beach feeling with high chill-out factor, a new cultural institution on the pulse of time…complete with its own entertainment zone – stage, video screen and free WLAN included – spread out over an area of around 1,000 square meters of sand, on which up to 400 people can drop into original Tel Aviv beach chairs.”
Unfortunately, the organisers have largely failed to offer visitors the full-package of life in this popular tourist destination, who will have to miss out on traditional activities such as routine police beatings meted out on Arab Israelis and, most recently, feminist peace activists.
Assorted interpretations of May 25
May 25th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
Opponents of Hugo Chávez express opposition. (Photo by Amelia Opalinska.)
In my parents’ living room in Buenos Aires this morning, I scanned the online version of the Argentine journal La Nación in an effort to determine the justification for the current national holiday. An article proclaiming the 199th anniversary of the Revolución de Mayo in the headline offered no further clarification of the celebration aside from the information that President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner would be celebrating it at the Sheraton Hotel in Iguazú National Park, and that she would prefer not to talk about recent nationalizations by Hugo Chávez of steel companies belonging to Argentine-based multinationals.
According to another article on the site, Chávez’ confiscaciones had already been talked about, and Argentine businessmen had been assured by the Kirchner administration that “no somos Chávez.” The online readership of La Nación did not appear convinced of such distinctions, however, and, of the 6,148 responses that had been registered as of 10 AM to a poll regarding whether the government would defend Argentine business interests in Venezuela, 4.47% were positive.
