Backdrop and perspectives on death of another Bhutto

Zia Mian and Chris Harman on issues related to recent international news story including a first-person account by The Hindu’s Pakistan Correspondent who was close at hand


This news is extremely significant, before we learned of the Pakistani former prime minister being assassinated, Benazir Bhutto, some US meda oulets were reporting on US Special Forces expecting to vastly expand their presence in Pakistan beginning in 2008. US troops are reportedly taking part in an effort to train and support Pakistani counterinsurgency forces and clandestine counterterrorism units. While the US expands its presence in Pakistan, questions have been raised over how Pakistan spent $5 billion in US aid since September 11th, the money supposed to have been sent to fight al-Qaeda and Taliban, instead US officials admitting funds were diverted to help finance weapons systems to counter India, another US ally.

Zia Mian, physicist with the Program on Science and Global Security at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University explains that:

" Bhutto's assassination is not a complete surprise. We know that there was a big suicide bombing that was directed at trying to kill her on the very day that she arrived in Pakistan from her years in exile. And she had warned that there were going to be attempts on her life. General Musharraf had also said that militants might try and disrupt the elections. So it’s very tragic, but not a complete surprise

Benazir Bhutto’s father had been a charismatic politician who had served as a civilian in a previous military dictatorship in Pakistan as the foreign minister of Pakistan, and he had set up his own political party, which Benazir inherited from him. And he had tried to rig elections after he had become prime minister in 1971 and triggered a major protest movement against himself. And he had actually been hung by the previous military dictator of Pakistan, General Zia-ul-Haq, for murdering his political opponents. And so , the whole family has been fundamental to the politics of Pakistan for more than thirty years and has had a very tragic history.

Benazir Bhutto served as prime minister of Pakistan twice, once in the late 1980s and again in the mid-1990s. Both times, there were very serious allegations of corruption against her administration and people in her administration and directed against, in particular, her husband and herself. And so, when Nawaz Sharif had become prime minister of Pakistan, she had fled the country because of these corruption charges against her, and she had stayed in exile for many, many years to evade going to court to clear these allegations.

But then, with the support of Washington and the Bush administration and from the British government, she had negotiated terms for her return to Pakistan with General Musharraf, in which General Musharraf passed a law specifically dropping the corruption charges against her, not part of any general amnesty against other people, but just her. In exchange, she was supposed to come to Pakistan, participate in the elections and support General Musharraf being president, and he would allow her to run for prime minister of Pakistan in the general elections. And so, it was going to be a power-sharing between Benazir and General Musharraf.

If there’s a two-party political dynamic in Pakistan, it was between Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party and Nawaz Sharif’s Muslim League. They alternated as prime ministers, taking power from each other in elections through the late ’80s and early ’90s. And so, they are bitter political opponents, of course, but both of them were opposed to General Musharraf, because General Musharraf was responsible for throwing both of them out of politics. Nawaz Sharif was also exiled by General Musharraf and has spent many years living in Saudi Arabia. And he also recently returned to participate in these elections, until Pakistan’s election commission, appointed by General Musharraf, denied him the right to stand as a candidate in these elections."



Chris Harman is the editor of the International Socialism journal and wrote this article for the Socialist Worker newspaper on 25 September 2007.

Pakistan is facing growing instability as a result of its role in the US-led “war on terror”. Chris Harman looks at the dilemmas facing its rulers and the background to current events

Regardless of the outcome of presidential elections planned for 6 October, massive changes of one sort or another seem inevitable in Pakistan.

The dictator General Pervez Musharraf, who took power in a coup in 1999, is in such deep trouble that he has been forced into talks with his sworn enemy Benazir Bhutto, one of two former prime ministers who went into “self-imposed” exile as he took office.

Many commentators expect Musharraf and Bhutto to come to an arrangement that will see all corruption charges against her dropped, and the constitution amended to allow her to return as prime minister. Musharraf would remain as president.

A second former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif who was overthrown in Musharraf’s coup, saw his own attempt at a triumphant return turn to dust.

Musharraf’s reluctant compromise with Bhutto and her Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) follows a swell of opposition to him from two different directions in recent months.

On the one hand much of the middle class are up in arms over his unsuccessful attempt to remove the chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry from office.

On the other hand there is growing pressure from the right wing Islamist parties, who are angry at Musharraf’s steadfast commitment to George Bush’s “war on terror”.

There is an increase in military assaults on pro-Taliban towns and villages in Pakistan, particularly in the country’s Waziristan region, which borders Afghanistan.

A changed attitude towards the regime among the middle class is of huge concern to both the general and his backers in the US.

In 1999 Musharraf had found it easy to seize power because of massive popular disenchantment with both Sharif and Bhutto.

The administrations of both Bhutto and Sharif had been notoriously corrupt – and each had been prepared to do deals with virtually any sectarian political, religious or ethnic organisation in order to hang on to power.

Corruption

As a result most of the middle class positively welcomed the coup. The Islamist parties also welcomed Musharraf, seizing the opportunity to take advantage of the vacuum created by the departure of the other political leaders.

But the corruption of the previous governments was not driven solely by the greed of those who led them. Rather it followed from deep-seated fissures in Pakistani society. It is these which have re-emerged to plague Musharraf.

Pakistan was founded 60 years ago with the partition of the Indian subcontinent.

The new state was based on the notion that there existed a “Muslim nation”. But in fact it was made up from six different linguistic groups, each with different traditions and custom

Those most enthusiastic about the new state were the “Muhajirs” – who had arrived as immigrants from the parts of the Punjab that were designated Indian territory at the time of partition.

Over time the Muhajirs came to dominate the state machine, thereby causing widespread resentment.

Meanwhile, there were recurrent separatist pressures among other ethnic groups – the Baluchis in the south west had to be coerced into joining the state in the first place.

Many in the North West Frontier Province hankered after an independent state for Pashtuns in Pakistan and Afghanistan alike.

And the Bengalis in East Pakistan, separated by more than 1,000 miles of Indian territory, did break away in 1971 to form what is today Bangladesh.

These ethnic tensions might have subsided if the mass of people had, in the decades following the creation of Pakistan, seen any significant improvement in their lives. But they did not.

The old landowning classes continued to enjoy near feudal powers in much of the countryside.

A new class of industrialists began to grow up alongside them as the country experienced often quite fast paced economic growth that rested on the increasing impoverishment of the majority of the population.

There was brief hope in the early 1970s that something would be done to mend this state of affairs.

An offspring of one of the feudal families, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (father of Benazir), won a great electoral victory as he spoke of socialism and nationalisation of some major industries.

But he soon turned against his working class and peasant supporters, until one of his generals, Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, felt powerful enough to first overthrow and then hang him.

Nawaz Sharif’s political career took off under the Zia dictatorship, serving as the military’s provincial prime minister in the Punjab.

From this time on the only way successive rulers could hold the country’s disparate groups together was to play each off against the other – one ethnic group against another, one interpretation of Islam against another, the more religiously minded against the more secular.

In such battles one section of the lower middle class mobilised politically to battle against others for positions in the state machine – struggles which often spilled over into bloody ethnic or religious violence.

Life threatening

For millions of ordinary Pakistanis the sporadic fighting was life threatening. But the rich found that there was little disturbance to their capacity to accumulate wealth.

So it continued under General Zia and, after his death in a plane crash in 1988, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, who were prime ministers in turn. They all endorsed the use of Pakistan as a base in the US’s efforts to subvert the Russians in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Bhutto and Sharif alike sponsored the Taliban in the 1990s in the hope of getting a pro-Pakistan government in Afghanistan – thus placating Pakistan’s Pashtun minority and opening up trade routes through the country to Central Asia.

They both created nationalist furore over the disputed territory of Kashmir, obtaining Islamist volunteers to fight against India.

Meanwhile Pakistan’s big cities, especially Karachi, were increasingly awash with weapons. They were periodically brought to a halt by violence between rival ethnic or religious groupings.

Musharraf’s rule has developed along similar lines, but with one very big added complication.

The 2001 US war against the Taliban in Afghanistan forced him to turn against former allies among the Pashtuns, thus destabilising his carefully constructed political alliance.

Increasingly Musharraf has had to perform a precarious balancing act in order to hold on to power.

He has used Islamist parties sympathetic to the Taliban to keep the supporters of Bhutto and Sharif’s parties in check, while presenting himself to the US as the only person able to take on Taliban supporters in Pakistan.

In the last year this act has come unstuck. Nato’s continuing war in Afghanistan is seen by many Pashtuns as a war against them – especially when the US demands that the Pakistan army wages the war on its side of the border.

As a result the Islamist parties feel compelled to agitate against Musharraf, even though, with less than 20 percent of the vote, they fear that if the military government collapses they will lose out to Bhutto and Sharif.

The discovery of large reserves of gas in Baluchistan has caused many of its people, who did not want to be in Pakistan in the first place, to begin to struggle again for their independence, in what is now a serious uprising.

There is also increasing resentment among the middle classes at the way military officers indulge in the same forms of corruption as the old political elite – a resentment given expression by the recent movement in defence of chief justice Chaudhry.

Continuing pressure from the US on Pakistan to keep the peace with India, its new ally, makes it difficult for Musharraf to try to stampede the population into a feeling of national unity through the old tried and tested tactic of a war scare over Kashmir.

This is the background against which Musharraf began unleashing violence of his own.

He allowed his allies in one of Karachi’s armed ethnic groups, the MQM, to attack people demonstrating in support of the chief justice, killing scores, while the army was preparing an onslaught against Islamists occupying the Red Mosque in Islamabad.

Such resorts to violence were not, however, a sign of strength but of weakness – hence his attempt to do a deal with Bhutto.

This deal, though warmly welcomed by the US as it allows for a greater democratic veneer for the “war on terror”, is thought by many commentators as likely to further discredit them both.

Bhutto is regarded as having sold out the movement for democracy in Pakistan in order to grab a small hold on power. Musharraf’s clumsy attempts to make an alliance with a sworn enemy is clearly the product of desperation.

The only card Musharraf has left to play is the fear among some in the middle class – and many in the White House – of what will happen to Pakistan if he falls.

Any weakening of military domination, it is claimed, could lead to an explosive disintegration of the country, in which the right wing Islamists could be the main beneficiaries.

But any weakening of military rule would also remove one of the obstacles preventing action by those forces capable of providing a very different sort of alternative to the country.

A recent opinion poll suggested that 75 percent of the population believe that the Musharraf government has increased poverty.

The vast majority of those questioned said that they want to see a reduction in military spending, continuation of the policy of peace with India, and an end to privatisation.

This represents an approach that is radically different not only to that of the military, but also to that of Bhutto, Sharif and the right wing Islamist parties.

The key question is whether a popular movement emerges out of the present political crisis which takes up such questions.

Karachi has a large working class with some powerful traditions of struggle.

One function of military rule has been to prevent any re-emergence of that tradition, with the military in control of Karachi’s docks, the country’s main trading hub with the rest of the world, and of the rail links to the northern cities.

It was the great crisis of military rule in 1971, after the separation of Bangladesh, which precipitated the last great wave of struggle and provided the one moment of real hope for the mass of Pakistan’s people since the state was formed.

There is, of course, no guarantee that the fall of Musharraf would have such an effect.

What can be said, however, is that if he clings on to power, with or without the assistance of Bhutto, none of the problems facing Pakistan’s oppressed nationalities, workers and peasants will be solved.

And if that is so, there will continue to be a political space for the right wing Islamist parties to try and occupy.




A first-person account by The Hindu’s Pakistan Correspondent who was close at hand

Rawalpindi: Benazir Bhutto, 54, chairperson of the Pakistan People’s Party, was killed in a gunfire attack-cum-suicide bombing minutes after she finished addressing an election rally here on Thursday.

Ms. Bhutto had descended the stage at Liaquat Bagh, the venue of the rally, and got into a waiting car behind the stage. The vehicle, accompanied by several other escort cars with her supporters and PPP bodyguards, was leaving the venue when the explosion took place, about 5-20 p.m.

I was about 30 feet away from the blast in a crowd of people waiting to leave the rally from a parallel gate. A wall separated the two gates. The police had stopped us so that Ms. Bhutto’s convoy could leave.

I heard two rounds of automatic gunfire, which I mistook to be firecrackers at first. In the next second, a huge ball of flame went up in the air, accompanied by a massive explosion. People screamed and ran in all directions. I ran away from the blast first, and then went back towards it, quite apprehensive that there would be a second blast.

Daylight was fast fading but the first thing I saw was a dismembered head, face down, lying just outside the gate where I had stood hours earlier. The road was spattered with blood well beyond the gate where I had stood seconds earlier.

A little distance away, where the bomber had struck, lay several bodies, many of them dismembered. There was thick blood on the road and people were surging back and forth from the scene. Many of them were crying, some shouting slogans against President Pervez Musharraf. The police were trying to keep the crowds away — without much success. Some dazed PPP activists stood among the bodies, beating their heads and wailing.

Ms. Bhutto’s car had apparently sped away from the scene, and PPP workers at the spot believed she had got away. Sherry Rehman, her spokesperson, who was in a car behind Ms. Bhutto’s, also thought the PPP leader had escaped the attack.

But people had doubts. As I moved here and there talking to eyewitnesses, many asked me: “Is Bibi okay?, “How is Benazir?”

It was only later I found out that she died of bullet wounds from the gunfire that I had heard. The car took her straight to Rawalpindi hospital, where her death was announced by PPP senator Babar Awan to an angry and grieving crowd.

Back at the scene of the blast, there was chaos, with ambulances rushing in, their sirens screaming, the police trying to keep people away and the wounded trying to make sense of what had happened to them. On the pavement sat a man dressed in a brown suit, his trouser leg rolled up and blood gushing out of a wound. He was clutching his head in shock.

One of Ms. Bhutto’s bodyguards, wearing a T-shirt in the red and green PPP colours with “Benazir Jan Nisar” written on it, stood screaming. His face was covered with blood. “I was on the footboard of her vehicle. There was a man who came towards the car, there was an explosion, I don’t know anything after that,” said the man, identifying himself as Ayyaz Pappu of the Pakistan Students’ Federation, the youth wing of the PPP. He was escorted away by his friends.

Inside the gate from where Ms. Bhutto’s vehicles had begun to roll out, lay two bloodied people. Someone rolled over one of them, and as the man breathed his last, the person who had rolled him over whispered to him: “Say the name of Allah, quickly, say the name of Allah.”

As I drove back to Islamabad from Rawalpindi with a friend, the text messages started coming in: “Shaheed Benazir.” On the main road to Islamabad, at two places where the PPP had put up stalls to welcome Ms. Bhutto to Rawalpindi, her first visit for a public meeting in perhaps 10 years, activists had started gathering to mourn as the news of their leader’s assassination began trickling in.

Not "just a former publisher of some newspapers"

If anybody saw BBC Newsnight last night you will have witnessed a fawning interview of the kind the establishment only ever reserves for one of it's own. A convincted neobliberal war mongering fraudster and black propagandist discussed his 'terrible personal injustice' with a broadcasting corporation sychophant in London (who appeared to assume his innocence despite overwhelming proof of his dishonesty).

However Conrad Black’s fate will horrify his friends and admirers in London. Convinced by his aggressive PR campaign belittling the case against him as “a joke” and “pure fiction”, they believed the Judge would somehow also succumb to what amounted to a smokescreen of bluster.

Let's not forget this little moment: In a court room in Chicago on a Friday in the summer of this year Lord Black’s eyes closed, his head fell and his mouth opened in a silent gasp. The first guilty verdict had just been read out to the crowded courtroom by the judge. Lord Black of Crossharbour looked distraught as the verdicts continued. Convicted of obstruction of justice and three counts of fraud, he realised that his biggest battle was finally lost.

Henceforth the former owner of The Daily Telegraph would be damned as a felon alongside Robert Maxwell, the late proprietor of the Daily Mirror. Black knew that his arrogance and deceit would, if the prosecutors’ sentencing demands were met, be punished by years of imprisonment.

Black’s mistake was two tape recordings whose existence he had long forgotten. They record him addressing the annual Hollinger shareholders’ meetings in 2002 and 2003. He can be heard repeatedly lying to shareholders, denying use of a corporate jet for private trips and, more importantly, insisting a succession of “noncompete” payments were negotiated and approved by his company’s independent directors. Three of those payments, the jury had decided, were bogus and defrauded the shareholders.

After the verdict walking like a zombie, Black left court - now the 62-year-old tycoon faces 6 and half years imprisonment with murderers and rapists.

It'll be tough - but hey maybe the BBC will send him food parcels full of his favourite extravagances.

Cohen: The establishment journalist who can't confront the truth about Iraq war

Columnists like Nick Cohen abuse their access to the national press to obsessively defend their personal positions on the war, in the face of widespread mainstream discredit ( see latest Observer article). Nobody with an ounce of power really believes the war was right any more. In the corridors of power and the annals of history, the argument is over, and Cohen was on the losing side.

No amount of sniping at opponents will change the reality that, on balance, Iraq has been a monumental f*ck-up. To suggest otherwise at this stage has no social purpose other than to defend oneself against accusations of poor judgment.

Cohen's column in the paper used to have the strapline "Without Prejudice". Presumably, it was removed when some sub-editor decided they couldn't keep on printing it and keep a straight face.

Despite Cohen's attempts to defile Brian Haw's anti-war convictions - he represents the mainstream. A few MILLION of us went out to protest the Iraq invasion and occupation. There were no mass protests for the war; just vicious politicians and drunk and corrupt journalists heeding the party line.

All the points raised about the current murderousness in Iraq - none of those were conditions on the ground before the invasion took place, so responsibility for those crimes resides ultimately with the invaders.
Cohen has conveniently forgotten why a war of aggression is the 'supreme' crime under the Nuremberg Principles. "It is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole". All the crimes Cohen mentions, and they are terrible, emanate from the original crime of aggression without which they would not now be occurring.

"a charity meant to help Iraqis who were the victims of both United Nations sanctions and Saddam Hussein's genocidal regime."

correction: a charity meant to help [publicise the conditions of Iraqi [children] who were the victims of both United Nations [genocidal] sanctions and Saddam Hussein's regime.

There is no doubt Hussein's regime was genocidal, but it did not systematically *target* children (that I am aware of). However, the UN sanctions regime was *described* as genocidal by *each* of the officals who ran it, it targetted children, and caused several *times* more deaths than Saddam.

"Call me a cockeyed optimist..."

No. I call you pro-genocide, providing it is white-eye Western boys killing brown-skinned Muslim men, women, and children. (You're not nearly so comfy vice-versa).

"Like Holocaust denial, 9/11 conspiracy theories..."

What? Where did this come from? Did a David Ike just hijack the Observer, or something? What's going on????

"Hyperbole at this intensity usually conceals insecurity."

AH. Now I understand. That's the the punchline to this, and every Nick Cohen, column (ever).

I have to admit I will be cheering the day Cohen stands in the dock with Blair for facilitating this evil crime.

Abu Ghraib Tape CIA would like to destroy

“Man torturing man is a fiend beyond description. You turn a corner in the dark and there he is. You congeal into a bundle of inanimate fear. You become the very soul of anesthesia. But there is no escaping him. It is your turn now… “
- Henry Miller
Alex Gibney's new documentary Taxi to the Dark Side (to be released in the US January 2008) is apparently a dispiriting, devastating indictment of the Bush administration's detention and torture policies that have done so much to reinforce the United States' reputation around the world. Anyway, loony tunes conservatives will be able to ask why the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences hates America when the movie is, as other members of the bloggersphere predict, nominated for a Best Documentary Oscar.



Below former military interrogator Damien Corsetti is asked about what he saw and participated in at Abu Ghraib and Bagram detention centers. Former FBI Special Agent and interrogator Jack Cloonan is then asked why after seeing the interrogation scene in Iraq and Afghanistan the FBI pulled out. His response which reflects on 'future blowback' from the Abu Ghraib abuses and photos is important and reflects what the majority of the European left have been saying since 9/11.


Interview with the film director here:

NOTES: Taxi to the Darkside, won Best Documentary Feature prize at its premiere at the 2007 Tribeca, Newport and Ojai film festivals. Tom Tomorrow, Sydney Blumenthal and BBC4 viewers have all been affected by it.

Good Kurds, Bad Kurds ecoutez et repetez

Anyone who has seen Kevin McKiernan's Good Kurds, Bad Kurds will know that..



...by 2001 more than 37,000 lives had been lost in Southeastern Turkey, more than all the fatalities in the conflicts in North Ireland, the West Bank and Gaza.

Kurds inside Turkey were forbidden to wear their national costume, speak their language, perform their music or even bear Kurdish names. There had been 29 Kurdish rebellions inside Turkey since 1923. Kurds were not allowed to run their own schools or media. McKiernan filmed footage of a few of the 3,000 Kurdish villages which were systematically torched during the 15-year uprising led by Abdullah Ocalan. McKiernan had stumbled onto Turkey's ongoing repression of its own Kurdish minority, which makes up about 20 percent of the country's population of approximately 63 million. The Turkish military has evacuated and leveled hundreds of Kurdish villages, leaving 2 million people homeless. The Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) has been fighting a guerrilla war against the Turkish army in the southeastern mountains, but even in cosmopolitan Istanbul at the opposite end of the country, Kurds and supporters of their cause live with the threat of censure, arrest, and death.

Kurds have risen against Persian, Turkish and Iraqi state domination over their lands throughout the past century. The British napalmed and gassed Kurds in the 1920s, to the recorded delight of Winston Churchill. The mercenary Kurds served as US State Department/CIA guinea pigs by attacking and weakening Iraq over the last forty years. Israel has been a partner throughout, the weakening of the Arabs being a primary ongoing objective of Israeli foreign policy. This ugly menage-a-trois has been a major factor in the massive destruction which has befallen Kurdistan. Instead of being a breadbasket for the region as it should be, Kurdistan has the remains of thousands of destroyed villages and towns and millions of displaced residents.

In 2007 (and after more 1m Iraqis have been salughtered) it has been reported that thousands of Turkish troops invaded northern Iraq, chasing Kurdish guerillas. Of Course Associated Press has said: "The PKK ... is seen as having provoked Turkey into planning an attack on Iraq."

So the Americans had/have two choices now that they are being invaded - sorry the new democracy in Iraq is under threat. Either they support Turkey or the Kurds. But not both.

Turkey was their choice since the very start of the Cold War perhaps due to the fact that it was an excellent southern flank near the Soviet Union. Not to mention the Dardanels straights, which blocked the Black Sea Soviet Navy.

So, for all they care about 'freedom and democracy', the Kurds are totally irrelevant to them: "kill as many as you can, we don't give a shit...". Sordid realpolitik that is.

As long as Turkey is important (a.k.a. a good strategic choice) to the Americans, the Kurds (a big national minority without a state) are lost.

Now the next logical step for the neoliberal oil grabbers is to use the "Kurd alibi" to weaken the regional 'axis of evil' i.e. Iran.

Muslims and the media: 96% of tabloid coverage negative

A "torrent" of negative stories has been revealed by a study of the portrayal of Muslims and Islam in the British media, according to a recent report.

Research into one week's news coverage showed that 91% of articles in national newspapers about Muslims were negative.

London mayor Ken Livingstone, who commissioned the study, said the findings were a "damning indictment" on the media and he urged editors and programme makers to review the way they portray Muslims.

"The overall picture presented by the media is that Islam is profoundly different from and a threat to the West," he said.

"There is a scale of imbalance which no fair-minded person would think is right."

Only 4% of the 352 articles studied last year were positive, he said.

Mr Livingstone told his weekly news conference that the findings showed a "hostile and scaremongering attitude" among the national media towards Islam and likened the coverage to the way the Left was attacked by national newspapers in the early 1980s.

"The charge is that there are virtually no positive or balanced images of Islam being portrayed," he said.

"I think there is a demonisation of Islam going on which damages community relations and creates alarm among Muslims."

Among the examples highlighted in the study was a report which claimed that Christmas was being banned in one area because it offended Muslims, which researchers said was "inaccurate and alarmist".

The report said that Muslims in Britain were depicted as a threat to traditional British values.

Alternative world views or opinions were not mentioned and facts were frequently distorted, exaggerated or over-simplified, said the report.

The researchers said that the coverage weakened government attempts to reduce and prevent extremism.

A separate opinion poll recently published by Mr Livingstone showed that Muslims in London were more likely to feel "British" in their attitudes than other members of the community.

More Muslims were proud of their local area compared with other members of the public.























It reminded SteveUK2 at the medialens messageboard of a survey of Muslim opinion conducted by The Telegraph on July 23, 2005.

They asked...

"Which of these views comes closest to your own?"

(Possible answers and results)

1. Western society is decadent and immoral and Muslims should seek to bring it to an end, if necessary by violence. 1%

2. Western society is decadent and immoral and Muslims should seek to bring it to an end, but only by non-violent means. 31%

3. Western society may not be perfect, but Muslims should live with it and not seek to bring it to and end. 56%

4. Don't know. 11%

The results appeared on the front page as:

"32% of British Muslims think Western society is decadent and immoral and should be brought to and end."

So they misrepresented their own survey and combined two of the results they liked into one. They critically left out the "by non-violent means" part as well.

"Christmas a humbug, uncle!" said Scrooge's nephew. "You don't mean that, I am sure."

Full report

Oliver Kamm’s Wargasms

Are you in urgent need of a jolly good laugh? Then read page one of yesterday’s Guardian and then turn to page thirty for the punchline, and a most unexpected and unintended punch it is too. One usually gets an idea of what kind of ”joke” is being told from merely hearing the punch: “…but that doesn’t mean a dog is a donkey”. And here the two pieces in today’s Guardian – one a piece of news reporting, the other a comment piece worthy of the National Inquirer and Voice of Freedom – inadvertently fulfil the setup and the punch. While the setup is of the classy school of not giving anything away and keeping one gripped, the gag line is definitely of the Bernard Manning “dog and donkey” tradition of telegraphed stupidity laced with the bigotry only a select “clientele” can enjoy. To take the latter instance first, page thirty has the maniacal scribbler and Chuck Norris of political commentary, Oliver Kamm, commenting on Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons programme. Here we are “informed” of the alleged danger Iran poses to the world.

For instance: Syria is a “client state” of Iran, something Syria may enjoy learning; that the “Iraq war might not have happened” had it not been for the “farce” that was the IAEA and UN inspectors, who, Kamm will be shocked to learn, comprehensively dismantled Iraq’s WMD but whose intelligence was disregarded in favour of “sexed up” insults to the intelligence by latter-day disciples of Henry Kissinger; that “Iran’s complaints of discriminatory treatment and a denial of its rights under the non-proliferation treaty (NPT) are only slightly less risible…,” a knowingly untrue statement that tells you all you need to know about Kamm’s regard for journalistic ethics; that there was no “fault in translation from the Farsi” when Ahmadinejad apparently spoke of a desire to wipe Israel off the map, though Farsi speakers seem to think otherwise, another minor irrelevance; that “if you want peace, avoid anti-war campaigns,” an unexpected declaration of WAR IS PEACE. And on and on the scribbler goes in that customary fashion of his that always brings to mind George Eliot’s line, “He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow”.

That the whole article is a series of lies, distortions and fantasy, ought not surprise anyone, as a cursory inspection of Kamm’s “journalism” will prove; a thorough investigation will leave one with the concurrent strange feeling of constipation and suffering from a terrible bout of diarrhoea. Appropriately enough, Kamm’s piece is entitled ”A Dangerous Fantasy”. When Paul Goodman, during the Vietnam War, coined the term “wargasm”, he had people like Kamm in mind as sufferers, possibly sadists, although Kamm evidently suffers from a multiple need and just can’t get enough.

Meanwhile, on page one of the Guardian we learn that the National Intelligence Estimate, the combined analysis of the sixteen U.S. intelligence agencies, has disclosed that Iran’s nuclear weapons programme is non-existent, and that Iran’s protestations that it is seeking a civilian nuclear energy programme have been corroborated. Seldom has providence been so kind in making a propagandist like Kamm look like a warmonger. No doubt, the risible Kamm and his fellow capos will find other ways to campaign for further destruction of the Middle East. The rape of Iraq has not had the desirable climax for those who crave another “wargasm”. Perhaps even the Times has tired of Kamm’s risible efforts at “commentary”, and perhaps, just perhaps, even Rupert Murdoch’s flagship has succumb to embarrassment, even shame, that they gave the reactionary windbag space to propagandise for a war that has unexpectedly threatened to dismember U.S. hegemony.

This may explain Kamm’s disappearance from the Times’ comment pages, even though he is great chums with the comment editor Daniel Finkelstein, who, incidentally, was, along with Amanda Platell, the “brains” behind William Hague’s unimaginably weird “Common Sense Revolution”. Kamm’s risible blog has many tributes and references to his “friend” Daniel Finkelstein, and they seem to grow ever more frequent the longer he is denied space at the Times. It may not be a “revolution”, but denying the reactionary windbag space is certainly “common sense”. That the Guardian has given Kamm space to pimp for another “wargasm” is tantamount to pornography.

Original Author: Tawfiq Chahboune
Source

Give me the line of the queen and I'll give you your secret dream

OK I know it's not 5th November and they told me not to indulge myself but what the hell a great speech is a great speech. Click the clip (the clip not the pic) and enjoy a dub sync indulgence.

Are you sitting comfortably? Good.
Then I'll begin.

Right now, I imagine there are hundreds of soldiers rushing here to kill me because someone does not want us to talk. They are afraid that I am going to say the things that are not supposed to be said. They are afraid that I am going to say the truth.

The truth is that there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there? If you look about, you witness cruelty, injustice and despotism. But what do you do about it? What can you do?

You are but a single individual. How can you possibly make any difference? Individuals have no power in this modern world. That is what you've been taught because that is what they need you to believe. But it is not true.



This is why they are afraid and the reason that I am here; to remind you that it is individuals who always hold the power. The real power. Individuals like me. And individuals like you.

I have come to offer you a deal. If you accept, I will give you a different world. A world without curfews, without soldiers and surveillance systems. A world that is not run by other men but that is run by you. I am offering you a second chance.

Four hundred years ago, a great citizen made a most significant contribution to our common culture. It was a contribution forged in secrecy and stealth although it is best remembered in noise and bright light.

To commemorate that glorious night at precisely the stroke of midnight, the edifice of their world will erupt with enough sound and fury to shake the earth. All I ask is that you join me at the gates to watch as the past is erased, the pathway cleared so that together we can start toward a new day.

But, you ask, who am I to make such promises? A fair question but hardly necessary as you know me already. To know me any more you need only look to a mirror.

Truth be told, this wasn't even my idea, was it? If you think back, you'll remember that night, whispering in your lover's arms. I became a part of your plan just as you have now become part of mine. Give me the line of the queen and I'll give you your secret dream.

On the twelfth stroke of the fifth day of the eleventh month, I hope we shall all meet again.

Until then, I bid you goodnight.

Video Link: World Against War international conference

Just in are video files of speakers from the World Against War international conference held in London on Saturday 1 December which included:

Hans Von Sponeck


and Dennis Halliday


Prominent peace campaigners from the Middle East, Asia, the USA and around the world spoke and lead discussions on:
* The current situation in Iraq
* The occupation in Afghanistan
* The threats against Iran
* US aggression from Eastern Europe to Latin America.

Other speakers at the conference were former United Nations representatives in Iraq, Hassan Jumaa, President of the Basra Oil Workers Union, Jawad Al Khalassi, General Secretary Iraq Foundation Congress, Hannah Ibrahim from Women's Will Iraq, Ivona Novomestská, Czech No Bases Campaign, Brigitte Ostmeyer from the new German Left party, Eqyptian MP Hamdeen Sabahy, Tony Benn and Lindsey German from Stop the War Coalition, Mark Thomas, campaigning comedian, George Galloway MP, Craig Murray, ex-British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Iraqi exile Sami Ramadani, and representatives from United for Peace and Justice (USA), the Communist Party of Lebanon and Venezuela's UNT union confederation. More videos can be viewed here.

This conference was never more needed. George Bush has asked the US Congress to add 196 billion dollars as a supplement to the 450 billion dollars he has already got for war spending in 2008. He calls the supplemental spending the "Global War on Terror Request" and it includes plans for a new bunker busting bomb which could be geared toward bombing underground targets in Iran.

And Britain's prime minister Gordon Brown has now repeatedly stated his support for Bush's horrifying plans for endless global war, based on what Brown calls "our shared values and our shared destiny".

Hitchens very exotic philosophy

'What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.'

This is one of those bold assertions for which Hitchens is famous. It is billed by him as an ‘elementary rule of logic’, but if he seriously believes it, he is committed to a very exotic philosophy. For there is a class of assertions for which we cannot provide evidence, but which would be reluctant to dismiss lightly. Moral statements (‘It is wrong to murder’, ‘You should tell the truth’, you know the kind of thing) cannot be supported by anything like evidence. Of course you might tell a story about how we have evolved to be moral, or you could point out the prudential advantages of a moral life. But this very far from being evidence that you must be moral now.

If moral statements are in some sense true and at the same time cannot rely on evidence, we have to be very meticulous as to how exactly they differ from religious claims. Now there might be a case for treating religious and moral claims differently; but it is a case that must be made. Assertions that lack evidence cannot be dismissed by fiat, by the power of a well turned aphorism.

Another aphorist once said that 'the good is outside the space of facts'. This is a claim that lacks factual corroboration (how could it not), but it is very beautiful, and perhaps even true.

Original Article: The Pitfalls of Eloquence

Anti-fascism, big business & socialism: A History of Italian Football

John Foot spoke to Chris Bambery about his book, Calcio: A History of Italian Football

Italy emerged as a footballing power in the 1930s. How important was football to Benito Mussolini’s fascist regime? Was it associated with opposition to fascism?

Football was very important for fascism. Mussolini helped make the sport into a mass pastime, organised rallies around games and added fascist symbols.

This was particularly true with the World Cups of 1934 and 1938 and the Olympic tournament in Berlin in 1936, all of which Italy won. Radio was the main means by which people followed the game and the commentaries were extremely nationalistic, as were the reports in the press.



The Battle of Highbury match with England in 1934 was presented as a kind of war, and defeat was turned into victory. The 1938 World Cup in France saw anti-fascist protests at Italian games.

However, football also presented fascism with problems. Localism contrasted with fascism’s nationalist ideology—being a fan of a club side was at odds with the whole idea of fascism.

Football itself was in some ways anti-fascist in a weak sense, perhaps. Many footballers were fascists, but others became part of the resistance.

The big teams in the 1930s were associated in some ways with the regime. Juventus, which won five titles in a row, were the car company Fiat’s team, and Bologna had a strong link to the fascist leadership in that town.

Many fans believe Juventus and the Milan clubs exercise too much control over football. How true is that?

Big business and football have always been closely linked in Italy—Pirelli, and then businessman and prime minister Silvio Berlusconi with AC Milan, Fiat with Juventus, oil interests with Inter. These three teams have carved up tournaments among themselves since the 1950s.

Money talks in football and there is a lot of circumstantial evidence of what is known as the “psychological conditioning” of referees—in particular by Juventus.

The relationship between Italians and referees mirrors that between Italians and the state—a relationship built on suspicion, hatred and mistrust.

Today, with the vast sums spent on TV coverage, the big clubs have an even greater control over the game. Nobody else can really win. This dominance has only ever been challenged on a few occasions—by Bologna in the 1920s and 1930s, Torino in the 1940s and the Rome clubs in the 1990s.

Italian football is often associated with a cautious approach, which means teams are happy to try and sit on a one goal lead. Is this stereotype still true?

Catenaccio, as defensive football was known, was not invented in Italy, but it flourished there in the 1950s and 1960s. The basic premise was to concentrate on not conceding goals, and to play a counter-attacking game.

However, it is also part of a stereotype which derives from the lack of “fair play” in the Italian game—the win at all costs attitude which is still a part of the game. Catenaccio could be boring, but it also implied more skilful defending and beautiful, swift breaks from defence.

Italian football became more attacking in the 1990s with the pressing game invented by AC Milan and Arrigo Sacchi.

It should also be said that Italians were often simply better at defending than other countries, and have produced some extraordinary players at the back.

In Britain it is rare for football fans to get involved in politics. But in Italy football fans have joined demonstrations. There’s been the emergence of Livorno as a left wing club. How serious is politics among the supporters?

Politics is very serious, and it touches all parts of life. However, most of the hardcore fans are now on the right or the extreme right of the political spectrum.

Extremist groups like Forza Nuova have found fertile recruiting grounds among the fanatical Ultra fans.

This has led to a lot of racism and open fascism at football grounds, with anti-Semitic banners, insults directed at black players and swastikas.

Some of the left wing strongholds, such as Torino and Roma, have been taken over by the right in recent years. Little has been done about the racism.

On the left, Livorno are interesting, although their Stalinism is quite hard to take and they are often simply provocative.

Venice fans also led an anti-racist campaign and put up anti-war banners. The link between politics and sport in Italy has always been very strong.

How does the economy of football work?

In recent years the finances of football have been a grotesque parody of the Italian financial system. Clubs have gone bankrupt and been “saved” by financial accounting. New laws have been passed to allow clubs to survive despite falsifying their accounts.

Scandals in football mirror those in Italian society, with corruption rife.

People are extraordinarily interested in the game, and in some ways it has replaced politics and religious belief as the main thing in people’s lives. The media deals in football almost continuously.

Violence, fraud, scandal and intrigue were endemic. The system had collapsed, yet the show went on. Teams continued to play on despite bankruptcy, doping, arrests, investigations.

All this was surreal and disturbing, but perhaps not all that surprising. After all, the president of the Football Federation was also a key figure in the running of AC Milan, whose president is the prime minister of Italy.

In a country where rules and laws are not only broken with impunity, but where those who do so are rewarded for their pains, it is unlikely that the most popular and the most wealthy sport would be a “happy island” of legality, peace and tranquillity.

Sometimes, during the work on this book, I felt like Malcolm McDowell in The Clockwork Orange. I was forced to watch things which have made me sick. I did not think it would be possible but, by the end, I had almost fallen out of love with football.

Link to original article
Marxism and Sport

In defence of Aamer Anwar

Suppression of critical comment of the Scottish judiciary should be seen as an attack on all our democratic rights - well with what is left of them in Brown's broken Britain.

Mohammed Atif Siddique a 21 year old student from Alva, Clackmannashire was jailed for eight years last month - Scotland's first ‘Islamist terror’ conviction . His legal representive a well known Scottish human rights lawyer now also faces a potential jail sentence.

Mr. Anwar has stated that the Atif Siddique verdict was “a tragedy for justice and for freedom of speech and undermines the values that separate us from the terrorists, the very values we should be fighting to protect. Young Muslims live in a climate of fear no different to that experienced by the Irish community in the last century."

Lord Calloway subsequently ordered Mr Anwar to appear before the High Court in Edinburgh to face contempt of court proceedings. A finding of contempt against the 39-year-old solicitor would put his legal career in jeopardy. He could face a jail sentence or heavy fine and professional disciplinary proceedings.

So at a time when our great leader frantically squeegees away contaminated party bureaucrats and lousy carpetbaggers - the Scottish courts wash away the life of a young muslim who interwebbed for answers to the mass deaths and destruction in Iraq, Palestine and Afghanisan. And now the state's guilt in its political complicity with the wider objectives of the neo-con war on terror realizes itself in the form of a judicial tantrum: ‘This was our case and no ‘mouthy black boy’ can have anything to do with it. Lock him away!’

However millions of people – fuelled by their participation and support for the global anti-war movement - have developed a deep rooted sense of mistrust for the official narrative and response to the war on terror as projected by Brown and Bush. From this anti neo-con bedrock the 'Defend Aamer Anwar' campaign is growing.

The Glasgow Stop the War Coalition and the Muslim Action Committee, an umbrella organisation of more than 700 mosques, imams and religious scholars in the UK, has already met to form a support group for Aamer Anwar. Tony Benn, president, Stop the War Coalition; Moazzam Begg, ex-Guantanamo Bay detainee; Iain Banks, author; George Galloway MP; Lindsey German, national convener, Stop the War Coalition; Professor Mike Gonzales, University of Glasgow; Imran Khan, human rights lawyer; Bashir Mann, convener, Muslim Council of Scotland; Professor David Miller, University of Strathclyde; Gareth Pierce, human rights lawyer; Mohammed Sarwar MP; Sandra White MSP; and many others are part of the natonwide campaign.

Pressure on the judiciary over the case is set to increase as Margo MacDonald, the independent MSP, said that she wanted to raise the issue in the Scottish Parliament, probably in the form of a parliamentary motion, if she was allowed to do so.

Ms MacDonald said: "I am concerned about any restraint being put on lawyers who speak their minds, give their opinions or campaign against injustice - and Aamer Anwar does all three.”

Scotland’s leading ‘quality’ newspaper clearly disagrees suggesting that free speech rights can be best protected by simply limiting their scope in counter-terror legal cases. Human rights lawyers like Aamer Anwar should simmer down and show ‘a level of restraint in voicing criticism about such matters’. The implication is that free speech should be delimited by the extent to which it mirrors the existing state consensus. Legal representatives of the most oppressed groups supposedly have a special responsibility to choose their words carefully and fulfill their duty to uphold normal standards of consent.

Such a position is typical of the dominant discourse surrounding the issue in Scotland’s established corporate media. All mainstream media outlets skew the framework of debate by restricting it's terms when discusssing the erosion of human rights by government policies purporting to fight terrorism. This tendency has been well-developed over decades in relation to the conflict in Northern Ireland and was given renewed impetus by the UK’s actions in response to the attacks in the USA on 11 September 2001.

Since 11 September 2001, the UK authorities have passed a series of new laws, even though the UK already had some of the toughest "anti-terrorism" laws in Europe. These laws contain sweeping provisions that contravene human rights law, and their implementation has led to serious abuses of human rights.

People suspected of involvement in terrorism who have been detained in the UK under the new laws have found themselves in a Kafkaesque world. They have been held for years in harsh conditions on the basis of secret accusations that they are not allowed to know and therefore cannot refute.

After the events of 7 and 21 July 2005 in London, more draconian measures were proposed. These included a new Terrorism Bill currently before Parliament. Some of its most sweeping and vague provisions, if enacted, would undermine the rights to freedom of expression, association, liberty and fair trial. You would not get a real sense of this by relying on the likes of The Herald, The Scotsman, The Daily Record, Reporting Scotland, Scotland Today or Good Morning Scotland.

We are living through a creeping Orwellian nightmare whereby oppressed groups and their representatives are being targeted by the state and being prosecuted for thought crime. The Government is terrorising the Muslim community and causing fear in its efforts to combat terrorism. Laws are effectively being used to breed a culture of suspicion against Muslims and people of Middle Eastern appearance.

But you cannot defeat terrorism by taking away the rights of those who seek to defend citizens suspected of a crime and pronouncing them guilty along with their whole community. The state’s real problem remains the threat of an organised response by the millions who can see through the thickening (nay sickening) smokescreen of state suppression.

Update 1:
Anwar invited to stand as Glasgow University Rector: Students at Glasgow University have joined the the growing chorus of support for solicitor Aamer Anwar, by inviting him to stand for the post of Rector.

Update 2:
Scotland's legal magazine The Firm is calling on the profession to break it's silence and speak out in defence of Aamer Anwar. An editorial in the December 2007 edition states: "If solicitors and advocates lose sight of the greater principles and purpose of the profession by keeping their heads down and thinking about the money, they shame and disgrace themselves, the public and the law itself. Solicitors should be able to speak out in public for their clients without fear of criminal consequence."

Related links:
Defend Aamer Anwar petition
john hilley blog