America at War With the World and Itself
Is it possible that the United States is poking its nose into places that it doesn't belong? According to this editorial from Saudi Arabia's Arabic-language Al-Riyadh, by doing so, the Bush Administration has created tremendous domestic turmoil for itself, and has turned even its friends into adversaries.
EDITORIAL
Translated by Nicolas Dagher
ends with...
Besides all of these reasons, there is global political animosity toward any of America's old explanations, such as fighting communism, which was swept away with the disintegration of the Soviets. Similarly, using the pretext of the war on terror and the spread of democracy to serve America's hegemonic interests has become a problem, and has created a predicament that can no longer be called a triumph. This is what is pushing American domestic forces to speak up and openly oppose the policies of their leaders.
#1
of course, the saudi gov't will say that the newspapers can print what they want (sorta reminds me of edgar bergen getting angry with charlie mccarthy).
still, they don't put much support behind that argument when cartoons are printed.
FP: Melanie Phillips, welcome to Frontpage Interview.
Phillips: Thanks. Its a pleasure to talk to you.
FP: So what inspired you to write Londonistan?
Phillips: I was just appalled by the fact that, not only had Britain become the key European hub of Islamist extremism and terrorism during the 1990s under the noses of the British authorities, but even after both 9/11 and last years suicide bombings in London the British political and security establishment is still appeasing Islamist extremism, and remains in a state of denial about the threat to the west. After the London bombings, when home-grown British Muslim boys set out to murder as many of their fellow British citizens as possible, a senior London police officer went on TV and said that the words Islam and terrorism did not go together. If a threat is so badly misunderstood in this way, it will not be defeated.
FP: Can you talk a little bit about the collapse of traditional British identity and of the destructiveness of multiculturalism?
Phillips: This is absolutely a key issue. Multiculturalism has turned Britains values inside out and the root cause of the problem is the deconstruction of Britains identity. For decades, the British elite has been consumed by loathing of its national identity and values which it decided were racist, authoritarian and generally disagreeable. Much of that was due to our old friend, post-colonial guilt. The elite was therefore vulnerable to the predations of the left, which had signed up to Gramscis insight that a society could be suborned by replacing its normative values by the mores of those who transgressed them or were on societys margins.
This gave rise to multiculturalism and minority rights, which held that all cultures were equal to each other and which thus provided minorities with an enormous weapon with which to force the majority to give in to their demands. One of the consequences of this was moral inversion, which holds that since minorities are weak they must always be victims of the majority because it is strong. So even when minorities behave badly, its always the majoritys fault. Translate that onto the world stage, and you arrive at the view that even when third world people commit terrorist outrages against the west it must be the west which is to blame. Thats why multicultural Britain said, after 9/11, that America had it coming to them and why, after the London bombings last July, it said the reason British Muslim boys had blown up the London transit system was because of Britains support for the US in Iraq.
FP: Describe for us Britains culture of appeasement. What do you think engendered it? Rest at link.
Posted by: ed ||
05/13/2006 15:13 ||
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According to this op-ed article from Mexico's La Jornada, since the 1840s, Washington has tried and failed to hinder Mexicans and Latin Americans from entering what was once Mexican territory. Today Hispanics are regaining control - through the ballot box.
#1
One of the benefits of living in New Mexico is that the 'conquest' card played
by the Hispanics is usually immediately responded to by the original natives.
They have a very long and deep animosity towards their former rulers. Check -
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The Discovery/Times channel has been replaying a GREAT series about pyramids today. The Mayans and Aztecs were absolutely the most bloodthirsty tyrants I have ever see. Oceans of blood and hundreds of thousands of headless bodies cascaded down the steep temple steps of Aztlan. I'm not exactly looking forward to a return of all that.
#7
When are we going to realize that Mexico is an enemy nation and treat them accordingly?
Posted by: mac ||
05/13/2006 18:52 Comments ||
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#8
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was the peace treaty that ended the Mexican-American War (18461848). The treaty provided for the Mexican Cession, in which Mexico ceded 1.36 million km² (525,000 square miles) to the United States in exchange for USD$15 million. The United States also agreed to take over $3.25 million in debts Mexico owed to American citizens.
So, calculating 18.25M with interest since 1848, what would be the amount Mexico would have to pay back [cash only] to renege on the deal?
#10
Just today I was visiting the Mexican-themed store of an ethnically Mexican US citizen friend. It was a small store, but packed with typical Mexican-style merchandise, and very busy.
It was mostly busy because the products offered therein are *better* than the similar products you can get in the chain stores. Superb location and very profitable.
In addition to employing half a dozen men, he also still works as a suburban gardener, managing a team of another half half dozen men, in the morning, when his partner is running the store.
He lives in the suburbs in a nice house that he and a team of his employees improved to be the nicest one in the neighborhood--think complete remodling inside and out.
Only his eldest daughter, of four kids, speaks some Spanish, as a second language. His second oldest daughter is a small business computer consultant. His older son is an okay high school student, who expects to go to college in a few years.
His new baby, a boy, is named "Frank", by the way, after a friend his wife had in the US Army.
And his sister is an illegal, who has lived with him for 5 years now. She can barely speak English. Except for the language thing, she would say that with of the rest of their family, they are Americans. Screw Mexico.
Despite much-touted public claims by President General Pervez Musharraf to have changed the countrys direction by uprooting its network of extremists, a cursory glance at the activities of the outlawed militant and sectarian groups and their leaders shows that most of them are back in business and operating freely in the country.
For those who need a ready reckoning of Musharrafs performance, a glance at his record on handling the jehadi kingpins will prove instructive. When the President of Pakistan banned six of the countrys top jehadi and sectarian groups in two phases on January 5, 2002 and November 14, 2003 he declared that no militant or sectarian organization would be allowed to indulge in terrorism to further its cause. Yet, none of the key jehadi leaders has been either arrested or prosecuted on terrorism charges.
After the initial crackdown, the four major jehadi organizations the Lashkar-e-Toiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, Harkatul Mujahideen, and Hizbul Mujahideen resurfaced and regrouped to run their respective networks with different names and identities. The respective leaders of these organizations, Prof Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, Maulana Masood Azhar, Maulana Fazlur Rehman Khalil, and Pir Syed Salahuddin, remain at large, and the pattern of treatment being meted out to them by the military-led so-called civilian administration suggests they are being kept on a leash, ready to wage a controlled jehad in Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir.
These militants largely depend on Pakistan for training, logistics, arms, ammunition and, most of all, sanctuary, a dependence that has been exploited by Pakistans intelligence establishment. Not only does its intelligence establishment decide which jehadi group will play what role in fuelling the Kashmir insurgency, but it also launches new militant outfits at regular intervals to ensure that none of them ever get so big or powerful that they start posing a threat to their creators.
Musharrafs claims of having taken concrete measures to clip the wings of jehadi groups and reform their religious seminaries across Pakistan were nothing more than rhetoric, proved in the recent past when his own administration admitted that three out of the four London suicide bombers had been visiting madrassahs in the provincial capitals of Sindh and Punjab in November 2004, before returning to England in February 2005, only to carry out deadly bombings there. Since then, Musharrafs policy of enlightened moderation has come under sharp criticism, both from within and outside Pakistan.
After the 9/11 terror attacks, the four key jehadi leaders, who were becoming increasingly vocal in their condemnation of Musharrafs policy of slavery to the Americans, were placed under house arrest in their respective home towns in the Punjab province. A countrywide crackdown was launched against activists of the jehadi organizations, who were furious over General Musharrafs U-turn on support for jehad in Afghanistan. Groaning under US pressure, Islamabad had to temporarily stop cross-border infiltration into Jammu and Kashmir, which eventually reduced violence in the Valley.
As things stand, one can notice that most of the militant leaders and their respective groups, which were made to adopt a lie-low and wait-and-see policy in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks, are once again on the loose. Some of these groups have assumed new identities: Jaish-e-Mohammad has been renamed as Khudamul Islam, and Harkatul Mujahideen is called Jamiatul Ansar. Almost all the major jehadi organisations have re-launched campaigns to recruit volunteers, utilising websites etc., to promote the jehadi culture and attract youngsters. The most effective instruments of these groups to freely propagate jehad are their publications (Ghazwa, Majalla, Zarb-e-Taiba, Shamsheer, Zarb-e-Momin, etc) which together boast a circulation of millions and are distributed free of cost.
In his televised address to the nation on July 21, 2005, a few hours after the failed London bombings, Musharraf renewed his January 2002 commitment to root out the evils of extremism and terrorism from the country. There was nothing new in his speech. The administrative measures for combating terrorism and extremism that he announced were no different from his earlier assurances. Indeed, in his televised interaction with journalists on July 25, 2005, Musharraf declared that the fresh crackdown would not be like the last one, where people were picked up and held for 10-15 days and then released; an open admission that the earlier crackdowns he had ordered were just an eyewash. This raised a basic question if the previous declarations were not followed up with effective action, how would the regime do a better job this time round?
While addressing a crowded press conference in Rawalpindi on July 29, 2005, Musharraf confronted such scepticism, conceding that he had not taken a firm action against the militants since 2002 because he did not have a free hand at that time as a result of an unstable economy, confrontation with India over Kashmir, and insufficient international support for his presidency. He claimed he was now in a much stronger position to campaign against religious militants. I am in a totally different environment. Today, I am very strong. We need to act against the bigwigs of all the extremist organizations. We are not going as fast as I would like to go, the General said.
In response to specific questions on the difference between the crackdowns in 2002 and now, Musharraf said the world and media should not judge the performance of his government through the eyes of the past. Replying to a Western journalists query why he had not been serious in his earlier attempts to curb militancy, General Musharraf retorted, You have to be realistic and take cognizance of the ground situation. By taking stringent action against Islamic fundamentalists, I would have risked the prospect of a million Taliban on the streets of Pakistan.
To judge the general through the eyes of the present, it is useful to note that in the aftermath of the 7/7 attacks, he had once again directed the law enforcement agencies to deal with extremist organisations and the threat of terrorism with their full might. His first declaration was that none of the sectarian and militant groups banned on account of terrorism and extremism would be allowed to operate under any name and those poisoning young minds would be arrested and tried under Anti-Terrorism Laws. By saying so, Musharraf actually repeated his resolve for the third time since 9/11, but without doing anything practical to implement the same.
As far as his declaration to arrest those poisoning young minds is concerned, not even a single key jehadi leader was arrested after the 7/7 attacks in the so-called anti-jehadi crackdown. This included, among others, two Most Wanted militants of the CBI who had allegedly orchestrated major acts of terrorism in India: Prof Hafiz Mohammad Saeed of the Jamaatul Daawa, and Pir Syed Salahuddin of the Hizbul Mujahideen. Similarly, the American Federal Bureau of Investigation wants to interrogate two more jehadi leaders including the Harkatul Mujahideen (now Jamiatul Ansaar) leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman Khalil and the Jaish-e-Mohammad (now Khudamul Islam) chief Maulana Masood Azhar. As things stand, Hafiz Saeed, Masood Azhar, Fazlur Rehman Khalil and Syed Salahuddin are on the loose and most of the extremist infrastructure their groups used to maintain before 9/11 to wage jehad in Afghanistan and Jammu and Kashmir remains intact. The kid glove approach of the Pakistani establishment towards the leaders of the banned jehadi outfits can be gauged from the fact that the Jamaatul Daawa led by Hafiz Saeed was allowed to hold a 25,000 strong public meeting at the Minar-e-Pakistan in Lahore on March 18, 2006.
The second instance is that of Syed Salahuddin, the leader of Hizbul Mujahideen who was shown on television on March 26, 2006, addressing an international conference organised by the Jamaat-e-Islami in Peshawar and attended by a leading Hamas figure, Sheikh Muhammad Sayam and top leaders of the MMA. The third instance is that of a proscribed Sunni sectarian organization Sipah-e-Sahaba (Army of Companions of Prophet Mohammad PBUH) or its reincarnation Millat-i-Islamia, which has been allowed to resume activities in the country. The SSP is one of the five outfits banned by General Musharraf on January 12, 2002. This pro-Taliban organisation whose leadership eulogizes Osama bin Laden, has been allegedly involved in bloody violence. Thousands of the SSP activists took out a rally in Islamabad on April 7, 2006 and distributed pamphlets preaching jehad and hatred against Shias. One of the organisers even thanked the government for allowing the rally.
Analysts give varying explanations why the Musharraf-led administration keeps hobnobbing with these jehadi and sectarian groups. However, the root cause of the problem seems to be the jehadi orientation of the Pakistani military leadership and its continued alliance with fundamentalists. As the head of the Pakistan Army an institution credited with crafting and carrying Pakistans pro-jehad policy in Afghanistan few know more about what goes on in Pakistan than General Musharraf himself. And the fact remains that despite his repeated rhetoric to promote enlightened moderation in the country, Jehad Fi Sabilillah (Jehad in the name of Allah Almighty) continues to be the motto of the Pakistan Army.
To sum up, despite enthusiastic applause from the West for the anti-militancy efforts of Pakistans visionary military ruler, it is evident that much remains to be done on the ground before these efforts actually bear fruit. With changing scenarios all over the world, there has been a change of minds, yet what is required is a change of hearts.
The writer is the former editor of Weekly Independent, currently affiliated with Reuters and the Gulf News
Posted by: john ||
05/13/2006 07:47 ||
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#1
Pakistan is an ally of convenience. Check a map.
From bad to worse in Turtle Bay.
by Joshua Muravchik
SWITZERLAND'S NOMINATION OF ITS NATIONAL, Jean Ziegler, to membership on the U.N. Subcommission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights illustrates in a nutshell (and a nut) why there is so little hope for meaningful reform of the world body.
The subcommission should not be confused with the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, which has just held its last meeting. The commission has been abolished at the initiative of Secretary General Kofi Annan, who lamented that it had become a stain on the U.N.'s reputation. However, the subcommission, which is a body of "experts" rather than diplomats, does not go out of existence with the commission. It presumably will now be linked with the new Human Rights Council, which is slated to replace the commission as part of the overall reform plan.
Ever since the revelations of massive abuses in the U.N.'s Oil-for-Food program for Iraq, "reform" has been at the top of the U.N.'s agenda. And little wonder given that the Volcker Commission, appointed by Kofi Annan to investigate the scandal, found that more than one undersecretary general and Annan's own son were among the program's illicit beneficiaries.
The deeper corruption of the U.N., however, does not consist of acts of individual venality, but of the betrayal of the principles proclaimed in the charter. Nothing has exemplified that better than the organization's tawdry record on human rights. And no individual embodies that tawdriness more exquisitely than Ziegler.
Until now, he has served as the old commission's "special rapporteur on the right to food." A sociologist by training and a politician, Ziegler did not bring to his post any particular expertise on food or agriculture. His credentials were all in the realm of ideology. Ziegler's main idea was anti-Americanism. He was a founding editor of the journal L'Empire, and you don't need many guesses to know which "empire" was the subject. The United States, according to Ziegler, is an "imperialist dictatorship" that is guilty, among other atrocities, of "genocide" against the people of Cuba by means of its trade embargo.
In 1989, Ziegler was one of a group of self-described "intellectuals and progressive militants" who gathered in Tripoli to announce the launching of the annual "Muammar Qaddafi Human Rights Prize," awarded by the government of Libya. Ziegler explained that the purpose of the Qaddafi prize was to counterbalance the Nobel prize, which, he said, constituted a "perpetual humiliation to the Third World."
Winners of the Qaddafi prize have included Fidel Castro, Louis Farrakhan, and recently Venezuela's Hugo Chávez. When no individual of such luminous human rights credentials has presented himself, the award has gone to collectivities. In 1996, it went to a female member of the Cuban Communist party's central committee, a leader of a Ba'ath party women's organization in Saddam's Iraq, and a couple of other "symbols of women's struggle for freedom." In 1990, it went to the "Stone Throwing Children of Occupied Palestine" and in 1991 to the "Red Indians." In 2002, the awardees were "13 intellectual and literature personalities," of whom the most notable were the French Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy and (you guessed it) Jean Ziegler.
The naming of Ziegler did not pass unnoticed and even stirred some protests. In response to these, Ziegler announced that he would turn down the prize on the grounds that he "could not accept an award or distinction from any country because of my responsibilities at the United Nations." At least this is what he told the West. Whether he delivered the same message to Tripoli is unclear, since the Libyan government still lists him as having been one of the 2002 recipients.
As for his work on the issue of food, the nongovernmental organization U.N. Watch has monitored Ziegler's record as special rapporteur. It reports that Ziegler denounced the United States on such "food" issues as the embargo of Cuba on 34 occasions, but "never spoke out for the hungry or criticized any party in 15 of 17 countries deemed by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization to have a man-made food emergency." Like all passionate haters of America, Ziegler also loathes Israel, which he has denounced on dozens of occasions, likening the Gaza strip under Israeli rule to an "immense concentration camp" and demanding suspension of the European Union's trade agreement with Israel.
More's the pity because encouraging and channeling aid to desperately poor people is one of the few areas in which the U.N. has done valuable work. Had Ziegler's post been filled by someone who genuinely cared for starving people, rather an obsessive ideologue, that person might have been able to do some good.
The fact that Ziegler served not one but two terms in his U.N. position illustrates why the U.N. is so impervious to reform. Ziegler was first chosen in 2000 for three years. Conceivably, the member states who voted to approve him knew little of his record. But, three years later, he had given ample demonstration that he intended to use the position to attack America and Israel, while largely ignoring the world's hungry. Accordingly, the United States opposed his nomination for a second term. Australia abstained, while the other 51 members of the Commission on Human Rights, including Canada, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, voted for him.
It is no longer true, as it was during most of the U.N.'s history, that the majority of its member states are dictatorships. But sadly, the record shows that, except for the United States, the democracies are rarely willing to stand on principle against the leftist/Third World-ist ideology that dominates the body.
After decades of absurdities and outrages, such as the selection of the government of Ziegler's ally, Muammar Qaddafi, as chairman of the Commission on Human Rights, the U.N. leadership confessed that the commission had become an embarrassment. At the U.N. summit this past fall, member states agreed to start over by replacing the commission with the new Human Rights Council.
The format of that body was negotiated over the following six months. The United States (and Kofi Annan) backed several proposals designed to make it less likely that the council would be as subservient to brutal dictatorships as the commission had been. One proposal was to make it much smaller. Another was to require that states be chosen for seats on the council by a two-thirds vote. The idea behind both was that they would make it harder for egregious rights abusers to get elected.
The latter proposal was defeated, and the former nearly so: The council will consist of 47 members, down only slightly from 53 for the commission. In a last desperate stab at establishing some minimal standard for membership on the council, Washington proposed that member states currently under sanction by the Security Council for human rights abuses or terrorism be considered ineligible for membership. At most this would have disqualified a handful of states, but even this lilliputian barrier was deemed too high.
The council, in short, will be the commission all over again. Apparently it will inherit the subcommission and with it, almost surely, Jean Ziegler, who is at this time one of only three nominees for the three seats apportioned to the Western group. This hero of Qaddafi's is a symbol--both ridiculous and painful--of an organization that rarely fails to disappoint.
Joshua Muravchik, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author of The Future of the United Nations: Understanding the Past to Chart a Way Forward (AEI Press).
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
