It’s not a conspiracy, it’s ‘Regime Change’
Ahmed Quraishi

IT doesn’t take a genius to figure out why the crooked Princess Ferragamo, Benazir Bhutto, has returned to Pakistan. Bhutto’s been traipsing all over Washington trying to garner support from think-tank heavies and establishment powerbrokers to help her stage a political comeback in Islamabad. She even hired a high-powered public relations firm to polish her image so the media wouldn’t focus too much attention on her past transgressions. Allegations of money laundering and corruption have haunted Bhutto ever since she was driven from office in 1996. Last month, General Musharraf cut a deal with Bhutto which freed her from the prospect of criminal prosecution and allowed her to return home. The arrangement ignored the judicial system entirely. The $1.5 billion that she and her husband allegedly “received in a variety of criminal enterprises” has simply disappeared down the memory hole.
Another titbit the media seems to breezily disregard is Bhutto’s role in supporting Islamic extremism; the very dragon she is now expected to slay. According to Wikipedia: “It was during Bhutto’s rule that the Taliban took power in Kabul and gained prominence in Afghanistan. She viewed the Taliban as a group that could stabilize Afghanistan and enable trade across the Central Asia republics. Her government provided military and financial support for the Taliban, even sending a small unit of the Pakistani army into Afghanistan.”
But, then, anyone can make a mistake and Bhutto has since offered her sincere regrets and promised to rid Pakistan of the ‘scourge of terrorism’. This must be music to the ears of her new patrons in Washington. It’s astonishing how quickly one can “see the light” when their career depends on changing their point-of-view. U.S. historian, Arthur Herman, in a letter published in the Wall Street Journal, described Bhutto as “One of the most incompetent leaders in the history of South Asia;” adding that she and other Pakistani elites hated Musharraf because he is “muhajir”, born of Indian Muslims. Herman claims, “Although it was muhajirs who agitated for the creation of Pakistan in the first place, many native Pakistanis view them with contempt and treat them as third-class citizens.” [Editor’s note: Pakistan is a free society and we have all shades of opinion, but it is beyond doubt that a majority of Pakistanis are Pakistani nationalists who generally do not think along such divisive lines.]
Herman makes an interesting point. Perhaps, Bhutto saw the footage of Hurricane Katrina—where the mostly poor, black Americans were herded cattle-like into the Superdome at gunpoint—and realized she could find common-ground with the Washington political class. After all, she matriculated at Harvard and Oxford, so we can expect that her views are not that different from other ‘bluebloods’ who regularly defend discrimination, waterboarding, endless war and other shocking abuses on the op-ed pages of America’s leading newspapers. In any event, she was certainly persuasive when she addressed members of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) on Aug 15, 2007. She seemed to fit right in with the gathering of corporate chieftains, media bigwigs and other assorted political elites. There was plenty of back-slapping and jocularity as CFR President Richard Haas introduced his distinguished guest, Bhutto, to the assembled throng:
“It’s hard to imagine someone better placed to speak about the current situation in Pakistan than Benazir Bhutto. She was born into one of Pakistan’s leading political families. She was educated at both Harvard and Oxford. And — full confession — let me say that she and I met some — at the risk of being less than gallant — 30 years ago or so at Oxford. We would have met even earlier than that, at Harvard, except she got accepted and I did not. (Laughter.) And of such things history is made. (Laughter.) I’m almost over it, by the way. (Laughter.)” [http://www.cfr.org/publication/14041/]
Ha, ha, ha. Allow me to extract this silver spoon from my mouth long enough to assure you that Madame Bhutto has an acceptable pedigree to oversee our colony in Pakistan and will execute our military plans to expand the war into the tribal areas of Waziristan spreading suffering and death to another corner of the world which hasn’t yet been thoroughly obliterated by our ambition for global domination. Ha, ha ha. Bhutto was asked directly about the so-called Miranshah agreement which Musharraf worked out so that he could withdraw Pakistani troops from North Waziristan where his army was sustaining heavy losses. Musharraf had only won minor concessions from the tribal leaders who were supposed to limit their support for the Taliban. The treaty was a complete hoax designed to extricate Musharraf from an ‘unwinnable’ war that was universally unpopular with Pakistanis.
Unfortunately, the treaty turned out to be Musharraf’s death sentence. When it became clear to Bush and his neocon colleagues that Musharraf would not carry out their war agenda; they began to sharpen their daggers and plan for his removal. That is why Bhutto was exhumed from her Dubai mausoleum long enough to play a part in this latest Bush comic operetta.
This has nothing to do with ‘democracy promotion’. It’s just another grim chapter in the ‘colour-coded revolution’ digest. The whole performance is being staged courtesy of the U.S. intelligence agencies and the compliant establishment media. Bush doesn’t care about democracy any more than Bhutto. What he’s looking for is someone who’ll take on the Taliban in Waziristan. That’s it. And that’s why Musharraf’s days are numbered.
Bhutto, addressing the CFR crowd:
“I rejected that ceasefire of September 2006 — the peace treaty — and we rejected the ceasefires before that. In fact, we were appalled that the tribal region of our country was handed over to foreigners, because Afghan Taliban, Afghans and al Qaeda are added to the Chechens and the Uzbeks. And this is Pakistani territory, and Pakistan has to protect its own territory. So we’ve been absolutely appalled by that. And we think the first thing the government of Pakistan has to do is to take the territory back. We’ve ceded authority of our own territory, and it’s not enough to satisfy the agenda of the Afghan Taliban or the Arab al Qaeda or the Central Asian Uzbek-Chechen. They’re now knocking on the doors of our frontier province.”
So there it is—Bhutto’s Faustian bargain in black and white—‘Get rid of Musharraf and I’ll fight your bloody war.’ What could be clearer?
Bhutto also promised her audience that she would promote democracy, but not democracy that creates a “Hamas-type solution.” Oh no; that would be carrying democracy too far. Besides, it is so upsetting to go through all the trouble of conducting “free elections” when, right after, the errant voters have to be starved and randomly bombarded for choosing the wrong party. What Bhutto wants—and what the membership of the CFR wants—is managed elections that produce “real democracy”, the type that increases Washington’s power over its subjects. An article in Counterpunch by Bhutto’s niece, Fatima, summed up Bhutto’s real feelings about democracy like this: “Ms. Bhutto’s political posturing is sheer pantomime. Her negotiations with the military and her unseemly willingness until just a few days ago to take part in Musharraf’s regime have signalled once and for all to the growing legions of fundamentalists across South Asia that democracy is just a guise for dictatorship.” (Fatima Bhutto, “Aunt Benazir’s False Promises”.)
Indeed. Although, now, Bhutto has been given a media makeover and is being portrayed as a Pakistani Joan of Arc pumping her fist into the air defiantly and barking patriotic slogans into her bullhorn for her motley collection of devotees. Meanwhile, her arch-nemesis Musharraf has morphed into this month’s Adolph Hitler; temporarily edging out Hugo Chavez, Vladimir Putin and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Over and over we hear the same worn mantra: Musharraf arrested the lawyers. Musharraf suspended the constitution. Musharraf declared martial law. Musharraf is a tyrant. Of course, all of these are completely irrelevant. The only reason Musharraf has come under fire is because the Bush administration has decided that its time for regime change in Islamabad. Now, some critics are saying that Musharraf is worse than Saddam. By supporting regime change we are tacitly endorsing the Bush Doctrine and everything connected to it. We are endorsing the clandestine interventions which destabilized Lebanon, Georgia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Belarus. We are endorsing the coups d’etats in Haiti and Venezuela. We are endorsing the aggression against Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia. We are endorsing the ethnic cleansing, the collective punishment, the killing of civilians, the cultural annihilation, Shock and Awe, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, Falluja, and the utter destruction of Iraqi society. We are endorsing the claim that one nation has the right to unilaterally violate the national sovereignty of another country, without authorization from the United Nations, simply to advance its own geopolitical ambitions.
That’s what regime change really means and after 7 years of unrelenting violence—one million dead Iraqi civilians, 4 million refugees, and entire region of the world in chaos—it is a wonder that any sane person can knowingly support this same bloody policy? The media will undoubtedly continue this cruel farce. In fact, they are already ratcheting up the pressure by suggesting that the U.S. must play a more active role in “protecting Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal” (No mention of yellowcake uranium, yet) Even NPR’s so-called “liberal” commentator Daniel Schorr has lent his voice to the usual crowd of media alarmists: In a recent commentary Schorr warned:
“The magnitude of the martial law crackdown suggests a deeper fear. Some analysts suspect that the fear is nuclear that Al Qaida terrorists may somehow gain access to Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal and wage, what some have called, nuclear jihad; nuclear Holy War….Until recently the Pakistan nuclear arsenal has been considered safe…According to the Washington Post the U.S. learned in 2001 that Pakistani scientists had shared secrets with Al Qaida… Officials have long believed that the likeliest source of a nuclear leak would be Pakistan. Those fears have come alive again.” Good work, Dan, “nuclear jihad”; very clever. Now explain to me how the uncorroborated fear-mongering of NPR’s “senior analyst” is any different from the incoherent ravings of David Horowitz? They are identical. The media is, once again, creating the rationale for meddling in the domestic affairs of a sovereign foreign nation. We’re being told that Pakistan is “too critical to America’s national security” for us to simply remain on the sidelines. We are being set up for another foreign policy fiasco. When will we learn to stop butting into other people’s business?



Glimmer of hope
Farish A. Noor

THIS week marked a landmark of sorts in the history of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), that was formed in 1967, as part of a broader attempt to keep the Southeast Asian region tactically ‘neutral on the side of the West’ during the Cold War. As most political observers know by now, Asean may well claim to be the only other working and workable multi-national regional bloc next to the European Union, and it is true that in many ways it has served its role in keeping the region clear from the fallout of the Cold War of the 1960s-1980s. Not only was the region spared the worst of the violence and conflict, it had also successfully worked towards the rehabilitation and re-entry of Vietnam back into the international community.
The recent meeting of Asean leaders in Singapore, however, witnessed the signing of the first Asean Charter that may well become the basis of what may eventually develop to be a regional grouping that has more than a General Secretariat and offices in the capitals of each member state. For the first time, the Asean Charter tries to lay down the fundamental guidelines and rules of membership and association with it, though it is nowhere near the EU that has developed to the point of creating a single universal currency and where a sense of common EU citizenship has developed in time. No, unfortunately Asean has been hampered from the beginning by what the region’s leaders refer to as the Asean way of doing things, which is nothing more than a polite euphemism for saying that the member states of Asean shall not interfere in the domestic affairs of other member states. Of course, by now this practice of non-interference has incurred a terrible cost to the regional grouping’s credibility as a whole.
For a start, Asean’s cosy little arrangement has allowed the member states of the grouping to literally get away with murder. At the peak of military excesses and the rise of army-backed dictatorships in the region, Asean stood passively by while some of the worst human rights atrocities of the late 20th century were acted out before their very eyes: The declaration of martial law in the Philippines during the time of President Marcos led to the killing of thousands of Filipinos deemed to have held leftist sympathies; the rise of the colonels regime in Thailand witnessed the appalling violence in the restive south; and of course, Asean did little when Indonesia — then under former President Suharto — sent its troops into West Irian and later East Timor in 1974.
The only thing that saved the governments and leaders of these Asean countries up to the 1990s was their steadfast and public commitment to support the Western agenda and their professed love for Washington and the American government. It may seem like an academic point for some, but it can and has been argued that neither the Filipino dictator Marcos nor the Indonesian strongman Suharto could have lasted as long as they did without the support of the United States and their other Western strategic and commercial allies.
So can Asean, after delaying for so long, get its act together and finally put together a system that allows for greater accountability, transparency and even democratisation; apart from mere conflict-resolution and damage control? The new Asean charter spells out the framework for what is said to be the first Asean Human Rights body, though already sceptics have pointed to the fact that the Asean Human Rights body does not really have any teeth and it remains impossible for any individual citizen of any of the member states to take a case against his or her own government to that regional body. Furthermore, despite freedom of movement (as visa restrictions no longer apply to Asean citizens travelling to any Asean country) there is precious little in terms of the development of a common sense of Asean citizenship and solidarity. Til today, the schools of the member states of Asean still do not have a single universal history textbook that teaches the collective history of Southeast Asia and its peoples and cultures to everyone. (Understandable to some extent, for one wonders how the history of East Timor would be taught and understood by Indonesians who were, for a long time, seen as the oppressors in that small young country.)
Window-dressing aside, it would seem that there is some realisation at least that the institutions of state in Asean were due for a make-over and overhaul. In Burma, recently we have witnessed the rebirth of a pro-democracy movement that was brutally held down by a military government unable to listen to the will of the people. Shortly before the Singapore Asean summit, another pro-democracy movement was nipped in the bud in Vietnam, which led to several arrests. While in Malaysia the streets of the capital were packed with 40,000 demonstrators calling for free and fair elections. These developments point to the fact that there has and continues to exist a strong civil society in the Asean region that perhaps the leaders of the Asean countries themselves are unaware of.

—Khaleej Times






Oil costs & development
Fidel Casto Ruz

Chávez Said it very clearly in Riad: developing countries spend upwards of a trillion dollars in oil and gas. He proposed that the OPEC, which was nearly dissolved before the establishment of the Bolivarian government –which chaired and preserved this organization over 8 years– assume the tasks the International Monetary Fund was created for but has never fulfilled.
The dollar is in a state of free fall, he said. We are paid with paper notes. We can and ought to guarantee a supply of fuel, both to developed countries and to those struggling to develop that need to import it. The OPEC can grant development credits with long grace periods and a yearly interest of only 1 percent that poor countries can pay with the goods and services they can produce. He mentioned the sum of 5 billion dollars in development aid which Venezuela loans Caribbean countries which desperately need to import this essential commodity.
Chávez could invoke an illustrative example which Cuba is well aware of: with what it costs to import a single barrel of oil at the end of 2007, 13.52 tons of light oil could have been purchased in 1960, including their transportation, that is to say, nearly 50 times the amount today. In these circumstances, a country like the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela would continue to supply the United States with oil, a non-renewable resource, for practically nothing. The earth would continue to sink as its oilfields are drained of the oil that supports them.
I can imagine what headaches these calculations bring him and see how just and noble are his hopes for equality and justice for the peoples of what Martí called our America and Bolívar, in his struggle against the Spanish empire, described as a single nation. At the time, a balance could still be maintained. Neither the empire’s diabolical idea of transforming food into fuel, nor the climate changes science has discovered and proven, still existed.