The current worst case scenario that worries me is if there is a major terrorist strike on American soil, during a time when the public doesn't trust the President or Congress; when the military is stretched thin; and when the politicians will be more reluctant than usual to do unpopular things that might need to be done.
Nothing in the body.
The cycle of violence in recent years is as follows:
1. Musharraf's Military government in Pakistan is in political trouble domestically.
2. Terrorist attack in India follows.
3. Moronic editors in the West urge West to prop up Musharraf - e.g.
essentially saying that the blowing up of Indians in their capital is a threat to Musharraf; Musharraf is our bulwark against Islamic Fundamentalism in Pakistan, we need to do more to prop him up.
4. Infusion of foreign aid or arms or political support to Pakistan. Temporary increase in foreign reserves, signs of progress.
5. The military cannot rule effectively. They know nothing of economics or schools or sewers. Investors continue voting with millions of dollars a day legally or illegally leaving the country.
6. Back to step 1.
What people who peddle nonsense like the Times of London above don't realize is that the fundamental problem with Pakistan is Musharraf; he is no more against Islamic extremism than Osama bin Laden; it is a vital instrument of state policy.
Why should anyone not in South Asia care? Because the Lashkar-e-Taiba that Musharraf supposedly banned at the behest of the US, still operates with impunity. This supposedly banned organization was purchasing a helicopter for earthquake relief in Pakistan. How does a banned organization get to do that?
LeT operatives have been arrested, in Europe and in Australia, for planning terrorist attacks there, and they should be considered to be an ally of al Qaeda.
Until the world wakes up to the fact that the Pakistani regime is more dangerous than Iran or Syria, and deals with it accordingly, there will be no end to terrorism.
Just watched C-SPAN, the hour and seven minutes or so of Patrick Fitzgerald. After a long time, I felt again that the world had something to learn from America.
The law and the integrity of its process are one of our great values. If some prosecutor in, say, India, draws inspiration and courage from this example, and likewise in other corners of the world, then there might even be some net good out of the sorry story that lies behind the indictment.
Some people in Washington also had a lesson to learn as well, it seems. Fitzgerald pointed out that perjury and obstruction of justice are prosecuted routinely in New York and Chicago and Philadelphia. The unspoken point was why should Washington DC be any different.
Nothing in the body.
Bush is going to nominate Patrick Fitzgerald to the Supreme Court. First thing Friday morning.
:) :) :)
Next week, the Bush Administration is said to be set to announce the sale of 80 F-16s to Pakistan.
This week, the Swedish company Saab announced that it has a billion dollar deal with Pakistan to supply it with a airborne surveillance system.
No doubt these advanced systems will provide warmth and comfort to the people stranded in the snow-bound hills this winter.
Just in case the soldiers freeze their toes, the military is carefully putting tents provided for relief into storage, according to Human Rights Watch.
I've been a subscriber to the New York Times since 1998, if not earlier. It has utterly disgraced itself, and I urge all subscribers to suspend their subscription until the NYT comes clean, apologizes and does a house-cleaning.
Nothing more to say.
I have observed that bringing "bad news" to one's management in the corporation is not a career-enhancing move. The "bad news" may be simply the reality that a particular project simply cannot be done with the allocated money, people and time. But this is limited to my experience, and I cannot generalize.
However, reading the New York Times today, in particular, about the New Orleans catastrophe, I was struck by how many times the warnings of engineers and scientists of impending catastrophe were ignored by our leaders, the people in the position to be able to authorize the recommended mitigatory actions.
Then there is the non-reality based Iraq war, the rising debt and vanishing savings of the American family, the possible housing bubble, the burgeoning national debt for which one day we all shall pay; that US Intelligence was aware of the ringleader of the 9/11 plot, and so on.
Is this a problem of the Bush years? Casting my mind back, I can think of at least two examples that show it is not. The first is, in the aftermath of the first Shuttle disaster, physicist Feynman castigating NASA management for evading reality about the real risks of space shuttle flight, what he said can be found here
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
The second example has to do with the Internet stock bubble. The bubble was based in part on the utterly unsupported claim that Internet traffic was doubling every three months. This claim was endorsed by, among others, the Chairman of the FCC. The research that showed that there was no basis to this claim was mostly ignored.
The myth of the Internet explosion led to many disastrous consequences for the United States; its telecom industry is in shambles, and the myth led to e.g., Bernie Ebbers of Worldcom being able to fool a lot of people for a long time.
But people were willing to be fooled. The information was out there. For NASA management, there was what the engineers were saying. For the investors of the bubble years, the lack of evidence for various business plans and results was also apparent.
e.g.,
Second Thoughts on the Information Highway
by Clifford Stoll
Doubleday, 1995
From somewhere comes the hubris that reality can be infinitely manipulated to obtain whatever one wants.
Abdel-Moneim Said writes that the predominant Indian response to centuries of brutal exploitation by the British was a peaceful, constructive one. This has led to a nation, that is more forward-looking than backward-looking. So he calls for some introspection in the Muslim world as to whether terrorism
is a product of a sense of injustice and persecution felt by some Muslims in response to certain events and circumstances in the Arab and Islamic world, or whether it is a manifestation of a specific ideology that sanctions killing as part of its mission to establish a system of rule and social organisation that achieves deliverance in this world and the next.
Nevertheless, regarding Mahatma Gandhi, who is referred to in the article, and regarding the partition into India and Pakistan, which is also mentioned in the article, there is a certain irony. Before Gandhi, politics in India was limited to the small numbers educated people. Gandhi created mass politics in India. But Gandhi was confounded by the Muslims of India, they were quite difficult to mass-mobilize for the cause of Indian independence. In the 1920s, the Muslims were more energized by the fate of Ottomans and the Caliphate, in a phenomenon similar to today, when Pakistanis are typically more exercised over the Palestinians' lack of franchise than their own similar shortfall. So Gandhi decided to hitch their concerns to the Independence movement, and the non-cooperation movement he launched in the 1920s had dual goals - of Indian Independence and of restoration of the Ottoman Caliphate.
In doing so, Gandhi forfeited the support of one class of Muslim leaders - most notably, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the Father of Pakistan. Then, the Non-Cooperation movement exploded into violence. A mob attacked a police station in Chaura Chauri, people were killed. Gandhi suspended the Non-Cooperation movement, fearing that the violence would spread. This suspension of the struggle was considered to be a betrayal by the Muslim leaders with whom Gandhi had made common cause. Ultimately it was this class of people, led by Jinnah, who led the successful movement to partition India.
The Pakistan part is now quite backward looking. In the words of Stephen Cohen, in The Idea of Pakistan (page 174)
Even before 9/11, the more Islamist elements of the Pakistan Establishment held that the rest of the world, especially Christians, Jews and Hindus, feared Islam's progressive, reformist qualities and were intent upon keeping Islamic countries backward. Thus Pakistan's material and military backwardness is easily explained: it is due to Pakistan's religious and social greatness, and to a worldwide conspiracy to prevent it from acquiring modern technology and weapons. Thus the threat to Pakistan increases as it becomes purer, more Islamic; Islamic superiority explains Muslim inferiority.
One should be clear, Gandhiji did not have a high opinion of modernity. Asked about western civilization, he quipped that it would be a good idea. Gandhi thought that the Industrial Revolution had destroyed the dignity of human labor. Perhaps in some sense, Osama bin Laden has a higher regard for modernity - technology, at least - than Gandhi. So, forward-looking does not mean necessarily embracing technology, progress, and so on. Then, I'm also reasonably sure that Hitler embraced technology, progress, whatever. Forward-looking comes from recognizing that the only legitimate power I may have is that of peaceful persuasion. From that core, everything else arises.
In the 64th district, Munshiganj, where there were no bomb blasts, 120 bombs were seized by the police on the next day ((source)
The bombs injured around 150 people and killed two; their intention seems to have been not to kill but a show of strength.
This map makes the point quite clear.
Meanwhile, Taliban-like forces terrorize the country-side. (e.g., this
The young man's feet were tied to a tree, his head dangling inches above the ground. A microphone was held to his mouth while he was tortured so that the villagers who were not present to witness the "trial" could hear his screams.
The first to hear them were the men in uniform who did not stir from the police station, not far from the tree. The screams rose and fell till the man was dead.
Their mission accomplished, the killers issued fresh warnings to villagers against straying from the Islamic way, swore their loyalty to Bangla Bhai and left the scene.
The incident is one of about 500 cases of killing and torture by Bangla Bhai's armed Islamic bands that were documented by Taskforce Against Torture, a human rights group founded in Bangladesh three years ago.
Indian retired police officer,now commentator KPS Gill writes:
Today, the Islamists, led by the Jamaat-e-Islami, who collaborated with Pakistan in the atrocities of 1971, as well as Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence, are again firmly entrenched in the country's politics, its Government, and crucially in its institutions of education and mass culture.
The coordinated series of 459 explosions within a single hour across 63 of Bangladesh's 64 districts on August 18, 2005, was little more than the visible tip of the menacing iceberg that threatens this luckless country. All societies that foster terrorism have eventually themselves fallen prey to this scourge.
Bangladesh cannot be an exception, though the country's political leadership has sought to cover up the realities of state complicity with flat denials of state support to extremism and terror, even as they have sought to mask the steady spiral towards thuggish Islamist extremism, lawlessness and disorder.
Indeed, the falsification has gone well beyond the state. A wide range of international institutions and foreign Governments have contributed directly to the deception, speaking in glowing terms of Bangladesh's arguable 'successes' in development, in health sector reforms, in population control, and in non-governmental sector operations, all of which have been projected as examples for other developing countries to follow.
The truth of the comprehensive political mischief and administrative mismanagement in Bangladesh has systematically been brushed under the carpet.
This truth is now becoming increasingly difficult to conceal, even in the most prejudiced circles, and despite the state's relentless policy of suppression of the national Press and of denial of access to the international media.
It is significant in this context that an independent study carried out by Foreign Policy and the Fund for Peace, which drew up a listing of 60 of the world's failed and failing states on the basis of twelve specific "indicators of instability", placed Bangladesh at the 17th position, among the 20 'critical' states that are most at risk.
There is, unfortunately, no evidence of any visible transformation in the trajectory of politics or of the orientation of the state in Bangladesh, despite the country's growing difficulties.
A vigorous American response is necessary to keep Bangladesh from becoming another jihad factory.
