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Secrets of Natural Energy
Monday, November 12th, 2007
The Sands Arts Centre (downstairs room) 7.30 p.m.
Tuesday November 20th .
To continue the successful evening which was held in September, we have a variety of speakers on the subject of ‘Secrets of Natural Energy.’
Update by Derek Ellis from Stavely-in-Cartmel who is at present working on the development of a generator powered by water. He is also working on water powered vehicle technology.
Presentation by John Blacker of Hest Bank MSc IMI, with film footage of American born Stanley Meyer who discovered the amazing release of power from water by passing a sound frequency through it
Presentation by David Boyle of Blackpool who has formed a company called ‘Solar Steel’ and this technique uses the power formed by expansion and contraction of metal using the sun.
Presentation by Roy Watkins who co-owns Ulverston Natural Health Centre
and who has been following a Dublin company ‘Steorn’s’ claim that revolving magnets can produce free, clean and constant energy.
As usual, the presentations will be followed by discussion and planning for future events.
There is free admission and donations are welcome. Any monies collected will help fund speakers’ expenses and our chosen worthy cause which is Elizabeth Beckett of Alston Cumbria.
Have Your Say: Secrets of Natural Energy
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Loose Change Final Cut - The Evidence
Monday, November 12th, 2007
Tim Sparke
The Evidence That What Really Happened At 9/11 Has Been Covered Up: As Shown In Loose Change Final Cut.
The evidence collated in the film, when viewed in its totality now proves beyond reasonable doubt that the official story of 9/11 cannot be true. The film includes the allegations that:
1) At least 6 of the alleged named 9/11 hijackers match the names of 6 Arabs who were trained at US military bases. We have obtained letters under the US Freedom of Information act showing this. In addition, two of the alleged named hi-jackers shared a home with an FBI informant.
2) That US agents had been tailing the hi-jackers prior to 9/11 and made three attempts to inform the FBI - each time the meetings were cancelled. The US government denies any foreknowledge of the identities of the hi-jackers. The film proves that the Able Danger investigation did collate significant information regarding the activities of the alleged hijackers in the months prior to 9/11 – that much of this material was destroyed, but some of it still exists.
3) That the man who according to the FBI and the Wall Street Journal funded 9/11, and sent Mohammad Atta $100,000, was none other than the head of the Pakistan Secret Service. He was meeting with key US government officials on the morning of 9/11. He ‘retired’ one month after his meetings.
4) That Dick Cheney was warned that a plane was going to hit the Pentagon. That officials requested permission to shoot it down and he refused to give that permission, effectively condemning 120 US patriots to be killed. This is backed up by testimony we have obtained by Norman Mineta, US transportation secretary at the time of 9/11. This video evidence was presented to the 9/11 commission but was conveniently ‘lost’. We have obtained his testimony as reported to the 9/11 commission, and we have separately interviewed Mr Mineta who re-confirms his version of events.
5) That the part of the building which was hit at the Pentagon was, according to Donald Rumsfeld investigating a missing a possible 2 trillion dollars….we have film of Rumsfeld confirming the investigation into the possible missing 2 trillion, shot the day before 9/11 on 10th September 2001.
6) Expert testimony confirming that building 7, the third building which imploded on the afternoon of 9/11, could only have been brought down by controlled demolition - there is no other plausible explanation.
7) Expert testimony from Mechanical Engineer Gordon Ross confirming: ‘The official story of how the twin towers collapsed defeats two laws of physics’. His peer reviewed paper has not been refuted by any official US government agencies.
The film also show’s utterly damming evidence regarding how the Bush Administration forced the EPA to change the air quality warnings about the safety of breathing in toxic fumes from the dust that covered Manhattan in the days after 9/11 condemning thousands to a slow death.
This is just some of the remarkable evidence set out in the film.
The film has been fact checked for accuracy by Dr David Ray Griffin and we can source every claim made.
Have Your Say: Loose Change Final Cut - The Evidence
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‘I feared I’d end up dead in the woods like Dr Kelly’
Monday, November 12th, 2007
‘I feared I’d end up dead in the woods like Dr Kelly,’ says biological warfare expert who criticised Britain and U.S.
By GLEN OWEN and OLIVER WADESON
An EU expert on biological warfare has told how she fears ending up ‘dead in the woods’ like scientist Dr David Kelly after an alleged campaign of intimidation by members of MI6 and the CIA.
Jill Dekker, a bio-defence expert based in Brussels, has reported a string of sinister incidents – including the parking of a hearse outside her house – after making a speech critical of British and American policy in the Middle East.
Her claims are included in a new book by Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker which argues that Dr Kelly was murdered to silence his criticism of the grounds for going to war in Iraq.
American-born Dr Dekker has been billed at security conferences as the director of the ‘public health preparedness programme’ at the European Homeland Security Association (EHSA), a security think tank.
She was placed under the protection of the Belgian government after reporting a series of sinister incidents earlier this year.
The Belgians confirm that they mounted a three-month protection operation earlier this year for Dr Dekker, who has advised the European Commission on bio-terrorism issues, but refuse to be drawn on the extent to which her fears were wellfounded or why the protection was eventually lifted.
The EHSA bears many of the hallmarks of a ‘front’ organisation for espionage activities, although Dr Dekker refuses to say anything about it except that it answers to the French government.
Established in 2004, it holds workshops and conferences, and claims partnerships with a number of security-based thinktanks around the world.
It appears to exist only in cyberspace, with its staff, including its president, French career diplomat Richard Narich, only contactable by email. Dr Dekker is not listed on the EHSA website and the organisation was yesterday not responding to any calls.
Dr Dekker says the ‘intimidation’ against her started in March, as she was flying to Florida to give a speech on Syria’s weapons programme to an intelligence summit. She says she was subjected to a ‘heavy-handed’ interrogation by a man she suspects of being a British intelligence operative.
She believes the speech made her powerful enemies because she argued that billions of dollars spent by the US government to develop a smallpox vaccine has been wasted because scientists – including British experts – have used a different viral strain to the one she believes is being developed in Damascus.
Scroll down for more…
‘Mysterious’: The hearse which Jill Dekker followed and photographed
If this is true, it means governments would have no way of protecting the public against the use of the virus by terrorists or rogue states.
She also believes that Iraq did have a biological weapons capacity which was all shipped to Syria before the outbreak of war.
She argues this was known, but was concealed from the public because the real purpose of the war was not to target weapons of mass destruction but to topple Saddam Hussein and gain a strategic foothold in the region.
When she returned to her home in Belgium after the speech she said she was subjected to an overt campaign of surveillance and harassment, including being continuously followed on foot and having cars parked outside her house with the headlights on.
On one occasion, she says she found a hearse parked outside her house with the drivers ’staring straight ahead.’ When she approached, it sped off and she pursued it, taking photographs as evidence.
After being told that Mr Baker was writing a book about the circumstances surrounding Dr Kelly’s death, she sent him an email on March 23 designed, she says, to highlight the risk she felt she was under.
Dr David Kelly, the UK’s leading weapons inspector in Iraq, was found dead in 2003
‘I’ve informed all my diplomatic friends that not only am I not suicidal, I am looking forward to my children growing up and . . . also my great career,’ she wrote. ‘Much like other people who suddenly were found dead in woods.’A week later, she wrote: ‘The US State Department and their surrogates… continue to intimidate me and my family – every day they are outside my home, they tail me 24/7 – I believe they could try to kill me so I don’t reveal any more of my research on Syrian biological weapons.’
In a third email in April, she wrote: ‘I refuse to be intimidated by anyone who uses the tactics they used – so unprofessional even people inside can’t believe how they have acted here – it’s like Johnny English [the 2003 spoof spy film starring Rowan Atkinson as an incompetent British agent], really so amateurish. Our services just aren’t what they used to be.’
It is difficult to establish whether there is any truth to Dr Dekker’s claims of harassment, as she refuses to disclose the precise location of her home 90 minutes drive from Brussels for ’security reasons’.
She says the Belgian government extended its protection to her three months ago by making her a Belgian citizen, and is investigating her claims through its public prosecutor’s office. The Government confirms that she is now a Belgian national.
Dr Dekker has given a detailed account to The Mail on Sunday of the alleged campaign of intimidation, which she believes was led by American and British intelligence.
She tells how she was subjected to an ‘amateurish’ interrogation by the British man on the plane to Florida.
‘The plane was absolutely packed, and there was just one seat next to me that was empty. The plane was held up to let the final passenger on board,’ she said.
‘He then started asking me questions regarding my occupation, quite sensitive things about Nato and the like, to the point that I turned and said to him, ‘OK, go down the list’.
‘He then backed off but continued throughout the flight to be intrusive. He had this whole cover story about why he lived in Holland, right down to financial documents he showed me.
He asked me right out of the blue about Isotopes – now there’s a word you don’t hear everyday on a transatlantic flight.’
When she returned to Belgium after the conference she says was followed relentlessly on foot and by car, and had vehicles parked outside her house – often with darkened windows and their headlights fullon in broad daylight.
Of her encounter with the mystery ‘hearse’, she said: ‘No one in our neighbourhood had died and the agents sitting in the front wouldn’t make any eye contact, just stared straight ahead.
‘I was pretty ticked off so I decided to pull my car out and follow them. They took off so fast – they must have been driving at around 100 kph through the countryside. Then they followed me the next day with this hearse with Belgian plates all the way home.’
She says that after ‘making a few calls’, she was placed under the protection of the local police. The ‘campaign’ then stopped, having lasted just over a month.
‘It was unbelievable to me that I had to ask another government for protection against my own,’ she said. She kept a daily ‘harassment’ diary, which she has handed to the Belgian authorities.
Dr Dekker, who says she met David Kelly before the Iraq war at Wilton Park, a countryside conference centre used by the Foreign Office, agrees with Mr Baker’s conclusion that he was murdered.
Dr Kelly, the UK’s leading weapons inspector in Iraq, was found dead in woods close to his Oxfordshire home in 2003, after apparently committing suicide.
He had been highly critical of the intelligence used to justify the invasion of Iraq, and in particular the infamous assertion that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction which he could deploy at 45 minutes notice.
Speculation about potential culprits who might have had a motive to silence him has ranged from ’special ops’ units of the intelligence services to expatriate Iraqi opponents of Saddam.
Mr Baker writes in his book The Strange Death of David Kelly, which is published tomorrow: ‘I have met Dr Dekker on two occasions and had a number of long exchanges with her. She does not strike me as the sort either who would frighten easily, or who would ginger up her story for effect.
‘Rather, she is a somewhat hardnosed, intelligent and knowledgeable woman who has succeeded well in a profession where men predominate. I therefore took it seriously when she emailed me.’
Dr Dekker emerged from the shadows of what she says has been a 20-year career as a scientist in 2005, when internet records show that she was a ‘bio-defence consultant’ for the Brussels-based thinktank New Defence Agenda.
The organisation, which bills itself as ‘platform for discussing Nato and EU defence and security issues’, names former Hong Kong Governor Chris Patten and former Nato secretary general Lord Robertson among its patrons.
But critics have called it the arms industry’s ‘weapon of mass disinformation’ because of the partnerships it has established with companies such as BAe Systems, Lockheed Martin and Thales.
The International Intelligence Summit, which she addressed in Florida, described itself as ‘a nonpartisan, non-profit, neutral forum that uses private charitable funds to bring together intelligence agencies of the free world and the emerging democracies … the purpose of The Summit is to provide an opportunity for the international intelligence community to listen to and learn from each other, and to share ideas in the common war against terrorism.’
The publicity for the conference said: ‘The list of presenters will include many of the top leaders of the intelligence, espionage, counterterrorism and counter-intelligence agencies from around the free world. The Summit is intended to be the most prestigious world conference on international studies, intelligence policy, terrorism, and homeland security.’
The Summit flagged up Dr Dekker by saying she ‘regularly consults with Ministries of Public Health, Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Ministries of Defence on issues related to Mid-East state bio-warfare programmes’.
It added that she ‘has advised the European Commission on bio-terterrorism and stockpiling for Category A bio-warfare agent countermeasures; resulting in (COM (2004) 701 Communication from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament Preparedness and consequence management in the fight against terrorism’.
Asked if she knew anyone who could back up her claims of intimidation, she referred us to one of her friends, who spent 20 years as a CIA officer and now works as a consultant.
He said: “She told me what happened, and I believe it. What she described is known as heavy harassing surveillance, with the purpose of intimidating.”
Dave Thomas, the local police inspector who was entrusted with Dr Dekker’s protection, said he had done so on the orders of the Belgian ministry of the interior.
Speaking in accented English almost as good as his distinctly un- Belgian name would suggest, he said: “It is true that we were told to look after her. They said she was an important person who felt under threat.”
But he did not go into details into what action his force had taken.
A spokesman for the Interior Ministry said the order had come from the country’s Crisis Centre, Belgium’s emergency planning department.
He said: “Jill Dekker specialises in bioterrorism. She reported to us that she felt she was being threatened by foreign intelligence services, and we received an instruction from the Crisis Centre on March 21 that she should be protected. The protection was withdrawn on July 7.”
Last night, Mr Baker said he believed Dr Dekker could have made enemies by exposing a fallacy at the heart of military action against Iraq.
“If the war was really about WMD, then to be consistent we should also invade Syria,” he said.
“Otherwise, it suggests that it was more about giving Saddam a bloody nose.”
Have Your Say: ‘I feared I’d end up dead in the woods like Dr Kelly’
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Blowback, Pakistan-style
Monday, November 12th, 2007
Mark LeVine
The carnage that greeted Benazir Bhutto, the former Pakistan prime minister, upon her return to the country may have occurred in Karachi, but there is little doubt about where the orders came from: the badlands of the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) and neighbouring Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), the home bases of al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
little doubt about where the orders came from: the badlands of the Northwest
Left unsaid, and unquestioned, was why Bhutto is so familiar with “these people,” most of whom are hiding out in the NWFP: The governments she led during the late 1980s and mid 1990s were, in conjunction with Pakistan’s notorious intelligence services (ISI), among the most important sponsors of the Taliban.
Successive Pakistani governments supported the Taliban and the militants who would form the core of al-Qaeda not just because of their role in expelling the Soviets from
As important was the need to co-opt and keep busy this potentially destabilising new force in the complex political landscape of the NWFP.
The problem is that Pakistan’s leaders were viewing the NWFP and FATA
through the same distorted lens as the British did before them, seeing the region as a bastion of backwards tribes which could be manipulated and cajoled into preserving a status quo that left most of the people living in the region among the most underdeveloped people on earth.
The trouble with tribes
The justification for such policies has long rested on the view of the region by outsiders as a primitive tribal system that is incapable of developing on its own terms, if at all. (As one friend in Peshawar, a law professor and rock artist, told me: “People call us walnuts; that is, hard-headed and stupid. I’m regularly asked by Pakistanis in the south if I live in a mud hut.”)
This perception of supposedly primitive tribal peoples is not unique to Pakistan.
Ever since Europe “discovered” the
and began to gain control over Africa and s
And American no less than Pakistani fall prey easily to the allure of “tribes” as the explanatory catch-all for what ails the world.
American history is unimaginable without the ubiquitous image of the Indian “tribes”, and their role as “noble savage” against whom the country’s “frontier personality” developed.
The Dutch, British and French empires also had an ambivalent relationship with what they defined as the “tribes” living in the societies with whom they came into contact.
Dividing, classifying, and managing them (often against each other) was central to successful European trade with, and ultimately control over the
Definition debate
Scholars have had a particularly tough time defining the term. A 1963 article in the British Journal of Sociology well summed up the problem, explaining that tribe was “an everyday word with a vengeance: probably everyone is quite sure what it means”. The problem, of course, was that most people, including many academics, didn’t quite know what it meant, and still don’t.
The views of journalists, commentators and the public at large have been even more problematic.
By and large, most people have simplistically assumed that any society that possessed tribes was technologically, politically and morally “inferior” to and “backwards” vis-a-vis Europe and later the US.
This view has changed little in mainstream policy-making or journalism, as demonstrated by the writings of many commentators, who have often had a disproportionate influence on the formation of US foreign policy in the Muslim world.
For instance, Thomas Friedman famously argued in his first best-seller, From
different from the West because they “have not fully broken from their primordial identities”.
The best way to understand the “tribalism” governing Arab societies, he argues, is to return to the “nomadic Bedouins of the desert” in 7th-century
‘Ancient hatreds’
Robert Kaplan, whose articles and best-selling books have equally influenced government policy-making, also draws on tribal imagery for his analyses.
In his Balkan Ghosts, which influenced Bill Clinton’s decision not to intervene in the Yugoslav civil war, he argues that the war was the result of irrational and irreconcilable “ancient hatreds”, which made it Western intervention futile and even foolhardy.
More recently, Kaplan has argued that the “lawless frontier” and “unreconstructed” - that is, backwards and uncivilised - “tribal people” of the Pakistani-Afghan frontier are principle causes for the spread of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in these regions.
Perhaps the most well known and influential tribalist argument is the Clash of Civilisations thesis of Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington.
This theory enlarges the tribal model to the level of civilisation, and then argues that Islamic civilisation - as if Islam can be reduced to one simplistic representation - is incapable of change, development, or even rational behaviour.
Because of this, the Muslim world must inevitably clash with the secularised, rational and enlightened West.
Tribes and tribalism
Of course, the fact that tribes and tribalism are politically charged and confusing terms doesn’t mean that there aren’t political groupings in the Muslim world define themselves in ways that roughly correspond to the English word tribe.
From pre-Islamic times through today, Arab and Muslim societies more broadly have defined and differentiated their identities through kinship and similar relationships that fit the broad usage of the term.
They trace their lineages back to common ancestors, and ensure communal solidarity - what the great Arab sociologist Ibn Khaldun famously termed asabiyya - through marriages to members of the same kinship networks and other mechanisms for securing loyalty to the tribe (qabila, a word whose Arabic root connotes hospitality and agreement).
Tribal affiliations and loyalties have long played a crucial role in securing rights to land, particularly in the Afghan-Pakistani border regions that today are part of the NWFP and FATA.
Both regions, which together comprise almost 100,000sq km, are composed of at least a dozen tribes belonging, largely, to the Pashtun ethnic group.
Pashtun pride
Pashtuns have long been known for their refusal to submit to foreign domination, and the more than a dozen tribes of the regions that would become the NWFP and FATA fought a succession of outside powers in the 18th and 19th centuries, including the Mughal, Afghan, Persian and British empires, in their quest to retain as much local autonomy as possible.
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| Pakistani government forces are engaged in a difficult battle in the tribal areas [EPA] |
The British alone engaged in well over four dozen “expeditions” in the frontier or tribal areas between 1847 and 1908, as part of the struggle for control of these strategically important regions against Czarist Russia.
Despite the regular and large scale use of force - in the first war with the Pashtuns, 14,800 soldiers went into the Tribal Areas, only one came out alive - the British never managed to secure full control over them.
This was a primary reason why the government of
Significant autonomy
The NWFP was created by the British in 1905 as a reflection of the need to offer significant autonomy to the region’s Pashtun majority if a semblance of order was to be maintained.
Its seven agencies or districts reflected not just the power of Pashtun identity, but the enduring impact of Arab, Hindu, Sikh, Dravidian, Sindhi and Punjabi influences, and the confusing interplay of caste and tribal structure as well.
Religiously, Sufism rather than the orthodox Islam today associated with the Taliban was dominant in the region.
Given the circumstances that led to its creation, it’s not surprising that the tribes of the NWFP have born the stamp of criminality since the days of British rule.
First, they were defined by the “Criminal Tribes Act” of 1871. Until 1917, tribes were classified as “Backwards Classes” or “primitive”, and were divided into “criminal and wandering tribes, aboriginal tribes, and untouchables.” Even today, the region is governed by the “Frontier Crimes Regulation Ordinance” (FCR), which continues the centuries old tradition of governments equating the frontier regions with lawlessness and criminality.
The British placed Peshawar, capital of the NWFP, under direct federal administration to ensure a modicum of control of the surrounding areas by the central government. But in the NWFP and what would become the FATA, tribal customs were allowed to govern most aspects of people’s lives, as they do today.
Politically, when provincial elections were held beginning in 1935, the leaders of the main tribes, or maliks (often referred to as “feudal lords” in the West, and by some Pakistanis as well) were most often elected to the local or national assemblies, extending their local power by participating in the emerging British, and then Pakistani, state structures.
As the central government attempted to exert greater power over the frontier and tribal regions, however, the long-standing tensions between the secular laws of the state, the Sharia, or Islamic Law, and urf, or local customs, grew.
Aggravating the situation was the fact that the NWFP and FATA were home to a particularly powerful code of ethics and behaviour, known as Pashtunwali, or the Pashtun way.
Powerful obligations
Pashtunwali is based on the powerful obligations to provide hospitality and sanctuary, even to one’s enemies, yet at the same time to exact revenge at all costs against any slights against one’s honour, or that of members of one’s family, clan or tribe.
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| Musharraf’s popularity has plummeted as he prosecutes an unpopular war on terror [AFP] |
The code also requires Pashtuns to abide by the decisions of the council of tribal leaders when they meet in the assembly known as the jirga, which adjucates disputes and feuds.
The overall system long served not just to maintain honour (which is what most Western commentators focus on), but equally important, to maintain a rough equality and balance of power between and within tribes.
This function is crucial because in the imperial as well as globalised eras, external forces have exercised power precisely by disturbing local equality, or at least stability, in order to create new political orders more favourable to their interests.
Indeed, this process generated significant instability in the tribal regions in the decades leading up to the creation of Pakistan, as economic transformations in India and neighbouring regions increased the power of previously minor tribal leaders at the expense of the more established maliks.
They in turn aligned themselves with the British and later central Pakistani governments to retain their hold on power.
Threat of instability
As is so often the case in countries under colonial rule, the very system that the British imposed to maintain order politically was threatened by the instability their economic and military policies generated.
As time wore on, the increasing power, corruption and exploitation of the “big Khans” (as the maliks are also known) encouraged the rise of a new generation of charismatic religious figures, and eventually the Taliban.
Their egalitarian and purified vision of a just Islamic order was more in line with local customs and ideals than were the actions of the politically connected major land-owning maliks.
What is particularly dangerous about this dynamic is that the coming together of the Taliban and the tribesmen brought into synergy two seemingly contradictory positions.
The anti-nationalist and pan-Islamic identity of the often foreign-born Taliban (much of it inspired by the writings of the Pakistani theologian and activist Mawlana Mawdudi), ranged against the particularistic and locally rooted identity of the region’s tribal groups.
As important, the Taliban brought in their own, much needed financial resources to the region. Their activities were supported by a succession of Pakistani governments, by the US and
Saudis, and by remittances sent home by migrants working in the wealthy Gulf countries.
History of rebellion
The local people offered hospitality, generations of anger at the central government, and a history of violent rebellion under the banner of Islam.
This combination of economic, geostrategic, political and ideological interests made the NWFP and FATA a natural base for the jihadi movements after the Afghan war.
The growth of the heroin and arms trades, and other cross border smuggling (especially of Chinese-made goods, much of them pirated), also increased the power of the new religious forces and the growing number of tribal leaders who were aligned with them.
As the US Institute of Peace concluded in a 2002 conference on the NWFP, “These new leaders have effectively captured the various forms of simmering discontent within the tribes and have emerged as more legitimate defenders of tribal interests.
“The foundations of Pashtun identity have changed with perhaps a permanent turn towards Islamism and movement away from traditional secular, tribal leadership.”
Complicating matters even more was that the central government’s main intelligence network, the ISI, simultaneously encouraged, infiltrated, and sometimes fought against the Pakistani Taliban and various jihadi groups.
Dashed dream
The founders of Pakistan, Muhammad Jinnah, and Allama Iqbal imagined their hoped for country as a “land of the spiritually pure and clean” people.
Their vision never approached reality, as from the start
Indeed, the new state quickly reinforced the most corrupt and exploitative dynamics of British rule, a reality that helped drive the leadership of East
The Pashtun peoples of the NWFP and FATA have never had a cohesive enough nationalist identity to break away from the rest of the country.
In fact, their relative independence depended on the region’s continued function as a buffer between Pakistan and its western neighbours, as well as on the very absence of state authority that has been an important cause of the region’s many economic and political woes.The ambivalence towards the state by local forces reflects the larger contradictions of life in the NWFP and FATA, which literally jump out at you when you travel through them. Signs welcoming you to the “land of hospitality” alternate with those that warn “Foreigners, keep out.”
Rampant illiteracy
Smugglers markets sell the latest high tech electronics, as well as advanced weapons, drugs and pornography. Innumerable English language and computer schools, and one of
The two regions are awash in money, but most is derived from the local gray and black economies.
The state pledges increased funds for local development, yet 60 years after independence it has not managed to build a modern road into the provincial capital of Peshawar.
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| The ambivalence towards the state reflects the contradictions of life in the tribal belt [GETTY] |
The government decries the prevalence of tribal customs, yet it continues to administer the regions based on customary practices such as the collective punishment of tribes.
Dictatorship is defended by appeals to fighting the terror it helped breed, while agreements designed to rein in the Taliban (such as the much-criticised 2006 Miranshah agreement between the government and tribal and Taliban leaders in
Taliban and al-Qaeda to regroup and grow.And now, the political situation has become so contradictory as to border on the absurd.
Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto is being called upon to save the country from the Taliban, when her government did perhaps the most to build up the Taliban.
She is supposed to bring a breathe of political fresh air (which would be much appreciated, given the pollution levels across the country), but she was twice removed from power because of corruption.
Interpol even issued arrest warrants for Bhutto and her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, otherwise known as “Mr Ten Percent” for the kickbacks he allegedly demanded from businesses during her time as prime minister.
What can Bhutto do?
It is hard to imagine what Bhutto will do that Musharraf hasn’t already done, or how she will succeed where he has, at least in Washington’s eyes, failed.
Indeed, it should surprise no one when, despite the horrific attack against her, Bhutto proves as incapable - or unwilling - to crush the Taliban and al-Qaeda as previous governments have been, including her own.
 |
| It is hard to see what Bhutto can what Musharraf hasn’t already done in the war on extremists [AFP] |
That’s because ultimately, the tragic reality of Pakistan is that the forces tearing the country apart are the same ones that are holding it together.
The central government is too weak and corrupt to implant or impose a strong, national identity or programme of development in the manner that Ataturk did in Turkey or Lenin and Stalin did in the Soviet
The very process of doing so would likely trigger widespread social unrest, disintegration and even civil war.
The suicide bombings against Bhutto’s welcome home procession are only a taste of the chaos and large-scale violence that would erupt if a politician or party actually challenged the finely honed corruption and horse-trading that has defined Pakistani politics for generations.
Although its causes would owe as much to economic and political inequalities as to religious or tribal ideologies, such a development would inevitably be interpreted as yet another example of “ancient tribal hatreds” dooming a developing country to perpetual war and poverty.
Only this country is a nuclear-weapons state that is home to the world’s most dangerous terrorists. And unlike
Mark LeVine is professor of modern Middle Eastern history at UC Irvine in California, USA, and author and editor of half-a-dozen books, including Why They Don’t Hate Us: Lifting the Veil on the Axis of Evil (Oneworld, 2005) and the forthcoming Heavy Metal Islam: Rock, Religion and the Struggle for the Soul of Islam (Random House/Verso) and An Impossible Peace: Oslo and the Burdens of History (Zed Books). He is a regular commentator on Al Jazeera’s The Listening Post. www.culturejamming.org
Have Your Say: Blowback, Pakistan-style
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Administration officials see few options for U.S.
Monday, November 12th, 2007
For more than five months the United States has been trying to orchestrate a political transition in Pakistan that would manage to somehow keep Gen. Pervez Musharraf in power without making a mockery of President Bush’s promotion of democracy in the Muslim world.
On Saturday, those carefully laid plans fell apart spectacularly. Now the White House is stuck in wait-and-see mode, with limited options and a lack of clarity about the way forward.
General Musharraf’s move to seize emergency powers and abandon the Constitution left Bush administration officials close to their nightmare: an American-backed military dictator who is risking civil instability in a country with nuclear weapons and an increasingly alienated public. [complete article]
Editor’s Comment — While the neoconservatives are waging a hysterical campaign targeting unrealized nuclear risks in Iran, the fearmongers have had little to say about the nuclear actualities in Pakistan. Indeed, we now know that for decades American administrations and Congress looked the other way while Pakistan both developed its own weapons program and created the most extensive clandestine proliferation network ever known - a network that is believed to remain in tact and in operation even though in February 2004 its chief of operations, AQ Khan, was forced into what could best be described as early retirement. Paradoxically, while the drumbeat for bombing Iran grows increasingly loud, there is a stunning silence in response to the preeminent risk for nuclear terrorism. Washington’s Faustian pact with General Musharraf is now unraveling, yet we are blithely assured that Pakistan’s weapons and nuclear materials will remain safe, whoever rises to power. We have seemingly entered a Through-the-Looking-Glass world where nuclear weapons that do exist are less dangerous than those that can be imagined.
For more revelations on Washington and Islamabad’s twisted relations, read this:
‘Bush winked at Pakistan’s nuclear proliferation’
Chidanand Rajghatta, Times of India, September 5, 2007Successive US administrations winked at Pakistan’s clandestine nuclearisation and its rampant proliferation activities, and Washington continues the charade of normalcy although proliferation activities continue to this day, an explosive new book on the subject has revealed.
The disclosures in the book Deception: Pakistan, the United States and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons by Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark, which is to be released next week, are nothing short of stunning.
It charges US President Bush of perpetuating deceit in an elaborate American charade that forgave Pakistan for its nuclear transgressions as a price for keeping it from becoming an even more dangerous proposition - in other words, succumbing to Pakistani blackmail.
Describing the episode in which US officials confronted Pakistan’s military ruler Pervez Musharraf with evidence of its nuclear proliferation, the authors say “American officials knew that Musharraf had known about the nuclear trade all along. And Washington had itself not only turned a blind eye to Pakistan’s nuclear bomb project for decades but had covered it up for imperative geopolitical reasons, even when Islamabad began trading its secret technology.”
The authors credit then Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage of conceiving the drama in which Musharraf would promise to shut down Pakistan’s nuclear black market in return for winning continued US support for his unelected regime.
It was agreed that A Q Khan and his aides would be arrested and blamed for “privately” engaging in proliferation. “The country’s military elite - who had sponsored Khan’s work and encouraged sales of technology to reduce their reliance on American aid - were left in the clear,” the authors say, adding that “Bush subscribed to the deceit.”
However, in a worrying new claim for Washington’s non-proliferation pundits, who have spent the last two decades chasing WMD phantoms in all the wrong places, Pakistan’s proliferation has not stopped even now.
They say new intelligence reports show that Pakistan is procuring a range of materials and components that “clearly exceeds” what Islamabad needed for its domestic nuclear program.
KRL labs, A.Q.Khan’s old facility, had continued to coordinate the Pakistani sales programme and now runs a network of front companies in Europe, the Gulf and southeast Asia which deployed all the old tricks: disguising end-user certificates by shielding the ultimate destinations from sellers, and lying on customs manifests.
Most alarming, say the authors, was the finding that hundreds of thousands of components amassed by Khan, including canisters with radioactive material, had vanished since he had been put out of operation.
In other words, they write, Pakistan has continued to sell nuclear weapons technology (to clients known and unknown) even as Musharraf denies it - “which means either that the sales are being carried out with his secret blessing or that he is no more in control of Pakistan’s nuclear program than he is of the bands of jihadis in his country.”
The book then quotes Robert Gallucci, a former US diplomat who tracked Islamabad’s nuclear program from inception in 1972, as describing Pakistan as “the number one threat to the world at this moment.”
“If it all goes off, a nuclear bomb in a US or European city, I’m sure we will find ourselves looking in Pakistan’s direction,” says Gallucci.
Such observations, and other disclosures in the book, hasn’t made the slightest impression on Washington, which continues a decades-long wink-wink policy that has made Pakistan’s into what experts are increasingly
describing as the world’s most dangerous country.The Bush administration continues to back Musharraf and is trying to engineer a coalition between the military ruler and former PM Benazir Bhutto. The latest experiment does not address the nuclear proliferation issue, where Washington is yet to even question A.Q.Khan even as Pakistan spirals out of control.
“The tragedy is that America’s gamble on Musharraf has not paid off…Musharraf presides over a country that is not only still a nuclear proliferator but the real source of the Islamist terrorism menacing the West,” say Levy and Clark-Scott.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-2338421,prtpage-1.cms
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My enemy’s enemy shouldn’t always be my friend
Monday, November 12th, 2007
By Brian Vogt
The outlook is looking increasingly gloomy for democracy in Pakistan. Our erstwhile ally in the war on terror, General Musharraf is looking worse by the day. After he took power in a bloodless coup in 1999, many Pakistanis were hopeful about the future. They were happy to be rid of a corrupt leader and willing to take a chance on Musharraf. Polls indicate, however, that they have soured on his leadership. And it’s not surprising why. After having regularly promised free and fair elections, Pakistan’s electoral efforts have fallen short. Musharraf’s seems to have a messiah complex and his justifications for his actions seem increasingly weak. Moreover, Musharraf’s alliance with the US has also hurt him with the Pakistani public that is increasingly skeptical of the war on terror. For the Pakistani public the “war on terror” is just considered a convenient excuse for further autocratic rule.
The New York Times reported that Musharraf caught word that the Supreme Court was about to issue a unanimous decision invalidating his recent election. Of course, Musharraf wasn’t about to let that meddling court have its way. He had learned his lesson in his tussle earlier this year with the Chief Justice. He therefore dismissed the court and we’re left today with an increasingly isolated and unpopular leader who justifies his continued abrogation of the constitution on the spurious grounds that it is necessary to combat terrorist elements. Sound familiar? I wonder if in a one on one meetings with President Bush, they exchanged notes on using the “terrorist” threat to bypass constitutional controls on power.
Of course, the U.S. is in a bind here. President Bush has publicly declared that democratic governance is the long term answer to overcoming violent extremism. It can give hope and dignity to oppressed people around the world who might otherwise choose terrorism. I agree that certainly it is a component of the solution - a very long term solution. However, this long term solution comes into conflict with our short term dilemma that Pakistan is ground zero on the war on terror. After 9/11 Musharraf signed onto the coalition of the willing and has been rewarded handsomely in terms of massive infusions of aid. The results of Musharraf’s alliance have been mixed. Certainly Pakistan’s assistance has led to the arrest and detention of high value targets and Pakistan’s support of our Afghanistan mission has been important. However, at the same time, Pakistan’s inability to control its own territory and reign in the Al Qaeda elements in the country have made many wonder whether we are getting our money’s worth.
It’s really a question here of short term vs long term interests. Unfortunately, in the past we too often have tended to focus on short term results and ignore the potential blowback from those actions. Just think back to the struggle in Afghanistan against the Soviets in the 1980s. Back then the US backed the mujahideen which, after the end of the Afghanistan conflict, led to the formation of Al Qaeda. The U.S. followed the old maxim, my enemy’s enemy is my friend. That sort of short term thinking contributed to the development of Al Qaeda and the foreign policy quagmire we find ourselves in now.
Flash forward now to the current situation in Pakistan. We can either support a dictator who has declared himself our friend against Al Qaeda (our once friend turned enemy), or we can support the long term stability of the country through the building of democracy.
The tragedy here is that this is just one example of the U.S. ignoring the potential blowback of its decisions - think U.S. support of Iraq against Iran…. or U.S. support of right wing dictators in Latin America who stood up against communism.
It’s time that we stood up for democracy. It can be messy, and it may mean short term losses, but in the long run, this will be the more effective bulwark against Islamic extremism.
What does this mean in Pakistan? Well, for one, we should get serious about withholding the massive budgetary supports we provide to the Pakistani government until elections are confirmed and Musharraf agrees to step down from his military position. The Bush administration seems to be trying to take both side on this. Yesterday the President recounted a phone call during which he pressed the general on these two issues. However, just a day before, Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte said that Musharraf was an “indispensable” ally on the war on terror. With that kind of “diplomatic pressure” I wouldn’t be surprised if Musharraf calls our bluff.
Some critics argue that if Musharraf falls, we won’t like what takes his place. However, this paper argues just the opposite. We must not ignore the lessons of the past. Although maintaining support for Musharraf may lead to short term stability, if we’re interested in long term gain, I’d rather put by my money on democracy. It’s hard and it’s messy, but it’s the best way out of this mess.
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Will 9/11 and BAE Derail Cheney’s Plan To Bomb Iran?
Monday, November 12th, 2007
Two recent events, both occurring in the context of Saudi Arabian King Abdullah’s visit to London at the end of October, have once again cast the dark shadows of 9/11 and the BAE scandal over Vice President Dick Cheney. Coupled with mounting opposition to Cheney’s war schemes from within the U.S. military and factions of the Bush Administration, as well as from Persian Gulf states, Russia, and even Israel, the spotlight, once again focussed on two of the biggest Cheney-linked scandals, could help derail the Vice President’s accelerating drive for a U.S. bombing of Iran, and avert what would certainly devolve into a new Eurasian Hundred Years War.
On Nov. 1, Prince Bandar bin-Sultan, the longtime former Saudi ambassador in Washington, and the current national security advisor to King Abdullah, gave an interview to the Arabic-language satellite TV network Al-Arabiya, in which he made the startling claim that the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks could have been avoided, if the United States had taken Saudi intelligence efforts more seriously.
Bandar claimed that Saudi intelligence was “actively following” most of the 9/11 hijackers “with precision,” prior to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. “If U.S. security authorities had engaged their Saudi counterparts in a serious and credible manner, in my opinion, we would have avoided what happened.”
Finger-Pointing on 9/11
Bandar’s accusations that the U.S. government could have stopped 9/11, had they pursued leads provided by Saudi intelligence, were met with skepticism by some U.S. intelligence officials consulted by EIR. They pointed to EIR’s own June 29, 2007 revelations, drawn from the 9/11 Commission Report and other sources, that then-Saudi Ambassador Bandar had funnelled more than $50,000 through two Saudi intelligence operatives, to some of the 9/11 hijackers. One source emphasized that the Bandar payments were so controversial that a 28-page segment of the 9/11 Commission report, dealing with this incident, was classified and blocked, to this day, from publication. But the Prince’s charges of U.S. failures, leading to the 9/11 attacks, could signal a rift between the Saudi prince and his “war party” ally Dick Cheney, that could set back the Vice President’s schemes to build up a Sunni versus Shi’ite confrontation in the Persian Gulf—a scheme he launched with his November 2006 trip to Riyadh, arranged by Bandar personally.
Whether legitimate or not, Prince Bandar’s extraordinary claims mirrored comments made by King Abdullah on Oct. 29, in an interview with the BBC on the eve of his state visit to London. King Abdullah claimed that British authorities also failed to listen to Saudi intelligence warnings about terror plots in England; and the July 7, 2005 London subway bombings, which killed 52 people, could have been prevented, if British authorities had acted on specific warnings passed from Riyadh in advance of the attacks.
U.S. intelligence sources, canvassed by EIR following the Bandar and Abdullah statements, reported that the Saudis had been devastated by the public revelation that 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers had been Saudi nationals, and that they were now launching a public relations offensive to get beyond the stigma. But, the sources observed, the effort to shift the blame for the 9/11 attacks carried considerable risks—for all parties concerned, including the Vice President, who has counted on the Saudis to back up his war plans against Iran.
Bandar’s blunt allegations raised some dramatic questions, which echo charges made by Lyndon LaRouche, most recently, during his Oct. 10, 2007 international webcast from Washington, D.C. In his opening remarks, LaRouche declared: “I shall say, that I do know, beyond doubt, that 9/11 was an inside job. It was an inside job on behalf of what the Bush-Cheney Administration represents.” Later, LaRouche added, “I know more than I’m saying: With complicity of certain people in Saudi Arabia, with the British Empire, which shares power with Saudi Arabia, through the BAE, a job was done on the United States on 9/11. And we’ve been living under the heat of that, ever since. That I stand by. Other facts will come out at a suitable time.”
With Bandar’s charges that U.S. officials failed to cooperate with the Saudis, who were tracking the 9/11 hijackers “with precision,” a question must be posed to Vice President Cheney and others inside the Bush White House:
Did the Saudis, in fact, provide the Bush-Cheney Administration with “actionable intelligence” on a pending al-Qaeda attack on America? By July 2001, both the FBI and the CIA were circulating warnings about an al-Qaeda terrorist action. On July 10, 2001, then-CIA director George Tenet and Cofer Black, the Agency’s counterterrorism director, met with National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Attorney General John Ashcroft, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to sound the alarms about an imminent al-Qaeda attack, but they were given the “brush-off”—by Rice, in particular.
This led up to the now infamous Aug. 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing, with a section titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside US,” which again warned of imminent al-Qaeda terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, based on a pattern of U.S.- and foreign-generated intelligence.
Despite all of the FBI and CIA warnings, and the new claims by Prince Bandar that Saudi Arabia had also been warning about pending al-Qaeda attacks on the U.S.A., the Bush-Cheney White House did absolutely nothing to act on the warnings.
Who bears the greatest burden of responsibility within the U.S. government for 9/11, whether or not the Bandar allegations pan out? At the time of the 9/11 attacks, Cheney was the counter-terrorism czar at the White House, a title bestowed on him by President Bush on May 17, 2001—at the very moment that the White House was shelving the findings of the Hart-Rudman U.S. Commission on National Security, which conducted a two-and-a-half year study of America’s vulnerability to terrorist attack, and demanded a major overhaul of U.S. domestic security planning and structures.
The Bandar accusations, on the heels of the LaRouche Oct. 10 webcast, are now certain to push the 9/11 matter back onto the front burner, which is particularly bad news for Cheney, whom LaRouche has branded the “Hermann Göring” of the Bush Administration.
The BAE Scandal: Back With a Vengeance
With much pomp and circumstance, King Abdullah paid a state visit to Great Britain during the last week of October, in what was billed as the “Two Kingdoms” celebration. Over 500 people accompanied the King—including Prince Bandar, Defense Minister Prince Sultan (Bandar’s father), Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, and Interior Minister Prince Naif.
The visit once again placed a spotlight on the scandal surrounding the longstanding “Al-Yamamah” arms-for-oil deal between Britain’s premier arms manufacturer, BAE Systems, and the Saudis. Vince Cable, the acting leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, boycotted the entire British-Saudi ceremony in protest over the British government’s coverup of the BAE scandal, and over Saudi human rights violations.
As one of his last official acts as Prime Minister, Tony Blair had ordered the Serious Fraud Office to shut down its investigation into the Al-Yamamah deal—including the reported $2 billion in kickbacks paid to Prince Bandar, the architect of the entire arms-for-oil scheme, since the mid-1980s. Just before packing his bags and leaving 10 Downing Street, Blair had signed a new BAE arms deal with the Saudis, worth an estimated $20 billion.
As EIR exclusively revealed earlier this year, the real BAE Al-Yamamah scandal centered around a $100 billion offshore covert action fund, which was administered by the British, with Saudi complicity and American participation, utilizing the spot market sales of the Saudi oil, paid to BAE for the weapons and support systems. These clandestine funds, according to Bandar’s semi-authorized biography, went to a wide range of secret war schemes, including bankrolling the Afghani mujahideen, who battled the Soviet Red Army in Afghanistan throughout the 1980s; arming Chad with Soviet-made weapons, to repel a Libyan invasion in the late 1980s; and U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia, bypassing Congressional oversight. Some of the BAE slush funds went to Bandar—and may have even been part of the money that went to some of the 9/11 hijackers, through Saudi intelligence operative Osama Basnan.
According to one U.S. intelligence source, the resurfacing of the BAE Al-Yamamah scandal during the Saudi royal visit to Britain could lead to new frictions between Riyadh and London. In an interview with BBC during the visit, Prince Faisal answered a question about the BAE scandal, saying that the focus of any investigation should be on the party that did the bribing, not on the recipients—i.e., blame BAE for any funny money passed to Prince Bandar.
The BAE scandal remains a subject of serious investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice. So far, according to official sources, the probe is centered around possible BAE violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act—for making the $2 billion in payoffs to Bandar, via Saudi bank accounts at Riggs Bank in Washington, D.C. If the DOJ investigation were to be expanded to include money laundering, the finances of the Saudi Embassy, during Bandar’s more than two decades as ambassador, could be opened to scrutiny. And that is something that Dick Cheney, the Republican National Committee, and a whole lot of others do not wish to see happen
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Let us never forget - As True As Ever
Monday, November 12th, 2007
Remembrance Sunday is perhaps the saddest days in the UK calendar.
As a mark of respect to all those who should have lived fuller lives had the powers that be been blessed with more courage to solve differences by intellectual means & persuasive argument, not violence.
Here are 5 songs of which ask us all to show more respect and tolerance to fellow inhabitants of this planet.
Judy Collins - Turn Turn Turn
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DejUPN4SksU
Blowing The Wind - Peter, Paul and Mary
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LoBwkVLVKU
Donovan - Universal Soldier
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrPB8TPgs9U
Barry McGuire - Eve of Destruction
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39ESOKkU1ho
Judy Collins - “Amazing Grace”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uG3Xd7ENuyk
Have our current leaders learned anything from the past? Will the seas be red & the land scorched barren before they have had their fill of war profit & Greed? Do they have the courage to solve petty differences by mutual respect and dialog?
Do We have the courage to ensure they do?
Have Your Say: Let us never forget - As True As Ever
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The Spy Who Wants Israel to Talk
Monday, November 12th, 2007
Efraim Halevy, the former head of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, titled his memoirs “Man in the Shadows.” But now that he’s out in the sunlight, the 72-year-old retired spy chief has some surprisingly contrarian things to say about Iran and Syria. The gist of his message is that rather than constantly ratcheting up the rhetoric of confrontation, the United States and Israel should be looking for ways to establish a creative dialogue with these adversaries.
Halevy is a legendary figure in Israel because of his nearly 40 years of service as an intelligence officer, culminating in his years as Mossad’s director from 1998 to 2003. He managed Israel’s secret relationship with Jordan for more than a decade, and he became so close to King Hussein that the two personally negotiated the 1994 agreement paving the way for a peace treaty. So when Halevy talks about the utility of secret diplomacy, he knows whereof he speaks.
Of course, Halevy looks like the fictional master spy George Smiley — thinning hair, wise but weary eyes, the rumpled manner of someone who might have been a professor in another life. And Halevy has the gift of anonymity: You would look right past him in a crowded room, never imagining that he was the man who had conducted daring secret missions. After he appeared here with former CIA director George Tenet at a conference sponsored by the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center, Halevy agreed to sit down for an interview.
Halevy suggests that Israel should stop its jeremiads that Iran poses an existential threat to the Jewish state. The rhetoric is wrong, he contends, and it gets in the way of finding a peaceful solution to the Iranian nuclear problem.
“I believe that Israel is indestructible,” he insists. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may boast that he wants to wipe Israel off the map, but Iran’s ability to consummate this threat is “minimal,” he says. “Israel has a whole arsenal of capabilities to make sure the Iranians don’t achieve their result.” Even if the Iranians did obtain a nuclear weapon, says Halevy, “they are deterrable,” because for the mullahs, survival and perpetuation of the regime is a holy obligation.
“We must be much more sophisticated and nuanced in our policies toward Iran,” Halevy contends. He argues for a combination of increased economic pressure and a diplomatic opening that attempts to speak to Iran’s “national aspirations” and its shared interests with America and the West — and even Israel.
“Iranians, including those in government, know that acceptance of Israel is not just something they have to accept but something that might bring their deliverance,” Halevy maintains.
The former spy chief also argues that Ahmadinejad’s fiery rhetoric masks a deep split within Iran over the country’s future. “I believe that behind their bombastic statements there is a desperate fear that they are going down a path that would have dire consequences,” he says. “They don’t know how to extricate themselves. We have to find creative ways to help them escape from their rhetoric.”
Halevy, who made many secret visits to Iran during the days of the shah, argues that rather than rattling sabers the West should be looking for dialogue with Tehran. “A creative and constructive approach to Iran’s concerns — not the dreams of their fanatic president to effect the demise of Israel — might move them to see that their self-interest would be better served by taking alternative paths.”
Halevy takes a similarly contrarian view about Syria. “Damascus is now ripe for peace negotiation,” he says. He argues that the Syrians are signaling their interest in such a negotiation and that the details of an agreement were worked out during extensive talks in the 1990s. The Syrian track might be a breakthrough, he argues, because an accommodation with Damascus might bring along the rest of the Arab world, lead to a settlement in Lebanon and undermine Syria’s current alliance with Iran.
If the Syrians are serious about a dialogue with Israel, they should send a clear signal, Halevy advises. They should urge Hezbollah to release the Israeli prisoners it is holding or limit the activities of Hamas offices in Damascus. “Do a little,” he urges the Syrians. “Start the ball rolling.”
Halevy has battled for decades for Israel’s security, launching hundreds of secret missions over the years to defend the Jewish state. So he has earned the right to offer iconoclastic advice about his country’s strategic interests. At this delicate moment, he suggests, war talk about Iran is a mistake. “Sensible Iranians are not in short supply,” he confides. The challenge is to find them and to begin a serious conversation.
The writer is co-host ofPostGlobal, an online discussion of international issues. His e-mail address isdavidignatius@washpost.com.
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How to Destroy an African American City in 33 Steps
Monday, November 12th, 2007
By BILL QUIGLEY
Step One. Delay. If there is one word that sums up the way to destroy an African-American city after a disaster, that word is DELAY. If you are in doubt about any of the following steps–just remember to delay and you will probably be doing the right thing.
Step Two. When a disaster is coming, do not arrange a public evacuation. Rely only on individual resources. People with cars and money for hotels will leave. The elderly, the disabled and the poor will not be able to leave. Most of those without cars–25% of households of New Orleans, overwhelmingly African-Americans–will not be able to leave. Most of the working poor, overwhelmingly African-American, will not be able to leave. Many will then permanently accuse the victims who were left behind of creating their own human disaster because of their own poor planning. It is critical to start by having people blame the victims for their own problems.
Step Three. When the disaster hits make certain the national response is overseen by someone who has no experience at all handling anything on a large scale, particularly disasters. In fact, you can even inject some humor into the response–have the disaster coordinator be someone whose last job was the head of a dancing horse association.
Step Four. Make sure that the President and national leaders remain aloof and only slightly concerned. This sends an important message to the rest of the country.
Step Five. Make certain the local, state, and national governments do not respond in a coordinated effective way. This will create more chaos on the ground.
Step Six. Do not bring in food or water or communications right away. This will make everyone left behind more frantic and create incredible scenes for the media.
Step Seven. Make certain that the media focus of the disaster is not on the heroic community work of thousands of women, men and young people helping the elderly, the sick and the trapped survive, but mainly on acts of people looting. Also spread and repeat the rumors that people trapped on rooftops are shooting guns not to attract attention and get help, but AT the helicopters. This will reinforce the message that “those people” left behind are different from the rest of us and are beyond help.
Step Eight. Refuse help from other countries. If we accept help, it looks like we cannot or choose not to handle this problem ourselves. This cannot be the message. The message we want to put out over and over is that we have plenty of resources and there is plenty of help. Then if people are not receiving help, it is their own fault. This should be done quietly.
Step Nine. Once the evacuation of those left behind actually starts, make sure people do not know where they are going or have any way to know where the rest of their family has gone. In fact, make sure that African-Americans end up much farther away from home than others.
Step Ten. Make sure that when government assistance finally has to be given out, it is given out in a totally arbitrary way. People will have lost their homes, jobs, churches, doctors, schools, neighbors and friends. Give them a little bit of money, but not too much. Make people dependent. Then cut off the money. Then give it to some and not others. Refuse to assist more than one person in every household. This will create conflicts where more than one generation lived together. Make it impossible for people to get consistent answers to their questions. Long lines and busy phones will discourage people from looking for help.
Step Eleven. Insist the President suspend federal laws requiring living wages and affirmative action for contractors working on the disaster. While local workers are still displaced, import white workers from outside the city for the high-paying jobs like crane operators and bulldozers. Import Latino workers from outside the city for the low-paying dangerous jobs. Make sure to have elected officials, black and white, blame job problems on the lowest wage immigrant workers. This will create divisions between black and brown workers that can be exploited by those at the top. Because many of the brown workers do not have legal papers, those at the top will not have to worry about paying decent wages, providing health insurance, following safety laws, unemployment compensation, workers compensation, or union organizing. They become essentially disposable workers–use them, then lose them.
Step Twelve. Whatever you do, keep people away from their city for as long as possible. This is the key to long-term success in destroying the African-American city. Do not permit people to come home. Keep people guessing about what is going to happen and when it is going to happen. Set numerous deadlines and then break them. This will discourage people and make it increasingly difficult for people to return.
Step Thirteen. When you finally have to reopen the city, make sure to reopen the African-American sections last. This will aggravate racial tensions in the city and create conflicts between those who are able to make it home and those who are not.
Step Fourteen. When the big money is given out, make sure it is all directed to homeowners and not to renters. This is particularly helpful in a town like New Orleans that was majority African-American and majority renter. Then, after you have excluded renters, mess the program for the homeowners up so that they must wait for years to get money to fix their homes.
Step Fifteen. Close down all the public schools for months. This will prevent families in the public school system, overwhelmingly African-Americans, from coming home.
Step Sixteen. Fire all the public school teachers, teacher aides, cafeteria workers and bus drivers and de-certify the teachers union–the largest in the state. This will primarily hurt middle class African Americans and make them look for jobs elsewhere.
Step Seventeen. Even better, take this opportunity to flip the public school system into a charter system and push foundations and the government to extra money to the new charter schools. Give the schools with the best test scores away first. Then give the least flooded schools away next. Turn 70% of schools into charters so that the kids with good test scores or solid parental involvement will go to the charters. That way the kids with average scores, or learning disabilities, or single parent families who are still displaced are kept segregated away from the “good” kids. You will have to set up a few schools for those other kids, but make sure those schools do not get any extra money, do not have libraries, nor doors on the toilets, nor enough teachers. In fact, because of this, you better make certain there are more security guards than teachers.
Step Eighteen. Let the market do what it does best. When rent goes up 70%, say there is nothing we can do about it. This will have two great results. It will keep many former residents away from the city and it will make landlords happy. If wages go up, immediately import more outside workers and wages will settle down.
Step Nineteen. Make sure all the predominately white suburbs surrounding the African-American city make it very difficult for the people displaced from the city to return to the metro area. Have one suburb refuse to allow any new subsidized housing at all. Have the Sheriff of another threaten to stop and investigate anyone wearing dreadlocks. Throw in a little humor and have one nearly all-white suburb pass a law which makes it illegal for homeowners to rent to people other than their blood relatives! The courts may strike these down, but it will take time and the message will be clear–do not think about returning to the suburbs.
Step Twenty. Reduce public transportation by more than 80%. The people without cars will understand the message.
Step Twenty One. Keep affordable housing to a minimum. Use money instead to reopen the Superdome and create tourism campaigns. Refuse to boldly create massive homeownership opportunities for former renters. Delay re-opening apartment complexes in African American neighborhoods. As long as less than half the renters can return to affordable housing, they will not return.
Step Twenty Two. Keep all public housing closed. Since it is 100% African-American, this is a no-brainer. Make sure to have African-Americans be the people who deliver the message. This step will also help by putting more pressure on the rental market as 5000 more families will then have to compete for rental housing with low-income workers. This will provide another opportunity for hundreds of millions of government funds to be funneled to corporations when these buildings are torn down and developers can build up other less-secure buildings in their place. Make sure to tell the 5000 families evicted from public housing that you are not letting them back for their own good. Tell them you are trying to save them from living in a segregated neighborhood. This will also send a good signal–if the government can refuse to allow people back, private concerns are free to do the same or worse.
Step Twenty Three. Shut down as much public health as possible. Sick and elderly people and moms with little kids need access to public healthcare. Keep the public hospital, which hosted about 350,000 visits a year before the disaster, closed. Keep the neighborhood clinics closed. Put all the pressure on the private healthcare facilities and provoke economic and racial tensions there between the insured and uninsured.
Step Twenty Four. Close as many public mental healthcare providers as possible. The trauma of the disaster will seriously increase stress on everyone. Left untreated, medical experts tell us this will dramatically increase domestic violence, self-medication and drug and alcohol abuse, and of course crime.
Step Twenty Five. Keep the city environment unfriendly to women. Women were already widely discriminated against before the storm. Make sure that you do not reopen day care centers. This, combined with the lack of healthcare, lack of affordable housing, and lack of transportation, will keep moms with kids away. If you can keep women with kids away, the city will destroy itself.
Step Twenty Six. Create and maintain an environment where black on black crime will flourish. As long as you can keep parents out of town, keep the schools hostile to kids without parents, keep public healthcare closed, make only low-paying jobs available, not fund social workers or prosecutors or public defenders or police, and keep chaos the norm, young black men will certainly kill other young black men. To increase the visibility of the crime problem, bring in the National Guard in fatigues to patrol the streets in their camouflage hummers.
Step Twenty Seven. Strip the local elected predominately African American government of its powers. Make certain the money that is coming in to fix up the region is not under their control. Privatize as much as you can as quickly as you can–housing, healthcare, and education for starters. When in doubt, privatize. Create an appointed commission of people who have no experience in government to make all the decisions. In fact, it is better to create several such commissions, that way no one will really be sure who is in charge and there will be much more delay and conflict. Treat the local people like they are stupid, you know what is best for them much better than they do.
Step Twenty Eight. Create lots of planning processes but give them no authority. Overlap them where possible. Give people conflicting signals whether their neighborhood will be allowed to rebuild or be turned into green space. This will create confusion, conflict and aggravation. People will blame the officials closest to them–the local African-American officials, even though they do not have any authority to do anything about these plans since they do not control the rebuilding money.
Step Twenty Nine. Hold an election but make it very difficult for displaced voters to participate. In fact, do not allow any voting in any place outside the state even we do it for other countries and even though hundreds of thousands of people are still displaced. This is very important because when people are not able to vote, those who have been able to return can say “Well, they didn’t even vote, so I guess they are not interested in returning.”
Step Thirty. Get the elected officials out of the way and make room for corporations to make a profit. There are billions to be made in this process for well-connected national and international corporations. There is so much chaos that no one will be able to figure out exactly where the money went for a long time. There is no real attempt to make sure that local businesses, especially African-American businesses, get contracts–at best they get modest subcontracts from the corporations which got the big money. Make sure the authorities prosecute a couple of little people who ripped off $2000–that will temporarily satisfy people who know they are being ripped off and divert attention from the big money rip-offs. This will also provide another opportunity to blame the victims–as critics can say “Well, we gave them lots of money, they must have wasted it, how much more can they expect from us?”
Step Thirty One. Keep people’s attention diverted from the African-American city. Pour money into Iraq instead of the Gulf Coast. Corporations have figured out how to make big bucks whether we are winning or losing the war. It is easier to convince the country to support war–support for cities is much, much tougher. When the war goes badly, you can change the focus of the message to supporting the troops. Everyone loves the troops. No one can say we all love African-Americans. Focus on terrorists–that always seems to work.
Step Thirty Two. Refuse to talk about or look seriously at race. Condemn anyone who dares to challenge the racism of what is going on–accuse them of “playing the race card” or say they are paranoid. Criticize people who challenge the exclusion of African-Americans as people who “just want to go back to the bad old days.” Repeat the message that you want something better for everyone. Use African American spokespersons where possible.
Step Thirty-Three. Repeat these steps.
Note to readers. Every fact in this list actually happened and continues to happen in New Orleans after Katrina.
Have Your Say: How to Destroy an African American City in 33 Steps
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Cameron, EU Collaborator
Monday, November 12th, 2007
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The UK Column October 2007 - complete copy, (.pdf).
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Is Waterboarding Torture?
Monday, November 12th, 2007
I’d like to digress from my usual analysis of insurgent strategy and tactics to speak out on an issue of grave importance to Small Wars Journal readers. We, as a nation, are having a crisis of honor.
Last week the Attorney General nominee Judge Michael Mukasey refused to define waterboarding terror suspects as torture. On the same day MSNBC television pundit and former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough quickly spoke out in its favor. On his morning television broadcast, he asserted, without any basis in fact, that the efficacy of the waterboard a viable tool to be used on Al Qaeda suspects.
Scarborough said, “For those who don’t know, waterboarding is what we did to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is the Al Qaeda number two guy that planned 9/11. And he talked …” He then speculated that “If you ask Americans whether they think it’s okay for us to waterboard in a controlled environment … 90% of Americans will say ‘yes.’” Sensing that what he was saying sounded extreme, he then claimed he did not support torture but that waterboarding was debatable as a technique: “You know, that’s the debate. Is waterboarding torture? … I don’t want the United States to engage in the type of torture that [Senator] John McCain had to endure.”
In fact, waterboarding is just the type of torture then Lt. Commander John McCain had to endure at the hands of the North Vietnamese. As a former Master Instructor and Chief of Training at the US Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego, California I know the waterboard personally and intimately. SERE staff were required undergo the waterboard at its fullest. I was no exception. I have personally led, witnessed and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people. It has been reported that both the Army and Navy SERE school’s interrogation manuals were used to form the interrogation techniques used by the US army and the CIA for its terror suspects. What was not mentioned in most articles was that SERE was designed to show how an evil totalitarian, enemy would use torture at the slightest whim. If this is the case, then waterboarding is unquestionably being used as torture technique.
The carnival-like he-said, she-said of the legality of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques has become a form of doublespeak worthy of Catch-22. Having been subjected to them all, I know these techniques, if in fact they are actually being used, are not dangerous when applied in training for short periods. However, when performed with even moderate intensity over an extended time on an unsuspecting prisoner – it is torture, without doubt. Couple that with waterboarding and the entire medley not only “shock the conscience” as the statute forbids -it would terrify you. Most people can not stand to watch a high intensity kinetic interrogation. One has to overcome basic human decency to endure watching or causing the effects. The brutality would force you into a personal moral dilemma between humanity and hatred. It would leave you to question the meaning of what it is to be an American.
We live at a time where Americans, completely uninformed by an incurious media and enthralled by vengeance-based fantasy television shows like “24”, are actually cheering and encouraging such torture as justifiable revenge for the September 11 attacks. Having been a rescuer in one of those incidents and personally affected by both attacks, I am bewildered at how casually we have thrown off the mantle of world-leader in justice and honor. Who we have become? Because at this juncture, after Abu Ghraieb and other undignified exposed incidents of murder and torture, we appear to have become no better than our opponents.
With regards to the waterboard, I want to set the record straight so the apologists can finally embrace the fact that they condone and encourage torture.
History’s Lessons Ignored
Before arriving for my assignment at SERE, I traveled to Cambodia to visit the torture camps of the Khmer Rouge. The country had just opened for tourism and the effect of the genocide was still heavy in the air. I wanted to know how real torturers and terror camp guards would behave and learn how to resist them from survivors of such horrors. I had previously visited the Nazi death camps Dachau and Bergen-Belsen. I had met and interviewed survivors of Buchenwald, Auschwitz and Magdeburg when I visited Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. However, it was in the S-21 death camp known as Tuol Sleng, in downtown Phnom Penh, where I found a perfectly intact inclined waterboard. Next to it was the painting on how it was used. It was cruder than ours mainly because they used metal shackles to strap the victim down, and a tin flower pot sprinkler to regulate the water flow rate, but it was the same device I would be subjected to a few weeks later.
On a Mekong River trip, I met a 60-year-old man, happy to be alive and a cheerful travel companion, who survived the genocide and torture … he spoke openly about it and gave me a valuable lesson: “If you want to survive, you must learn that ‘walking through a low door means you have to be able to bow.’” He told his interrogators everything they wanted to know including the truth. They rarely stopped. In torture, he confessed to being a hermaphrodite, a CIA spy, a Buddhist Monk, a Catholic Bishop and the son of the king of Cambodia. He was actually just a school teacher whose crime was that he once spoke French. He remembered “the Barrel” version of waterboarding quite well. Head first until the water filled the lungs, then you talk.
Once at SERE and tasked to rewrite the Navy SERE program for the first time since the Vietnam War, we incorporated interrogation and torture techniques from the Middle East, Latin America and South Asia into the curriculum. In the process, I studied hundreds of classified written reports, dozens of personal memoirs of American captives from the French-Indian Wars and the American Revolution to the Argentinean ‘Dirty War’ and Bosnia. There were endless hours of videotaped debriefings from World War Two, Korea, Vietnam and Gulf War POWs and interrogators. I devoured the hundreds of pages of debriefs and video reports including those of then Commander John McCain, Colonel Nick Rowe, Lt. Dieter Dengler and Admiral James Stockdale, the former Senior Ranking Officer of the Hanoi Hilton. All of them had been tortured by the Vietnamese, Pathet Lao or Cambodians. The minutiae of North Vietnamese torture techniques was discussed with our staff advisor and former Hanoi Hilton POW Doug Hegdahl as well as discussions with Admiral Stockdale himself. The waterboard was clearly one of the tools dictators and totalitarian regimes preferred.
There is No Debate Except for Torture Apologists
1. Waterboarding is a torture technique. Period. There is no way to gloss over it or sugarcoat it. It has no justification outside of its limited role as a training demonstrator. Our service members have to learn that the will to survive requires them accept and understand that they may be subjected to torture, but that America is better than its enemies and it is one’s duty to trust in your nation and God, endure the hardships and return home with honor.
2. Waterboarding is not a simulation. Unless you have been strapped down to the board, have endured the agonizing feeling of the water overpowering your gag reflex, and then feel your throat open and allow pint after pint of water to involuntarily fill your lungs, you will not know the meaning of the word.
Waterboarding is a controlled drowning that, in the American model, occurs under the watch of a doctor, a psychologist, an interrogator and a trained strap-in/strap-out team. It does not simulate drowning, as the lungs are actually filling with water. There is no way to simulate that. The victim is drowning. How much the victim is to drown depends on the desired result (in the form of answers to questions shouted into the victim’s face) and the obstinacy of the subject. A team doctor watches the quantity of water that is ingested and for the physiological signs which show when the drowning effect goes from painful psychological experience, to horrific suffocating punishment to the final death spiral.
Waterboarding is slow motion suffocation with enough time to contemplate the inevitability of black out and expiration –usually the person goes into hysterics on the board. For the uninitiated, it is horrifying to watch and if it goes wrong, it can lead straight to terminal hypoxia. When done right it is controlled death. Its lack of physical scarring allows the victim to recover and be threaten with its use again and again.
Call it “Chinese Water Torture,” “the Barrel,” or “the Waterfall,” it is all the same. Whether the victim is allowed to comply or not is usually left up to the interrogator. Many waterboard team members, even in training, enjoy the sadistic power of making the victim suffer and often ask questions as an after thought. These people are dangerous and predictable and when left unshackled, unsupervised or undetected they bring us the murderous abuses seen at Abu Ghraieb, Baghram and Guantanamo. No doubt, to avoid human factors like fear and guilt someone has created a one-button version that probably looks like an MRI machine with high intensity waterjets.
3. If you support the use of waterboarding on enemy captives, you support the use of that torture on any future American captives. The Small Wars Council had a spirited discussion about this earlier in the year, especially when former Marine Generals Krulak and Hoar rejected all arguments for torture.
Evan Wallach wrote a brilliant history of the use of waterboarding as a war crime and the open acceptance of it by the administration in an article for Columbia Journal for Transnational Law. In it he describes how the ideological Justice Department lawyer, John Yoo validated the current dilemma we find ourselves in by asserting that the President had powers above and beyond the Constitution and the Congress:
“Congress doesn’t have the power to tie the President’s hands in regard to torture as an interrogation technique….It’s the core of the Commander-in-Chief function. They can’t prevent the President from ordering torture.”
That is an astounding assertion. It reflects a basic disregard for the law of the United States, the Constitution and basic moral decency.
Another MSNBC commentator defended the administration and stated that waterboarding is “not a new phenomenon” and that it had “been pinned on President Bush … but this has been part of interrogation for years and years and years.” He is correct, but only partially. The Washington Post reported in 2006 that it was mainly America’s enemies that used it as a principal interrogation method. After World War 2, Japanese waterboard team members were tried for war crimes. In Vietnam, service members were placed under investigation when a photo of a field-expedient waterboarding became publicly known.
Torture in captivity simulation training reveals there are ways an enemy can inflict punishment which will render the subject wholly helpless and which will generally overcome his willpower. The torturer will trigger within the subject a survival instinct, in this case the ability to breathe, which makes the victim instantly pliable and ready to comply. It is purely and simply a tool by which to deprive a human being of his ability to resist through physical humiliation. The very concept of an American Torturer is an anathema to our values.
I concur strongly with the opinions of professional interrogators like Colonel Stewart Herrington, and victims of torture like Senator John McCain. If you want consistent, accurate and reliable intelligence, be inquisitive, analytical, patient but most of all professional, amiable and compassionate.
Who will complain about the new world-wide embrace of torture? America has justified it legally at the highest levels of government. Even worse, the administration has selectively leaked supposed successes of the water board such as the alleged Khalid Sheik Mohammed confessions. However, in the same breath the CIA sources for the Washington Post noted that in Mohammed’s case they got information but “not all of it reliable.” Of course, when you waterboard you get all the magic answers you want -because remember, the subject will talk. They all talk! Anyone strapped down will say anything, absolutely anything to get the torture to stop. Torture. Does. Not. Work.
According to the President, this is not a torture, so future torturers in other countries now have an American legal basis to perform the acts. Every hostile intelligence agency and terrorist in the world will consider it a viable tool, which can be used with impunity. It has been turned into perfectly acceptable behavior for information finding.
A torture victim can be made to say anything by an evil nation that does not abide by humanity, morality, treaties or rule of law. Today we are on the verge of becoming that nation. Is it possible that September 11 hurt us so much that we have decided to gladly adopt the tools of KGB, the Khmer Rouge, the Nazi Gestapo, the North Vietnamese, the North Koreans and the Burmese Junta?
What next if the waterboarding on a critical the captive doesn’t work and you have a timetable to stop the “ticking bomb” scenario? Electric shock to the genitals? Taking a pregnant woman and electrocuting the fetus inside her? Executing a captive’s children in front of him? Dropping live people from an airplane over the ocean? It has all been done by governments seeking information. All claimed the same need to stop the ticking bomb. It is not a far leap from torture to murder, especially if the subject is defiant. Are we willing to trade our nation’s soul for tactical intelligence?
Is There a Place for the Waterboard?
Yes. The waterboard must go back to the realm of SERE training our operators, soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. We must now double our efforts to prepare for its inevitable and uncontrolled use of by our future enemies.
Until recently, only a few countries considered it effective. Now American use of the waterboard as an interrogation tool has assuredly guaranteed that our service members and agents who are captured or detained by future enemies will be subject to it as part of the most routine interrogations. Forget threats, poor food, the occasional face slap and sexual assaults. This was not a dignified ‘taking off the gloves’; this was descending to the level of our opposition in an equally brutish and ugly way. Waterboarding will be one our future enemy’s go-to techniques because we took the gloves off to brutal interrogation. Now our enemies will take the gloves off and thank us for it.
There may never again be a chance that Americans will benefit from the shield of outrage and public opinion when our future enemy uses of torture. Brutal interrogation, flash murder and extreme humiliation of American citizens, agents and members of the armed forces may now be guaranteed because we have mindlessly, but happily, broken the seal on the Pandora’s box of indignity, cruelty and hatred in the name of protecting America. To defeat Bin Laden many in this administration have openly embraced the methods of by Hitler, Pinochet, Pol Pot, Galtieri and Saddam Hussein.
Not A Fair Trade for America’s Honor
I have stated publicly and repeatedly that I would personally cut Bin Laden’s heart out with a plastic MRE spoon if we per chance meet on the battlefield. Yet, once captive I believe that the better angels of our nature and our nation’s core values would eventually convince any terrorist that they indeed have erred in their murderous ways. Once convicted in a fair, public tribunal, they would have the rest of their lives, however short the law makes it, to come to terms with their God and their acts.
This is not enough for our President. He apparently secretly ordered the core American values of fairness and justice to be thrown away in the name of security from terrorists. He somehow determined that the honor the military, the CIA and the nation itself was an acceptable trade for the superficial knowledge of the machinations of approximately 2,000 terrorists, most of whom are being decimated in Iraq or martyring themselves in Afghanistan. It is a short sighted and politically motivated trade that is simply disgraceful. There is no honor here.
It is outrageous that American officials, including the Attorney General and a legion of minions of lower rank have not only embraced this torture but have actually justified it, redefined it to a misdemeanor, brought it down to the level of a college prank and then bragged about it. The echo chamber that is the American media now views torture as a heroic and macho.
Torture advocates hide behind the argument that an open discussion about specific American interrogation techniques will aid the enemy. Yet, convicted Al Qaeda members and innocent captives who were released to their host nations have already debriefed the world through hundreds of interviews, movies and documentaries on exactly what methods they were subjected to and how they endured. In essence, our own missteps have created a cadre of highly experienced lecturers for Al Qaeda’s own virtual SERE school for terrorists.
Congressional leaders from both sides of the aisle need to stand up for American values and clearly specify that coercive interrogation using the waterboard is torture and, except for limited examples of training our service members and intelligence officers, it should be stopped completely and finally –oh, and this time without a Presidential signing statement reinterpreting the law.
http://www.montanawomenfor.org/2007/11/10/is-waterboarding-torture/
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Negativity on Islam ‘fuels tension’
Monday, November 12th, 2007
The UK must be careful how it tackles terrorism and treats Islamic culture if it is to avoid recreating a society reminiscent of Nazi Germany, the head of the Muslim Council of Britain has warned.
Muhammad Abdul Bari, in an interview with the Daily Telegraph, criticised the Government for fuelling tensions in the Muslim community rather than dissipating them.
He told the paper: “There is a disproportionate amount of discussion surrounding us. The air is thick with suspicion and unease. It is not good for the Muslim community, it is not good for society.”
The Muslim leader continued: “Every society has to be really careful so that situation does not lead us to a time when people’s minds can be poisoned as they were in the 1930s.
“If your community is perceived in a very negative manner and poll after poll says that we are alienated then Muslims begin to feel very vulnerable.
“We are seen as creating problems, not as bringing anything, and that is not good for society.”
The Government’s foreign policy and particularly the Iraq war, which he described as a “disaster”, had been used by criminals as a weapon to encourage young people into extremism, he said.
Dr Bari also criticised the head of MI5, Jonathan Evans, for painting a bleak picture of the terrorist threat the night before the Queen’s Speech this week. He said: “I don’t think it was a good thing to share information in this way, I think it is creating a scare in the community and wider society. It probably helps some people who try to recruit the young to terrorism.”
The leader believes integration should be a two-way process and that the emphasis should be on the positive aspects of Muslim culture instead of the threat of al Qaida.
Muslim principles - including stricter attitudes to drinking, sex, marriage, abortion and dress - could improve the country as a whole and add more morality, he argues. Dr Bari said: “Marriage should not be forced on people but parents can be a catalyst… Young people are emotional, they want idealism. Older people have gone through all sorts of things and become a bit more experienced.”
http://news.uk.msn.com/Article.aspx?cp-documentid=6648007
Have Your Say: Negativity on Islam ‘fuels tension’
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