UNITE! Info #302en: On Pakistan, Afghanistan, A-bombs and oil
[Posted: 03.01.2008]
Note: The "UNITE! (etc) Info" posting series (1995-) advocates the
political
line of Marx, Lenin and Mao Zedong. For all items, see
www.rolf-martens.com.
INTRO NOTE
Here I'm reproducing a posting I sent (in two parts) yesterday 02.01 to
the
Pakistan-based mailing list cmkp_pk, at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cmkp_pk/.
The description of that mailing list reads in full,
[QUOTE:]
The CMKP list is a Marxist-Leninist email list with more than 2,700
members to
discuss politics in Pakistan in the international context. This is also
the
list of the "Mazdoor Action Committee Pakistan" (Workers Action Committee)
an
alliance of five working class organizations including:
1) Working Women’s Organization (WWO)
2) All Pakistan Trade Union Federation (APTUF)
3) Anjuman Mazareen Pakistan (AMP)
4) Bhatta Mazdoor Mahaaz (BMM)
5) Communist Mazdoor Kissan Party (CMKP)
In addition, the Progressive Pakistan Movement (UK) will also be utilizing
this
list as a public forum.
The email list is open minded, educational and open to informed opinion.
The
fact that people in Pakistan are questioning and seeking ways of changing
the
status quo is reflective of the wider political trends in the world at
large.
Trends that perhaps our own society would benefit learning from. The CMKP
list
offers us precisely this op****tunity of linking the various struggles in
various parts of the world with the struggle in our own otherwise quite
parochial society. Joining the list is the beginning of globalization from
below.
[END OF QUOTE]
The posting I sent to cmkp_pk was the same as one that I had sent
(likewise in
two parts) earlier yesterday to the mailing lists Modern Marxism and MLL,
though with two additions in the form of some intro lines to cmkp_pk
readers
first and a reproduced piece of new information, which I had seen later
yesterday, last.
[http://groups.yahoo.com/group/modern_marxism/
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxist-leninist-list]
Some news of today:
[http://sydsvenskan.se/sverige/article290783.ece]
Another piece of information concerning Pakistan there is in the local
southern
Swedish newspaper Sydsvenskan today. An article (incorrectly) headlined,
in
translation, "SAAB ignores weapons stop to Pakistan" re****ts that there is
a
contract between the Swedish company SAAB and Pakistan for delivery to
that
country of a radar system for battle control, "Erieye", to be placed on
board
aircraft of the (otherwise civilian) type SAAB 2000, that the Swedish
authority
for weapons ex****t control on 11 November decided on a ban on all new
contracts
for arms to Pakistan - something which however, contrary to the
newspaper's
headline, has nothing to do with the fulfilling of contracts already made,
such
as that one of SAAB's - and further, that infamously pro-US-imperialism
newspaper noted with regret too: Only if there were an embargo decided on
by
the UN or the EU, something which however is nowhere in sight, then the
fulfillment of that contract could have been stopped (and Pakistan's
defence
capability against Sydsvenskan's Big Friend and Master in the world then
not
increased somewhat, as originally planned).
About the fact that the ruling bourgeoisie here in Sweden ("of course")
continues to sell weapons to the USA, a country engaged in open aggression
against Iraq and Afghanistan (for instance), flagrantly in contravention
to
their own law banning all arms sales to countries which are at war
(incidentally, a hypocritical law too, since it makes no difference
between
aggressor and defender), there ("of course") was nothing in that newspaper
article.
Here follows my mailing list posting of yesterday. It comes here in one
part,
not in two as sent.
*Re: Who Killed Benazir Bhutto? [and more on the situation concerning
Pakistan]*
SOME LINES OF INTRODUCTION, TO THE READERS OF cmkp_pk
Greetings to the people in Pakistan! I still know only little about your
country, but I want to express my sup****t for your struggle for democratic
rights and against the reactionary forces in Pakistan, who obviously are
being
propped up internationally by the ruling cliques in the USA, above all,
and by
other international exploiters too, including those in the country from
which
I'm writing, Sweden.
In this posting, my first to the cmkp_pk mailing list, I shall repeat one
which
I sent (likewise in two parts) earlier today to two other mailing lists
(both
considerably "smaller" than yours), where the situation in Pakistan has
been
discussed rather intensively in the last few days, after the foul
assassination
of Benazir Bhutto on 27 December last year. Here I'm first adding some
introductory lines.
My posting now is only touching on a few of the questions that concern
Pakistan
today, and on a few of those concerning neighbouring Afghanistan too.
Concerning the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and concerning some of the
political forces in Pakistan, I expressed as my standpoint and approximate
*****sment the following, in a reply on 28.12 to Taimur Rahman of the
CMKP, who
was the one who tipped off some of us outside your country about the
cmkp_pk
list,
[QUOTE:]
Taimur,
Again I agree with what you are saying.
No doubt Bhutto represented, and PPP represents, bourgeois interests too.
And
the US imperialists may well have hoped that Bhutto's return plus an
alliance
of hers with Musharraf would help "stabilise" the situation in Pakistan,
in
their interests. Haines Brown was right too, I hold, in saying that one
should
at least consider also this factor. Nevertheless, though I don't know much
about Pakistan, it looks to me too that what you are saying is correct and
im****tant, that the PPP were nonetheless a certain ally, even if an
extremely
vacillating one, against military rule and fundamentalism.
....
Of course that assassination was a serious reactionary crime. Among other
things, as introducing that "method" of political struggle, as a method of
terrorizing the people. As you said too:
"But this assassination is a whole different ball game."
Also in your end lines :
"... this event is a very bad thing for the left in the country. The
object of
this assassination is also to paralyze democratic forces with fear",
you clearly are precisely right.
Rolf M.
[END OF QUOTE]
I live in Malmö, Sweden. My website, at www.rolf-martens.com, has as
programme
at its top: "Advocates the political line of Marx, Lenin and Mao Zedong.
Strives to sup****t all actions which favour the vast majority of people."
The mailing lists which I mentioned above, on which the situation in
Pakistan
has been discussed recently, are firstly the list MLL, which has the
address
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxist-leninist-list,
existing
since several years back with some 200 members today, and secondly the
Modern
Marxism mailing list, created by me in August 2007, with the address
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/modern_marxism/
and now 24 members.
It was to those two mailing lists that I earlier today sent that which
follows.
Last in part 2/2 of this posting I'm also adding now one piece of new
information from Taimur Rahman which I only saw after I had sent it, in
its
version to the MLL and MM lists, and which is rather im****tant concerning
one
of the matters discussed in my posting.
[End of my intro lines]
The articles repeated below already are rather long. I'm going to make
this
posting even somewhat longer. For it to reach the list MLL quicker I'm
dividing
it into 2 parts. [Note: This will not show up in this Info.]
BRIEF REPLY TO ALEXANDER ("democrite" <democrite@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>), WHOSE POSTING
IS
REPRODUCED FURTHER BELOW
No, Alexander, I don't agree with you, but am holding on to the *****sment
by
Taimur Rahman and the CMKP (with which I have disagreements too) that the
PPP,
despite that certain involvement with US imperialism which it has, that
party
is a certain, even if very vacillating, ally of the people. The Islamic
fundamentalists and the military clique in Pakistan clearly are rather
much
worse.
And as for international forces, the politicians and the political parties
here
in Sweden, for instance, all staunchly sup****ting the system of
imperialism in
the world with its oppression, exploitation and mass murdering of the
people in
the poorer countries, above all, may be *****sed, I think, as being some
five
times as bad as any political force in Pakistan, and those in the USA, the
main
upholder of this system today, some ten times as bad. This only very
approximately.
Concerning the article (reproduced below) by Fatima Bhutto from
14.11.2007,
which I've now read (I hadn't when I forwarded it), I hold that the line
represented by her there, despite the article's no doubt also pointing to
some
truths, is worse than that of her aunt Benazir.
[Added when I'm posting this to cmkp_pk: But see the recent information
from
Taimur Rahman on a changed standpoint later by Fatimah Bhutto, last in
part 2/2
of my posting now.]
PAKISTAN'S NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARE MAKING IT MORE DIFFICULT FOR THE US
IMPERIALISTS
TO INTERVENE DIRECTLY; THIS SOME OF THEIR PUPPETS DON'T LIKE AT ALL
One positive factor, as seen from the standpoint of the vast majority of
people, is the fact that Pakistan has the Bomb, and has not signed the
big-power oppressive and extortionist so-called NPT. This the US
imperialists
dislike quite in particular, of course, since it makes it much more
difficult
for them to intervene quite directly militarily in Pakistan. They and some
various stooges of theirs are howling that these nuclear weapons, in the
hands
of these or those forces in Pakistan, would "constitute a threat to other
peoples", but of course it's the other way around. None of those forces
pointed
to would start firing rockets with atomic bombs at other countries. That
idea
is just ludicrous, not least because the people in Pakistan would never
stand
for such a thing. The really dangerous madmen and madwomen in this respect
are
located approximately in Wa****ngton, D.C., the USA - not that they are not
"paper tigers" too, as pointed out by Mao Zedong already over 60 years
ago.
One "plus point" for Benazir Bhutto is, that she was "pro-Bomb", at least
back
in 1998, and in that respect at least, anti-US-imperialism. I don't know
whether this changed later, but am guessing it didn't.
In 1998, I commented on a certain article by the so-called "ILC"
("International Communist League"), a Trotskyite organization typically
always
applauding and sup****ting the biggest reactionary powers in the world, the
worst enemies of the people everywhere, which then screamed out its utter
dislike of Pakistan's A-bomb test. (See my "UNITE! Info #074en: 3rd-world
A-bombs & 'ICL'", part 1/3 etc, of 18.07.1998, at my homepage,
www.rolf-martens.com.)
The "ICL" in that article first pretended to speak against the
imperialists'
utter hypocrisy in their "condemning" the acquisition by both India and
Pakistan of nuclear weapons (whose absolutely main point, in both of the
cases,
of course was defence against the reactionary big powers' massive
nuclear-weapons blackmail), by saying:
"—The nuclear tests carried out in May by India, followed two weeks later
by
its neighbor and rival [!] Pakistan [typical for such Trotskyite forces
was
always their attempts too to sow dissent between such countries as India
and
Pakistan, which quite in the main had common interests in that they both
to a
great extent were dominated by the imperialist big powers, the ones that
actually were rivaling with each other in the world], were met with a
chorus of
imperialist condemnation. Following New Delhi’s announcement, Labour prime
minister Tony Blair sanctimoniously lectured India about its threat to a
'safe
world.' U.S. president Bill Clinton, commander in chief of the deadliest
nuclear arsenal in the world, hypocritically decried India’s challenge to
'the
firm international consensus to stop the proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction,' imposing a raft of punitive economic sanctions first against
India and then Pakistan."
So far, fair enough, it may have seemed - except for that Trotskyite
"rival"
insertion. But then, after this bit of (basically) "red" paint over
itself, the
"ICL" continued:
"Nonetheless[!], the India-Pakistan nuclear rivalry[!] represents an
ominous[!]
escalation of nationalist war fever[!] on the sub-continent."
And further i.a.:
"Now, the chauvinist[!] outpouring[!] over the A-bomb tests directly
threatens[!] the huge Muslim minority within India, whom the BJP decries
as
'Pakistani' and an 'enemy within.'"
Obviously not even the, true enough, rather reactionary BJP party in India
could ever have had such a strange and idiotic idea as trying to A-bomb
the
Muslim minority within India. The Nobel prize for that one could only go
to
such forces as that big-power mole (as I called it in 1998) the "ICL" -
which
continued too:
"India’s nuclear explosions in turn provoked a chauvinist furore within
Pakistan, as former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, once the darling of
Western
liberals and 'leftists' and others screamed[!] for Sharif [Pakistan's then
prime minister Nawaz Sharif] to order similar tests."
The "real leftists", the "ICL" thus said, that must be such who *screamed*
out
as loudly as their big-power masters and they themselves *against* India's
and
Pakistan's getting the Bomb. (Today of course the US imperialists are
"graciously accepting" India's having nuclear weapons, because that
country has
now to a certain extent become a big power itself and thus somewhat more
of an
ally of theirs too.)
THE NEIGHBOURING MUCH-MALTREATED AFGHANISTAN
The situation in Pakistan clearly is influenced not least by that in its
neighbouring country Afghanistan, which has suffered largescale
devastation
already earlier, by the ten years long lasting aggression against it by
that
earlier existing arch-reactionary power (from the early 1960s or so on)
the
Soviet Union, killing some 1.5 million people there, and which now again
is
suffering the same since October 2001, at the hands of that today
dominating
arch-reactionary big power the USA and its allies - today even including
the
miserably hypocritical, internationally-plundering bourgeoisie of that
country
where I live, Sweden. (On this, see the website of an unfortunately only
small
protest organization of which I'm a member, at http://www.afghanistan.nu/;
it
doesn't seem to have any texts in English yet, but of course we're
demanding
the immediate withdrawing of "our" country's aggressor, imperialist and
completely illegally-dispatched troops, now some 350, and probably a large
majority of people in Sweden sup****t this demand too.)
What the abovementioned "ICL" says about the big-power aggression of today
against Afghanistan I don't know, but that of yesterday it *openly
sup****ted* -
how about these lines which it had in the same abovementioned article, in
1998:
"We [the 'ICL', from late 1979 on] proclaimed 'Hail the Red[!!] Army'[!!!]
and
called to 'extend social gains of the October Revolution to the Afghan
peoples.'[!!!] The Kremlin bureaucracy’s treacherous[!!] withdrawal[!!] in
1989
led to the barbaric, anti-women Taliban coming to power in Afghanistan and
gave
enormous impetus to the rise of Islamic fundamentalism elsewhere."
Precisely turning things upside-down also concerning the causes of the
rise of
Islamic fundamentalism, which in reality of course got a big impetus from
the
*aggression*, from 1979 on, by Soviet social-imperialism, and certainly
*not*
from its troops' finally being forced by the Afghan people to withdraw,
which
helped in the largescale defeat of that particular big enemy of the
peoples in
the world too.
And the biggest impetus that the rise of Islamic fundamentalism got,
likewise
from 1979 on in particular, that of course came from the "ICL's" other big
master, US imperialism, which wanted to combat all secular, democratic,
modernistic and pro-socialism forces both in Iran and elsewhere in the
Middle
East and also in Afghanistan, massively sending pro-Islamic-fundamentalist
propaganda to that country, sup****ting precisely that type of forces there
and
striving to bring the Afghan people's resistance against the big-power
aggression of that time precisely on to an Islamic-fundamentalist track.
As for the Taliban in Afghanistan, certainly their political programme is
a
reactionary one, but what they above all are doing today in that country
is
fighting that really big barbarism of the aggression against the country
by
troops of the imperialists, including constant largescale bombing by
aircraft
(the US bomber B-1, taking 10 tons of bombs, is widely employed, for
instance).
The question of what policies to pursue in Afghanistan of course must be
solved
by the people there itself, a first precondition for this being that all
foreign forces must be defeated and kicked out.
When the US imperialists organized the infamous terror attacks against the
people in the USA and against the people in all other countries too, on
11.09.2001, of course it was their very own creation "Al-Qaida" that they
blamed for them, and the people of Afghanistan (who else could have done
it?)
for "having orchestrated" those simultaneous four hijackings of big
passenger
aircraft in the USA and the ensuing terror attack crashes there.
DO THE US IMPERIALISTS WANT DEVELOPMENT, PERHAPS, IN PAKISTAN, AFGHANISTAN
ETC?
- ONE TRICK OF THEIRS CONCERNING THIS WHICH TAIMUR RAHMAN, IN CONTRAST TO
SOME
OTHERS, HAS RECOGNIZED
What they want in Afghanistan of course is firstly, to have a military
stronghold there so as to put pressure on all neighbouring countries
including
Pakistan, and secondly, it should be noted, to *prevent* development of
the
country, plus, thirdly, to get the production of opium poppy, which the
Taliban
had managed to stop almost completely in 2000-2001 when they were in
control,
going again, for their, the US imperialists', actual policies of pu****ng
harmful drugs "at home" and in many other countries, one of their many
methods
of keeping the peoples down.
By no means do the US imperialists *want* any oil or natural gas pipelines
through Afghanistan, as some of their Trotskyite and other phony"Marxist"
puppets have loudly hollered, quite on the contrary. They in recent years
quite
openly have declared their strong opposition to, and massively have acted
in
order to sabotage, the project for a natural gas pipe line which would
connect
Iran, Pakistan and India with each other in that respect.
The fanatical striving, today, by the US imperialists above all, to make
all
energy scarce and expensive and thus hit at industrial development in many
countries, so as to create unemployment in the "rich" countries and keep
the
people in the internationally-exploited ones down as particularly low-paid
labour power, has taken its expression also in those forces' very massive
(though factually ridiculous) public propaganda about a pur****ted "manmade
global warming", for *curtailing* the use of oil, above all, and also that
of
natural gas and coal (still necessary in many less developed countries).
Precisely this trick, unfortunately, most of those political organizations
in
the world who are saying they are Leftist or Marxist have not seen
through, and
the Trotskyite-type and many others among them are even helping the US
imperialists etc in this wrong and utterly reactionary propaganda.
I've written a number of articles against this, and have quoted some such
too
by some (mainly) bourgeois scientists, some of whom probably are employed
by a
certain minority of industrial capitalists, who because of some interests
of
their own don't like that "greenhouse" bull**** fraud either.
And I was pleased to see that Taimur Rahman (of the CMKP in Pakistan), who
later took part in the debate at the list MLL concerning the foul
assassination
of Benazir Bhutto on 27.12.2007, immediately recognized that this
propaganda
indeed is a trick by the main imperialists in order, not least, to keep
the
people in such countries as Pakistan, and many others too, down in
underdevelopment, to prevent the largescale industrialization of those
countries. He on 30.11 forwarded an article which I had reproduced,
"ICECAP:
'Global warming is over. Man was never responsible.'", to the CMKP mailing
list
at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cmkp_pk,
about which he in the meantime
had
informed us others.
"Jolly good show!", as they'd say in a certain country - this time
hopefully by
the people there, who are being hit too by the making of all energy much
more
expensive, under the cover of the "greenhouse" fraud among others, by
their
"leaders", Thatcher, Blair and now George Brown, and the people in many
countries in Asia, Africa and South America are being hit even much harder
by
this. Hopefully, practically everybody in Pakistan will realize too, what
a
nasty fraud this is, and probably very many there already do so today.
OIL AND NATURAL GAS IN PAKISTAN - THE US IMPERIALISTS WANT TO CURTAIL
PRODUCTION OF THIS TOO
As I happen to know, oil and natural gas by no means have "biological"
origins,
as almost all the imperialists' mass media still maintain, but stem from
giant
amounts of such hydrocarbons in the earth's mantle, much of which are
constantly seeping upwards (on oil's being created at depths of over 100
km,
you can read the many expert articles at http://www.gasresources.net/
or
else a
rather long one by me at my homepage, index, 30.12.2006).
Thus a country such as Pakistan, which lies in a region with many
earthquakes
and thus some big cracks in the earth's crust there, down towards the
mantle,
should have very good conditions for largescale and cheap extraction of
oil and
natural gas, I calculated, and was just about to look up some information
about
that country's actual such production, when I saw in a mail sent today
(from
Liz Burbank <lizburbank@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>) one article at the (true enough,
quite
suspect) website "Globalresearch" on this.
It may interest others too, so I'm inserting:
[QUOTE:]
The Destabilization of Pakistan
Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, Globalresearch
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7705
....
This US agenda for Pakistan is similar to that applied throughout the
broader
Middle East Central Asian region. US strategy, sup****ted by covert
intelligence
operations, consists in triggering ethnic and religious strife, abetting
and
financing secessionist movements while also weakening the institutions of
the
central government. The broader objective is to fracture the Nation State
and
redraw the borders of Iraq, Iran, Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Covert Sup****t to Balochistan Separatists
Pakistan's extensive oil and gas reserves, largely located in Balochistan
province, as well as its pipeline corridors are considered strategic by
the
Anglo-American alliance, requiring the concurrent militarization of
Pakistani
territory. Balochistan comprises more than 40 percent of Pakistan's land
mass,
possesses im****tant reserves of oil and natural gas as well as extensive
mineral resources. The Iran-India pipeline corridor is slated to transit
through Balochistan. Balochistan also possesses a deep sea ****t largely
financed by China located at Gwadar, on the Arabian Sea, not far from the
Strait of Hormuz where 30 % of the world's daily oil supply moves by ****p
or
pipeline. (Asia News.it, 29 December 2007)
Pakistan has estimated 25.1 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of proven gas
reserves of
which 19 trillion are located in Balochistan. Among foreign oil and gas
contractors in Balochistan are BP, Italy's ENI, Austria's OMV, and
Australia's
BHP. It is worth noting that Pakistan's State oil and gas companies,
including
PPL which has the largest stake in the Sui oil fields of Balochistan are
up for
privatization under IMF-World Bank supervision.
According to Oil and Gas Journal (OGJ), Pakistan had proven oil reserves
of 300
million barrels, most of which are located in Balochistan. Other estimates
place Balochistan oil reserves at an estimated six trillion barrels of oil
reserves both on-shore and off-shore (Environment News Service, 27 October
2006). The Balochi resistance movement dates back to the late 1940s, when
Balochistan was invaded by Pakistan. In the current geopolitical context,
the
separatist movement is in process of being hijacked by foreign powers.
Balochistan's strategic energy reserves, serving British and US oil
interests
are intimately related to the separatist agenda. Following a familiar
pattern,
there are indications that the Balochi insurgency is being sup****ted and
abetted by Britain and the US. British intelligence is allegedly providing
covert sup****t to Balochistan separatists (which from the outset have been
repressed by Pakistan's military). In June 2006, Pakistan's Senate
Committee on
Defence accused British intelligence of "abetting the insurgency in the
province bordering Iran"[Balochistan]..(Press Trust of India, 9 August
2006).
[END OF QUOTE]
Quite possibly, that author's theory about some intentions of the US and
other
imperialists' is approximately correct.
But what such writers never point out is, firstly, that obviously,
Pakistan's
actual oil and natural gas reserves are much larger than those mentioned
in
that article - in fact, in case there are even some open conduits there
all the
way to the earths' mantle (which begins at 15-40 km down), as is possibly
the
case in several other countries (too), then there are even in practice
limitless amounts of these substances that can be extracted in Pakistan.
And secondly, that "big secret" that the US imperialists absolutely want
to
curtail all such production, as much as they can, is never as much as
hinted
at, in such articles, either.
But this is also something that as many as possible, in Pakistan as in
other
countries, should know about.
Rolf M.
Malmö, Sweden
www.rolf-martens.com
And here follow first Alexander's message earlier today and then (in full,
again) the article by Fatima Bhutto which he referred to.
[QUOTE:]
----- Original Message -----
From: "democrite" <democrite@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
To: "For the reaffirmation of Marxism-Leninism"
<marxist-leninist-list@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
Sent: Wednesday, January 02, 2008 8:33 AM
Subject: Re: [MLL] Fw: Who Killed Benazir Bhutto?
I think that this is a very interesting article. Assuming the content is
exact
(it does coincide with other articles I have read) I would like to know
what
other comrades think, especially those from Pakistan.
What comrade Taimur Rahman says I find theoretically attractive, but in
the
face of the article by Fatima Bhutto, I tend to feel that it is a mistake
to
engage an alliance with the pro US corrupt "democratic" PPP and consider
the
Islamic fundamentalists (presumably anti-US, but I am not so sure that
they are
not also manipulated by them) as the principal enemy.
Seen from the outside, I would favour in priority whatever solution
diminishes
US power in the region.
Alexander
[END OF QUOTE]
[QUOTE:]
----- Original Message -----
From: "Rolf Martens" <rolf.martens@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
To: "modern marxism" <modern_marxism@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>; "For the
reaffirmation
of Marxism-Leninism" <marxist-leninist-list@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
Sent: Tuesday, January 01, 2008 4:58 PM
Subject: [MLL] Fw: Who Killed Benazir Bhutto?
[This I wrote yesterday 01.01. - RM]
I don't know from whom the first article here is, or how good/bad is the
analysis presented.
But last here at least is:
Aunt Benazir's false promises
Bhutto's return bodes poorly for Pakistan -- and for democracy there.
By Fatima Bhutto
November 14, 2007
Which may be of interest.
Rolf M.
www.rolf-martens.com
[END OF QUOTE]
[See also last here in part 2/2, a later article by Fatimah Bhutto. - RM,
02.01.2008]
[I'm snipping now most of the first article here, which I think is not so
interesting. It was quoted in full in earlier postings, by me and by
Alexander.
- RM, 02.01.2008]
[QUOTE:]
----- Original Message -----
From: thorsprovoni@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
undisclosed-recipients:
Sent: Tuesday, January 01, 2008 3:55 PM
Subject: Who Killed Benazir Bhutto?
Justifying Intervention in Pakistan
Justifying Incineration of Pakistan
by Joachim Martillo (ThorsProvoni@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
)
Pakistan's government claimed that al-Qaeda killed Benazir Bhutto without
providing any evidence, but compared to other players in Pakistani
politics
al-Qaeda received quite small strategic or tactical benefits from the act.
Nawaz Sharif now stands alone as the chief opposition leader and may
receive
many of Bhutto's votes.
Parvez Musharraf can use the ensuing chaos as an excuse to cling to power
and
possibly make at least part of the Bush administration very happy.
According to re****ts, Condi Rice pressured Benazir to return to Pakistan.
Rice
could even have threatened seizure of Benazir's wealth, for the USA has
developed such capabilities, and outstanding corruption charges against
Benazir
and her husband would have made such action legal and possible under US
law.
In post-return interviews Benazir had certainly shown a willingness to be
a
good US puppet and to permit direct US military intervention in Pakistan.
(Of
course, she could have been trying to pull a Chalabi on the Neocons in the
Bush
administration.)
.....
[END OF QUOTE]
[QUOTE - from another writer:]
Fatima Bhutto's LA Times Article
[In the article below, Fatima worries that Benazir would tie Pakistan to a
Neocon agenda. I have heard rumors of a Bhutto-Neocon family connection
via
Marc Segal, who was Benazir's second cousin and a Wa****ngton lobbyist, but
I do
not know much about him. Segal is a common Jewish ethnic Ashkenazi name
and for
the most part completely unknown in SE Asia. Obtaining political benefits
by
supplying younger daughters to powerful non-Jewish families for marriage
or
concubinage is an old Polish Jewish political tactic. The most famous case
in
Polish history is that of Kazimierz Wielki (Polish King Casimir the Great,
1310-1370) and his Polish Jewish mistress Esterka.]
[END OF QUOTE]
[QUOTE]
Aunt Benazir's false promises
Bhutto's return bodes poorly for Pakistan -- and for democracy there.
By Fatima Bhutto
November 14, 2007
KARACHI -- We Pakistanis live in uncertain times. Emergency rule has been
imposed for the 13th time in our short 60-year history. Thousands of
lawyers
have been arrested, some charged with sedition and treason; the chief
justice
has been deposed; and a draconian media law -- shutting down all private
news
channels -- has been drafted.
Perhaps the most bizarre part of this circus has been the hijacking of the
democratic cause by my aunt, the twice-disgraced former prime minister,
Benazir
Bhutto. While she was ha****ng out a deal to share power with Gen. Pervez
Musharraf last month, she repeatedly insisted that without her, democracy
in
Pakistan would be a lost cause. Now that the situation has changed, she's
saying that she wants Musharraf to step down and that she'd like to make a
deal
with his opponents -- but still, she says, she's the savior of democracy.
The reality, however, is that there is no one better placed to benefit
from
emergency rule than she is. Along with the leaders of prominent Islamic
parties, she has been spared the violent retributions of emergency law.
Yes,
she now appears to be facing seven days of house arrest, but what does
that
really mean? While she was supposedly under house arrest at her Islamabad
residence last week, 50 or so of her party members were comfortably
allowed to
join her. She addressed the media twice from her garden, protected by
police
given to her by the state, and was not reprimanded for holding a news
conference. (By contrast, the very suggestion that they might hold a news
conference has placed hundreds of other political activists under real
arrest,
in real jails.)
Ms. Bhutto's political posturing is sheer pantomime. Her negotiations with
the
military and her unseemly willingness until just a few days ago to take
part in
Musharraf's regime have signaled once and for all to the growing legions
of
fundamentalists across South Asia that democracy is just a guise for
dictator****p.
It is widely believed that Ms. Bhutto lost both her governments on grounds
of
massive corruption. She and her husband, a man who came to be known in
Pakistan
as "Mr. 10%," have been accused of stealing more than $1 billion from
Pakistan's treasury. She is appealing a money-laundering conviction by the
Swiss courts involving about $11 million. Corruption cases in Britain and
Spain
are ongoing.
It was particularly unappealing of Ms. Bhutto to ask Musharraf to bypass
the
courts and drop the many corruption cases that still face her in Pakistan.
He
agreed, creating the odiously titled National Reconciliation Ordinance in
order
to do so. Her collaboration with him was so unsubtle that people on the
streets
are now calling her party, the Pakistan People's Party, the Pervez
People's
Party. Now she might like to distance herself, but it's too late.
Why did Ms. Bhutto and her party cronies demand that her corruption cases
be
dropped, but not demand that the cases of activists jailed during the
brutal
regime of dictator Zia ul-Haq (from 1977 to 1988) not be quashed? What
about
the sanctity of the law? When her brother Mir Murtaza Bhutto -- my father
--
returned to Pakistan in 1993, he faced 99 cases against him that had been
brought by Zia's military government. The cases all carried the death
penalty.
Yet even though his sister was serving as prime minister, he did not ask
her to
drop the cases. He returned, was arrested at the air****t and spent the
remaining years of his life clearing his name, legally and with
confidence, in
the courts of Pakistan.
Ms. Bhutto's repeated promises to end fundamentalism and terrorism in
Pakistan
strain credulity because, after all, the Taliban government that ran
Afghanistan was recognized by Pakistan under her last government -- making
Pakistan one of only three governments in the world to do so.
And I am suspicious of her talk of ensuring peace. My father was a member
of
Parliament and a vocal critic of his sister's politics. He was killed
outside
our home in 1996 in a carefully planned police assassination while she was
prime minister. There were 70 to 100 policemen at the scene, all the
streetlights had been shut off and the roads were cordoned off. Six men
were
killed with my father. They were shot at point-blank range, suffered
multiple
bullet wounds and were left to bleed on the streets.
My father was Benazir's younger brother. To this day, her role in his
assassination has never been adequately answered, although the tribunal
convened after his death under the leader****p of three respected judges
concluded that it could not have taken place without approval from a "much
higher" political authority.
I have personal reasons to fear the danger that Ms. Bhutto's presence in
Pakistan brings, but I am not alone. The Islamists are waiting at the
gate.
They have been waiting for confirmation that the reforms for which the
Pakistani people have been struggling have been a farce, propped up by the
White House. Since Musharraf seized power in 1999, there has been an
earnest
grass-roots movement for democratic reform. The last thing we need is to
be
tied to a neocon agenda through a puppet "democrat" like Ms. Bhutto.
By sup****ting Ms. Bhutto, who talks of democracy while asking to be
brought to
power by a military dictator, the only thing that will be accomplished is
the
death of the nascent secular democratic movement in my country.
Democratization
will forever be de-legitimized, and our progress in enacting true reforms
will
be quashed. We Pakistanis are certain of this.
Fatima Bhutto is a Pakistani poet and writer. She is the daughter of Mir
Murtaza Bhutto, who was killed in 1996 in Karachi when his sister,
Benazir, was
prime minister.
[END OF QUOTE]
Note - addition
when this is now posted to cmkp_pk: Only after I had already sent this to
the
mailing lists MM and MLL did I see a message sent already earlier to MLL
by
Taimur Rahman. It follows here.
[QUOTE:]
----- Original Message -----
From: "Taimur Rahman" <redpak2000@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
To: "For the reaffirmation of Marxism-Leninism"
<marxist-leninist-list@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
Sent: Wednesday, January 02, 2008 11:22 AM
Subject: Re: [MLL] Fw: Who Killed Benazir Bhutto?
This article by Fatimah Bhutto was written some time ago. Before BBs
death.
Since then Fatimah has taken a very different position. She was wailing
like
mad on BBs funeral and she wrote the following article afterwards. Ghinwa
Bhutto and Fatima Bhutto have given up the title of PPP (Shaheed Bhutto)
and
are now working as the PPP. Their is a process of reconciliation between
Fatimah Bhutto and the PPP going on anyway. This assassination has really
changed peoples' opinions about the PPP.
In solidarity
Taimur Rahman
CMKP Website:- http://cmkp.tk
CMKP YahooForum:- http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cmkp_pk
CMKP News:- http://cmkp_pk.blogspot.com
Farewell Wadi Bua, my aunt
By: Fatima Bhutto
Courtesy: Hindustan Times
My aunt and I had a complicated relation****p. That is the truth, the sad
truth.
The last fifteen years were not the ones we spent as friends or as
relatives,
that is also the truth. But this week, I too want to remember her
differently.
I want to remember her differently because I must. I can't lose faith in
this
country, my home. I can't believe that it was for nothing, that violence
in its
purest form is so cruel and so unforgiving. I can't accept that this is
what we
have come to. So, I must offer a farewell. One that is written in tears
and
anger but one that comes from a place far away, from the realm of memory
and
forgiving a place where at another time, we might have all been safe. As a
child, I used to call my aunt Wadi Bua, Sindhi for father's older sister.
When I got the news, I was told that something had happened to Wadi Bua.
It was
an expression I hadn't heard or used in a very long time, when I heard it
said
to me over the phone I remembered someone different. We used to read
children's
books together. We used to like exactly the same sweets â?" sugared
chestnuts
and candied apples. We used to get the same ear infections that tortured
us
throughout the years.
I have never before written an article that seemed so impossible. We were
very
different. Though people liked to compare us, almost instinctively,
because
well, they could. It is difficult for me to write about two people, one in
the
present tense and one in the past, at the same time. Especially when one
person's passing makes the other one wonder whether there is a cusp to
things
and whether or not there really is a past and present to life.
I never agreed with her politics. I never agreed with those she kept
around
her, the political op****tunists, hangers-on, them. They repulse me. I
never
agreed with her version of events. But in death, perhaps, there is a
moment to
call for calm. To say, enough. We have had enough. We cannot, and we will
not,
take any more madness. I mourn because my family has had enough. I mourn
for
Bilawal, Bakhtawar, and Asifa. I mourn for them because I too lost a
parent. I
know what it feels like. I am at a loss. I am in shock because I have yet
to
bury a loved one who has died from natural causes.
Four. That's the number of family members, immediate family members, whom
we
have laid to rest, all victims of senseless killing. I was born five years
after my grandfather, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's assassination. I was three
when my
uncle Shahnawaz was murdered. I remember Wadi Bua sitting with me and
telling
me stories while the rest of the family was with the police. When I was
fourteen, my life was ended. I lost my heart and soul, my father Murtaza.
I am
and have been since then a shell of the person I was. I suppose there are
cusps
in life, and thank god for that because that way we can stay in between.
And
now at twenty-five, Wadi. But this isn't about me, it's about those whom
we
have lost. It's about the graveyard at Garhi Khuda Bux that is just too
full.
I pray that this is the last, that from this moment onwards we will no
longer
have to bid farewell too quickly.
Wadi, farewell.
[END OF QUOTE]
Rolf M.
_____________________
Message posted by:
Rolf Martens
Malmö, Sweden
Phone and fax:
+46 - 40 - 124832;
rolf.martens@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
|
