Thus Fare Fake Democracies

#29 by Zakkk on May 12, 2005 2:51pm PT

We all have to deal with the consequences now, don`t we...

India dealt with the blowback from sri lanka and that`s now history....The lankans were helped by India more than any other country during the recent tsunami...

Pakis, OTOH, will continue to face blowback for their support of Islamic fundamentalism for a long time..... don`t forget that...every time you get anally probed when you show your pakistani passport at an immigration counter at a western airport....or when pakis get instinctively picked up after every terrorist attack....

Here`s another op-ed from the author...

Zakk...read this carefully..this piece is a level-headed analysis of the situation....Not an exercise in ``oh we pakis are poor victims`` self-delusion....

What we mean to Americans

However, it would also be correct to say that political cartoons are a window into the thinking of at least a portion of the political elite. Seen in this context, it would be fair to assume that some of the informed opinion in the United States sees Pakistan as a subservient country doing its bidding on command. This is certainly not a nice image to have and any self respecting nation has every right to feel upset about it.

As an aside, the cartoonist is trying to be too clever by half. A dog may be dearly loved in western cultures but it is nevertheless a dog. It loves its master and is trained to carry out its commands. It is not and cannot be the equal of his master. It is an animal, for God`s sake. All this nonsense about cultural differences and how we should actually be happy because we have been portrayed as a dog is adding insult to injury. He probably thinks we are brain dead and ignorant to boot. Spare us any further explanations, Mr. Garner.

This sorry episode however does provide an opportunity to look at our relationship with the United States. In particular, it may be useful to understand how the American state and society looks at Pakistan and what kind of relationship it is seeking with us. To do this in a useful way, it would be important to understand how that country works in the realm of foreign policy.

There is an identity of view regarding Pakistan among all the important actors with some minor differences. The view shared by all is that Pakistan is potentially a very dangerous country and can create many difficulties for the United States. It has, according to this way of thinking, a weak economic base, inefficient governing structures and rampant Islamic extremism which has the potential to take over the Pakistani state.

Some US agencies are also repeating the line that Pakistan has the promise of being a failed state. The Congressional Research Office is the latest to predict that we may collapse by 2015. Scholars such as Stephen Cohen are more circumspect but there is not much optimism about Pakistan`s future in the American establishment.

What is particularly worrying for everyone is that Pakistan is a country possessing nuclear weapons and has a history of indulging in proliferation. Weak governing structures also means to them that the government is not fully in control of the nuclear programme and it could fall into the wrong hands. Different US entities keep repeating this line and do not buy our plea that the programme is completely immune to extremist takeover.

They also look at the huge madrassah network in the country as potential nurseries for terrorists. This fear is acute and what adds to it is our rapidly growing population which would soon make us the sixth largest country in the world. Even if a small percentage of this population takes to terrorism, it is feared, it would be a whole lot of terrorists to deal with.

Pakistan is also seen as an important Al Qaeda base. We may take pride in the fact that we have arrested a lot of Al Qaeda people including some important leaders but to them this is further proof that we are an Al Qaeda stronghold. No wonder General Musharraf is repeatedly asked by American press about the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden.

I dont understand this hue and cry. Why do we keep expecting freedoms from a dictatorship? infact the funny thing is the press in Pakistan is never been freer than it is now. These journalists should find mind important things than exploit their freedom.

I dont understand this hue and cry. Why do we keep expecting freedoms from a dictatorship? infact the funny thing is the press in Pakistan is never been freer than it is now. These journalists should find mind important things than exploit their freedom.

{“… weak power holders will eventually be removed, there is no reason to believe that Shaukat Aziz will survive as Prime Minister … power games … will be played against him. The wheel for him is coming full circle. … conspiracies against Shaukat Aziz have begun. …
We have seen enough people being removed in Islamabad to know that there is a certain pattern to it. … the die is cast. The weak holder of power is on the way out and another lamb for the slaughter is in. … the game in fake democracies. … real power is with the army... The rest is a charade of poor players …”}

All of the above has been historically true, but there is one factor that is being over-looked: Citibank… As a Citi Group insider, Shaukat Aziz, in the ultimate analysis, is a tout for, and a mole of, the multinational corporate interests in the region. To this day he has close connections with other insiders like Ruben, the Clinton Treasury Secretary, Goldman Sachs man. The Real Great Game today is no longer being played in the national cabinet offices around the world, but in the corporate boardrooms.

The political antics of parliamentarians, ministers, and even generals don’t amount to a hill of beans… they are just a distraction, a side-program, a soap opera for the consumption of the masses (ie: workers / consumers) through corporate owned media.

Shaukat Aziz’s real job is to pave the ground for the global corporate consortiums to integrate with, and take over the economy. What is going on now is by far more complex and orders of magnitude more sophisticated than anything the East India Company accomplished two centuries earlier. Mush may think he has real power, but his departure is only one telephone call away unless, of course, he’s blown up to smithereens first by the misguided morons of Alqaida (MMA).

Watch out, all this whole political soap opera is just a Red Herring. The real sharks are moving in with great stealth and Shaukat Aziz is just an innocent looking shark-fin that is visible above the surface.

...SR

SR

I think your analysis is on the mark and is irrefutable. Do you think that AlQaida is an inevitable (I am not saying right or wrong) response to this caorporate/capitalist aggression. Is there any other way to respond to this threat, since it itself uses the might of mightiest of military force in the history of mankind to enforce its agenda.

#34 by Ameena on May 12, 2005 11:37pm PT


the press in Pakistan is never been freer than it is now.


That`s an indication that the bar was really really low to begin with....

According to Frreom House, the press in Pakistan is Not Free

Re: # 38 SR, that was one good piece of pattren finding. This new born corporate being is really intimidating..

Interestingly, this is a lifeform drastically different from previous evolutionary products. This one lives as a union of interests of a large group of people. Doesn`t have a body but sure has a vicous soul. Dies of same causes as poeple (natural selection) but doesn`t abide by the natural age limits. One shocking thing is that it comes in drastically different sizes and mights.

We should talk more about this new life form ....

” Re: 36 Urstruly {… AlQaida is an inevitable … response to this corporate / capitalist aggression. Is there any other way to respond to this threat … it … uses … military force … to enforce its agenda…”}

In the movie Jurassic Park (I) at one point the humans are caught between the velociraptors and the Tyrannosaurus Rex. The T. Rex ate the raptors thus providing a brief respite for the humans.

I see Alqaida as an evil force that is fighting another, more powerful evil. To mix metaphors, consider those two as Klingons and Borg of the TV series Start Trek Next Generation. They are both evil. The Klingons are highly passionate and ferocious, primitive, uncouth, uncontrollable, barbarous and beast-like, while the Borg are cold steel-faced, impersonal, integrated like a bee-hive, highly lethal, quasi-machine men. Both are repulsive and dangerous. Two wrongs don’t make a right.

The technologically sophisticated evil monster will inevitably wipe out the primitive evil barbarians, but that is little comfort as far as the ultimate fate of your and my children goes. It’s a grim choice between living under the harsh whip of the vatwani and lota crowd on the one hand and the cold and callous neo-feudal lords of Gobble and Engulf International Inc on the other.

The aggression you speak of is not the fault of the free enterprise system. This present incarnation of the corporate fascism has little to do with the ideological spirit of free enterprise. There is nothing free or enterprising about this plutocratic tyranny that has usurped the innocent-sounding title of capitalism. In a genuine free enterprise system the individual is sovereign and his rights are supreme.

The great tragedy is that somewhere along the evolutionary ladder the inanimate and impersonal corporate entity was recognized as an individual and given all the sacred rights that should belong only to individual humans (not to corporate entities). Thus a new life-form has evolved that is of a higher order of existence than the individual human. I view this development with the same horror as a single-celled creature in the pre-cambrian age must have viewed the early multi-cellular organisms.

This is one of the most ominous developments of the last two hundred years. It has perverted all that is sacred in the spirit of democracy in a human civilization.. It has turned the present system into the best democracy money can buy. We now see a government of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations.

I am an uncompromising individualist. My ideological loyalty is to the principles of liberty as they were enshrined in the Bill of Rights according to the Jeffersonian ideals. Sadly, today’s USSA (the extra “S” stands for soviet) has drifted as far away from those ideals as can be. I for one prefer to die fighting it on my feet than to live on my knees in its subservience.

…SR

Re # 34

How about judiciary? Are they freer than ever before under this dictatorship?

Re: # 45 SR

I find it hard to beleive that you live inside a geo-dome, where your only contact with the outside world is through the finacial pages of the daily newspaper. But anyway we create our own world in our mind around us - all of us. I, for example, take solace in the fact that the amount of money I make here or even that I send ourside far exceeds that of which I return back into the system as my taxes. The money that I make was my money anyway which they plundered thru their corporations and other means, so I take back what was already mine.

Re: # 40 {``...a question about our perceptions of these two... we ... live in a borg world... practically, every minute .... our perception ...of Klingons ... formed by ... Borg propaganda ... Klingons [can`t] ...reach the masses, the way the Borgs can. ...Borg ... [pretend] virtue and morality ... we [don`t] ... buy this ... propaganda. but we do buy their bad propaganda about Klingons. ... is... our perception ...marred with our ... prejudices ... if it is then we ourselves are denying us the truth...``}

Please speak for yourself...

I neither own a TV set nor read any of the main stream newspapers (except Financial Sections) ... So my perception of the Klingons does not come filtered through the Borg prisms. I have seen, known, travelled amongst, lived with, and broken bread with the Klingons as well as the Borg. My perceptions are based on first hand impressions gathered over a life-time.

(...you and me for example, we stand on the opposite sides of the spectrum...);

Yes we do stand at opposite ends... You lend support to the ``Borg`` machinery with your tax contributions, and are thus, by your choice, a passive accomplice in their atrocities... You have been assimilated... Resistance is futile.

...SR

SR

Borgs & Klingons - that is an interesting analogy.

But one can raise a question about our perceptions of these two. Basically, the way I see it, we (supposedly neutral in this conflict or at worst victims of both) practically live in a borg world. We experience good and bad of everything that Borgs have to offer, practically, every minute of our waking and sleeping hours. Even our perception (or large part of it) of Klingons has been formed by whatever the Borg propaganda machinery feeds us. Because I do not think that Klingons have the capability to reach the masses, the way the Borgs can. One can safely say that the Klingon propaganda machinery is non-existent. The interesting thing is that the Borg propaganda machinery at the same time spends more time protraying itself as a paragon of virtue and morality but we hardly buy this line of propaganda. (Consider you and me for example, we stand on the opposite sides of the spectrum yet we do not buy it); but we do buy their bad propaganda about Klingons. So the question is, whether our perception of either is marred with our own personal prejudices or not. Because if it is then we ourselves are denying us the truth, isn`t it.

Re: # 41

Although you forgot to include a hyperlink and GDP figures of India to support your thesis (and it falsely gives an impression that you thought all of what you wrote by yourself) but you make an interesting point.

During the 10 years of Soviet occupation of Afghanistan Pakistan has been subjected to worst of terrorism from the Afghan side. The KHAD and KGB trained terrorist killed scores of Pakistani civilians in spate of bombings in all major cities of Pakistan, which used to happen almost every week at one place or the other. Just to add insult to the injury, Iraqi, Libiyan, Syrian, and Indian (The soviet camp) were also aiding and training those terrorists . Incidently, none of those attacks happened against government or military personnel and establishments and all were directed at killing Pakistani civilians. So one can safely assume that powers that be in Afghanistan genuinly thought people of Pkaistan as their enemies. But as compared to then when Afgahnistan is under another occupation, the resistance has targeted only Pakistani officials including dictator and his rubber stamp PM, whereas I think, given the corruption in military and law enforcement establishment of Pakistan the people of Pakistan would have been the best target to exert political pressure on the junta. What does it tell you?

#38 by SR on May 13, 2005 8:07am PT


I see Alqaida as an evil force that is fighting another, more powerful evil.


In other words, America had it coming...right?

What if an Afghan, angry at what Pakistan did to his country in pursuit of it`s strategic depth wet dreams, kills 3000 paki civilians.....

Will the jihadi apologists point to the root cause? Will they make star trek analogies? Or will they just claim victimhood?

#42 by Urstruly on May 13, 2005 9:13am PT


What does it tell you?


I`m don`t get it...being that it`s you, there has to be a big bad America as the root of all evil angle to all this....but what exactly are you suggesting? That the attacks in Jalalabad were orchestrated?