Editorial: Fifteenth of May 2011

Fences and foxes

If you intend to save your chickens from foxes you will build good strong fences and if you tended your chickens well by also ensuring where they have free range to roam was not weedy, bushy or overgrown, it is unlikely when you go picking the eggs you’ll end up with a snake bite.

One is at pains to say that if Pakistan were cast as a farmer, her chickens would have been safe or she would not have come to harm during the morning egg-run.

This is an apt analogical characterisation of the supposed sovereignty of Pakistan and their embarrassment at having the United States of America breach their borders in pursuit of Osama bin Laden that make their protestations and dishonesty hypocrisy at best and an exercise of bare-faced denial of realities and truths they are still failing to address. Things are just not all that right with others than the government besides the US having writ large around Pakistan.

Might of the fox

There is no doubt that in an ideal world the United States should not have entered Pakistani territory to take out Osama bin Laden but it is not the duty of the fox to mend fences or the nature of the snake to resist opportunistic assess to eggs – that is just the way of the world and nature, might almost always determines right rather than the cosy liberal notion of knowing the boundaries of right and wrong.

Then again we profess the upholding of human rights as the basis of our values and as much as can be done is done to project that across the world.

In an ideal setting Osama bin Laden would have best been captured and made to follow the due process of law and justice – he however never presented the means by which anyone could objectively suggest that when cornered he could be captured without his assailants meeting a gruesome end.

In the heat of the raid

He might not have been armed but he might have been wearing a suicide vest as his type of ideology has persuaded others to just as we were informed that he had 500 Euros sewn into his clothes.

The house might well have been booby-trapped needing a trigger which could proximity-based or otherwise, but there is some confidence that allowed him to maintain such a conspicuous house with just the basic security of high walls and strong gates.

In the end, the easiest way to ensure no one else came to serious harm was to shoot him in the head before he thought up something as diabolical as other daring terrorist acts that are attributed to him and his acolytes.

The despatch

For the havoc this particular person had wreaked on the world, the innocent, his fellow Muslims, life, property, economies, security and much more; Osama bin Laden had in terms excluded himself from any reasonable quest that should have sought to protect of his rights and was hardly deserving of the dignities, respect or honour that people would like to arrogate to him.

Osama bin Laden was a singularly special case and should never be conflated with other issues of policy, politics, values, justice or sovereignty; he had to be summarily dealt with on apprehension and promptly disposed of on expiry.

Much as one could be given the opportunity to dance on his grave, it is one offer that should be declined; I cannot swim.

Obama sees the end of Osama

Osama in my slumber

Just before I fell asleep my Twitter time-line revealed Barack Obama was about to make an unusual Sunday statement and so my dreams were invaded by content broadcast by Al Jazeera concerning Osama bin Laden.

I eventually stirred up and the alertness that came was hit with the comprehension of my dreams, Osama bin Laden is dead.

A very evil man

It is a welcome development but it needs to be taken in context. This man was a very evil man whose Midas touch was death and destruction under the guise of an extreme form of religion that took its strains from Islam.

He found brotherhood amongst fellow religionists, usually sexually ascetic and repressed who were cajoled into giving up their lives for a paradise of debauched harems of virgins. With these bedazzled foot-soldiers he waged Jihad with impunity and unspeakable atrocity.

East Africa, Yemen, New York, Washington and spin-offs in Bali, Madrid and London, it was carnage like Armageddon and the man behind it every few months released videos to taunt and tease that he was still around – Catch me if you can.

The cost in life and property cannot be quantified in Afghanistan and Iraq, in some circles he could have been the precursor to the Anti-Christ, if a mere mortal can make destruction a global business you can only wonder about those who are destined to wreak biblical proportions of havoc untrammelled.

Justice is not served, revenge is

Amazingly, whilst he launched 9/11 from Afghanistan and was almost smoked out in Tora Bora he was found in a monumental edifice just North-East of the capital of Pakistan a classic case of hiding in plain sight.

I am not convinced justice is served, his actions changed our world that the rights, freedoms and liberties that many gave their lives for in the wars of the 20^th Century have systematically been rolled back in the blanket interests of safety and security, the world will never be the same again.

However, revenge has been taken, vengeance exacted and it is important that our celebration of his death especially amongst democratic nations should see this as the removal of a leader, a figurehead and an international nuisance, it would have been nigh on impossible to take him alive to face our courts and answer for the crimes he committed – we need to maintain that view of justice being served in that kind of structure.

Managing the fallout

An embarrassed Pakistan should have something to say about the unwanted guest that took residence in their country, as for the body that is in the custody of the United States in Afghanistan, he was shot in the head, he deserves no burial rites derived from the religion he professed to follow but besmirched with his actions and philosophy – there is a whole lot of rebuilding of systems, creeds, beliefs and reputations to be done.

He should never become a martyr and those who seek inspiration from his causes should begin to diminish and let our hope and future begin to take shape into a world that is safe, free, secure and less threatened by terror not forgetting the conflicts that allow for these extreme activities to take hold.

Palestine needs resolution, repressive regimes in the Arab world need to come to an end, some accommodation needs to be found for Iran, the Muslims should not find persuasion in the view that they are under siege.

The news today and the paralysis of analysis will for the moment be; Obama sees the end of Osama.

YouTube versus Islam - Between discernment and ignorance

Mosque smarts and technical dunces

When I wrote Temple smarts and street dunces as the subtitle to my write-up Earth-queers quaking in Israel on the 21^st of February, I was not anticipating writing Mosque smarts and technical dunces 5 days on.

On Sunday, the Pakistani government had ordered ISPs to block all access to YouTube because of content deemed offensive to Islam and they all complied.

The smarts at Pakistan Telecom hijacked the IP address of the YouTube web server and in conjunction with PCCW an ISP sent seekers of that site down a rabbit hole.

In fact, it sent the global user community of YouTube down the rabbit hole for two hours.

The jury is out as to whether this act was deliberate or just a case of ignorance about how Internet protocols work because Morocco, Thailand and Turkey have successfully implemented bans to YouTube without bringing the whole house down.

Accountability or ridicule

Did I not say, “The sooner adherents and followers call their leaders to account the less their beliefs and dogma are subjected to ridicule”, to leaders we now have to add technical people.

This also extends however tenuously to the use and abuse of knowledge, when Pakistan acquired knowledge of nuclear weaponry the smarts involved opened an illegal market of nuclear proliferation threatening global peace.

Fostering an intellectual environment

Sadly, the real problem is the fact that the Pakistani government has failed to foster an intellectual environment amongst its people.

In the weekend, a friend sent me a few links from YouTube to do with a grandmother doing some “commendably” shocking things like kicking a toddler out of the path of an oncoming train – I found the material utterly offensive and definitely not funny, I did not bother to view the other link but deleted the email and was ungentlemanly enough not send acknowledgements or thanks.

What I am saying here is I made the decision to view the content and once I found it was not to my liking, I refused to create more revulsion by viewing the rest of the material.

If the email had come with a clearer idea of the content, I would not have opened the links at all.

Give the people more credit of discernment

Surely, the people of Pakistan should be able to make informed decisions like that; as refusing to view YouTube videos with refer to the Mohammedan cartoons (Warning: Links to the cartoons, you exercise a personal prerogative in clicking on the link) or Geert Wilders’ Islamic ruse called Fitna to be released in March and still be about to seek out videos that glorify Islam or teach Internet protocols properly.

Censorship is a very blunt and unwieldy hammer to hit the nail where the government has lost the persuasion of ideas that they have to use the coercion of tyranny by resorting to blanket bans.

Very typical of ordering everyone to wall off the windows in their homes because the wind is blowing and it might carry bad odours when people should have the choice to open or close their windows at will to let air in or keep it out as they will.

In the process, technical ignorance on the one part and government policy failure on the other have combined to depict proud, independent and intelligent Pakistanis as ignorant, incapable of making informed decisions and brought Islam to unnecessary ridicule in the name of protecting the self-same religion.

They damned the consequences

19

I am still numb with disbelieve that Benazir Bhutto has been committed to earth, time and again, I have hoped for a playback to just before the 27^th of December where that scene could be reprised with a different act and outcome.

19, an age where most in the West are still tied to their mother’s apron strings whilst pretending to be grown-up. There is no doubt that people grow up faster in other parts of the world.

They take on responsibility beyond their years and stoically approach life with a resolve that leaves people in their 30s here, in shame. As recorded by Paul Hardcastle in his hit 19, the average documented average age of a US serviceman in Vietnam was 19.

Bilawal (One without equal) Bhutto Zardari, at 19 takes on the mantle of leadership of the Pakistan Peoples Party from his murdered mother, 6 years too early to run for parliament and having hardly started at the Oxford University – the responsibilities that dynasties thrust on their younger members can be burdens too great for mere mortals to bear. I wish him well.

Feudal Politics

Asian politics suffers the feudal encumbrance of political dynasties where merit suffers at the expense of nepotistic succession because the name and the mystique of the cult of personality of Bhutto (Pakistan), Gandhi (India), Aquino (Phillipines), Bandranaike (Sri Lanka) carries more gravitas in their localities.

It takes populism and pandering to baser instincts for others to gain control of the political levers of government, sometimes through extreme violence – the fastest way to gain control however, is through a military putsch on the premise that the leaders deposed have been corrupt.

What worries me about Pakistan is the way the perpetrators of this heinous act of violence have damned the consequences of their actions not caring to the life of others, the stability of the country or the opportunity for people to chose their own leaders.

If Al Qaeda is denying they had any involvement in the murder of Benazir Bhutto, the man in sunglasses looks smart enough to be part of the unruly Pakistan intelligence services that Musharraf has presided over with cack-handed incompetence. They really did damn the consequences and their denials are sounding too shrill to listen to anymore.

Living with Corruption

I did hope that Kenya being one of the most tribally diverse countries in Africa would produce an electoral victory for Africa where the votes tallied would match the votes cast.

Naively, after watching Living with Corruption and the spotlight on Kenya, I should have known better. Up to 4 of the electoral officers have announced that there were serious irregularities in the tallying that gave President Mwai Kibaki a second-term in office.

This is a man who was first made a minister in Jomo Kenyatta’s government in the year I was born – 1965 – I am still amazed that there are too many grand-old men who cannot make way for the youth to lead their countries to more promising prospects than the entrenched patriarchy that keeps the poor poorer and allows corruption to grow without abatement.

The First Jezebel of Kenya

I had hoped I would be writing about the electorate slapping down of that dreadful First Jezebel of Kenya – Lucy Kibaki, the President's wife – with a much deserved rejection. She has become a law unto herself and literally out of the bounds of legal restraint and due process.

Going around assaulting people because she is the wife of the president, one of the most ignominious examples of first-lady excess as exemplified in the death by misadventure of Stella Obasanjo who died due to cosmetic surgery complications in Spain or that of Grace Mugabe – the First Shopper of Zimbabwe whilst people starve in what was once the bread-basket of Southern Africa.

These women in steeped in the spirit of Imelda Marcos and Eva Braun do all to make the good work of other first ladies like Graça Machel who has been first lady of both Mozambique and South Africa or other demure but positively activist ones like the first ladies of the United States of America.

Shameless complicity of the West

However, I cannot believe the stance of the West at the rotten results of the Kenyan elections where indeed the violence must stop but the talk of reconciliation which implies accepting the results rather than going to the right result of the votes is unfortunate.

We need to fulfil the demands of democracy first before we devolve to the machinations of diplomacy and not the other way round – we are being sold short again.

When would Africans be allowed to get the government they have really voted for?

When would we be able to say with all confidence that our votes have been tallied and the numbers announced are clearly representative of what happened in the privacy of the ballot box cubicle?

It is saddening that people are protesting to have their votes counted properly and they are being shot down, killed and burnt severally by the police, the army or intra-ethnic violence for seeking what is fundamentally a human right in the West but almost certainly a death sentence in Africa.

Too many times, we have failed to deliver the truth of a basic democratic process, especially when we have to contend with an incumbency-beholden electoral commission so typical of the one in Nigeria.

And like the Nigerian one , they damned the consequences of their actions. Somehow, we still have a plague in Africa of leaders who care nothing for the legitimacy of their standing as long as they can wield power and suppress dissent – we are sentenced to being ruled rather than being lead or governed by men of honour, dignity, who are honest and who command real respect.

In Pakistan and in Kenya some people just damned the consequences and blood flows unabated for what could have been better managed if these people ever knew what was right to do. We need to have ways of seeking and getting just for these actions.

Benazir Bhutto, 1953 - 2007

Killed in the safest place

If I thought the year 2007 would run out on the note of events that have already taken place with the effects of the credit crunch, the prospects of recessions and economic show-downs coupled with low consumer confidence and Madeleine McCann, I was wrong.

I had hardly had breakfast and returned to my room when I heard of a suicide bomb attack in Rawalpindi, Pakistan on the convoy of Benazir Bhutto, we were first told she was safe, that was not the case, she was mortally wounded.

Rawalpindi if you may know is the military headquarters of the Pakistan; it has the intelligence services and obviously should have the best security measures you can hope to have in such a volatile country.

The question remains how a suicide bomber first took a shot at Benazir Bhutto´s neck and possibly her chest before compounding the commotion with a self conflagration that wasted over 20 lives – in Rawalpindi.

That would be point of discussion as one hopes that all the people behind this heinous, cruel, shameful, cowardly act of gross terrorism are caught and punished.

The Pakistan of today has all the hallmarks of Pervez Musharraf´s misgovernment and pseudo-democracy that has proved more ruinous for Pakistan over the last 8 years.

But we have to pause for thought as our prayers, heartfelt sympathy and condolences are conveyed to the family of Benazir Bhutto who was assassinated this afternoon in Rawalpindi.

Pakistan looking forward

The future of Pakistan is in the balance as our overriding policy of the war on terror is condemning to the scrapheap essential matters of true democratic reform in favour of comfortable but corrupt alliances with the West.

Ms. Bhutto was a flawed personality amidst allegations of corruption and other accusations of impropriety, but in all that Pakistan has to offer of leadership, it appears she still embodied the aspirations of the masses as they flocked to her rallies in the hope that she had a message and a solution to their ills and situations.

This chapter closes with 3-days of mourning for a lady who served her country twice as Prime Minister, the ramifications however would be more far-reaching than we can begin to fathom, eventually, one would hope Pervez Musharraf would be swept away then allowing the governing institutions of Pakistan to thrive as bastions of real democracy.

Pakistanis deserve that much and like President Bush said in his statement about this killing – they should honour Benazir Bhutto memory with a return to democracy. My hope is that it would be a properly representative democracy rather than the charade that now exists.

Benazir Bhutto – leader, voice, hope and martyr – Rest in peace.

The Grand Old Duke of Pakistan

I love the English

The English can be so wicked; dressing up the most scathing criticism with the novelty of a nursery rhyme exemplifies that kind of pretend kindness that is equivalent of taking long knives in the back whilst seeing everyone smile at the event.

The debacle that Pakistan has settled into is not only puzzling but farcical; a tin-pot general who thinks his incumbency would be threatened by the judiciary imposes emergency rule and sacks the bench and puts his puppets on the bench.

Pulling all stops

He stops people from gathering to protest his megalomania as the constitution is caught between the limbo of being suspended and being the basis of the rule that is martial law in everything but name.

The election date became a moveable feast that moved from January to February and then back to January, but nobody is free to campaign for elections that would take place in less than 60 days if they do.

The khaki-thug who commands an air of grudging respectability from the West because of the perverseness of the war on terror might just find that his firstname Pervez is really a colloquial corruption of perverse as people get corralled into prison with impunity and house arrest orders get imposed and removed; the cordons and barricades swung in and out of place like a matador coaxing a bull – and I am in Spain – Pakistan might well run out of prison space as the brigands in police uniform mob the public with sticks and staves and slaps.

Drunk with intoxicating power

When he said imposing this rule which seems to have no focus apart from whims that seem to chart the course of a completely inebriated man on his way home in the witching hour was the hardest thing he had ever done – one can see how power-drunkenness that lead one to do foolish things.

However, enough of this and let us see how history would remember the Grand Old Duke of Pakistan and notice that history just has a way of repeating itself location not withstand – the similarities are left for you to note.

The nursery rhyme

O! The Grand old Duke of York

He had ten thousand men

He marched them up to the top of the hill

And marched them down again.

And when they were up, they were up

And when they were down, they were down

And when they were only halfway up

They were neither up nor down.

This is as I remember it, we marched, stood up and sat down to the events depicted in the nursery rhyme none the wiser about the fact that we were making fun of an army general.

I would not pen the Pakistani version, there are literary proponents ad poets in that country better talented to give us a nursery rhyme that depicts the events in Pakistan today for posterity.

General Pervez Musharraf would be remembered well maybe not the way he would want to be remembered but that shows how much control we have of the present and none particularly of the future and history.

Preferences

Pakistan’s Political Crisis

Musharraf cannot fool us again

Guns to the rule

That Pakistan is caught in the throes of those who wield power through the comfort and support of the barrel of the gun rather than popular political mandate is an unfortunate development.

However, that would not have mattered to me because the regime of General/President Pervez Musharraf has thrived on the basis of America and the West putting the war on terror above real democratic reform in Pakistan.

Despite that, there is still trouble in Afghanistan; Osama bin Laden still sends us videos of home life and the Northwest of Pakistan bordering Afghanistan is still as ungovernable as it ever was – terror has visited the main cities as self-interest amongst the leading politicians leaves carnage in their wake.

General Musharraf believes that imposing emergency rule which is in fact martial law in everything but name would stop Pakistan from committing suicide.

We would be fools no longer

Regarding Pakistan, we have been taken for fools for a long time and this would have been believable if Musharraf had just come round to clean out a seething mess, but he is the one who has presided over Pakistan over the last eight years and to pretend he is not only instrumental and central to the problems of today is dishonest to say the least.

To then address the world and contend that our expectations of democracy in Pakistan are too lofty since the democracies in the West have had centuries to mature is to pull the wool over our eyes – Is India’s democracy not the same age as the time Pakistan got its independence?

Pakistan, Bangladesh (East Pakistan until 1971) and India used to be part of the same entity of the British Empire – British India - up until the independence in 1947; India has made the greatest progress in democratic maturity whilst the other two countries have vegetated into quasi-religious militancy with fragile political frameworks that pander to the cult of political dynasties.

General Musharraf has no answers to the problems in Pakistan and egregious exercise of military-backed executive remit in dismissing judges who contend with how the constitution is being abused; the arresting of political minds who would question this power-grab and the suspension of the constitution are only going to make matters worse.

Accepting the unacceptable

Unfortunately, the war on terror would prevent a proper condemnation of these extra-constitutional developments and it sets no template by which other military juntas around the world can be de-politicised.

The people of Pakistan would have to rise up and demand that they be given the right to decide who presides over their nation; it is unlikely that General Musharraf in his uniform or Mr. Pervez Musharraf in a Taliban tunic would win any popular support.

History and case studies all around the world where soldiers have marched rough-shod over the yearnings of real democratic reform show that they only have the terrifying effect of the fear of gun-borne retribution; they bring nothing of political progress to their countries, rather, they entrench corruption, impunity and human-rights abuses.

That is not to say democracy has all the answers, but Pakistan does need to be put back on the road to real representative democracy without some tin-pot General trying to lecture us on government having lost all credibility as a leader that can be trusted.

The sham of civilian government we are told still exists when the political leadership have been placed under arrest, restrictions exist on news reporting and the usurpation of powers that belong to the judiciary and legislature leaves much to be desired – as any government without a popular mandate always finds itself at variance with the judiciary that it tries either to subsume or emasculate that branch of government.

At no time has it become so necessary for General Musharraf to seek political asylum in some far-flung land and allow for Pakistan to be delivered from the throes of suicide that he and him only has created and fostered.

Cricket World Cup 2007 - lbw - Ligature Butchers Woolmer

Making up the numbers

It is an open secret that cricket hardly has the demographic following to truly be a world sport. Beyond the seemingly shared colonial heritage shared with England, we have India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri-Lanka, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada and West Indies - political interference in Zimbabwe cricket left it on the verge of dropping out of the elite - six minnow teams are needed to create a world event.

What is even interesting is that once cannot get a worthy representation from Scotland, Wales or Ireland, I take that back, Ireland has caused ructions in the current World Cup event taking place in the geographical expanse of hop-scotch islands that make up the West Indies.

The Netherlands prepared for the World Cup in the cold winter of the Northern Hemisphere made up of amateurs who probably just like English tea and have graduated to having cucumber sandwiches as a sign of anglophilia demonstrated by swinging a bat must have envied the elite teams that crowded down to the Southern Hemisphere for summer tans and practice where England dumped the ashes back in Australia with a whitewash.

Obfuscating cricket

For many, the rules of cricket are as inscrutable as the rules of American football which rarely sees the foot near the ball; and really, when the scores are toted up, who is Extras and when did he bat and I did not see him run?

However, the danger of the Cricket World Cup 2007 tournament coming and going as a non-event has passed with the death of the English Pakistani coach who was found unconscious on the floor of his hotel room in Jamaica after Pakistan was dumped out of the World Cup by Ireland the previous day.

The passion for cricket in the sub-continent cannot be overstated as effigies of the players were burnt by fans back home, disappointed by the performance of their team, but the death of Bob Woolmer has overshadowed the whole episode.

An English Murder Mystery

Now, the World Cup might just be remembered for being the one in which the coach of a team was asphyxiated by strangulation, though no other person implicated or ligature has yet been found - we have a murder mystery, one that would be a difficult one to solve.

All we now need to complete the Englishness of a game that probably can only be understood in English language is a Miss Marple or the nuisance of an Hetty Wainthropp, whilst a budding novelist might just be penning the first lines of a life as the new Agatha Christie with the Hercule Poirot of 2007 putting clues together for Sherlock Holmes and Dr John H. Watson to unravel.

Who cares about wickets, bowling, googlies, creases, fours, sixes or boundaries when the plot thickens to solve a Murder, most horrid?

Seriously, there is a serious crime to be solved about a nice man who has been tragically murdered for reasons we might yet never know, leaving a family behind in South Africa and a game that would miss a much loved man.

The Coalition of the Unviable

An appallingly truthful report

“We are pleased to present…” they said, I am utterly appalled I thought as I read the BBC headlines.

I have just been reading the Failed States Index 2006 produced by US Foreign Policy magazine and the US-based Fund for Peace think-tank, it does make interesting reading as it rates states or nations according to their viability.

Weep for the Rotten Criteria

Twelve criteria feature in this index as follows:

1.      Mounting demographic pressures

2.      Massive movement of refugees and internally displaced peoples

3.      Legacy of vengeance - seeking group grievance

4.      Chronic and sustained human flight

5.      Uneven economic development along group lines

6.      Sharp and/or severe economic decline

7.      Criminalisation and delegitimisation of the state

8.      Progressive deterioration of public services

9.      Widespread violation of human rights

10.  Security apparatus as "state within a state"

11.  Rise of factionalised elites

12.  Intervention of other states or external actors

United in mischief and more

The United States is ensconced in 128^th position being less viable than France, The United Kingdom and even Chile.

They reckon this must be due to the fact that there are mounting demographic pressures; probably the politics, the oil, the environment and all that is between creates significant discord.

Hurricane Katrina has definitely dealt a blow in this matter, since they score a 6 with regards to the massive movement or it was the massive immobility of internally displaced people who probably would never return to New Orleans sadly.

In our era of great American efficiencies and globalisation that is being force-fed to anyone who has an ear, the American Dream is turning into an nightmare for those caught on the negative side of uneven economic development.

It excludes people from opportunity, good health, rigorous justice and the enforcement of their constitutional rights.

Then the widespread violation of human rights where a score of 5 might include the abuse of the executive prerogative in the surveillance of Americans and the presence of the Guantanamo Aberration.

The Coalition of the Unviable

Besides these American failings, strong American allies or piles of mess feature in the Top 10 with Iraq (4), Afghanistan (9) and Nuclear Pakistan (10), barely Nuclear Iran comes in at 53 excelling by not being in sharp or severe economic decline.

I would contend if there were way of measuring viability also in relation to the havoc the primary country wreaks elsewhere, America should feature closer to its allies in the coalition of the unviable.

Nigeria as the most populous African country is where the debate about an at-present unconstitutional third term quest by the President flies in at number 22.

Having paid off most of their debt, they are host to many issues in the criteria that the government has done little to ameliorate.

Players, not Doers

As it were, many are big international players and poor internal doers.

It is however poignant to note that only 10 states do not have the influence of some intervention of other states or actors – Welcome to Earth – Chaos Reigns where people fail.

Views on Think Tanks