Chavez Told To Shut Up, About Time

Finally, someone has said what should’ve been said long ago:

Spain's King Juan Carlos told Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Saturday to "shut up" during closing speeches by leaders from the Latin world that brought the Ibero-American summit to an acrimonious end.

"Why don't you shut up?" the king shouted at Chavez, pointing a finger at the president when he tried to interrupt a speech by Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.

Zapatero was in the middle of a speech at the summit of mostly leftist leaders from Latin America, Portugal, Spain and Andorra, and was criticizing Chavez for calling former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar a fascist.

Chavez, a leading leftist foe of Washington, also attacked Spanish businessman Gerardo Diaz Ferran earlier in the week after he questioned the safety of foreign investments in Venezuela.

"I want to express to you President Hugo Chavez that in a forum where there are democratic governments ... one of the essential principles is respect," Zapatero told the leaders gathered in the Chilean capital, Santiago.

And this was from fellow leftists too. Chavez is slowly pissing off even his friends, who are getting tired of Chavez’s bombastic grandstanding, his increasingly rude behavior and use of undiplomatic language. Slowly and surely, Chavez will become such an embarrassment that world leaders will stay away in droves.

Chavez thrives because he's become the chief Bush hater. Chavez needs Bush. Chavez’s popularity feeds off Bush’s unpopularity. What will happen when a new U.S. president is sworn in little over a year? Democrat or Republican, the new president will have a more pragmatic worldview, even with Chavez’s Venezuela. Will Chavez be singing the same tune then?

HAPPY DIWALI!

Pakistan: Army And Militants One In The Same?

Excellent op-ed in The New York Times by a former member of the Pakistani military, who witnessed the Islamization of the military under President Zia-ul-Haq, and its consequences Pakistan faces to this day. Key graphs:

On the night he declared the emergency, General Musharraf released 28 Taliban prisoners; according to news reports, one was serving a sentence of 24 years for transporting two suicide bombers’ jackets, the only fashion accessory allowed in Pakistan’s Taliban-controlled areas. These are the kind of people who on their off days like to burn down video stores and harass barbers for giving shaves and head massages.

In what can be seen only as a reciprocal gesture, the Taliban released a group of army soldiers it had held hostage — according to the BBC, each soldier was given 500 rupees for good behavior.

Why do General Musharraf and his army feel a sense of kinship with the very people they are supposed to be fighting against? Why are he and his army scared of liberal lawyers and teachers but happy to deal with Islamist Pashtuns in the tribal areas?

The reasons can be traced back to the 1980s, when another military dictator, Gen. Zia ul-Haq, launched a broad campaign to Islamicize Pakistani society and the armed forces in particular. Back then, I was a cadet at Pakistan’s Air Force Academy, where I witnessed, along with hundreds of other aghast cadets, a remarkable scene in which a new recruit, out of religious conviction, refused to shave his beard. (Like most military training institutes in the world, the academy’s first right of passage was to turn the civilian recruits into clean-shaven jarheads.)

The issue was eventually referred to the Army high command in Islamabad, and as a result procedures for training institutes were amended — the boy was allowed to keep his beard and wear his uniform. The academy barber never recovered from the shock.

Within months there were other changes: evenings socializing to music and mocktails were replaced by Koran study sessions. Buses were provided for cadets who wanted to attend civilian religious congregations. Within months, our rather depressing but secular academy was turned into a zealous, thriving madrassa where missing your daily prayers was a crime far worse than missing the morning drill.

It is this crop of military officers that now runs the country. General Musharraf heads this army, and is very reluctant to let go.

More proof that the military is at loggerheads with democracy and secularism, especially when it has better relations with the Taliban, their purported enemy, then their own citizens. If what this writer says is true, then what effect can Musharraf and the military have in combating Islamic militants in the tribal areas when much of its mid-level officer corp is sympathetic to them, and many of the rank-and-file soldiers, so ill-equipped and so demoralized, are surrendering to them in droves?

[via ultrabrown]

A Realistic Look At US Policy Towards Pakistan

Charles Krauthammer, in my opinion, is a realist when it concerns American foreign policy, and has a great column on President Musharraf in The Washington Post. Key graphs:

Universal democratization is lovely, but it cannot be a description of day-to-day diplomacy. The blanket promise to always oppose dictatorship is inherently impossible to keep. It always requires considerations of local conditions and strategic necessity.

Lebanon, for example, has a long tradition of democratic norms going back to independence in 1943. America's current policy (backed strongly by France) of vigorous support for an independent Lebanese democracy is not utopian. Sudden democratization of Egypt and Saudi Arabia, however, is utopian -- an invitation to the kind of Islamist takeover that happened in Gaza and nearly occurred in Algeria.

Pakistan is not the first time we've faced hard choices about democratization. At the height of the Cold War, particularly in the immediate post-Vietnam era of American weakness, we supported dictators Augusto Pinochet in Chile and Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines. The logic was simple: The available and likely alternative -- i.e., communists -- would be worse.

What Krauthammer says is essentially true, and he’s doubtful Pakistan can make the transition.

That depends on whether we think Benazir Bhutto is Corazon Aquino and whether Bhutto and her allies can successfully take power, which means keeping both the army and the country intact. Heightening the risk of dumping Musharraf is that external conditions today are not like the relatively benign conditions of the 1980s. The Taliban and its allies are gaining in strength and waiting to pick up the pieces from the civil war developing between the two most westernized, most modernizing elements of Pakistani society -- the army, one of the few functioning institutions of the state, and the elite of civil society, including lawyers, jurists, journalists and students.

Yes, there are no Abraham Lincolns waiting in the wings; and Bhutto and her counterpart, Nawaz Sharif, are far from ideal, but they enjoy some modicum of popular support. And I disagree with Krauthammer that the army is a westernized institution. In fact, it’s increasingly becoming radicalized. It’s more of a hindrance than a pillar of support.

Read the rest of the article, Krauthammer makes a lot of sense.

Some Palestinians Seeking Israeli Citizenship

It seems Palestinians living in Jerusalem are applying for Israeli citizenship in droves. These two articles explain why. Some excerpts:

"I don't want to have any part in the PA. I want the health insurance, the schools, all the things we get by living here," says Ranya Mohammed as she does her afternoon shopping in Shuafat.

"I'll go and live in Israel before I'll stay here and live under the PA, even if it means taking an Israeli passport," says Mrs. Mohammed, whose husband earns a good living from doing business here. "I have seen their suffering in the PA. We have a lot of privileges I'm not ready to give up."

Nabil Gheet, a neighborhood leader who runs a gift and kitchenware outfit in the adjacent town of Ras Khamis, also resists coming under the PA's control.

"We have no faith in the Palestinian Authority. It has no credibility," he says, as his afternoon customers trickle in and out. "I do not want to be ruled by Abbas's gang," he says, referring to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

And

"They've weighed the pros and cons of life under the Palestinian Authority and those under Israel and they've chosen," said residents in East Jerusalem of their naturalization-seeking neighbors.

33-year-old Samar Qassam said his motivation to apply for Israeli citizenship was to seek a better future for his family. Along with his wife and son, Qassam once lived in the Old City but recently moved to Beit Safafa, an Arab village south of Jerusalem.

"I was born in Jerusalem, this is where I grew up and this is where I make my living. My entire life is here. My wife comes from the West Bank, so I do fear she may be deported and therefore filed a naturalization request for her as well. I want to keep living here with my wife and child without having to worry about our future. That's why I want an Israeli citizenship," Qassam said.

"I don't know what the future holds. There's talk of the Palestinian Authority coming to Jerusalem. Personally, I don't think that will happen. But only God knows what will happen. I work as a mechanic for an Israeli company, I have both Jewish and Arab friends. I speak Hebrew and go out to Tel Aviv and Akko in the evenings. I just want a better future," he said.

Good governance and quality of life trumps nationalism. These Palestinians have tasted success and prosperity living under Israeli rule, they’ve seen how their brethren live in the West Bank and Gaza and have come to the following conclusion—they don’t want any part of it.

Nitin's Rightful Criticism Of Tehelka

Nitin criticizes Tehelka for publishing a rather shaky article questioning Gujarat’s economic success. Gaurav, in turn, criticizes Nitin for shooting the messenger. I think Gaurav is way off base. Nitin accomplished two things by writing what he did: first, he refuted the claims made by the article and, second, he criticizes Tehelka for its shoddy, gotcha-journalism practices.

Newspapers are supposed to be contrarian by nature, to question prevailing views, and to cast doubts on utterances by governments and public officials. I do not question Tehelka’s right to doubt the Gujarat government's claims, but I do question its methods, which seems to be driven by economic (to sell more magazines and get more hits on its web site), and a hidden political agenda (most newspapers and magazines India are left-wing) against the BJP-led Gujarat government.

Integrity and credibility are stock and trade of the journalism business, and Tehelka seems to be losing on this score.

Karuna Caught In United Kingdom

Here’s an interesting story from Sri Lanka:

Damning evidence has surfaced that the Government smuggled LTTE renegade commander Karuna to Great Britain on a forged diplomatic passport.

An investigation revealed that the forged diplomatic passport was issued by the Immigration Department on the orders of higher authorities in the name of Kokila Gunawardena on August 30, 2007.

Who is Karuna? He is a renegade LTTE commander who broke off from the LTTE to, ostensibly, protest the marginalization of eastern Sri Lankan Tamils within the organization. It’s been long rumored Sri Lankan intelligence services have been secretly backing him: in the vain hope that eastern Sri Lankan Tamils would rally to his side, weakening the LTTE by dividing them in two. This support did not materialize as planned, mostly due to the ruthless efficiency in how the LTTE deals with dissent. Karuna was a marked man, and so were his supporters.

I would gander a guess that Sri Lanka decided to cut its losses and redeploy their resources elsewhere. They could have left Karuna twisting in the wind; a LTTE hit squad would’ve finished him off sooner or later. After all, they never forget traitors nor do they stop hunting them. On the other hand, Sri Lanka wanted to spare themselves the embarrassment, so they decided to send him into exile, hopefully buying his silence. London is a good choice as Karuna’s family was already ensconced there.

And Sri Lanka risked a diplomatic row to send Karuna to London. Using a false name, a forged passport, and outright mendacity, Sri Lanka tried to smuggle Karuna into the United Kingdom. Unfortunately, Karuna was caught at the airport and arrested. No doubt he’ll be deported back to Sri Lanka. Karuna will try to ask for political asylum—perhaps this was the plan, after all—and may well receive it given liberal asylum policies of Europe.

I’m sure the United Kingdom is outraged that Sri Lanka was abusing the Vienna Convention, which governs diplomatic protocols, to send the likes of Karuna to the U.K. under the guise of diplomatic cover. We haven’t heard the last of this story.

UPDATE: Human rights groups are calling Britain to prosecute Karuna for war crimes, including torture and recruitment of child soldiers. I don’t think this will go anywhere. I doubt Britain has the jurisdiction to prosecute a person whose crimes were committed in another sovereign nation; and I’m unfamiliar with international law to have an opinion one way or the other. The only scenario that I can see is that Karuna is deported to Sri Lanka and tried for his crimes there.

Musharraf Promises To Be Tough, Again

Conservative will say anything to protect Musharraf, their boy in Pakistan, to save face. For example, the gang at Powerline write:

The Asian Age reports that Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf has given the go-ahead for a massive crackdown in the restive tribal areas for the purpose of crushing pro-Taliban and Al Qaeda militants. To the extent that Musharaf is serious, this doesn't seem like the time for the U.S. to counteract his attempts to consolidate power.

Musharraf had 7-years and over $10 billion in U.S. aid to be serious about cracking down on pro-Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants. Why is he doing this now, and why does he need to suspend democracy to do it. They don’t ask these questions. They just blindly accept the bullshit being spouted by Musharraf and his cronies. Conservatives have become those parents who are frequently frustrated in their attempts to discipline a spoiled child, who constantly makes empty promises. All I can say is: here we go again.

Frontline Kisses China's Ass

This article on the Communist Party of China’s 17th Congress proves that Frontline magazine is nothing more than an appendage of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). There’s not a single negative comment in it. It’s all praise: China can do no wrong. The author giddily writes:

The “Scientific Outlook on Development” is projected as a pathway to “a harmonious socialist society”, whose establishment is also outlined in the latest amendment. The idea is to “turn China into a prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced and harmonious modern socialist country”. The amendment further stipulates that “the CPC leads the people in developing the socialist market economy”. A related mandate is that the party “unwaveringly consolidates and develops the public sector of the economy and unswervingly encourages, supports and guides the development of the non-public sector”.

What China practices is not socialism but a type of gangster capitalism that shuts out much of the population from the prosperity that elites and the oligarchs are presently reaping. China obfuscate it by calling it “Scientific Outlook on Development.” Typical commie hypocrisy and double-speak. It’s the type of capitalism communists continually decry in India, but have no problem praising China for.

What the article fails to mention is rising discontent in the countryside among farmers. So far China has resorted to repressive measures, coupled with tight controls on media, to keep things quiet. But with hundreds of millions of people seething, how much longer can China keep lids on issues simmering for years? Frontline never explored this position because it has its head too far up its asses to take notice.

Pakistan: What Does The Common Man Think

The throttling of democracy in Pakistan is a matter of grave concern, and I’m the last person to belittle it, but is it a crisis the media makes it out to be? Is Pakistan really on precipice of an Islamic takeover? I’ve seen the pictures on the Internet and television of thousands of people protesting the declaration of martial law, but most of them appear to be lawyers. Naturally, they would be upset if the judicial system is shuttered, it’s their livelihood after all.

I want to know what the man on the street thinks, the regular guy who is trying to eke out a living—the laborer, street merchants, low-level government employees and other people the media tend to ignore. What do they think of Musharraf and his declaration of martial law? Does it touch their lives in anyway? My guess would be no. For them, the next day will be just like yesterday. What does it matter to them what the government does, after all it’s never been there for them. And why should they care about lawyers and students protesting for democracy, a mere trifle in their world. To the common man, they’re part of the same ineffective and corrupt system.

If you look at it: you have to be a cynic to live and survive in present-day Pakistan.