International Affairs: December 2007 Archives
Former prime minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto was killed by an assassin, and all the MSM news coverage casts her in a very positive light despite ample evidence of corruption by the Bhutto clan.
Many cyncial Pakistanis discounted accusations against the Bhuttos as a frame-up. But all this changed when incorruptible Swiss federal prosecutors announced the Bhuttos and their Pakistan People's Party had hidden at least 20 million Swiss francs (C$20 million) made from money laundering, illegal payoffs, and, possibly, drug dealing in numbered accounts in Geneva. A Swiss firm hired by the Bhutto government to monitor customs duties was accused of having paid a percentage of their collections to the Bhutto's secret Swiss accounts. Swiss prosecutors froze the Bhutto accounts and sent their indictment to Pakistani federal prosecutors for criminal action.'Few people believed the Pakistani government charges,' Benazir said, 'until the Swiss investigation. But that changed everything.' Indeed. Not only did the Swiss charges widely discredit the Bhutto clan in Pakistan, the accusations of massive bribery and drug dealing caused Benazir's many ardent supporters in Washington and the western media, whom she was seeking to enlist to her cause, to give her the cold shoulder. Why would the normally discreet, cautious Swiss bring such inflammatory charges unless they had overwhelming proof of guilt?
'I don't know,' insists Benazir. 'I've never had a bank account in Switzerland since 1984. Why would the Swiss do this to me? Maybe the Swiss are trying to divert attention from the Holocaust gold scandal.'
I think it's more likely that the Bhuttos, like essentially every other Islamic power-center, were deepy corrupt and largely supported by criminal enterprises. That she was more popular than the current thug ruling Pakistan means that Benazir Bhutto could have won a hypothetical "election", but even if she had she would still have been a thug herself. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Democracy is great in that it gives people the government they deserve. The Palestinians got Hamas, and the Pakistanis would have gotten in Bhutto more of the same they get now from President Pervez Musharraf. Bhutto did nothing to advance women's rights during her two tenures as prime minister, and she made a strategic alliance with the Taliban in Afghanistan to help stablize the opium market. Let's not pretend that Bhutto was a pure and wholesome freedom fighter -- she was just the most popular thug in the country.
Al Qaeda is taking credit for her assassination, which is as plausible as anything. Whether they did it or not, they may have alienated another whole swath of the Muslim world by claiming credit for killing such a popular figure. Perhaps Musharraf will now have the breathing room to allow American forces into northern Pakistan where Bin Laden is most likely hiding? Or maybe we'll take the initiative ourselves if the country falls into chaos over this murder.
Peter Hitchens reveals a pitiful North Korea. His bleak descriptions certainly miss the worst of it (as he concedes).
You can gaze on the gargantuan housing estates, made up of scores of apartment blocks, a great festival of concrete outdoing even Soviet Moscow in its gigantism. You may admire the Juche Tower, which symbolizes North Korea’s supposed self-reliance. The tower is a column three feet taller than the Washington Monument, weirdly topped by a great simulated red flame, like a much larger version of the World War I Memorial in Kansas City, but only when there is enough power to keep it aglow. That is not always. Voltage is a problem in Pyongyang. The streetlamps are never switched on, and there is a strange interval between sundown and total darkness, before the lights start to come on in the windows of all the apartments. There is also a wonderful quiet, since Pyongyang has hardly any motor traffic by day and even less at night. Human voices can be heard from astonishing distances, as if you were in a tranquil lakeside resort rather than in the center of a grandiose metropolis. The electric current in homes and offices seems suspiciously feeble and shuts down abruptly when the government thinks bedtime has arrived. The authorities also have views on when you ought to wake up. A siren rouses the sluggards at 7 each morning, though light sleepers will already have been alerted to the approach of the working day by ghostly plinking, plonking music drifting from loudspeakers at 5 and 6 o’clock. The sensation of living in an enormous institution, part boarding school, part concentration camp, is greatly enhanced by the sound of these mass alarms.
I think his final two paragraphs are a bit naive, but I agree that the problem is generally intractable.
(HT: Arts & Letters Daily.)
David Brooks on the power structure of China.
The persecution of British schoolteacher Gillian Gibbons by the Sudanese government should certainly make any Westerner considering working in a Muslim nation think twice.
A British teacher jailed for insulting Islam after allowing her students to name a teddy bear Muhammad flew home Monday following a pardon by the president of Sudan, a British Embassy spokesman said. ...Gibbons' conviction under Sudan's Islamic Sharia law shocked Britons and many Muslims worldwide. It also inflamed passions among many Sudanese, some of whom called for her execution.
She escaped harsh0er punishment that could have included up to 40 lashes, six months in prison and a fine.
In a written statement given to President Omar al-Bashir and read by a British mediator, Gibbons said she did not intend to offend anyone and had great respect for Islam.
Gibbons, 54, was sentenced Thursday to 15 days in prison and deportation for insulting Islam because she allowed her students to name a class teddy bear Muhammad, seen as a reference to Islam's Prophet Muhammad. Her time in jail since her arrest Nov. 25 counted toward the sentence.
This case isn't as bad as that of the Saudi Arabian gang-rape victim sentenced to 200 lashes (effectively a death sentence), but it further highlights the gaping chasm between the West and Islam. I haven't heard any prominent Muslims -- such as world leaders -- denouncing either of these incidents.
