Benazir Bhutto faced death with courage
Mirza A. Beg
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Counter Currents, Saturday, December 29, 2007
http://www.countercurrents.org/beg291207.htm
Indian Muslims, Friday, December 28, 2007
http://indianmuslims.in/obituary-benazir-bhutto-faced-death-with-courage/#more-481
Khabrein Info. India, Friday, December 28, 2007
http://www.khabrein.info/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=10399&Itemid=88
My News India, Sunday, December 30, 2007
http://www.mynews.in/fullstory.aspx?storyid=1600
Pine Magazine, Atlanta, Wednesday, January 2, 2008
http://pine-magazine.com/content.php?id=1098
The Tuscaloosa News, Thursday, January 3, 2008
http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/article/20080103/NEWS/801030301
Banazir Bhutto, fell victim to the politics of endemic violence in Pakistan. She called herself “the Daughter of Destiny” in her autobiography and often styled herself as the daughter of Pakistan. She had more upheavals in one life time than most can imagine. In her untimely death, she followed her slain father and two brothers.
She was the daughter of former President, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, appointed under emergency rule when former dictator Yahya Khan abdicated in the wake of civil war of 1971. The war was brought on by hubris of Yahya Khan and Zulfiqar Bhutto, resulting in East Pakistan breaking away to form Bangladesh. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto later became the Prime Minister under a parliamentary constitution designed by him. He rigged the next election and was overthrown in a military coup in 1977 by General Zia ul Haq, who hanged him in 1979 for the murder of a political opponent.
With courage and perseverance, twenty-six year old Oxford and Harvard educated Benazir Bhutto became the undisputed leader of her father's Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP). The PPP was hounded by General Zia, an ally of the US in the war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. After the death of dictator-President Zia ul Haq in a plane crash, she returned from exile to lead PPP to victory twice to become the Prime Minister in 1988 and again in 1993. And twice she was dismissed from office under a cloud of corruption and nepotism in 1990 and 1996 by the ceremonial president.
In 1999, General Parvez Musharraf overthrew the government of her political rival Nawaz Sharif. General Musharraf has ruled Pakistan through some very difficult times in the wake of 9/11 and the US war on Al Qaeda and the Talibans in neighboring Afghanistan.
After eight years of dictatorship, and close cooperation with the United States, Musharraf has not been able to contain the virulent Talibanist ideology that has spilled over among the kith and kin of Afghan Pashtuns in the very porous frontier areas of Pakistan. With regular indiscriminate bombings of Pashtun villages in Afghanistan by the US lead forces and occasional stealth bombings in Pakistan, claiming hundreds perhaps thousands of innocent lives, the Pashtuns have become much more anti-American and anti-Pakistan government than ever before, resulting in Iraq style suicide bombings in civilian areas of Pakistan.
Unable to defeat the Talibanist ideology and unable to safeguard the civilian population in the heartland of Pakistan, Musharraf has become quite unpopular. He found his power slipping and made the mistake of firing the Chief Justice of the Pakistan Supreme Court in March 2007. Unexpected widespread protest followed and Musharraf was forced to reinstate the Chief Justice. It weakened him further.
Over the summer of 2007, the United States brokered a power sharing deal between General Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto to provide a gradual shift in power. Musharraf dropped the pending corruption charges against her and allowed her return to Pakistan after a decade of self exile. She was a candidate for Prime Minister again in the upcoming election on January 8, 2008. On again, off again political maneuvering by General Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto further weakened Musharraf who declared emergency in early November, but was forced to relinquish his military dictator’s uniform to become a newly minted civilian president.
Whatever the veracity of behind the scene deal may have been, Bush took credit for it, trying to shore his sagging popularity in the United States. To the Pakistanis the very idea of Bush meddling and controlling the two top political figures, made Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto appear to be stooges of Bush, who while preaching democracy has a record of supporting dictatorships and bullying other countries. An average Pakistani does not support the Talibanist ideology and feels caught between the devil and the deep sea, unable to decide which is which.
Benazir Bhutto was a polarizing figure in a country that had aspirations of nationhood, but keeps loosing to the vested interests based on many conflicting ethnic, linguistic and economic fissures held together or perhaps suppressed together by the domineering presence of the military. For sixty years, its leaders have gone for quick fixes of military dictatorships rather than let the imperfect civilian institutions grow and mature.
As polarizing leaders often are, she was intensely loved by many and was hated by many others. In the past Benazir Bhutto had political opponents, but this time she had deadly enemies. The bullets of an assassin and the suicide bomber not only killed Benazir Bhutto, but have set Pakistan further back, denying another possible chance for an imperfect democracy to take root.
I was not an admirer of Benazir Bhutto’s political compromises and considered her father to be one of the architects of the dismemberment of Pakistan when Bangladesh broke away in 1971. But criticism aside one has to admire her courage and persistence. She tried to bring sanity to Pakistan's many-sided murky politics choked with a strangle-hold of military on all the intermittent civilian governments, including hers.
Finally she went down fighting courageously trying to do some good for her beleaguered country. She was less than what critics like me would have liked her to be, but then critics have the luxury of not being in the rough and tumble of politics. They do not have to swallow principles and make calculated imperfect or at times far from perfect compromises. As Theodore Roosevelt said,
"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again ... who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly."
Banazir Bhutto knew the dangers she faced. About 150 people died in an attempt on her life when she arrived in Pakistan from exile in mid-October this year. She was not intimidated but pursued on with vigor. She died valiantly fighting for her and Pakistan's future as she saw it. She was cut down in her prime by those who have a very narrow jaundiced view of their religion and no vision of the future. They court death, killing innocent bystanders in ignorance of the ideals of religion and nobility of human spirit.
After six years of war, death and destruction the US should realize that bombing wins battles and destroys some enemies while creating many more, resulting in a heavy blowback price to pay. War of ideas is won by convincing the enemy of a better future. Instead of supporting military dictatorships the United States should invest in better schools, universities, hospitals and infrastructure to help Pakistan alleviate poverty and build a more equitable society.
Pakistan is again at fateful cross roads. It is sixty years late, but not too late, because what else can a people or a nation do, but to take up the fallen standard and persevere. Pakistanis can reject the politics of fear imposed by the quick-fix promises of military dictatorships. They should take up the difficult long journey of slowly building civil institutions of imperfect political give and take to reach an internal cohesion and become a nation at peace with itself and its neighbors.
Mirza A. Beg can be contacted at mab64@yahoo.com or read at http://mirzasmusings.blogspot.com/
Friday, December 28, 2007
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Thoughts for 2008, 07-12-20
Will the year 2008 be Different?
Mirza A. Beg
Tuesday, December 20, 2007
Counter Currents, Wednesday, December21, 2007
http://www.countercurrents.org/beg211207.htm
The American Muslim, Tuesday, December 20, 2007
http://www.theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/will_the_year_2008_be_different/0015294
Media Monitors Network, Monday, December 24, 2007
http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/48396
My News India, Sunday, December 30, 2007
http://www.mynews.in/fullstory.aspx?storyid=1601
Asia Peace, Article of the month, December 2007
http://www.asiapeace.org/article_of_month.htm
January 1, of the year 2008 of the Julian-Gregorian calendar will be just another day in the steady flow of time. Some will celebrate because it is customary, while others will rejoice in the ever present hope of renewal, but most of the teaming poor and dispossessed of the world will not notice it. The wars will go on as legalized murder. It will be yet another day of misery and deprivation.
Most people, across the globe, at least wish for peace on Earth and equity and justice for all. They are kind and considerate as individuals. But as a group, “us versus them”, we conveniently forget that it requires treating the distant “others” as we, the “us” would like to be treated. It is easy to find tortuous reasons to justify selfish interests, resulting in wars based on the worst of lies, the self serving lies that we tell ourselves. They propel us to support the politicians who lie most convincingly that killing neighbors or a people in far off lands is necessary to preserve our way of life.
Religions become the most convenient hand maiden of the propagandists, and we willingly with enthusiasm profane what we purport to hold sacred.
Eventually all wars do end, often with the exhaustion of all sides. In the past two centuries, the quantum growth in modern technology has provided unimaginable material conveniences. It has brought prosperity, but sadly there is even a greater growth in weapons to feed the wars; weapons that can be used without any danger to the user; impersonalized weapons.
In my name, with my taxes, a neighborhood full of people with similar dreams as mine, in a far off place, will be destroyed by a rocket delivered by a remote controlled plane, while I am celebrating the New Year festivities and talking of peace and goodwill. If confronted by the deception, the trite explanation will be “collateral damage”, or at best an oft repeated hackneyed phrase “Oops, a mistake for which we are extremely sorry.”
Ours is an age of information and instant communication. No technology can be secret for very long. Every weapon invented by an established government to oppress others in the name of crass nationalism will eventually leak out or are sold to those fighting the oppression, who after gaining power, in turn become oppressors.
The wars can not be fought or sustained unless the populace is duped into believing that the “ungodly other” or “beastly other” is trying to destroy them. The propaganda is self-sustaining and it grows until we are jolted after falling off the precipice.
Those who see injustice and keep quiet, end up being silent supporters of oppression. The "innocent" bystanders are no longer as innocent as they want to believe, especially in a democracy. If we do not object to our own government's misdeeds at home and abroad, we are guilty, because in a democracy we are the government.
Many of us were not taken in by the lies of warmongers. We foresaw and wrote about the quagmire and destruction that the war would bring, but being right before a majority realizes the folly is perceived as a greater political folly. The strength of ethical principles and intellect is branded as weakness of brawn by the glib power seekers who keep trying to deceive the electorate by appealing to the baser instincts.
We need to speak in louder and clearer voices to inject backbones in politicians who want to be with the winning side. We also need to convince the popular media that people do want to hear the other side as well. It is not economically injurious. They do not need to imitate Fox news. Unless we do it in greater numbers, the malfeasances of the Bush administration in domestic policy and endless indiscriminate wars in the name of peace will continue to create more terrorists and wider wars.
The warmongers had their run. They have sown terrible death and destruction. They have the power of the latest weapons, but they suffer a great disadvantage. They have to be against others to be hegemonic. They thrive on hatred, pitting “us” against “them”.
The ideals of peace and of consideration of others as human beings may appear to be powerless, but they have one great advantage. They can unite across the false divide created by forces of ignorance and war. They extend a hand of friendship across the artificial rift. They can erase the dishonest division.
Let us make the year 2008 a watershed, when the 21st century emerges from the deathly clutches of the wars of the 20th century to claim its much needed place to unfold an era of peace in the flow of time.
Mirza A. Beg can be contacted at mab64@yahoo.com and at http://mirzasmusings.blogspot.com/
Mirza A. Beg
Tuesday, December 20, 2007
Counter Currents, Wednesday, December21, 2007
http://www.countercurrents.org/beg211207.htm
The American Muslim, Tuesday, December 20, 2007
http://www.theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/will_the_year_2008_be_different/0015294
Media Monitors Network, Monday, December 24, 2007
http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/48396
My News India, Sunday, December 30, 2007
http://www.mynews.in/fullstory.aspx?storyid=1601
Asia Peace, Article of the month, December 2007
http://www.asiapeace.org/article_of_month.htm
January 1, of the year 2008 of the Julian-Gregorian calendar will be just another day in the steady flow of time. Some will celebrate because it is customary, while others will rejoice in the ever present hope of renewal, but most of the teaming poor and dispossessed of the world will not notice it. The wars will go on as legalized murder. It will be yet another day of misery and deprivation.
Most people, across the globe, at least wish for peace on Earth and equity and justice for all. They are kind and considerate as individuals. But as a group, “us versus them”, we conveniently forget that it requires treating the distant “others” as we, the “us” would like to be treated. It is easy to find tortuous reasons to justify selfish interests, resulting in wars based on the worst of lies, the self serving lies that we tell ourselves. They propel us to support the politicians who lie most convincingly that killing neighbors or a people in far off lands is necessary to preserve our way of life.
Religions become the most convenient hand maiden of the propagandists, and we willingly with enthusiasm profane what we purport to hold sacred.
Eventually all wars do end, often with the exhaustion of all sides. In the past two centuries, the quantum growth in modern technology has provided unimaginable material conveniences. It has brought prosperity, but sadly there is even a greater growth in weapons to feed the wars; weapons that can be used without any danger to the user; impersonalized weapons.
In my name, with my taxes, a neighborhood full of people with similar dreams as mine, in a far off place, will be destroyed by a rocket delivered by a remote controlled plane, while I am celebrating the New Year festivities and talking of peace and goodwill. If confronted by the deception, the trite explanation will be “collateral damage”, or at best an oft repeated hackneyed phrase “Oops, a mistake for which we are extremely sorry.”
Ours is an age of information and instant communication. No technology can be secret for very long. Every weapon invented by an established government to oppress others in the name of crass nationalism will eventually leak out or are sold to those fighting the oppression, who after gaining power, in turn become oppressors.
The wars can not be fought or sustained unless the populace is duped into believing that the “ungodly other” or “beastly other” is trying to destroy them. The propaganda is self-sustaining and it grows until we are jolted after falling off the precipice.
Those who see injustice and keep quiet, end up being silent supporters of oppression. The "innocent" bystanders are no longer as innocent as they want to believe, especially in a democracy. If we do not object to our own government's misdeeds at home and abroad, we are guilty, because in a democracy we are the government.
Many of us were not taken in by the lies of warmongers. We foresaw and wrote about the quagmire and destruction that the war would bring, but being right before a majority realizes the folly is perceived as a greater political folly. The strength of ethical principles and intellect is branded as weakness of brawn by the glib power seekers who keep trying to deceive the electorate by appealing to the baser instincts.
We need to speak in louder and clearer voices to inject backbones in politicians who want to be with the winning side. We also need to convince the popular media that people do want to hear the other side as well. It is not economically injurious. They do not need to imitate Fox news. Unless we do it in greater numbers, the malfeasances of the Bush administration in domestic policy and endless indiscriminate wars in the name of peace will continue to create more terrorists and wider wars.
The warmongers had their run. They have sown terrible death and destruction. They have the power of the latest weapons, but they suffer a great disadvantage. They have to be against others to be hegemonic. They thrive on hatred, pitting “us” against “them”.
The ideals of peace and of consideration of others as human beings may appear to be powerless, but they have one great advantage. They can unite across the false divide created by forces of ignorance and war. They extend a hand of friendship across the artificial rift. They can erase the dishonest division.
Let us make the year 2008 a watershed, when the 21st century emerges from the deathly clutches of the wars of the 20th century to claim its much needed place to unfold an era of peace in the flow of time.
Mirza A. Beg can be contacted at mab64@yahoo.com and at http://mirzasmusings.blogspot.com/
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Justice & Gujarat 07-12-10
Justice for the Victims of Gujarat Pogrom
Mirza A. Beg
December 10, 2007
Counter Currents, Tuesday December 11, 2007
http://www.countercurrents.org/beg111207.htm
Dear Mr. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and
The Congress President Mrs. Sonia Gandhi.
At this important juncture, the helm of the ship of state, the Republic of India is primarily in your hands. The agenda of the executive and political power has been entrusted to your judgment by the people of India, in the hope that you will leave an ethical and proud legacy for the generations to come. Unfortunately the nightmare of the BJP misrule persists in many parts of the Republic and the constitutionally guaranteed rights of minorities are still being violated with impunity.
The perpetrators, the victims and the average Indians know that Narendra Modi's government engineered the riots in Gujarat resulting in the death of 2000 innocent people and injuring hundreds of thousands more in 2002. The justice to the victims is being denied because the BJP controlled governments in Gujarat and at the Center concealed the evidence, precluding a citizen’s ability to seek redress in the courts of law. Therefore, it was not a spontaneous riot, but a planned Pogrom.
The fig-leaf of lack of legal evidence of Modi government's direct involvement is believed only by the morally bankrupt. Even the American and European governments, though well disposed towards India, know enough to repeatedly deny the coveted diplomatic visa to Modi.
Over the years sectarians within the Congress party stealthily looked the other way while the Hindutva (Hindu sectarians) engineered cyclical riots, too numerous to list, often supported by the police. It culminated in the orchestrated destruction of the Babri Masjid in 1992 while the then Congress Prime Minister Narsimha Rao, feigned helpless surprise for six long hours. The loss of faith among the secular electorate, and the minorities resulted in Congress's defeat in the successive general elections.
After being in wilderness for eight years, the Congress led coalition under your new and vigorous leadership was elected as a repudiation of the fascistic and sectarian agenda of the BJP. Indian electorate gave the Congress another chance in the hope that the party has learned a lesson and returned to its founding secular and humane principles.
The dead and the dispossessed are still waiting for justice after five long years. Some may find them a political inconvenience, but they cannot be wished away.
We understand that political disputes in a democracy are decided by elections; and the division of power between the Central and the Provincial governments are well established in the constitution. But the constitution clearly provides mechanisms to punish provincial governments guilty of blatant criminality. Many times in the past provincial governments have been dismissed by the President for much less.
The brave reporters and editors of the Tahelka News magazine took enormous risks to record irrefutable evidence from the culprits, exposing the hand of Modi and the Gujarat government. They did what the government should have done.
I know the elections in Gujarat are around the corner; some wedded to politics of unprincipled power, afraid of political muscle of the Hindutva forces, want to cajole them. This will be a grave mistake. Instead of more placebos of toothless inquiry commissions, the Central government should protect the Tahelka reporters and promptly bring charges against Modi and his cohorts in the court of law. A five year delay is not too soon. Failure to act will fortify the assessment that the Congress has forsaken the ethos of the Indian Constitution to succumb to the destructive lure of power. It will confirm the perception of Congress as enablers of riots by stealth sectarianism.
Both of you understand the economics of dispossession and personal loss. Steadfastly you have overcome great impediments to reach your present coveted positions, not in search of power, but in pursuit of ideals. Great leaders courageously navigate the country to uphold the Constitution and establish principles that the succeeding generations will be proud to follow. It is time to use the irrefutable evidence provided by the Tahelka reporters to bring the powerful nefarious sectarian forces to justice and set the Indian Republic on the firm footing as a nation of laws.
Mirza A. Beg can be reached at mab64@yahoo.com or http://mirzasmusings.blogspot.com/
Mirza A. Beg
December 10, 2007
Counter Currents, Tuesday December 11, 2007
http://www.countercurrents.org/beg111207.htm
Dear Mr. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and
The Congress President Mrs. Sonia Gandhi.
At this important juncture, the helm of the ship of state, the Republic of India is primarily in your hands. The agenda of the executive and political power has been entrusted to your judgment by the people of India, in the hope that you will leave an ethical and proud legacy for the generations to come. Unfortunately the nightmare of the BJP misrule persists in many parts of the Republic and the constitutionally guaranteed rights of minorities are still being violated with impunity.
The perpetrators, the victims and the average Indians know that Narendra Modi's government engineered the riots in Gujarat resulting in the death of 2000 innocent people and injuring hundreds of thousands more in 2002. The justice to the victims is being denied because the BJP controlled governments in Gujarat and at the Center concealed the evidence, precluding a citizen’s ability to seek redress in the courts of law. Therefore, it was not a spontaneous riot, but a planned Pogrom.
The fig-leaf of lack of legal evidence of Modi government's direct involvement is believed only by the morally bankrupt. Even the American and European governments, though well disposed towards India, know enough to repeatedly deny the coveted diplomatic visa to Modi.
Over the years sectarians within the Congress party stealthily looked the other way while the Hindutva (Hindu sectarians) engineered cyclical riots, too numerous to list, often supported by the police. It culminated in the orchestrated destruction of the Babri Masjid in 1992 while the then Congress Prime Minister Narsimha Rao, feigned helpless surprise for six long hours. The loss of faith among the secular electorate, and the minorities resulted in Congress's defeat in the successive general elections.
After being in wilderness for eight years, the Congress led coalition under your new and vigorous leadership was elected as a repudiation of the fascistic and sectarian agenda of the BJP. Indian electorate gave the Congress another chance in the hope that the party has learned a lesson and returned to its founding secular and humane principles.
The dead and the dispossessed are still waiting for justice after five long years. Some may find them a political inconvenience, but they cannot be wished away.
We understand that political disputes in a democracy are decided by elections; and the division of power between the Central and the Provincial governments are well established in the constitution. But the constitution clearly provides mechanisms to punish provincial governments guilty of blatant criminality. Many times in the past provincial governments have been dismissed by the President for much less.
The brave reporters and editors of the Tahelka News magazine took enormous risks to record irrefutable evidence from the culprits, exposing the hand of Modi and the Gujarat government. They did what the government should have done.
I know the elections in Gujarat are around the corner; some wedded to politics of unprincipled power, afraid of political muscle of the Hindutva forces, want to cajole them. This will be a grave mistake. Instead of more placebos of toothless inquiry commissions, the Central government should protect the Tahelka reporters and promptly bring charges against Modi and his cohorts in the court of law. A five year delay is not too soon. Failure to act will fortify the assessment that the Congress has forsaken the ethos of the Indian Constitution to succumb to the destructive lure of power. It will confirm the perception of Congress as enablers of riots by stealth sectarianism.
Both of you understand the economics of dispossession and personal loss. Steadfastly you have overcome great impediments to reach your present coveted positions, not in search of power, but in pursuit of ideals. Great leaders courageously navigate the country to uphold the Constitution and establish principles that the succeeding generations will be proud to follow. It is time to use the irrefutable evidence provided by the Tahelka reporters to bring the powerful nefarious sectarian forces to justice and set the Indian Republic on the firm footing as a nation of laws.
Mirza A. Beg can be reached at mab64@yahoo.com or http://mirzasmusings.blogspot.com/
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