Fate hanging in the balance
By Ayaz Amir
NOT an individual’s fate but the nation’s because if we get it wrong this time, and take the wrong turning, the gods won’t forgive us and we will have time enough to bewail the consequences.
Even if Mossad and RAW together had scripted a plan for subverting Pakistan, they couldn’t have bettered what we are doing to ourselves. Parts of Balochistan long swept by unrest, terrorists striking at will across the country, and now the fires of insurrection burning in an arc from Waziristan to Swat. All because of a mixing of roles: the army neglecting what it should be doing and doing that for which it is entirely unequipped.
The most striking thing about Pakistan today is the yawning gulf between danger and response. While the country is in turmoil and Pakistanis who care to think about such things are fearful of the future, those at the helm - whom God knows we never chose as our saviours - are lost in a world of their own, concerned only about self-preservation, this at a time when their inadequacy stands proven beyond words. Read more
This Coup and The Next One
by Daniel Ellsberg
TS Admin : Read and despair
I think nothing has higher priority than averting an attack on Iran, which I think will be accompanied by a further change in our way of governing here that in effect will convert us into what I would call a police state.
If there’s another 9/11 under this regime … it means that they switch on full extent all the apparatus of a police state that has been patiently constructed, largely secretly at first but eventually leaked out and known and accepted by the Democratic people in Congress, by the Republicans and so forth.
Will there be anything left for NSA to increase its surveillance of us? … They may be to the limit of their technical capability now, or they may not. But if they’re not now they will be after another 9/11.
And I would say after the Iranian retaliation to an American attack on Iran, you will then see an increased attack on Iran - an escalation - which will be also accompanied by a total suppression of dissent in this country, including detention camps, mainly for Middle Easterners but not exclusively. Read more
Shouting at the Devil : I Loath Thee!
by Jason Miller
“America touts itself as the land of the free, but the number one freedom that you and I have is the freedom to enter into a subservient role in the workplace. Once you exercise this freedom you’ve lost all control over what you do, what is produced, and how it is produced. And in the end, the product doesn’t belong to you. The only way you can avoid bosses and jobs is if you don’t care about making a living. Which leads to the second freedom: the freedom to starve.”
-Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine
Capitalism, capitalism. How do I loath thee? Let me count the ways….
1. Few would argue with the conclusion that greed, selfishness, ruthlessness, and egocentrism are qualities that all of us humans possess, to varying degrees of course. Equally compelling is the argument that nearly all of us are capable of acting with kindness, compassion, justice, honesty, generosity, and empathy. Yet despite the sweeping epidemic of unnecessary suffering caused by torrential waves of avarice, self-centeredness, and brutality, our filthy moneyed elite, their well-compensated sycophants, and countless millions of deeply inculcated members of the working class defend the sacred cow of capitalism with the zeal of the Siccari. What a brilliant way to conduct human affairs and organize ourselves socioeconomically! Not only do we embrace the inevitability of our human frailties; we willfully and perpetually embrace a system that ensures that the worst elements of the human psyche will predominate AND which amply rewards those who act the most reprehensibly. Read more
A Quiet Revolution
By Francis Fukuyama
Latin America, it is safe to say, gets no respect in Washington. Mention the region at a meeting of foreign policy cognoscenti who are not Latin America specialists, and eyes immediately glaze over. There may be a quick discussion of Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, but attention will swiftly return to the Middle East, Russia, or China. Back in 1971, Richard Nixon advised the young Donald Rumsfeld, “Latin America doesn’t matter. . . . People don’t give one damn about Latin America now.” Rumsfeld took Nixon’s advice on where to focus his career, and the rest is history.
Coverage of Latin America in the mainstream media is little better. It merits attention primarily when it causes trouble for the United States. Thus more ink has been spilled on Chávez over the past few years than on the entire rest of the region combined. The only associations that many in the United States have with Latin America are problems such as drugs, gangs, and illegal immigration.
Intelligentsia in Pakistan and the world
By Prof Khwaja Masud - Dawn - 20-10-07
‘WHICH side of the barricade are you on’ This was the question posed to the intelligentsia by Maxim Gorky, during the mid-thirties of the last century, when fascism was on the rampage in Europe. This query is as relevant today as it was 70 years ago in as much as the threats facing humanity due to conflicts, ecological disasters, mass illiteracy, poverty, disease and an ever-deepening economic crisis are the breeding grounds for fascism.
Each one of us, especially those whose duty is to do intellectual work, must stand up and be counted. There can be no spectators in the titanic struggle that goes on between the forces of democracy, social justice, enlightenment and tolerance on the one hand and the forces of fanaticism, dogmatism and exploitation on the other.
The war on the ‘intelligentsia’ is Russian in origin - the intelligentsia being a class of intellectuals possessing culture and political initiative. According to Isaiah Berlin, ‘The phenomena of intelligentsia with its historical and literary revolutionary consequences is the largest single Russian contribution to social change in the world.’ During the 19th century, the members of the Russian intelligentsia thought of themselves as united by something more than mere interest in ideas. They considered themselves as being a dedicated order, devoted to the spreading of a specific attitude to life. Read more
Return of Benazir Bhutto : The Kleptocrat in an Hermes Headscarf
by Jemima Khan*
*Ms. Jemima Khan is the daughter of the late UK billionaire Sir James Goldsmith and the ex-wife of Pakistani cricketer turned politician Imran Khan. She is also an ambassador to UNICEF.
She’s back. Hurrah! She’s a woman. She’s brave. She’s a moderate. She speaks good English. She’s Oxford-educated, no less. And she’s not bad looking either.
I admit I’m biased.
I don’t like Benazir Bhutto.
She called me names during her election campaign in 1996 and it left a bitter taste.
Petty personal grievances aside, I still find jubilant reports of her return to Pakistan depressing.
Let’s be clear about this before she’s turned into a martyr.
This is no Aung San Suu Kyi, despite her repeated insistence that she’s “fighting for democracy”, or even more incredibly, “fighting for Pakistan’s poor”.
This is the woman who was twice dismissed on corruption charges. Read more
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Welcome
For years I had been watching lies being peddled as truths in the name of God, king or country. I always felt that truth needed no crutches for it has neither a religion nor a nationality. It owes its loyalty only to its own unadulterated self.
Truth Spring is but a humble beginning toward that end.
May the truth be our companion.
Anwaar Hussain -
Book
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United
Vegetative States of America
In the United Vegetative State of America, Anwaar Hussain, a Masters in Defense and Strategic Studies, delivers a comprehensive and unsettling analysis of the dissolution of liberty in America and how an administration of neo-conservatives is using the threat of lost freedoms and increased terrorism as a justification for international aggression and violence.
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News
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