Russophobes for hire, to detriment of USA

From Zenpundit Mark Safranski's comments about three posts at the Russia Blog:

Look, neither Russia nor Putin merit any special favors from the USG, but there are large factions of Beltway political activists on the Hill who are on retainer for the government of Georgia (including the Podesta Group of Democratic Party bigwig John Podesta) or from their domestic opposition, as registered foreign agents, who would like to poison relations with Moscow as much as possible in the interest of their clients with little regard to American interests.

I think Mark is completely right when he observes that the influence agents for hire are not representing the best interests of Americans. So I'm very glad he mentioned the situation, which is not limited to Georgia. Now I suggest you read the rest of his commentary then look at the posts he recommends.

Your masters are not in Brussels, Gen. Dempsey

“The ministers get together and provide [the defense chiefs] with political guidance, and we discuss how we turn that into military advice and planning,” the chairman explained.

The chairman, in this case, is Army General Martin E. Dempsey, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest military position in the United States of America, and the chief military advisor to the President of the United States.

From the American Forces Press Service, published at the U.S. Department of Defense website:

KABUL, Afghanistan, April 22, 2012 – The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff will focus on progress in Afghanistan’s national security forces during a visit here.

Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey arrived this evening, and after a private dinner with a small group of field grade officers, met for about an hour with Marine Corps Gen. John R. Allen, commander of the International Security Assistance Force.

Discussions here also will center on Allen’s plan to draw down the U.S. presence in Afghanistan to 68,000 troops by the end of September, the chairman told American Forces Press Service during the flight here from Amman, Jordan.

Dempsey’s visit to Afghanistan comes between last week’s meetings in Belgium among NATO foreign and defense ministers and the alliance’s summit in Chicago next month.

“The ministers get together and provide [the defense chiefs] with political guidance, and we discuss how we turn that into military advice and planning,” the chairman explained.[...]

I found myself in a difficult position when I first read the above report because I'd already suggested that Gen. Dempsey was barking mad after I heard his comments in March on the Charlie Rose show about Pakistan. If you think a person is crazy, what use is it to attempt to reason with him?  However, I don't know whether the chairman is actually crazy, or just doing a good imitation whenever he discusses Pakistan -- a mental blip that seems to manifest in all ranking members of the U.S. military who hold forth on Pakistan whenever they get in front of a microphone.

But despite my discomfort I should like to point out that while the U.S. military is under civilian control, this doesn't mean it's supposed to be under the control of civilians in foreign nations, even NATO ones.

To put this another way,  I can't find a sound rationale for U.S. commanders basing their war planning on the geopolitical machinations and business concerns of European, Turkish and Canadian governments. This, in my view, is taking the 'You gotta have a gang' mentality too far.

I confess I've been particularly concerned about the gang mentality since February 2010, when AFP reported that NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasumssen had floated the idea of NATO becoming "the hub of a network of security partnerships and a centre for consultation on international security issues -- even issues on which the alliance might never take action."

Rasmussen underlined that he did not seek to replace the work of the United Nations, and his stance was backed by German Defence Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg.

"We don't want to enter into any competition with the United Nations," the minister said. "We don't want to turn NATO into a global security agency."
[...]

So I've been a little nervous since reading those words because you know how it is, when people seek to assure you about something that hadn't even occurred to you before. Not to be unkind, but NATO demonstrated in Afghanistan that it can't fight its way out of a paper bag. All that NATO seems to excel at in the military sphere is carpet bombing. So I certainly hope it's not entertaining the idea of becoming a global constabulary -- one that takes its political guidance from Brussels, no less.

If Gen. Dempsey gets my drift.

Catching Up, Part 2: Solving Siachen

So here it is, 2:25 AM in Washington, DC and I am trying to type while stopping every few seconds to stuff the edge of my sleeve in my mouth so my guffaws won't awaken the neighborhood. From the Major's April 17 post, You Too Can Give Suggestions To Solve Siachen:

Do you feel like doing a strategic analysis of Siachen issue but cannot figure out where it is on the map? Do you feel like calling for solutions to Siachen but do not know the difference between Karakoram highway, Karakoram pass and Karakoram mountain range? Fikar not. Here is a map yours sachly made for you (click on it for a bigger map and opportunities for bigger strategic analysis)

No I'm not going to show you the map because if I look at it again I'm going to lose the battle to muffle my laughter.

Because it's Friday

Gemma the Seer



Russian Raccoon to Give Twitter Predictions for London Olympics

The Moscow Times
July 27, 2012

A prophetic raccoon from a Tula zoo is set to become an unlikely star of the London Olympic Games beginning Friday, predicting the outcomes of major events from the safety of her enclosure.

According to her handlers, Gemma the Raccoon will release regular Twitter updates over the course of this year's Olympics, which run till Aug. 12, offering handy tips for punters and interested spectators alike.

Tatyana Rodchenko, a spokeswoman for the Tula zoo, told Interfax that the move to Twitter was the result of the high stress levels Gemma had suffered during the Euro 2012 football championships, when she made her predictions live.

Gemma, who correctly guessed that Spain and Italy would play in the Euro 2012 final in Ukraine on July 1, already has a live feed on the social-networking site, although she is yet to publish any predictions.

[...]
Gemma was given to the Tula zoo in 2000 and began predicting sports results with the help of handlers in 2006, Interfax reported. She lives in the zoo's exotic animals department along with monkeys, iguanas, crocodiles and snakes, according to the zoo's website.

Steady On

There is so much bad news on so many fronts that to follow the major foreign or domestic issues is to be mired in negativity.  But when it's bad news everywhere you look, that's a sure sign that an entire system is collapsing.  So then the question is whether the collapse is masking the emergence of a new system or paradigm that represents a leap forward for humanity.

There is certainly one earth-shaking revolution going on that's been slowly building since the early 1970s, when New Agers discovered Adelle Davis's Let's Eat Right to Keep Fit (first published in 1954).  Davis, a biochemist, was among the early pioneers in post-WW2 America of the nutritional approach to curing disease and using food and nutritional supplements to ward off chronic diseases.

At the time, the medical profession considered Adelle and her approach to curing illness to be crazy. By the late 1980s, the tenets Adelle laid down in her books were considered by the medical profession to be self-evident.

Today, 'whole foods' and nutritional supplements are large industries backed by huge research projects, and these have merged with mainstream medicine, gerontology (the study of aging) and cutting-edge biochemical research into life-extension. 

The entire paradigm has evolved into a wide-ranging discipline that was first called preventive medicine and is now called functional medicine.  Functional medicine integrates hormone replacement therapy, organic food/farming, scientifically-developed nutritional supplements, scientifically-developed optimum diets and exercise routines, ancient Indian and Chinese 'herbal' medicine, and non-invasive or minimally invasive surgical techniques.  .

The paradigm has been driven forward -- nay, flogged forward -- by aging Baby Boomers, who refuse to go into their Golden Years with diabetes, heart disease, memory loss, cancer, and all the creaking joints and brittle bones that have traditionally accompanied old age. 

While a contingent of the Boomers believe that death itself has a cure, I think the majority simply want to live into their 80s or 90s in good health and without being rendered dependent by advancing old age.  In the present era, the demand to live in good health during old age became more than a lifestyle desire; it converged with an economic crisis that meant many Boomers couldn't afford to retire, or had to come out of retirement and return to the workforce. 

And this converged with the skyrocketing cost of medical insurance, hospitalization, nursing home care, and mainstream pharmaceuticals and surgery.  The healthcare system, fragile for decades, finally broke under the onslaught of retirement-age Boomers. 

And despite high current unemployment in the United States, the retirement of so many Americans around the same time has meant that many jobs requiring highly specialized skills and management experience can't be filled -- not by Americans. 

In short, if there was ever a time when many Americans can't afford to spend their old age as invalids, now is that time.  They have to be able to function at least as well as a healthy person in his or her 50s.  That's a tall order; can functional medicine really fill it?

I'll put the answer this way:  Adelle never mentioned the term "inflammation"-- at least, not in the sense it's used in functional medicine.  But she detailed a simple formula that is at the heart of functional medicine:  provide the body with the right nutrients in the right ratios and proportions at the right times of the day, and the vast majority of chronic diseases are cured or prevented from occurring.

While advances in nutritional research since Adelle's day have challenged or overturned some of her  recommendations regarding specific nutrients and added laboratory-created preparations that boost food-based nutrition, her formula has held.

Functional medicine is moving toward the consensus that the vast majority of about 12,000 chronic diseases have the same root:  an inflammatory condition of the body that can be cured and prevented or at least greatly mitigated by optimum nutrition.  This includes many diseases that are considered genetic.  And all the research on the subject is supporting the hypothesis.

What's more, many 'mental' afflictions, such as ADD and chronic depression, have been cured through the optimum diet approach, either alone or supplemented with megadoses of specific nutritional supplements and/or herbs.

What's more -- and this is one of the most exciting developments -- the line between mainstream medicine/medical and pharmacological research and the approach of the nutritionists to curing and preventing chronic disease is being erased.

If this is the first time you've come across the topic of functional medicine, it can take a while for the implications of the new paradigm to sink in.  The implications are mind-boggling.  Yet there are downsides to the emergence of any new paradigm, and the rise of functional medicine is no exception.  The current health care system, which supports many millions of workers in thousands of capacities, will cease to exist as we know it today. A new health care system, which is already in its nascent form, will replace it. But the transition will mean the end of many types of jobs, a retrenching for millions of workers, and a completely new approach to medical training.

And it's likely that the status quo in medicine and pharmacology will resist any mass migration to functional medicine; the status quo will probably spend years blocking health insurance for functional medicine cures.  This, and the likelihood that we're still decades away from a technology that 'reads' the individual's daily nutritional needs and supplies formulas meant to correct the daily imbalances, means that applying the functional medicine approach is still very much a do-it-yourself affair.

And, depending on how far you want to take the concept of optimum health, it can be an expensive affair, particularly if you want to be very aggressive with offsetting the aging process. Yet the expense and do-it-yourself nature of using functional medicine is creating a sense of community that cuts across political lines and is integrating thousands of human endeavors in new ways around two old ideas:  that you are what you eat, and that food is medicine.

I could write pages more on the topic, and I'll probably return to it, but I brought it up now because many things about society are very unsettled at this time and so there's a lot of worry about the future.

The American motivational speaker Les Brown once observed that just as an airplane can run into turbulence when it climbs to a higher altitude, people who're making positive changes in their lives can run into considerable turbulence.  This turbulence is something that has be worked through and endured; it can't be evaded. This is because it's made of situations you've put off dealing with, and which are actually blocking your advance. 

That was the only time I heard Brown speak; that was almost 20 years ago, and yet I've never forgotten his explanation about turbulence because it struck me as so very true, not only for individuals but also for societies.   

Steady on. 

Oops! China feeling encircled

After spending years doing it all it could to encircle India, China's defense establishment is complaining that it's feeling encircled by a "pack" of Asian countries. Guess who China is blaming for the pack's increasing boldness.

The irony is that for years, there's been growing and increasingly unified opposition in East Asia/Pacific to China's muscle-flexing in the region. But President Barack Obama's "Asia pivot," which seems to have bipartisan support in Washington, has given China's leaders the perfect excuse to shift blame to the United States, and more importantly to downplay the fact that China's "Peaceful Rising" has increasingly been seen by its neighbors as a sneaky strategy to grab territory and bully them.

So my question is whether the widely advertised Asia pivot has been premature. It's just a question at this point because I've been so focused on the Afghan War that I haven't been closely following the ASEAN region. But I remember thinking when I first heard of the Asia pivot, 'Whatever happened to Mr Obama's "Leading from Behind" policy?'

Perhaps that policy is selectively applied according to some arcane formula -- granted, one of the privileges of a superpower. Yet as a general rule, when several countries are working up a head of steam about a country in their region that's trying to impose its will on them, it's wise for a superpower to wait until there's no way it can be blamed for the situation before talking about a pivot.  The rule applies in particular when the superpower is all too happy to see the bullying country come down a peg or two.

To apply the rule in this instance: if the United States is wading too soon into the South China Sea disagreement, this threatens to put countries in the region that are standing up to China in the counter-productive position of being seen as American lackeys. 

Reuters India, July 26 (IST)

China's hawks gaining sway in S. China sea dispute
By David Lague in Hong Kong
Additional reporting by Paul Eckert in Washington

China has adopted a more aggressive stance in recent weeks on territorial disputes in the South China Sea as hard-line officials and commentators call on Beijing to take a tougher line with rival claimants.

China's supreme policymaking body, the Politburo Standing Committee, is made up entirely of civilians, but outspoken People's Liberation Army (PLA) officers, intelligence advisers and maritime agency chiefs are arguing that Beijing should be more forceful in asserting its sovereignty over the sea and the oil and natural gas believed to lie under the sea-bed.

Most of them blame the United States' so-called strategic "pivot" to Asia for emboldening neighbouring countries, particularly the Philippines and Vietnam, to challenge China's claims.

"China now faces a whole pack of aggressive neighbours headed by Vietnam and the Philippines and also a set of menacing challengers headed by the United States, forming their encirclement from outside the region," wrote Xu Zhirong, a deputy chief captain with China Marine Surveillance, in the June edition of China Eye, a publication of the Hong Kong-based China Energy Fund Committee.

"And, such a band of eager lackeys is exactly what the U.S. needs for its strategic return to Asia," he wrote.

Most Chinese and foreign security policy analysts believe China wants to avoid military conflict across sea lanes that carry an annual $5 trillion in ship-borne trade, particularly if it raises the prospect of U.S. intervention.

However, they say Beijing is increasingly determined to block any unified effort from rival claimants to negotiate over disputes, preferring instead to isolate much smaller and weaker states in direct talks.

There was evidence of this harder line at an annual foreign ministers' meeting of the 10-member Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) bloc earlier this month where diplomats said China's influence behind the scenes led to an unprecedented breakdown in the grouping's traditional preference for maintaining an appearance of harmony and unity.

The meeting in Phnom Penh ended in disarray without progress on a proposed code of conduct that was aimed at minimizing the risk of conflict in the South China Sea or issuing a concluding communique.

China's close ally Cambodia, the meeting's host, blocked every attempt to include tensions in the South China Sea on the agenda, said the diplomats from other member nations.
[...]

Later in the analysis it's brought out that American wonks who watch China disagree on whether the hardliners on the S. China Sea issue are limited to China's defense establishment; some believe this is the case, others think the hardening stance is also reflected in China's civilian government.

One thing is clear at this point: China's leaders, both civilian and military, see the need to mount a strong response to the Obama administration's strategic pivot to Asia.

For a background summary on China's maritime policy, including an explanation of the "Nine-Dash Line," see the July 17 report for Stratfor by Rodger Baker and Zhixing Zhang, The Paradox of China's Naval Strategy.

Catching up

July 16: Afghan President Karzai bestows award on Ambassador Crocker

1. In the rush and tumble of my return to blogging I don't want to neglect to thank U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker for his work to get the post-2014 U.S.-Afghan strategic partnership agreement signed in spite of virtually insurmountable obstacles, and to wish him the very best as he once again retires from the foreign service, or tries to retire again.

Thanks also to General John Allen, not only for his part in getting the agreement signed but also for holding the NATO-ISAF mission together in Afghanistan during the worst February I can remember. Starting February 1, it was as if the darkest forces rose up together in the attempt to destroy the mission and block the signing of the agreement, and March and April gave little respite.  By the time the agreement was signed, on May 1, Pundita was a nervous wreck.

Through it all, General Allen and Ambassador Crocker never lost their cool.

2. Recently John Batchelor put in a few appearances on The Kudlow Report on the financial cable channel CNBC to comment, mostly on foreign/defense affairs. I hope the appearances can become a regular feature on the show because American television is bereft of in-depth informed analysis on foreign affairs from the American defense viewpoint. Until John's radio show is extended to TV, the situation is not going to change.

Thanks to Larry Kudlow for battling the headwinds at CNBC to bring John onto the show.

Here's the video from John's July 19 appearance on the show, during which he discusses the Syria situation.



And here is John's latest written analysis on Syria and other defense issues: (The Enemy of My Enemy, July 19).

My favorite quote:  "US wants stability for region with Islamist strongmen in place."

3. Using recent speeches on Syria by Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as examples, Zenpundit's Mark Safranski analyzes the stark differences between Russia's approach to foreign relations and America's, and concludes that the USA comes up short. (Putin’s Geopolitical Realism on Syria , July 16, posted in full at IVN.)

My favorite quote:  "We play at tactical geopolitics while the Russians do strategy."

Upcoming 'make or break' meeting between CIA and ISI chiefs

From PTI (India) via Hindustan Times (India), July 22:

(Islamabad) ISI chief Lt Gen Zahir-ul-Islam will meet his American counterpart, CIA head Gen David Petraeus, in Washington on August 2, the first meeting between the spy chiefs of Pakistan and the US amidst persisting tensions between the two countries. Islam had called off a visit to the US two months ago when bilateral relations plunged to an all-time low. The ISI chief's visit to the US will be a one-day affair, the [Pakistani online newspaper, The News International] quoted its sources as saying.

The meeting between Islam and Petraeus would be a “make or break” affair since it could determine future relations between various organisations in Pakistan and the US, including the General Headquarters and the Pentagon, the daily quoted sources as saying.

The spy chiefs will focus on several defence and security-related issues, including intelligence-sharing and Pakistan's call for an end to US drone strikes in the lawless ribal belt bordering Afghanistan.

Islamabad has described the attacks by CIA-operated drones as counterproductive and a violation of the country's sovereignty. Islam is expected to ask the US to provide drone technology to Pakistan, the sources were quoted as saying.

Circumstances surrounding the unilateral US raid that killed Osama bin Laden in the Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad last year will also figure in the talks.

The “unguarded activities” of US agencies and agents on Pak soil will also be taken up by the ISI chief, the report said.

So it seems Washington's ball on Pakistan is now in Gen. Petraeus's court; after consistently flubbing, it looks as if State, Defense, and the White House want to make him responsible for persuading the Pakistani military/ISI that they shouldn't keep fighting a proxy war against NATO in Afghanistan.

As to the request for drone technology, I think that has been floated every time a ranking member of the Pak military/ISI has met with an American counterpart. The Pakistanis have their own drone technology but they want weaponized drones from the USA. What they want most of all, however, is for the U.S. to share all its intelligence on terrorist activity with the Pakistani military.

John McCain: "There are layers of the Muslim Brotherhood we can work with." Michele Bachmann, Huma Abedin, and America's tangled defense policy

"Misguided Pentagon officials, including Mr. Islam and Mr. England, have initiated an aggressive 'outreach' program to U.S. Muslim groups that critics say is lending credibility to what has been identified as a budding support network for Islamist extremists, including front groups for the radical Muslim Brotherhood."
-- The Washington Times, January 4, 2008

Initially I was reluctant to use the quote I featured in the title of this post because I couldn't adequately source it. Senator McCain made the remark about a month ago, during a period when it seemed he was appearing on a different news show almost every day to promote strong U.S. military intervention in Syria. My best guess is that I heard him make the statement on BBC World News America, but don't hold me to that.

In any case Mr McCain's words about the Muslim Brotherhood were almost an echo of what he'd told a weekend anchor on a FNC show when he was promoting strong U.S. intervention in Libya: "We can work with these people," meaning rebels who were trying to topple Muammar Gaddafi. He added that one of the rebel leaders had even attended university in the USA, as if this was proper vetting.

Despite the inadequate sourcing for his remark about the Muslim Brotherhood, I decided to mention it when I heard him publicly defend Huma Abedin, who is U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's closest aide. I don't recall that he mentioned U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann by name but Mr McCain's defense was clearly a response to a question that Ms Bachmann had raised about ties that Ms Abedin's family is rumored to have to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Mr McCain's defense omitted the fact that Ms. Bachmann's question was raised in the context of a much broader issue: the U.S. government's practice of employing Muslim advisors without more carefully investigating the advisors' ties to Islamist and jihadist causes, and without setting a high bar for such ties when it comes to security clearances.

Unfortunately Ms Bachmann has a scattered style of exposition, which made it easy for Mr McCain and other critics of her remark to divert public attention from her main points. Yesterday on his radio show Glenn Beck gave Ms Bachmann the opportunity to attempt to clarify her points, with mixed results. But with patience the reader can discern that she indeed has valid points. From the show's transcript:

GLENN: Okay. So tell me what happened. You and who else wrote a letter to the inspectors general’s office and said, “There are some questions here that need to be addressed.”

CONGRESSWOMAN BACHMANN: That’s right. It was three members of the intelligence committee: Myself, Lynn Westmoreland from Georgia, Tom Rooney from Florida. And two members of the judiciary committee: Trent Franks of Arizona and Louie Gohmert of Texas. All signed onto a letter.

We asked numerous questions of the federal government because a letter was sent ‑‑ well, let me just back up. After the Fort Hood tragedy, a report was issued that said the real problem in our government is that we are not teaching FBI agents or our military to recognize radical Islam. So that’s what we need to do. We need to teach about it.

Well, in response to that, 50 ‑‑ over 50 Muslim organizations wrote a letter requesting that the White House start a task force to stop that [inquiry] from happening. Five days after the White House got this letter, this October 19 letter ‑‑ and people can see it on my website, or maybe you have it on The Blaze ‑‑ five days after the White House got this letter from the 50 Muslim groups, they started the purge of the federal government.

Let me tell you, the federal government doesn’t do anything in five days. But [presumably within five days] they started the purge of the FBI. So now the FBI, who are supposed to be trained in [the knowledge of] radical Islam -- elements [of the agency] have been purged of their training materials. So they are no longer being taught about what radical Islam is in order to be able to truly identify it ahead of time. This is serious. This is also happening throughout our United States military, Department of Justice, and Homeland Security.

And the word “purge” isn’t my word. That’s the word used by the 50 Muslim organizations. They demanded that the president purge the training materials and the trainers. And so already people have been fired who formerly were teaching what radical Islam is. They’ve been fired or they’ve been reassigned. And [the Muslim organizations] ask that the library be purged. Americans don’t purge libraries, but they demanded that the FBI’s library be purged.

All of this was happening, and so we wrote a letter to the inspectors general asking the question: Don’t you think you should look into the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood and what it is they’re seeking to do?

Ms. Bachmann had a great deal more to get off her chest about the attempt to quash the kind of inquiry that she and other members of Congress were proposing. But to move to her defense of her remark about Huma Abedin. Again, from the Beck show transcript:

CONGRESSWOMAN BACHMANN: [Abedin] is the chief aide for the ‑‑ to the Secretary of State, and we quoted from a document, and this has been well reported all across Arab media, that her father ‑‑ her late father who’s now deceased was a part of the Muslim Brotherhood. Her brother was a part of the Muslim Brotherhood, and her mother was a part of what’s called the Muslim Sisterhood.

It would be, we have requirements to get a high level security clearance. One thing that the government looks at are your associations, and in particular your family associations. And this applies to everyone. It would be the same that is true with me. If my family members were associated with Hamas, a terrorist organization, that alone could be sufficient to disqualify me from getting a security clearance.

So all we did is ask, Did the federal government look into her family associations before she got a high level security clearance?[...]

As you can see from the quote I featured from the Washington Times, complaints about the U.S. government's use of advisors with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood predate the Obama administration. So Ms Bachmann isn't talking through her hat.

However, she and colleagues are raising questions that should have been raised as early as the 1970s, when the American government became dependent on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to prop up the U.S. dollar. The greatest downside of the dependence was that Washington studiously ignored the fact that the Saudi government was sowing the world with the most radical form of Islamic teachings and with anti-American propaganda. The blindness came back to bite the American people even before 9/11, and left the USA wide open to al Qaeda's 9/11 attack. So while I sympathize with Rep. Bachmann's concerns and outrage, they've arrived far too late in the day.

As for Senator McCain, his habit of wanting the U.S. defense establishment to work with people with questionable motives toward the United States represents a systemic problem in Washington.  During the Cold War, the U.S. government leaned heavily on a strategy of supporting strongmen who would resist the Soviet Union or at least put on a show of doing so.

The strategy was based on the theory that 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend.' Yet somehow over the course of the Cold War the theory got garbled. The idea is to befriend enemies of your enemy -- not to befriend enemies, in the wild hope that they want to destroy other of their enemies before they try destroy you.

Washington's failure to untangle the theory has brought Americans to where we are today, which is that U.S. defense policy is America's greatest security threat.

1 husband, 2 wives, 20 kids: Pakistan's population problem

There's an aspect of the following report from CNN that I find grimly amusing. The two reporters who filed the story are clearly earnest, intelligent and well-educated.  Yet they're blind to the way Pakistan's rulers see the world.  It's a blindness found throughout the American diplo/defense establishments, a blindness that has led the United States into one blunder after another in its dealings with Pakistan. 

 The earnest reporters and the earnest Pakistan health workers they interview are critical of Pakistan's government for not being proactive about dealing with the country's  onrushing overpopulation disaster -- and by proactive they mean modern approaches to population control: public education programs, making contraceptives available, family planning clinics, and so on.

But actually Pakistan's government has been very proactive. Why else do the reporters think Pakistan's military is trying to get control of Afghanistan?  If the masses are breeding like rabbits and straining natural resources to the point of disaster, expand. Grab more territory.  This is family planning, Mogul style.

Family's 20 kids highlight Pakistan's population explosion
By Paul Armstrong and Reza Sayah, CNN
Updated 11:39 PM EDT, Thu June 14, 2012

(CNN) -- Islam Mohmand and his two wives have so many children that he sometimes gets confused and needs help to remember all of their names. They have 20 kids in all but would be happy to bring even more into their small family house.

But population experts in Pakistan, where the Mohmands are from, say families like theirs are fueling a population explosion that is fast becoming the country's most dangerous crisis.

Pakistan's population has grown from around 33 million in 1947 to more than 180 million people in 2012, making it the sixth most populous country in the world. It is also one of the world's poorest, with 60% of Pakistanis living on just $2 per day, according to the World Bank. The majority of the population -- 70%, according to the United Nations -- is largely illiterate and resides in rural areas lacking the most basic services.

With only one in five Pakistani women using modern birth control, the United Nations estimates Pakistan will become the world's third most populous country after China and India by 2050.

"I consider the population problem the biggest problem of this country," said Akbar Laghari of Pakistan's Department of Population Welfare. "The future is bleak because of this."

He admitted the government has to share the blame as not enough is done to offer effective family planning services and teach people about birth control.

"We don't have that much mobility, we don't have the resources," he said.

"Because of the political upheavals in the country and frequent changes in government ... they [the government] are not giving it top priority."

With widespread poverty, an energy crisis, woeful public services, and a bloody, resource-draining insurgency, Pakistan can ill afford to see this rapid growth continue.

"Naturally there will be epidemics, there will be wars -- there will be fights for food, water and everything," Laghari warned.

"It's a huge concern that we're growing at one of the fastest rates in Asia," said Zeba Sathar, Pakistan country director for the Population Council, a non-profit organization that specializes in public health research in developing countries.

"I think it's an ignored problem. We're brushing it away and I'm afraid we're losing time."

Sathar says many people are unable to make informed decisions because support services such as family planning are lacking. "The poor end up with many children because they don't have access to right kind of information," she said.

"We're doing a lot of research where women say 'we didn't want that many children,' or they wanted to have them later but they just didn't find the services.

"The philosophy is we're not into controlling the number of children. If you can bring up a healthy family with 20 children, kudos to you. It's a question of running out of resources. It's when the 15th one suffers."
But the Mohmand children are already paying the price -- the family can only afford to send four of their offspring to school, the rest have to work to support the family.

A lack of education is not the only challenge. Pakistan is a deeply conservative country, where some view birth control as un-Islamic.

"None of these methods is allowed in Islam," said Maulana Tanveer Alvi, a Muslim cleric. "Whatever is born in the world -- animals, humans, anything living -- God is responsible for their care.

"The process of reproduction will go on until God stops it. Why should a Muslim worry about the increase in population when God has taken responsibility for everyone's care?"

Culturally, many women are often confined to the marital home and deprived of the right to make important decisions such as whether to have a child.

omen don't always get to choose ... they require permission from their husband or even their mother-in-law," said Laghari.

However, other Muslim countries with similar problems to Pakistan, including Bangladesh and Iran, have introduced measures to curb their growing populations.

Experts say those countries started with the political will to do something and spent a lot of time and resources on family planning efforts.

The World Health Organization (WHO) says government field workers and satellite clinics are the two crucial elements in the campaign in Bangladesh -- which saw its population grow from 75 million when it gained independence in 1971, to more than 142 million currently.

It said thousands of Health and Family Welfare centers have been upgraded nationwide, while Family Welfare Assistants provide door-to-door visits giving millions of couples family planning support and sexual health education.
END

Less sympathy for Pakistan's military, Senator McCain; more sympathy for U.S. troops

I could have picked from any number of U.S. Members of Congress to question but I'm singling out Senator John McCain because he's proved himself over the course of decades to be a good friend to the U.S. soldier, and because he has a demonstrated knowledge about U.S. defense matters. Yet the statements I quote below would alert anyone who's well informed on Pakistan that he's either poorly informed or dissembling on the matter of Pakistan's military.

So, given that American soldiers are being injured and killed by militant groups supported or controlled by Pakistan's military, I think Mr McCain's statements about Pakistan merit particular attention. Take, for example, the quotes from this April 19, 2012 report from the [Pakistan] Express Tribune:

Former US presidential hopeful, Republican Senator John McCain says it is reprehensible that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence maintains a close relationship with the Haqqani Network that is responsible for American deaths. Addressing a packed hall at the think tank the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington DC, Senator McCain said that he had sympathy for Pakistan's military since the Pakistani government is dysfunctional, but said that it remained a "source of never-ending frustration" that the ISI had a continuous relationship with the Haqqani Network, when [Pakistan Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani] is responsible for appointing the head of the ISI.[...]

Senator McCain was poorly informed or deliberately misleading the public if he intended to imply that the Haqqanis were the only terrorist group that had a "continuous relationship" with the ISI. Or did he assume that he didn't have to mention the other groups if he was laboring under the belief that the others had a "continuous relationship" only with the Pakistani military, rather than the ISI?  Whatever he believed, here's a  handy list from the same July 11 Long War Journal report I linked to yesterday:

Pakistan has resisted, and continues to resist, US calls for a crackdown on the militant haven of North Waziristan, which is home base for al Qaeda, Taliban, the Haqqani Network, and a host of other jihadist groups that conduct attacks in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Nor will Pakistan heed US requests to move against the so-called "good Taliban" groups based in both North and South Waziristan, including Mullah Nazir, Hafiz Gul Bahadar, and the notorious Haqqani family. Additionally, Pakistan will not address the problem of its plethora of home-grown terror groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed, Lashkar-Jhangvi, Hizbul Mujahideen, and a host of others. In fact, these groups openly fundraise and recruit for jihad in Afghanistan and Kashmir without repercussions to this day.

There is a veritable alphabet soup of terrorist groups either controlled or closely associated with Pakistan's defense/ISI, or openly tolerated by these establishments -- groups that kill and maim American and other NATO troops in Afghanistan, rob NATO supply convoys, and kill Afghan troops and civilians.

As to the division he implied that exists between Pakistan's military and the country's "dysfunctional" civilian government -- was Mr McCain receiving his intelligence on Pakistan from the back of a cereal box? Or was he trying to mislead the Carnegie Endowment audience?

If he was misleading, why? If he was poorly informed, why? He sits on two defense-related Senate committees -- the Select Committee on Intelligence and the Committee on Armed Services. The committees are not necessarily the best source for intelligence on Pakistan. But given that Mr McCain has spoken in public several times in the past few years as an authority on Pakistan and the Afghan War, I would assume that his participation in the committees gives him at least some accurate background on Pakistan's military. And accurate background on the military is widely available through open sources.

Thank you, Riehl World View

Dan Riehl at Riehl World View linked to my post today (I don't care that Egyptians threw tomatoes at Hillary Clinton) and delivered this on-target introduction:

What's a few tomatoes, when Americans are being killed?

Unlike our mainstream media, Pundita seems a bit more upset over Americans being killed, than a couple tomatoes hitting a car. Is that so wrong?

Dan is the kind of person I'd want at my side in a trench. What am I saying? Going up against Washington on the matter of its support for Pakistan's military is already a form of trench warfare. Thanks, Dan.

I don't care that Egyptians threw tomatoes at Hillary Clinton

I have not been happy with Hillary Clinton's conduct as U.S. Secretary of State, but even two years ago I would've been outraged at the insult to the office of the Secretary that was represented by the tomato (and shoe) throwing incident. These days I spend all my outrage on an issue I consider far more pressing than a show of disrespect for the U.S. government. 

What I care about is that Americans are being murdered and maimed by proxies for a military that the United States government is helping to prop up.  So I would like to see something called 'prioritizing.'  I want Hillary Clinton to stop running around the world like a chicken with its head cut off, while all time she avoids the key issue for America.

The key issue is that the American government, including the Congress and the U.S. Department of State, continues to aid and abet the murder and maiming of American troops in Afghanistan by proxies for Pakistan's military. That's the number one priority.  Everything else is a distant second until the first priority is dealt with.

I also want Mrs Clinton to stop pushing the straw man argument that strengthening Pakistan's civilian sector will translate into a less dangerous Pakistan.  Mrs Clinton, if the World Bank and IMF couldn't 'solve' Pakistan, what makes you think that USAID helping The Gap import jeans made in Pakistan or a Wal-Mart subsidiary in England import Pakistani mangoes can solve it?

Solving Pakistan is not the key issue at this time; again, the issue is to stop the U.S. from actions that encourage Pakistan's military to use proxy militias in Afghanistan against American troops. 
   
I also want John Bolton and Barack Obama to cease telling the American public that Pakistan is too nuclear to be allowed to fail. Given the history of Pak military-instigated terrorism, where is the evidence that piling more aid on Pakistan's military will secure the country's nukes against terrorists?  

Messrs. Bolton and Obama and a long line of other American politicians and so-called defense experts have created a false dilemma to rationalize continued U.S. military and civilian aid to Pakistan. This, even though they know full well that by continuing aid, they're encouraging Pakistan's military to continue its proxy war against the United States in Afghanistan.

As to the argument that the U.S. Congress had to release military aid in order to get NATO supply routes reopened in Pakistan because European countries couldn't pay the higher fees to use the northern supply routes -- this is just more verbal Three Card Monte. The Europeans and the Congress know that by NATO continuing to use Pakistan as a supply route, this means revenue not only for Pakistan's military but also for the terrorists who rob the supply trucks. So if the Europeans find it less cost effective to use the northern supply route, can the U.S. Congress tell me how much an American life is worth in euros?  

And if Senator John McCain and his cohorts in the Get Russia crowd in Washington and European capitals don't want to use the northern supply routes because it means the U.S. government has to remain on civil terms with Russia -- what are they implying?  That a highly adversarial relationship with Russia has to be paid for with the blood of American troops in Afghanistan?

On July 11, Long War Journal summarized its report on the U.S. deal with Pakistan to reopen NATO supply routes by noting::

The bottom line is that Pakistan has manipulated the supply route issue -- which even the Taliban have called a "drama" orchestrated by the Pakistani government -- to continue to siphon billions of US dollars while at the same time maintaining Pakistan's jihadist proxies in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

While the administration considers the reopening of NATO's supply lines a major success in US-Pakistan relations, the reality is that Pakistan continues to shelter and support the same groups that kill US and NATO soldiers, and Afghan security forces and civilians across the border. Nothing to see here, please move along.

To my knowledge Long War Journal is the only news publication that addresses the NATO supply line deal from the viewpoint of the key issue for the United States. If I'm correct, that would be an indictment of the American news media. And without question what LWJ says about the details of the deal is an indictment of the White House, Pentagon, State, and Congress -- and NATO.

WARNING: All batshit crazy on this planet so KEEP OUT

Swing away, Merrill

Recently I saw Signs again.  I didn't find it scary the first time I saw it because I don't believe there's intelligent life anywhere in the universe except on Earth. But maybe because I saw the movie the second time at three in the morning, when I was half asleep, it occurred to me that it never hurts to hedge one's bets.

In H.G. Wells's The War of the Worlds humanity is saved from destruction when an invading force of Martians falls prey to pathogens native to Earth, and for which the aliens have no antibodies. Now just in case aliens from further afield than Mars are smart enough to inject themselves with antibodies before they invade, my fertile brain has hatched a plan for keeping them away from Earth altogether.

I once read that radio signals travel forever in space, which means that every Amos 'n Andy Show that ever aired on radio is still broadcasting somewhere in the universe.  So my plan is the essence of simplicity:  Read out on a radio broadcast the entire history of the relationship between the United States and Pakistan.

Trust me, this will work. When it picks up that broadcast, any race that's smart enough to figure out intergalactic travel wouldn't need to be told twice to give this planet a wide berth.

When I told the plan to a Pundita reader, he replied that if I wanted to be sure to scare away the aliens, the announcer should also read the history of U.S. relations with China since the Nixon era.

That would be a bad idea for two reasons.  First off, it's gilding the lily.  The aliens would probably say, 'Nobody's that crazy.'  The trick is to scare them away without making it seem you're trying to scare them.

The other reason is that any aliens who actually believed the history of U.S.-China relations would likely say, 'Then we'll just stay away from the United States.'  The idea is to ward off an invasion of Earth, not just the American part of it.

I wrote all the above about a year ago but I was stopped from publishing it by the most awful thought: What if we've already been invaded by aliens? It struck me this might finally explain why the U.S. relationship with Pakistan is so very strange, even unearthly.

Before you laugh, consider that prior to U.S. actions since around 2006, when the Pakistani military's proxy war against NATO in Afghanistan went into full tilt, there was  no precedent in human history for a government paying another government to murder its troops.  As I've pointed out before, not even fiends such as Mao and Stalin, who were so very cruel to their own people, would have thought of that one; not even history's most primitive savages did that.

There was no precedent because everybody knows that the one thing you don't do is pay another government to murder the very people whose job is to defend you. But then one wouldn't be 'everybody' if one was actually from another planet and posing as a human. It might not occur to such aliens that there was something truly inhuman about paying another government to murder one's soldiers.

Having scared myself silly in the fashion I've described, I returned to my normal self after I determined to never again watch an M. Night Shyamalan film at three in the morning.  However, if one discounts a covert alien invasion as the explanation, this leaves unanswered the vexing question of why the U.S. relationship with Pakistan is so very strange. It's a strangeness that's been to destructive to many innocents -- countless innocents -- almost since Pakistan's inception.

And, if one considers the tacit encouragement the U.S. government gave to Pakistan's clandestine nuclear proliferation, an encouragement it continues to provide in tacit fashion, the relationship between the two governments poses the greatest threat to the human race and indeed to all life on the planet. 

While some American defense analysts have, in recent years, claimed that Pakistan is the world's most dangerous country, the claim is preposterous.  Pakistan's military was thrashed every time it started a war with India and couldn't even hold onto East Pakistan once India intervened to stop the Pak military's massacre of civilians. 

Pakistan's only demonstrable danger is what it's been able to accomplish by the sneakiest means -- by fostering terrorism in clandestine fashion. But it's gotten away with this kind of murder for decades with the support of the American government -- and, one might argue, the British one, at least until very recently.  Even during the years that the U.S. government ostensibly punished Pakistan for its WMD  program,  the U.S. found ways to divert money to Pakistan's military through the use of proxies such as the World Bank.

The covert support from the United States, even while it publicly condemned Pakistan persuaded Pakistan's leaders that the Americans weren't seriously outraged by their behavior -- and what's more, taught the Pakistanis that the American leaders were as two-faced and sneaky as they were, a sneakiness shared by the powers in the American orbit.  This gave the Pakistanis no impetus to abandon terrorism as a policy tool and nuclear proliferation as a revenue stream. 

The American support has continued to translate into support for Pakistan from many quarters -- from international institutions to Western companies that have agreed to import clothing goods and other textiles from Pakistan. This, despite the fact that Pakistan's military continues to foster terrorism and use 'lashkars' to mount proxy wars against Afghans and the U.S.-led NATO mission there.

So it's closer to the truth to say that it's the relationship between the United States and Pakistan, not the country of Pakistan, which poses the greatest danger in the world.

Since 2010, when the lid blew off Pakistan's U.S.-sponsored murder and maiming of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, every American defense expert and his uncle has offered explanations as to why the U.S. government had engaged in such self-destructive and one might even say fiendish behavior.  And a chorus line of American military and civilian government officials have done the same.

Each set of explanations, proffered at every phase of the unfolding scandal and right up to this day, sounded reasonable -- until one noted that the history of the U.S.-Pakistan relationship has been characterized by the U.S. government coming up with one explanation after another, no matter what the situation, for the U.S. aiding Pakistan's military.  In other words, when seen against the big picture of the historical relationship, the reasonable explanations are exposed  for what they are: rationalizations.

As I explained in considerable detail in June 2011, this kind of rationalizing is well known to psychologists who specialize in working with substance abusers and people who refuse to leave or change a relationship that's destructive to both parties -- and often to anyone who's closely involved with the parties.   

Many such relationships are 'co-dependent' -- a psychological term that's easily misunderstood, as I learned when an editorialist in the American media picked up on my observations and proceeded to give advice about dealing with what he termed the "co-dependent" American-Pakistani relationship that was itself a textbook example of co-dependent thinking, and even enabling.

Enabling, as I've also explained before, is associated with co-dependence, although not all co-dependent relationships are supported by a party to the relationship that's acting to enable the other party's destructive behavior. The term, as it's used in the negative sense, is also easily misunderstood, as witness a recent PSA that intones at  parents who're lenient with boozing and pill-popping teenage offspring, "Enabling is a drug. Get help."

Enabling isn't a drug, it's not addictive behavior; it's a coping tactic that can be quite innocent at one end of the relationship spectrum and deliberately manipulative at the other.  In short, it's a minefield for anyone but a psychologist to analyze personal human relationships in formal psychological terms. And  to apply psychological terms to government-to-government relationships skates close to pop psychology, which is why I quickly backed away from the discussion I raised about co-dependence and enabling.

Both terms relate to individuals, not systems. And even though systems of government are managed by individuals, I think no matter how tempting it is to apply the concepts of co-dependence and enabling to the U.S.-Pakistan relationship, it's taking things too far to apply them to American government administrations that have spanned decades.

Unless one wants to speculate that individuals with co-dependent tendencies are attracted to foreign relations and defense occupations in the American government -- a very shaky speculation, I would think.

Perhaps one would be on more solid ground by speculating that there's something about the system of American government, or how it's been administered since the Cold War, which institutionalized tactics that resemble co-dependence and enabling behavior when applied to government-to-government relations. 

I was struck by a 2007 op-ed I came across in my files the other day which spoke approvingly of Bush abandoning unilateralism and embracing multilateralism in the effort to rescue the situation in Iraq. Bush was never a unilateralist; recall the 'Coalition of the Willing' he put together for the Iraq invasion and the team of Italian, Spanish, British and Japanese heads of state that he forged after 9/11.  He even tried to bring Vladimir Putin onto the team -- a short-lived attempt when hardliners in the U.S. and Russia set up a howl.

The United States has been a coalition builder even before World War Two and after the war ended, it established the multilateral institutions of the United Nations, World Bank and IMF, and several regional coalitions, and of course NATO. And all the throughout the Cold War and since, American leadership in the world largely translated into building and maintaining coalitions and encouraging nations friendly to the USA to do the same. 

So it's possible that at some point the U.S. government institutionalized a view of leadership that actually had more to do with maintaining coalitions than with leadership. That could explain why the United States has gotten itself into the damnedest situations -- with China, with Pakistan, with Saudi Arabia, and even with NATO.

Perhaps the strangest aspect of this century so far has been the U.S. government wringing its hands over Saudi-financed terrorism. But who raised up the Saudis?  Who taught them the oil business and built a nation for them?  Who built their air force and army?  Who aided and abetted them at every turn?  The United States.  This patten of behavior has been repeated many times, including with Pakistan and China.

In fact, it's hard to find a government working against the United States today that has not been helped at every turn by the USA, or by institutions and alliances that the USA created or encouraged.  So while this might be considered leadership on another planet, down here on Earth we would call this mission drift.

Unless one subscribes to the idea that all the truly strange aspects of U.S. foreign/defense policy can be blamed on aliens among us.  I myself scoff at the idea but in the manner of hedging bets, pardon me while I go and place several glasses of water around the house.  

     

AIR FORCE ONE LANDS AT BAGRAM, OBAMA AND KARZAI SIGN STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP AGREEMENT

The agreement was signed just moments ago in the atrium of the presidential palace in Kabul.  President Obama will now return to Bagram Airfield to address the American troops there, and then from Bagram will deliver a ten minute address to the American people that will be carried live on U.S. television at 7:30 PM, EDT.

Just last week the rumor was that the strategic pact wouldn't be signed until Mr Karzai attended the NATO summit in Chicago. This would have allowed enemies of the United States and Afghanistan additional weeks to continue to make last-ditch efforts to block the agreement. So while the signing of the pact won't cover all the outstanding issues connected with the post-2014 U.S. stay in Afghanistan, it will put a crimp in the machinations, which were launched on February 1 with the leaking of a NATO report to two British press outlets, the BBC and London Times.

In other breaking news, within the past hour the al Qaeda terrorist who plotted to bomb a subway in New York City has been found guilty all nine counts.

Note

The next Pundita post will be on May 16.
Best regards to all,
Pundita

"There is no freedom of press in Afghanistan"

Afghanistan has a stubbornly high illiteracy rate of 72 percent, so TV and radio are the most effective ways of spreading news around the country.

Afghan Journalists Strain Against Gags
By Giuliana Sgrena
Inter Press Service

KABUL, Apr 18, 2012 (IPS) - Afghanistan is quickly becoming one of the deadliest countries in the world for foreign and local journalists. In the last decade alone, 16 journalists have been killed on the job and so far no one has been brought to justice for these murders.

The silence of Afghan President Hamid Karzai in the face of such impunity is also a serious cause for concern for press freedom advocates.

After the fall of the Taliban and the arrival of foreign troops in 2001, Afghanistan experienced a ‘media boom’ that led to the rapid proliferation of publishing and broadcasting houses. The country is currently home to 200 print news outlets, 44 television stations (25 of which are in Kabul), about 141 radio stations and eight news agencies, all of which are increasing steadily.

Sadly, this increase has done little to improve press freedom in the country, since most media are linked to the government, warlords, the governments of occupying forces, or powerful, wealthy men – none of whom allow journalists to carry out their work properly.

Add to this the Taliban-imposed censorship of all media, including images of nudity that appear in soap operas, and the press landscape in Afghanistan bears striking resemblance to a battlefield on which journalists must wage a daily war to report the truth.

Widespread censorship

Nazir Fayaz, a 34-year-old journalist who has been working for years at Ariana TV, was forced to resign three months ago because of a dispute with the Iranian ambassador.

During an interview the Iranian diplomat accused Afghan people of "accepting the foreign occupation", a statement which Fayaz openly criticised.

Because his harsh response to the ambassador was broadcast nationwide, Fayaz was put in jail for two days, then forced by Iranian and Afghan authorities to resign.

Now, Fayaz gets threatening phone calls not only from the Iranian embassy but also from "the government, warlords, drug traffickers and Taliban. It’s very risky to be a journalist in Afghanistan," Fayaz told IPS.

"There is no freedom of press in Afghanistan because all the media are in the hands of warlords, mafia and banks. Censorship is even stronger in governmental media. Ariana TV was (independent) until the Afghan-American owner, Ehsan Bayat, became senator," Fayaz told IPS.

Fayaz is now considering leaving the field altogether to become an activist with the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission because "there is no chance of doing an honest job in media in Afghanistan." He believes that free media is crucial to bringing peace to the country, "but if there is no freedom of expression the result will be the opposite," he predicted ominously.

Some provinces in the south and east of Afghanistan, like Helmand, Uruzgan, Paktika and Farah, are no-go areas for journalists.

On Feb. 22, 2011, the decapitated body of Sadim Khan Bhadrzai, who had been kidnapped the previous evening, was found in Urgun, in the southeastern province of Paktika. He was the manager of Mehman- Melma, a local, very popular radio, and his death was just the latest in a series of targeted assassinations of media personnel over the years.

Every year there are hundreds of cases of violence against journalists, most of them in Kabul, Herat and Helmand.

Women journalists solider on

Women journalists have increasingly become the target of threats. In 2007 Zakia Zaki, the owner of Radio Peace in Kandahar, was shot and killed in her bed, where she sleeping with her young son.

But despite the dangers of the job, women haven’t given up.

Najeeba Feroz is a frail but resolute 24-year-old journalist working for BBC Afghanistan, which broadcasts in Dari and Pashto. Her office in Shara Now, in the centre of Kabul, is a well protected building surrounded by armed guards.

Feroz earned her degree at Kabul University and worked at a string of independent print and broadcast outlets, including Tolo TV, but was soon frustrated by the lack of independent reporting and the heavy- handed political control of all media.

"The only choice you have is between censorship or self censorship. That’s why I moved to the BBC," she told IPS.

Here, "we verify all our sources and we don’t care if we have to report on corruption involving the government or warlords, as long as the reporting corresponds to reality," she said.

Feroz, like many other journalists, wants to leave the country.

"After three years of work here (at the BBC) we have the opportunity to spend one year outside, this will be a good chance, but after that I will come back to help my people," said Feroz, whose beat is covering women’s issues that often go unreported.

Senator Belqis Roshan, another intrepid female journalist, told IPS she travels around her province of Farah, collecting news about violence against women and raising the voices of victims in the senate, because "in Farah we have no media at all," she said.

Afghanistan has a stubbornly high illiteracy rate of 72 percent, so TV and radio are the most effective ways of spreading news around the country.

(END)

Bingo: "Infiltration of Pakistan, Iran in Afghan Media: NDS"

"[A] number of the programs broadcasted by these TV channels and News Agency are displayed with a motive to disrupt the thinking of the Afghan people."

Of course the infiltrators are hotly denying everything, probably on the technicality that they're influence agents, not spies, lol. But by any term the NDS has gotten a step ahead of them.

Infiltration of Pakistan, Iran in Afghan Medias: NDS
Khaama Press [Afghanistan]
March 11, 2012

Officials in the Afghan Intelligence Department (National Directorate for Security) announced a number of the local TV channels and a News Agency was financially supported by neighboring Pakistan and Iran.

A spokesman for the Afghan National Directorate for Security Lotfullah Mashal said, a number of the programs broadcasted by these TV channels and News Agency are displayed with a motive to disrupt the thinking of the Afghan people.

While speaking during a press conference along with the representatives from the Afghan Medias, Afghan Ministry of Culture and Information, Afghan Interior Ministry, Afghan Foreign Ministry and NDS, Mr. Mashal said, a number of the Iranian and Pakistani nationals are working as the program and policy makers of these Media Agencies without informing the Afghan government officials.

Mr. Mashal also named Tamadon and Noor Television Channels as an exemplary which broadcasts programs in accordance with the Agendas of the Iranian government.

He said, “The subjects broadcasted by Tamadon TV was handed over to them by Iranian sources and are not created by Tamadon TV officials, and Noor TV normally invites individuals who oppose the presence of foreign troops and installation of foreign forces in Afghanistan and also criticize the achievements of the Afghan government.”

He also said, a number of Pakistani spies are also working in Shamshad TV which broadcasts in Pushto language. He said, “Shamshad TV has hired 12 foreigners without informing the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Culture and Information of Afghanistan. The Financial Director and a program maker of this TV is Pakistani nationals and creates Pakistani subjects for display.”

Mr. Mashal said he was 80% sure that the 12 individuals are the spies of ISI (Inter Services Intelligence), and would formally work in this TV if they were not spies.

According to Afghan NDS spokesman Lotfullah Mashal, the presence of foreign workers in Media Agencies without informing the Afghan government indicates that these individuals are following their political targets in this country.

However Tamadon and Shamshad TV officials denied the allegations by the Afghan NDS and urged them to hand over their evidences in this regard.

Mohammad Rahmati an official at Tamandon TV said, “Mr. Mashal presented his comments based on speculations and did not present any evidence. We deny his comments and will announce our stance formally in the near future.”

Khpalwak Safi Head of the Publications for Shamshad TV said, “I challenge Mr. Mashal and invite him to present evidences in regards to his comments and prove his claims.”

Afghan NDS spokesman Lotfullah Mashal also said, Fars Press and Press TV was working without having legal permit in Afghanistan and urged Pakistan and Iran to prevent interfering in internal issues of Afghanistan.

This comes as financial support to a number of Media Agencies in Afghanistan is considered to be an ambiguous issue, where 50 TV channels, 80 Radio Stations and dozens of printing presses have been launched across the country during the past 10 years.

In the meantime officials in the ministry of culture and information of Afghanistan recently urged the Media Agencies to specify their financial sources and present it to the ministry in written statements.
********

Notes from the real Afghan War: Up to 30 percent of Afghanistan’s water is used by Pakistan and Iran

Bottom line: poppy is a less water-intensive crop than other exportable agricultural commodities, and industrial mining is hugely water intensive.

Water & energy sector in critical situation
By Frozan Muradi
April 3, 2012
Pajhwok Afghan News

KABUL - A shortage water reservoirs and sharing of the precious, but depleting, resource with neighbours have created a critical situation for the country’s water and energy sector.

At a ceremony marking International Water Day in Kabul, Water and Energy Minister Mohammad Ismail Khan linked the lack of reservoirs to the continued war and insecurity in the country, where most of agriculture land is rain-fed.

“The climate change and rains have a direct impact on irrigated and rain-fed farms in the country, where droughts and floods are common,” the minister said in a statement read out at the ceremony.

Up to 30 percent of Afghanistan’s water is used by Pakistan and Iran. In his statement, Khan said his ministry planned to construct 22 dams in various provinces for agriculture development.

Addressing participants, Agriculture Minister Mohammad Asif Rahimi called improving the country’s economy and food security his ministry’s top priorities. He said the agriculture sector had improved a lot in recent years.

He said arable land had increased from 2.1 million hectares to 8.1 million hectares, wheat production from 5.1 million tonnes to 2.3 million tonnes, nurseries from 75,000 hectares to 119,000 hectares and grape production from 364,000 tonnes to 615,000 tonnes.

Almond production jumped from 19,000 to 56,000 tonnes and cotton from 20,000 to 45,000 tonnes, with the saffron yield reaching 2,000 kilograms over the past decade, the minister pointed out.

Water scarcity: Saving Jordan and the Dead Sea

Ah, but desalination is expensive....

Jordan’s critical water situation highlighted
March 19, 2012
The Jordan Times

[...]
Highlighting Jordan's critical water situation, [Jordan Minister of Water and Irrigation Mousa Jamani] noted that even with improving water efficiency, reducing water loss and wisely managing every drop of water, the country will still suffer from a water deficit.

A significant increase in population has led to a sharp decrease in per capita water availability in Jordan, which dropped from 3,600 cubic metres in 1946 to 145 cubic metres in 2008.

Water demand will rise to 1,673 million cubic metres (mcm) and the water deficit will surge from the current 457mcm to 659mcm within a decade, as the Kingdom's population is projected to exceed 7.8 million by 2022.

"The only long-term solution for the Kingdom's water scarcity is desalination. Studies for the Red-Dead [Red Sea-Dead Sea] project are nearing completion. Once the results out, the stakeholders will discuss the implementation phases," Jamani said yesterday.

The project is part of international efforts to save the Dead Sea, which has been shrinking at the rate of one metre per year, largely due to the diversion of water from the Jordan River for agricultural and industrial use.

Initial plans for the mega-venture propose pumping one billion cubic metres of water annually from the Red Sea into the rapidly shrinking Dead Sea to stop its depletion.

Meanwhile, Ministry of Water and Irrigation Assistant Secretary General and Spokesperson Adnan Zu’bi called on public, private and civic institutions to collaborate in order to reduce water consumption in Jordan by adopting environment-friendly practices.

"It is important to preserve water resources from depletion and pollution for the current and future generations," added Zu’bi, who is also president of the Jordanian Society for the Conservation of Water.

Jordan is recognised as the fourth water-poorest nation in the world, according to the ministry, which constantly urges households to install water-saving devices that can reduce water consumption by up to 30 per cent.

Are Muslim Syrian rebels driving Christian Syrians out of their homes and murdering them?

Generally I wouldn't pass along this story, which comes from an organization called Special Guests, because it's unsourced; it doesn't provide even one link to support the claims of a Christian activist named Wendy Wright about persecution of Syrian Christians under cover of a rebellion in Syria.

However, the gist of Wright's claims has been borne out in other countries, including Egypt and Iraq, where the Christian population was left helpless after the secularized regimes of Hosni Mubarak and Saddam Hussein were overthrown. And, after I dropped everything else to attempt to find a reasonably authoritative source for the Special Guests story (below), I see that the Los Angles Times has reported that 90 percent of Christians in Homs have been expelled from their homes by the rebels.

So if CNN could rip itself away for a few minutes from the role of Voice of the International Community and ask some hard questions about the present condition of Christians in Syria, then report on the answers, it would be helpful given the extent to which CNN has been propagandizing for U.S. intervention in Syria.

(Memo to self: ask Congress when it's going to stop clowning around and start procedures to make CNN an outright government agency.)

There's no way to prevent the American government from supporting the rebels; President Obama and Secretary Clinton have already clearly indicated they want Assad's regime gone. But since the White House has now taken the first step in direct intervention, it does have a responsibility to make help conditional on the rebels refraining from persecuting the Christians in the country.

From Special Guests:

Human rights organizations are reporting that Syrian rebels are actively involved in slaughtering hundreds of Christians and driving out tens of thousands from their homes--without even allowing them to bring their personal property.

This horrific escalation of “ethnic cleansing” of Christians from Syria must be exposed and stopped.

Telling this under-reported story is Christian Freedom International spokesperson Wendy Wright who shares how Barack Obama and many in the media continue to portray the uprisings throughout the Middle East as “freedom fighters.” In reality they are often sects of radical Islam overthrowing existing, sometimes more moderate regimes.

Wendy stated, "Christians are being slaughtered in Syria, yet world leaders are siding with the killers. The minority Christian population -- which is not taking sides in the current conflict -- is being kidnapped, used as human shields, tortured and executed.”

“Yet their plight is ignored by the media, UN, and the Obama administration. Their silence allows the genocide to continue. It will only get worse if the killers gain control of the government," concluded Wright.

Bravo, Burma -- er, Myanmar!

I meant to put this post up yesterday but I discovered it's really hard to type and dance around my desk at the same time. So I finally gave up on the attempt and just danced for joy. Here are the headlines that got me dancing -- and I'm sure the headlines also got Johnny Cash smiling down from his cloud in heaven (the campaign anthem of Aung San Suu Kyi's supporters is inspired by a Cash song):

Guardian: Burma celebrates Aung San Suu Kyi's apparent landslide election victory: Nobel laureate expected to take office for first time after landmark poll that could see end to 50 years of military rule

Agence France-Presse: No serious complaints in Myanmar vote: ASEAN chief.

Of course there were some shenanigans at the ballot box -- people rising from the dead to cast a vote, etc., but it's very clear that Myanmar President Thein Sein didn't want complaints from international election monitors to interfere with his star turn at the ASEAN summit on Tuesday. And, if one considers the courage he's and intelligence he displayed in somehow talking the country's generals into making Myanmar an upstanding member of ASEAN, he wanted nothing to interfere with the star turn of Myanmar's people on the world stage.

Success has been in the air for weeks; if the by-election was even halfway fair, Aung San Suu Kyi would win by at least a healthy margin. Rumors were flying last week that the government had already offered her a cabinet position and that she'd turned it down, saying being a parliamentarian was enough for her.

"Auntie Suu" was herself in such a good mood by last week that the 66-year old daughter of Burma's oops! Myanmar's founding father couldn't resist a little banter with a serious-faced Western reporter. He inquired worriedly about her health, which had been strained by the killer pace of campaigning. She told him with a grin that her health was so delicate she just might faint if the press asked her any tough political questions.

My celebratory mood was short-lived -- it is always is -- as I mulled over a long list of recriminations I might hurl at various parties because what happened yesterday in Burma could and should have happened decades ago. But I don't think Auntie Suu would appreciate my acid pen at this time. So I'll limit myself to saying to the Christian missionaries, the Soros Crowd and the Gene Sharp Crowd that if you'd like to see Burma's generals lower the boom again, push the envelope again. Are we clear? If so I'm willing to let the past remain where it is.

Now, as to whether Burma is the next Asian Tiger economy: the problem with turning your country into a fortress for decades is that the country falls greatly behind; add to that ethnic insurgencies fomented by outsiders and you end up with a fourth-world country. That's where Burma is today. But the country's potential is so great that economists and country analysts who specialize in ASEAN countries are seriously asking the question.

Here are two answers: one, from IHS Global Insight's Asia-Pacific Chief Economist Rajiv Biswas, is upbeat; the other, from Joshua Kurlantzick, a fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations, full of caution; both should be studied.

As to whether there's a tiebreaker, I think the money quote is found in Biswas's analysis:

From an economic perspective, Burma’s economic reforms and tariff liberalization will be important to ASEAN’s objective to create a single market for trade in goods by 2015.

To meet the objective, Myanmar can count on help from other ASEAN members -- a lot of help.

Finally, a word to my own dear government: Don't tack 'defense-related' issues onto lifting sanctions that you said at the time you were imposing for humanitarian reasons.

Need I remind you that the Afghans are now so justifiably worried that their country is going to become a battleground between Iran and the United States that recently a member of the Afghan senate lashed out at both governments, and Hamid Karzai backed him up.

With that thought in mind, don't try to use Myanmar as a staging ground against China. If you don't want to confront Beijing's leaders directly, don't use the world's dirt-poor as a stealth weapon. I don't want to hear, 'They do it too.' Are you Chinese? And while I'm on the subject, stop weaponizing in the name of 'freedom' every principle Americans cherish.

Sorry, Auntie Suu. We're actually all for peace and love here in Punditaland.

Washington stretches meaning of "humanitarian assistance" to give aid to Syrian rebels

Here we go again. It's 'just' a pledge at the moment to provide communications equipment but this would happen on April Fool's Day. The joke being on the fools here in the USA who believed the State Department's solemn assertions a couple weeks ago that "we" can't provide military aid to the Syrian rebels because they're so disorganized that "we" don't know which faction to help and besides some factions are al Qaeda.

This move, of course, is against Syria's patron Iran. What else can I say except to note that the only governments left that believe in the concept of Westphalian sovereignty are ones U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton deemed "despicable" for blocking the will of the International Community (pictured above) on the matter of Syria.

So, comrades and comradesses, I hope you like being a citizen of the International Community because that's what you are. If you're trying to find the member state of the USA in the above photo, I think we're the milk carton on the left-hand side of the counter.

Now I must go practice my stiff-armed salute. All hail the International Community! Hail!

U.S. Joins Effort to Equip and Pay Rebels in Syria
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
Sebnem Arsu contributed reporting from Istanbul, and Anne Barnard and Hwaida Saad from Beirut, Lebanon.
April 1, 2012
The New York Times

ISTANBUL — The United States and dozens of other countries moved closer on Sunday to direct intervention in the fighting in Syria, with Arab nations pledging $100 million to pay opposition fighters and the Obama administration agreeing to send communications equipment to help rebels organize and evade Syria’s military, according to participants gathered here.

The moves reflected a growing consensus, at least among the officials who met here this weekend under the rubric “Friends of Syria,” that mediation efforts by the United Nations peace envoy, Kofi Annan, were failing to halt the violence that is heading into its second year in Syria and that more forceful action was needed.

With Russia and China blocking United Nations measures that could open the way for military action, the countries lined up against the government of President Bashar al-Assad sought to bolster Syria’s beleaguered opposition through means that seemed to stretch the definition of humanitarian assistance and blur the line between so-called lethal and nonlethal support.

There remains no agreement on arming the rebels, as countries like Saudi Arabia and some members of Congress have called for, largely because of the uncertainty regarding who exactly would receive the arms.

Still, the offer to provide salaries and communications equipment to rebel fighters known as the Free Syrian Army — with the hopes that the money might encourage government soldiers to defect, officials said — is bringing the loose Friends of Syria coalition to the edge of a proxy war against Mr. Assad’s government and its international supporters, principally Iran and Russia.

The assistance to the rebel fighters as Mr. Assad’s loyalists press on with a brutal crackdown could worsen a conflict that has already led to at least 9,000 deaths and is increasingly showing signs of descending into a sectarian civil war. Some say that enabling the uprising to succeed is now the best bet to end the instability and carnage sooner.

“We would like to see a stronger Free Syrian Army,” Burhan Ghalioun, the leader of the Syrian National Council, a loose affiliation of exiled opposition leaders, told hundreds of world leaders and other officials gathered here. “All of these responsibilities should be borne by the international community.”

Mr. Ghalioun did not directly address the financial assistance from the Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, but he added, “This is high noon for action.”

But for some inside Syria, the absence of promises of arms far overshadowed the financial and communications aid. Mohamed Moaz, an activist in the Damascus suburbs who coordinates with rebel fighters, held Mr. Ghalioun responsible for failing to unify the gathered nations on sending arms, calling him “a partner with the regime in these crimes.”

“I’m the only one who watched this conference in our neighborhood, because there was no electricity and people don’t care,” he said. “I only watched it because Al Jazeera wanted my comment.”

At the conference, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said that Mr. Assad had defied Mr. Annan’s efforts to broker an end to the fighting and begin a political transition. She said that new assaults had begun in Idlib and Aleppo Provinces in the week since Mr. Assad publicly accepted the plan. It does not call for him to step down, but rather for an immediate cease-fire followed by negotiations with the opposition.

“The world must judge Assad by what he does, not by what he says,” Mrs. Clinton said in a statement to officials who sat around an enormous rectangular table the size of a basketball court. “And we cannot sit back and wait any longer.”

Molham al-Drobi, a member of the Syrian National Council, said that the opposition had pledges of $176 million in humanitarian assistance and $100 million in salaries over three months for the fighters inside Syria. Some money was already flowing to the fighters, he said, including $500,000 last week through “a mechanism that I cannot disclose now.”
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