NP Propagandada (Re: Amerikaka (NP?)

[jbor]

mikeweaver at gn.apc.org wrote:

> Trouble is that every rocket that hits Afghanistan recruits more young
> people for the anti-American crusade. Pakistan is being rapidly and
> dangerously polarised, if not already destabilised. This is not a path to
> greater global security. There is no "Until then" which makes sense.

I spoke with a Pakistani woman yesterday, a refugee health care worker here
who fled Pakistan herself only a few years back, who reminded me that
Pakistan's was one of the three national govts which recognised the Taliban,
and still does, with that increasingly harassed-looking Taliban foreign
minister facing the cameras every other day, and she suggested that the
Pakistani military or secret service, if not the govt., still covertly
supports the Taliban regime. Her point, or theory, was that the information
regarding targets and Taliban strongholds given by Pakistani intelligence
sources to the U.S. and other forces would be purposely misleading.

I'm inclined to think that her knee-jerk anti-Pakistan govt. stance is the
same blinkered, knee-jerk anti-U.S. govt. stance Mike Weaver and others are
adopting, and that the surprisingly small protests in the border towns there
were legitimately in opposition to the Pakistani PM's alliance with the
international coalition against the Taliban and Al Q'aeda, but her comments
do bring home the point that the simplistic portrait of the political
situation given above has no basis in reality.

For all the rhetoric, the analogy to the Fall of Rome, the false distinction
between system and populace, the false assertion that sympathy for the
Taliban and Al Q'aeda is growing, and so on, the essence of the commentary
is propagandist. Again, whatever his beliefs, Mike Weaver sounds throughout
as if he wants Pakistan to be destabilised, as if he wants more terrorists
to be recruited, as if wants America to be destroyed.

There are no solutions proposed:

> The only force capable of suppressing terrorism is a force on
> the same side of dialectic as the terrorists, but a constructive one.

This is a contradiction in terms, and it conflates Islam with terrorism,
which is inaccurate and extremely offensive.

> There are plenty of positive ways out of here, but none of them are short
> term, and none of them are largely military, and all of them involve
> continued globalisation. Not of the corporate kind, but of the
> international co-operation kind.

This is another false distinction. Nations are economic entities. But I
agree that without the international co-operation which has been sought and
constantly reaffirmed in the current situation the world would be in a far
worse position than it is now. If the anti-globalisation protesters had
their way there would be no chance for *any* type of international
co-operation.

Yesterday we heard that last Friday a refugee boat sank off Java. More than
350 people perished. They were predominantly Iraqi and Afghani nationals,
and had been waiting in Indonesia for up to two years to be "processed".

http://www.smh.com.au/news/0110/24/national/national1.html

http://www.smh.com.au/news/specials/intl/refugees/index.html

best