A round of applause

[Kevin S. Assilleekunt 1]

*clap clap clap*

 

The overthrow of a dictator by popular revolt deserves some appreciation. Zein al-Abidine Ben Ali has now reportedly fled the country, after over 20 years of autocratic rule, hounded out by mass protests. Obviously this is only the first step, the situation - which is already unstable and marred by violence - has the potential to become disastrous, so I can only hope that some kind of good outcome is reached for the people.

 

I'm not particularly well up on Tunisia or its history, so this thread could be a good place to link to articles and what have you following the story. A good omen imo for the derby tomorrow.

[snakehips 0]

*clap clap clap*

 

The overthrow of a dictator by popular revolt deserves some appreciation. Zein al-Abidine Ben Ali has now reportedly fled the country, after over 20 years of autocratic rule, hounded out by mass protests. Obviously this is only the first step, the situation - which is already unstable and marred by violence - has the potential to become disastrous, so I can only hope that some kind of good outcome is reached for the people.

 

I'm not particularly well up on Tunisia or its history, so this thread could be a good place to link to articles and what have you following the story. A good omen imo for the derby tomorrow.

 

I heard he's off to Tottenham. ITK.

[Guest You FCB Get Out Of Our Club]

Wouldn't applaud these mugs for anything after what I saw in Marseille in 1998.

[Howmanheyman 34441]

Wouldn't applaud these mugs for anything after what I saw in Marseille in 1998.

I think I better expand on this for any mugs who don't know what Stevie is going on about. An Algerian-Frenchman, (looked like a Tunisian) served Stevie some crepes and proceeded to put his finger down his crack and give himself a good scratch thus sickening the watching Stevie who then witnessed other England fans get served with the smelly finger.

[Rob W 0]

Hmm -rioting, murder and looting are OK when it suits you then KSA?

[acrossthepond 899]

Let's see what kind of strongman has taken over before we start patting ourselves on the back about 'popular revolt' and all that other crap.

 

Military dictator Pervez Musharraf was ousted from rule in Pakistan in '08 according to the so-called will of the people and his democratically elected successors have proven to be a bunch of corrupt and ineffective liars who have, through their inaction, allowed the rule of law to degenerate and have lost control of entire regions of the country to terrorists. Be careful what you wish for.

[Kevin S. Assilleekunt 1]

Hmm -rioting, murder and looting are OK when it suits you then KSA?

 

The murder is mostly being committed by pro-Ali agitators, but that's besides the point. Obviously, in your decrepit and senile state, your comprehension skills have eroded - not that they were ever of a level above your average mental retard - to the point of illiteracy and you have missed my point completely.

 

Let's see what kind of strongman has taken over before we start patting ourselves on the back about 'popular revolt' and all that other crap.

 

Military dictator Pervez Musharraf was ousted from rule in Pakistan in '08 according to the so-called will of the people and his democratically elected successors have proven to be a bunch of corrupt and ineffective liars who have, through their inaction, allowed the rule of law to degenerate and have lost control of entire regions of the country to terrorists. Be careful what you wish for.

 

The same is true of the Phillipines although the situation is not as bad; the governments that have followed Marcos have been corrupt as hell and a lot of his relatives are involved. I believe the dictators are mostly to blame for the nature of these societies when they eventually crumble, not the people - and I stand by my applause for the overthrow of a dictator by popular revolt; it has been a good effort.

 

*clap clap clap*

[Rob W 0]

Dear God! it IS Leazes in disguise

[Happy Face 29]

Activists David House and Jane Hamsher tried to visit Pfc. Bradley Manning, who stands accused of leaking classified US government documents, at Quantico on Sunday. They allege that while still outside the base, they were given a run-around, threatened with having their car towed, and then essentially detained for two hours, until the 3:00 pm end to visiting hours arrived. They were not on the base, and House is on an approved visitor list. They were trying to see Manning, whose health they say has deteriorated because of the harsh terms of his detainment, and to deliver to the base commander a petition with 40,000 signatories asking that the terms be eased.

 

The suspicious behavior of the authorities at Quantico raises the question of why they were trying to keep House from seeing Manning on Sunday. What had been done to their prisoner that they didn’t want coming out?

 

Manning’s treatment as though he were a terrorist contrasts to the lionization of other kinds of dissident. If it is true that Manning turned State Department documents over to Wikileaks, then he played a small role in the Tunisian Jasmine Revolution, which overthrew the brutal and grasping dictator, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, whom the US government had been coddling and the French government actively supporting. Ben Ali’s cruelty to political prisoners is now emerging, as they are being released and telling their story.

 

Desperation at the policies of the Tunisian government had driven college graduate turned vegetable peddler Mohammad Bouazizi to set himself on fire in protest. The government had supplied him no job, then had confiscated his vegetable cart, then slapped and humiliated him when he protested. Bouazizi was driven to desperation, knowing that the Tunisian system was closed so tight that it offered him no recourse, no hope for reform. His only means of protest was to start a fire and sacrifice his own life. His protest set off public disturbances throughout the country. In the midst of this “Jasmine Revolution,” a leaked US embassy cable about the corruption of President Ben Ali came to the attention of the Tunisian public, lending legitimacy and urgency to their efforts to unseat him. It may have been leaked by Manning.

 

Manning, like Bouazizi, is young. He also faced, with all his youth and inexperience and impatience, a political situation that was the result of criminality. Dick Cheney and John Yoo and Karl Rove and George W. Bush were responsible for creating a public image of government lawlessness that encouraged whistle blowing. They went to war against Iraq on false pretenses and in contravention of international law. They themselves tried to leak the identity of Valerie Plame, a covert CIA operative, to the press. They set up Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and Bagram as black torture facilities. They lied repeatedly to the American people (there was no looting in Iraq, no guerrilla war in Iraq, no civil war in Iraq, no torture practiced by the US in Iraq, no more than 30,000 civilian dead in Iraq, no need for more armored vehicles for our troops in Iraq).

 

The political situation Manning faced was also unyielding. Long after the American public turned against Washington’s Forever Wars, they are still being pursued, and are killing thousands of innocent civilians for war goals that range from the highly unlikely to the utterly phantasmagoric. Manning’s leak was an act of desperation no different in intent from Bouazizi’s self-immolation. He intended to protest, by putting himself on the line. He wrote in chat room, “god knows what happens now — hopefully worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms — if not & we’re doomed.” He did not intend to get caught, but he must have known the risks. His was a cyberspace form of self-immolation, a career-ending, decisively life-changing act that, however foolhardy or possibly illegal, was certainly courageous.

 

President Obama belatedly praised “the courage and dignity of the Tunisian people” and said,

 

“The United States stands with the entire international community in bearing witness to this brave and determined struggle for the universal rights that we must all uphold, and we will long remember the images of the Tunisian people seeking to make their voices heard.”

 

So one of the universal human rights the Tunisians wanted was freedom from harsh conditions of detention when charged with thought crimes.

 

As a service member under arrest in preparation for a military trial, Manning lacks many of the protections of US civilians charged with wrongdoing, but there are military regulations about pre-trial treatment that his defense alleges are being violated. There are also provisions in international law to which the US is signatory and which may be being violated.

 

Manning was placed on suicide watch for two days last week, and is in general in maximum security detention and subject to ‘prevention of injury’ (POI) rules.

 

Manning’s psychiatrists say there is no reason for the POI. This procedure allows guards to wake Manning up whenever they cannot see his face (i.e. if he rolls over on his bed while sleeping).

 

There is a strong possibility that solitary confinement (i.e. social isolation) and sleep deprivation are being used by Manning’s jailers as a form of torture to soften him up. It is possible that they want from him information that would allow them to pursue conspiracy charges against Wikileaks, and this mistreatment is the way they think they can get it from him.

 

Ironically, Among Amnesy International’s charges against the Ben Ali regime in Tunisia was this:

 

‘ Prison conditions: Many political prisoners reportedly suffered discrimination and harsh treatment. Some went on hunger strike to protest against ill-treatment by prison guards, denial of medical care, interruption of family visits and harsh conditions, including prolonged solitary confinement.’

 

And, yes, among the techniques used against prisoners was “sleep deprivation.”

 

No one is saying that Manning is being physically abused. But he is being psychologically abused, which is still a form of inhumane treatment. Both the United Nations and the US State Department have called sleep deprivation a form of torture. Glenn Greenwald has also made this case.

 

There is little recourse for Manning until the court convenes and pleas are entered, at which time his military attorney can submit a complaint about the terms of his detention. Attorney David Coombs has in the meantime protested on the grounds of article 13 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which says:

 

‘ No person, while being held for trial, may be subjected to punishment or penalty other than arrest or confinement upon the charges pending against him, nor shall the arrest or confinement imposed upon him be any more rigorous than the circumstances required to insure his presence, but he may be subjected to minor punishment during that period for infractions of discipline. ‘

 

Just Saturday, Coombs filed an article 138 complaint, as well. This complaint alleges a perceived wrong committed by his command against a service member, under the UCMJ.

 

Amnesty International has addressed a letter to US Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates about the treatment of Manning.

 

It says,

 

‘ We are informed that, since July 2010, PFC Manning has been confined for 23 hours a day to a single cell, measuring around 72 square feet (6.7 square metres) and equipped only with a bed, toilet and sink. There is no window to the outside, the only view being on to a corridor through the barred doors of his cell. All meals are taken in his cell, which we are told has no chair or table. He has no association or contact with other pre-trial detainees and he is allowed to exercise, alone, for just one hour a day, in a day-room or outside. He has access to a television which is placed in the corridor for limited periods of the day. However, he is reportedly not permitted to keep personal possessions in his cell, apart from one book and magazine at a time. Although he may write and receive correspondence, writing is allowed only at an allotted time during the day and he is not allowed to keep such materials in his cell.

 

We understand that PFC Manning’s restrictive conditions of confinement are due to his classification as a maximum custody detainee. This classification also means that – unlike medium security detainees –- he is shackled at the hands and legs during approved social and family visits, despite all such visits at the facility being non-contact. He is also shackled during attorney visits at the facility. We further understand that PFC Manning, as a maximum custody detainee, is denied the opportunity for a work assignment which would allow him to be out of his cell for most of the day. The United Nations (UN) Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (SMR), which are internationally recognized guiding principles, provide inter alia that “Untried prisoners shall always be offered opportunity to work” should they wish to undertake such activity (SMR Section C, rule 89). PFC Manning is also being held under a Prevention of Injury (POI) assignment, which means that he is subjected to further restrictions. These include checks by guards every five minutes and a bar on his sleeping during the day. He is required to remain visible at all times, including during night checks. His POI status has resulted in his being deprived of sheets and a separate pillow, causing uncomfortable sleeping conditions; his discomfort is reportedly exacerbated by the fact that he is required to sleep only in boxer shorts and has suffered chafing of his bare skin from the blankets.

 

We are concerned that no formal reasons have been provided to PFC Manning for either his maximum security classification or the POI assignment and that efforts by his counsel to challenge these assignments through administrative procedures have thus far failed to elicit a response. We are further concerned that he reportedly remains under POI despite a recommendation by the military psychiatrist overseeing his treatment that such an assignment is no longer necessary.’

 

If an American citizen, convicted of no crime and innocent until proven guilty, can be held under such conditions arbitrarily for half a year, essentially softened up and tortured as a means of extracting information from him, then the Republic is in extreme danger. Indeed, it may be that John Yoo, Karl Rove, Richard Bruce Cheney, and George W. Bush are already winning in their war on civil liberties in favor of a monarchical national security state.

 

President Obama, has made some important advances in abolishing torture and restoring some civil liberties, but it is a mixed picture, as the ACLU explained just a few days ago. He has a duty to intervene to stop the abuse of Pfc. Manning.

 

If Manning has broken the law, he will be tried and convicted and punished in accordance with the law. In the meantime, as long as he is being treated as though he were at Guantanamo, all of us are.

[Kevin S. Assilleekunt 1]

I see you're still subscribed to Ruel Fox's blog.

 

That article would have been a lot more coherent and pungent had it focused solely on Manning's plight and ditched the parallel with Tunisia, which is a stretch, only serving to conflate the issues, rather than displaying an profound insight into either of them. You should post that in the Wikileaks thread as it's more relevant; this thread is more for analysis of the Tunisian situation. Has Assange written his book yet or posed for Playboy?

[Happy Face 29]

The Tunisian situation fuelled by a leak from Wikileaks.

 

Strange to applaud the people rising up....and condemn the people who armed them with the information to spur that kind of anger.

 

No wonder you want to keep the issues apart.

[Happy Face 29]

The Corruption Game

What the Tunisian Revolution and WikiLeaks Tell Us about American Support for Corrupt Dictatorships in the Muslim World

By Juan Cole

 

Here’s one obvious lesson of the Tunisian Revolution of 2011: paranoia about Muslim fundamentalist movements and terrorism is causing Washington to make bad choices that will ultimately harm American interests and standing abroad. State Department cable traffic from capitals throughout the Greater Middle East, made public thanks to WikiLeaks, shows that U.S. policy-makers have a detailed and profound picture of the depths of corruption and nepotism that prevail among some “allies” in the region.

 

The same cable traffic indicates that, in a cynical Great Power calculation, Washington continues to sacrifice the prospects of the region’s youth on the altar of “security.” It is now forgotten that America’s biggest foreign policy headache, the Islamic Republic of Iran, arose in response to American backing for Mohammad Reza Pahlevi, the despised Shah who destroyed the Iranian left and centrist political parties, paving the way for the ayatollahs’ takeover in 1979.

 

State Department cables published via WikiLeaks are remarkably revealing when it comes to the way Tunisian strongman Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and his extended family (including his wife Leila’s Trabelsi clan) fastened upon the Tunisian economy and sucked it dry. The riveting descriptions of U.S. diplomats make the presidential “family” sound like True Blood’s vampires overpowering Bontemps, Louisiana.

 

In July of 2009, for instance, the U.S. ambassador dined with Nesrine Ben Ali el-Materi and Sakher el-Materi, the president’s daughter and son-in-law, at their sumptuous mansion. Materi, who rose through nepotism to dominate Tunisia’s media, provided a 12-course dinner with Kiwi juice -- “not normally available here” -- and “ice cream and frozen yoghurt he had flown in from Saint Tropez,” all served by an enormous staff of well-paid servants. The ambassador remarked on the couple’s pet tiger, “Pasha,” which consumed “four chickens a day” at a time of extreme economic hardship for ordinary Tunisians.

 

Other cables detail the way the Ben Ali and Trabelsi clans engaged in a Tunisian version of insider trading, using their knowledge of the president’s upcoming economic decisions to scarf up real estate and companies they knew would suddenly spike in value. In 2006, the U.S. ambassador estimated that 50% of the economic elite of Tunisia was related by blood or marriage to the president, a degree of nepotism hard to match outside some of the Persian Gulf monarchies.

 

Despite full knowledge of the corruption and tyranny of the regime, the U.S. embassy concluded in July 2009: “Notwithstanding the frustrations of doing business here, we cannot write off Tunisia. We have too much at stake. We have an interest in preventing al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and other extremist groups from establishing a foothold here. We have an interest in keeping the Tunisian military professional and neutral.”

 

The notion that, if the U.S. hadn’t given the Tunisian government hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid over the past two and a half decades, while helping train its military and security forces, a shadowy fringe group calling itself “al-Qaeda in the Maghreb” might have established a “toehold” in the country was daft. Yet this became an all-weather, universal excuse for bad policy.

 

In this regard, Tunisia has been the norm when it comes to American policy in the Muslim world. The Bush administration's firm support for Ben Ali makes especially heinous the suggestion of some neoconservative pundits that George W. Bush's use of democratization rhetoric for neo-imperialist purposes somehow inspired the workers and internet activists of Tunisia (none of whom ever referenced the despised former US president). It would surely have been smarter for Washington to cut the Ben Ali regime off without a dime, at least militarily, and distance itself from his pack of jackals. The region is, of course, littered with dusty, creaking, now exceedingly nervous dictatorships in which government is theft. The U.S. receives no real benefits from its damaging association with them.

 

No Dominoes to Fall

 

The Bush administration’s deeply flawed, sometimes dishonest Global War on Terror replayed the worst mistakes of Cold War policy. One of those errors involved recreating the so-called domino theory -- the idea that the U.S. had to make a stand in Vietnam, or else Indonesia, Thailand, Burma and the rest of Asia, if not the world, would fall to communism. It wasn’t true then -- the Soviet Union was, at the time, less than two decades from collapsing -- and it isn’t applicable now in terms of al-Qaeda. Then and now, though, that domino theory prolonged the agony of ill-conceived wars.

 

Despite the Obama administration’s abandonment of the phrase “war on terror,” the impulses encoded in it still powerfully shape Washington’s policy-making, as well as its geopolitical fears and fantasies. It adds up to an absurdly modernized version of domino theory. This irrational fear that any small setback for the U.S. in the Muslim world could lead straight to an Islamic caliphate lurks beneath many of Washington’s pronouncements and much of its strategic planning.

 

A clear example can be seen in the embassy cable that acquiesced in Washington’s backing of Ben Ali for fear of the insignificant and obscure “al-Qaeda in the Maghreb.” Despite the scary name, this small group was not originally even related to Usamah Bin Laden’s al-Qaeda, but rather grew out of the Algerian Muslim reformist movement called Salafism.

 

If the U.S. stopped giving military aid to Ben Ali, it was implied, Bin Laden might suddenly be the caliph of Tunis. This version of the domino theory -- a pretext for overlooking a culture of corruption, as well as human rights abuses against dissidents -- has become so widespread as to make up the warp and woof of America’s secret diplomatic messaging.

 

Sinking Democracy in the Name of the War on Terror

 

Take Algeria, for instance. American military assistance to neighboring Algeria has typically grown from nothing before September 11th to nearly a million dollars a year. It may be a small sum in aid terms, but it is rapidly increasing, and it supplements far more sizeable support from the French. It also involves substantial training for counterterrorism; that is, precisely the skills also needed to repress peaceful civilian protests.

 

Ironically, the Algerian generals who control the strings of power were the ones responsible for radicalizing the country’s Muslim political party, the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS). Allowed to run for office in 1992, that party won an overwhelming majority in parliament. Shocked and dismayed, the generals abruptly abrogated the election results. We will never know if the FIS might have evolved into a parliamentary, democratic party, as later happened to the Justice and Development Party of Turkey, the leaders of which had been Muslim fundamentalists in the 1990s.

 

Angered at being deprived of the fruits of its victory, however, FIS supporters went on the offensive. Some were radicalized and formed an organization they called the Armed Islamic Group, which later became an al-Qaeda affiliate. (A member of this group, Ahmed Ressam, attempted to enter the U.S. as part of the "millennial plot" to blow up Los Angeles International Airport, but was apprehended at the border.) A bloody civil war then broke out in which the generals and the more secular politicians were the winners, though not before 150,000 Algerians died. As with Ben Ali in neighboring Tunisia, Paris and Washington consider President Abdel Aziz Bouteflika (elected in 1999) a secular rampart against the influence of radical Muslim fundamentalism in Algeria as well as among the Algerian-French population in France.

 

To outward appearances, in the first years of the twenty-first century, Algeria regained stability under Bouteflika and his military backers, and the violence subsided. Critics charged, however, that the president connived at legislative changes, making it possible for him to run for a third term, a decision that was bad for democracy. In the 2009 presidential election, he faced a weak field of rivals and his leading opponent was a woman from an obscure Trotskyite party.

 

Cables from the U.S. embassy (revealed again by WikiLeaks) reflected a profound unease with a growing culture of corruption and nepotism, even though it was not on a Tunisian scale. Last February, for example, Ambassador David D. Pearce reported that eight of the directors of the state oil company Sonatrach were under investigation for corruption. He added, “This scandal is the latest in a dramatically escalating series of investigations and prosecutions that we have seen since last year involving Algerian government ministries and public enterprises. Significantly, many of the ministries affected are headed by ministers considered close to Algerian President Bouteflika…”

 

And this was nothing new. More than three years earlier, the embassy in Algiers was already sounding the alarm. Local observers, it reported to Washington, were depicting President Bouteflika’s brothers “Said and Abdallah, as being particularly rapacious.” Corruption was spreading into an increasingly riven and contentious officer corps. Unemployment among youth was so bad that they were taking to the Mediterranean on rickety rafts in hopes of getting to Europe and finding jobs. And yet when you read the WikiLeaks cables you find no recommendations to stop supporting the Algerian government.

 

As usual when Washington backs corrupt regimes in the name of its war on terror, democracy suffers and things slowly deteriorate. Bouteflika’s flawed elections which aimed only at ensuring his victory, for instance, actively discouraged moderate fundamentalists from participating and some observers now think that Algeria, already roiled by food riots, could face Tunisian-style popular turmoil. (It should be remembered, however, that the Algerian military and secret police, with years of grim civil-war experience behind them, are far more skilled at oppressive techniques of social control than the Tunisian army.)

 

Were oil-rich Algeria, a much bigger country than Tunisia, to become unstable, it would be a strategically more striking and even less predictable event. Blame would have to be laid not just at the feet of Bouteflika and his corrupt cronies, but at those of his foreign backers, deeply knowledgeable (as the WikiLeaks cables indicate) but set in their policy ways.

 

The Ben Alis of Central Asia

 

Nor is the problem confined to North Africa or even anxious U.S.-backed autocrats in the Arab world. Take the natural gas and gold-rich Central Asian country of Uzbekistan with a population of about 27 million, whose corruption the U.S. embassy was cabling about as early as 2006. The dictatorial but determinedly secular regime of President Islam Karimov was an early Bush administration ally in its Global War on Terror, quite happy to provide Washington with torture-inspired confessions from “al-Qaeda” operatives, most of whom, according to former British ambassador Craig Murray, were simply ordinary Uzbek dissidents. (Although Uzbeks have a Muslim cultural heritage, decades of Soviet rule left most of the population highly secularized, and except in the Farghana Valley, the Muslim fundamentalist movement is tiny.) Severe human rights abuses finally caused even the Bush administration to criticize Karimov, leading Tashkent to withdraw basing rights in that country from the U.S. military.

 

In recent years, however, a rapprochement has occurred, as Washington’s regional security obsessions once again came to the fore and the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s northwest tribal belt ramped up. The Obama administration is now convinced that it needs Uzbekistan for the transit of supplies to Afghanistan and that evidently trumps all other policy considerations. As a result, Washington is now providing Uzbekistan with hundreds of millions of dollars in Pentagon contracts, a recipe for further corruption.

 

Last spring, one Central Asian government -- Kyrgyzstan’s -- fell, thanks to popular discontent, which should have been a warning to Washington, and yet U.S. officials already appear to have forgotten what lessons those events held for its policies in the region. As long as ruler Kurmanbek Bakiev allowed the U.S. to use Manas Air Base for the transit and supply of American troops in Afghanistan, Washington overlooked his corruption and his authoritarian ways. Then it turned out that his regime was not as stable as had been assumed.

 

Here’s a simple rule of thumb in such situations: bad policy creates even worse policy. The Obama administration’s mistake in ramping up its Afghan War left it needing ever more supplies, worrying about perilous supply lines through Pakistan, and so vulnerable to transit blackmail by the ruling kleptocracies of Central Asia. When their populations, too, explode into anger, the likely damage to U.S. interests could be severe.

 

And keep in mind that, as the State Department again knows all too well, Afghanistan itself is increasingly just a huge, particularly decrepit version of Ben Ali’s Tunisia. U.S. diplomats were at least somewhat wary of Ben Ali. In contrast, American officials wax fulsome in their public praise of Afghan President Hamid Karzai (even if privately they are all too aware of the weakness and corruption of “the mayor of Kabul”). They continue to insist that the success of his government is central to the security of the North American continent, and for that reason, Washington is spending billions of dollars propping him up.

 

Corruption Triumphant in the Name of Counterterrorism

 

Sometimes it seems that all corrupt regimes backed by the U.S. are corrupt in the same repetitive way. For instance, one form of corruption U.S. embassy cables particularly highlighted when it came to the Ben Ali and Trabelsi clans in Tunisia was the way they offered “loans” to their political supporters and family members via banks they controlled or over which they had influence.

 

Since these recipients understood that they did not actually have to repay the loans, the banks were weakened and other businesses then found it difficult to get credit, undermining the economy and employment. Thanks to the Jasmine revolution, the problem finally is beginning to be addressed. After the flight of Ben Ali, the Central Bank director was forced to resign, and the new government seized the assets of the Zitoune Bank, which belonged to one of his son-in-laws.

 

Similarly, in Afghanistan, Da Kabul Bank, founded by Karzai ally Sherkan Farnood, was used as a piggy bank for Karzai’s presidential campaign and for loans to members of his family as well as the families of the warlords in his circle. Recipients included Karzai’s brother Mahmoud Karzai and Haseen Fahim, the son of his vice president and former Northern Alliance warlord Marshal Mohammad Fahim. Some of the money was used to buy real estate in Dubai. When a real estate bust occurred in that country, the value of those properties as collateral plummeted.

 

With recipients unable to service or repay their debts, the bank teetered on the edge of insolvency with potentially dire consequences for the entire Afghan financial system, as desperate crowds gathered to withdraw their deposits. In the end, the bank was taken over by an impoverished Afghan government, which undoubtedly means that the American taxpayer will end up paying for the mismanagement and corruption.

 

Just as the Ben Ali clique outdid itself in corruption, so, too, Karzai’s circle is full of crooks. American diplomats (among others) have, for instance, accused his brother Wali Ahmed of deep involvement in the heroin trade. With dark humor, the American embassy in Kabul reported last January that Hamid Karzai had nominated, and parliament had accepted, for the counter-narcotics post in the cabinet one Zarar Ahmad Moqbel. He had earlier been Deputy Interior Minister, but was removed for corruption. Another former Deputy Interior Minister evidently even informed embassy officials that “Moqbel was supported by the drug mafia, to include Karzai’s younger half-brother Ahmed Wali Karzai and Arif Khan Noorzai.” This is being alleged of Afghanistan's current counter-narcotics czar!

 

Or take the example of Juma Khan Hamdard, whom Karzai appointed governor of Paktya Province in the Pashtun-dominated eastern part of Afghanistan. A little over a year ago, the embassy accused him of being the leader of “a province-wide corruption scheme.” He is said to have been “the central point of a vast corruption network involving the provincial chief of police and several Afghan ministry line directors.”

 

According to that WikiLeaks-released cable, Hamdard’s network had set up a sophisticated money-skimming operation aimed at milking U.S. funds going into reconstruction projects. They gamed the bids on the contracts to do the work and then took cuts at every stage from groundbreaking to ribbon-cutting.

 

In addition, Governor Hamdard was reported to have longstanding ties to the Hizb-i Islami militia/party movement of Gulbaddin Hikmatyar, one of the Pashtun guerrilla leaders trying to expel the U.S. and NATO from the country, who, U.S. officials claim, is in turn in a vague alliance with the Taliban. Hamdard allegedly also has a business in Dubai in which Hikmatyar’s son is a partner, and is accused in the cable of funneling jewels and drug money to Hikmatyar loyalists. As with Tunisia, the public rhetoric of counterterrorism belies a corrupt and duplicitous ruling elite that may, by its actions, foster rather than forestall radicalism.

 

Harsh Truths

 

For a superpower obsessed with conspiracy theories and invested in the status quo, knowing everything, it turns out, means knowing nothing at all. WikiLeaks has done us the favor, however, of releasing a harsh set of truths. Hard-line policies such as those of the Algerian generals or of Uzbekistan’s Karimov often radicalize economically desperate and oppressed populations. As a result, U.S. backing has a significant probability of boomeranging sooner or later. Elites, confident that they will retain such backing as long as there is an al-Qaeda cell anywhere on the planet, tend to overreach, plunging into cultures of corruption and self-enrichment so vast that they undermine economies, while producing poverty, unemployment, despair, and ultimately widespread public anger.

 

It is not that the United States should be, in John Quincy Adams’s phrase, going out into the world to find dragons to slay. Washington is no longer all-powerful, if it ever was, and President Obama’s more realistic foreign policy is a welcome change from George W. Bush’s frenetic interventionism.

 

Nonetheless, Obama has left in place, or in some cases strengthened, one of the worst aspects of Bush-era policy: a knee-jerk support for self-advertised pro-Western secularists who promise to block Muslim fundamentalist parties (or, in the end, anyone else) from coming to power. There should be a diplomatic middle path between overthrowing governments on the one hand, and backing odious dictatorships to the hilt on the other.

 

It’s time for Washington to signal a new commitment to actual democracy and genuine human rights by simply cutting off military and counterterrorism aid to authoritarian and corrupt regimes that are, in any case, digging their own graves.

[Kevin S. Assilleekunt 1]

The Tunisian situation fuelled by a leak from Wikileaks.

 

Strange to applaud the people rising up....and condemn the people who armed them with the information to spur that kind of anger.

 

No wonder you want to keep the issues apart.

 

First of all, given your fanatical support of Wikileaks and every action it takes, it is not surprising that you are ignoring the real issues, building over many years, which lead to the uprising. Instead you are attributing far too much credit to Wikileaks, implying that without the leak this revolt would not have materialised, which is evidently utter garbage. There is something sinister or at least surreptitious in the way you are feebly attempting to credit Wikileaks as the main instigator of this revolt.

 

Secondly, I have not condemned Wikileaks, in fact I have explicitly stated in threads that I think it's great that a site like Wikileaks can exist. I question their behaviour and actions as much as possible, an approach I apply in many contexts to gain as much information as possible and also to ascertain whether (in this case) such a thing is a force for good. This is in stark contrast with your attitude, which is to unquestioningly support Wikileaks with a fervor usually seen in religious quarters. I do believe that the internet in general and the flow of information it provides is a force for good.

 

Thirdly, you state I want to keep the issues apart. What issues are you talking about? The 'issue' of Wikileaks? What is the issue there, and how is it comparable to the revolt in Tunisia? This is another case of your phantasmagorical mindset. It is plainly ignorant to suggest that the leak of a memo from the US embassy criticizing Ali triggered this revolt, when the issues behind it went back years and the catalyst was a young man who set himself alight. If the memo was never leaked, the results on the revolts would have been negligible at best and that is not a criticism of Wikileaks, just the most logical conclusion given the facts. Sorry that I burst your bubble.

[LeazesMag 0]

Hmm -rioting, murder and looting are OK when it suits you then KSA?

 

they should have seeked out a UN resolution, that would have sorted it out

[LeazesMag 0]

Let's see what kind of strongman has taken over before we start patting ourselves on the back about 'popular revolt' and all that other crap.

 

Military dictator Pervez Musharraf was ousted from rule in Pakistan in '08 according to the so-called will of the people and his democratically elected successors have proven to be a bunch of corrupt and ineffective liars who have, through their inaction, allowed the rule of law to degenerate and have lost control of entire regions of the country to terrorists. Be careful what you wish for.

 

 

indeed

[Happy Face 29]

First, I'm not ignoring the causes at all.

 

I called it a spark, which it blatantly was...it added fuel to the fire...confirmed what everyone knew....I don't think it was all down to the lad who set himself on fire ....but that was another spark. You seem to be insisting THAT was the sole catalyst. A proposition as ridiculous as the one you incorrectly accuse me of.

 

Second, OK.

 

Third, the issue of your condemnation of leaks...and your approval for the people power they help ignite.

 

You requested articles, I'll not bother posting anymore if it gets you so riled.

Edited January 27, 2011 by Happy Face

[Park Life 71]

Hmm -rioting, murder and looting are OK when it suits you then KSA?

 

they should have seeked out a UN resolution, that would have sorted it out

 

I'd rather people in their own coutries decided what to do in their own country. The UN has proved to be corrupt, innefectual and morally flaky since day one.

[Park Life 71]

Egypt next and then it's game on.

[Happy Face 29]

Egypt next and then it's game on.

 

Yemen...

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12295864

[Park Life 71]

Egypt next and then it's game on.

 

Yemen...

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12295864

 

I'm not picky, but Egypt atm is key in the buttressing of Israel. If that goes then the local politics and supplies for Palestine will radically improve.

[LeazesMag 0]

Hmm -rioting, murder and looting are OK when it suits you then KSA?

 

they should have seeked out a UN resolution, that would have sorted it out

 

I'd rather people in their own coutries decided what to do in their own country. The UN has proved to be corrupt, innefectual and morally flaky since day one.

 

true.

 

[i was being sarcastic ]

[Park Life 71]

Hmm -rioting, murder and looting are OK when it suits you then KSA?

 

they should have seeked out a UN resolution, that would have sorted it out

 

I'd rather people in their own coutries decided what to do in their own country. The UN has proved to be corrupt, innefectual and morally flaky since day one.

 

true.

 

[i was being sarcastic ]

 

[Rob W 0]

normally, when there is civil unrest, a whole bunch of people take to the boats and become refugees

 

What do the Tunisians eat? because they'll be here soon setting up restaurants

[Guest alex]

Aye, you can't get moved for Bosnian restaurants on Pudding Chare.

[Rob W 0]

they went into .... a different line of business.............