Michael Phelps not yet the greatest
John Goodbody in Times Online
IN THE pantheon of Olympians, Michael Phelps occupies a unique plinth. Few people have dominated a sport so overwhelmingly as he has done here. He has seemed in a different class from his rivals, a remarkable feat in a global activity in which more than 100 nations have competitive development programmes and national squads.
Phelps has overtaken fellow American swimmer Mark Spitz, the Finnish runner Paavo Nurmi, Soviet gymnast Larysa Latynina and American athlete Carl Lewis, all of whom had a total of nine gold medals. The American standing jumps specialist Ray Ewry did win 10, but these include two from the Intercalated Games of 1906 and are not officially recognised by the International Olympic Committee. But is Phelps a greater Olympian than these heroes and heroine?
As one who witnessed all of Spitz’s record-breaking seven gold medals in Munich, I have no doubt that Phelps is a superior swimmer, even bearing in mind that it is so difficult to compare competitors from different eras. Spitz was essentially a freestyle and butterfly swimmer, whereas Phelps is more versatile, demonstrated by his victories here in the individual medley. Spitz was also a disappointment in his first Games in 1968, when he got two gold medals, whereas Phelps garnered six in Athens four years ago.
Latynina was the supreme gymnast in 1956 and 1960 before being overhauled in 1964 by Vera Caslavska of Czechoslovakia. I believe her closest rival for the title of the supreme female Olympian is Fanny Blankers-Koen, the 30-year-old Dutch housewife and mother of two who won four gold medals in 1948 and was barred by the rules from entering more events, such as the high jump and long jump. She was voted the supreme female athlete of the 20th century by the International Association of Athletic Federations, but was restricted to only one Games because of the second world war.
Related Links
Top of Form 1
Bottom of Form 1
Michael Phelps: the lowdown
Top of Form 2
Bottom of Form 2
What distinguishes the greatest Olympian is supreme ability over a period of years. Here competitors such as Sir Steve Redgrave, German canoeist Birgit Fischer and Hungarian fencer Aladar Gerevich, whose career of winning sabre gold medals stretched from 1932 to 1960, should also be considered. However, with respect to these disciplines, they are not as widely practised as athletics or swimming.
When Seb Coe was asked about the status of Phelps, he advanced the case of Daley Thompson, who was a wonderful competitor in the decathlon, the real test of the all-round athlete. In addition, there is Jim Thorpe, the American winner of the 1912 decathlon and pentathlon, who was voted in 1950 by the Associated Press as the outstanding athlete of the first half of the 20th century. However, neither Thompson nor Thorpe was successful in more than two Games.
So, we are left with two principal challengers to the supremacy of Phelps: Paavo Nurmi and Carl Lewis. Nurmi revolutionised long-distance running, competed in three Games and would have run again in 1932 only to be ruled ineligible for supposed professionalism. Although he did lose races at the Olympics during this period, he was unquestionably the leading long-distance runner until the arrival of Emil Zatopek in 1948.
Lewis is one of only three Olympic competitors to have finished first in the same event in four successive Games, the others being the Danish sailor Paul Elvstrom and the American discus thrower Al Oerter. Lewis’s supremacy in the long jump between 1984 and 1996 was remarkable, but he was also a wonderful sprinter and in 1984 matched the performance of Jesse Owens in 1936 by getting four gold medals in the same Olympics.
At the moment, I would put Phelps level with, rather than ahead of, Nurmi and Lewis, because he has yet to demonstrate their longevity of excellence. However, the American swimmer may well continue until London 2012 and we will have to reassess his status then.
John Goodbody is covering his 11th successive Summer Games and is author of the audio book The History of the Olympics
Sunday, August 17, 2008
The Greatest Olympian of them all
Michael Phelps has left us only with questions of history.He is master of his present. No one can argue otherwise now that he has won eight gold medals and swum better than any other human ever has at the Beijing Olympics. Competitors rarely bother to call him the best anymore because, well, duh!No, the Phelps experience comes down to a couple of questions: Are we witnessing the greatest athletic feat of recent times? And if so, is Phelps the greatest athlete we've ever watched?It is folly to frame the thing in those terms. After all, was Abraham Lincoln a greater leader than Queen ElizabethI? Is Yo-Yo Ma a more profound musician than Jimi Hendrix?
Adherents might claim one or the other with some ferocity, but most rational people know these questions are unanswerable. Yet we ask them. What else to do when a fellow human leaves us in bewildered awe?Phelps has at least put himself in a class of athletes unassailably the best at their respective arts. Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, Steffi Graf, Roger Federer and others have apartments in this pantheon. But when deciding which performer deserves the penthouse, how do you set the terms?"He's right there in the top echelon," said National Public Radio commentator Frank Deford, who has seen his share of great ones in almost 50 years as a sportswriter."It's always difficult to compare him with people in team sports because it's easier to stand out in an individual sport. But I don't know that there's ever been anything like this. It's extraordinary."Phelps' masterpiece has seemed more condensed and thus more intense to Deford than the great moments of Woods or Federer or Jordan."I don't know if anybody's ever owned a week like this," he said.Phelps might be the most remarkable Olympian in memory, said Bob Dorfman, who studies the marketing potential of Olympic athletes for San Francisco-based Baker Street Partners."Maybe he doesn't bring the drama of Kerri Strug vaulting on a broken ankle, but in terms of sheer athletic performance, he's just jaw-dropping," Dorfman said."He's doing something that no one else has done, which puts him in that Tiger Woods category. His performance is really hard to top."Just don't ask Phelps to sort all this out, at least not yet."I literally just get in the water and swim," he said when asked to weigh himself against other great Olympians."That's all I think about."But his coach, Bob Bowman, isn't afraid to proclaim his student as the best."I think if it was over today, he's the greatest Olympian who ever lived," Bowman said in Beijing late last week."I do think it's difficult to compare [the different sports], but in terms of just sheer dominance in his events and the times he's putting up and what he's doing now in two Olympics - really three, but two where we won medals - I think it's hard to argue."
Exceeds expectationsLike the other greats, Phelps rarely fails to meet the ridiculous expectations set before him. Better yet, he exceeds them. Skeptics, for example, thought he might have hit his peak at last year's world championships, where he won seven gold medals and set five world records. Too bad, they figured, that he did it at an event seen by few in the United States.
Exceeds expectationsLike the other greats, Phelps rarely fails to meet the ridiculous expectations set before him. Better yet, he exceeds them. Skeptics, for example, thought he might have hit his peak at last year's world championships, where he won seven gold medals and set five world records. Too bad, they figured, that he did it at an event seen by few in the United States.
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Lockheed bribes
U.S. ARMS SALES BRING BLOODSHED, BANKRUPTCY TO PAKISTAN by Ahmar MustikhanAmerican Reporter CorrespondentWashington, D.C.
WASHINGTON -- The interests of the U.S. military-industrial complex appear to take precedence over U.S. national interests and human rights concerns, a recent transfer of fighter jets to Pakistan shows.
From behind the ivory tower called the White House on New Year's Eve, even as the ground in Rawalpindi - headquarters of Pakistan's military - was wet with the blood of twice-premier Benazir Bhutto, the Bush Administration okayed the delivery of deadly F-16 jets to Pakistan worth nearly $500 million.
The manufacturer in question, Lockheed Martin has had a history of bribing foreign officials for arms purchases and though a special law was enacted to quell such bribery three decades ago, the practice seems to still be continuing vis-à-vis Pakistan, an elected official in that country said.
The lone voice of protest to the arms sales was that of Senator Joseph Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations on the grounds that it was okayed prior to the general elections. Biden called the move "reckless."
Pakistan, with a population of 165 million, despite being rich in resources is one of the poorest nations in the world, ranking around 135 on the Human Development Index. Still the military generals in the South Asian country are filthy rich thanks to corruption and bribery, a big chunk of which comes through arms purchases from the United States.
Pakistan spends most of its $10 billion annual budget on its military on a plea of deterrence against arch-rival India, from which it was carved in a bloody war of independence that opitted Muslims against Hindus when the British left the Indian subcontinent in August 1947.
The country was formed by slicing off Muslim majority areas in the northwest and southwest portions of India. At the time of its formation, Pakistan had two parts, each separated by 1000 miles of Indian territory, called East Pakistan and West Pakistan. After the 1971-72 Indo-Pak War, East Pakistan became Bangladesh, a nation that has foundered in corruption, political chaos, natural disasters and poverty ever since.
Since its founding, Pakistan's main focus has been developing its military, which now ranks fifth in the world in size - just one step behind the U.S. - leaving its growth as a modern society stymied. Ironically, after assuming the leadership role of the so-called Free World after World War II, for more than a half-century now, the United States has nurtured Pakistan's military fotrces in the name of its own vital interests.
According to official U.S. thinking even to this day, Pakistan's military is "the greatest single stabilizing force in the country."
According to the World Bank, Pakistan's social indicators still lag far behind countries with comparable per-capita incomes - now less than $2 a day. Poverty rates, which had fallen substantially in the 1980s and early 1990s, have started to rise in the last 10 years. Among the most vulnerable are the poor in rural areas, where only 2 out of 10 girls and 4 out 10 boys complete their education. Less than half of the overall population is considered literate, but in the far-flung countryside the literacy rate plunges as low as 10 percent, thus providing fertile grounds for Islamic militancy.
Pakistan joined the World Bank in July of 1950 and by 1954 was a member of U.S.-lead aggressive military pacts called SEATO (South East Asian Treaty Organization) and CENTO (Central Treaty Organization) in the name of fighting the global communist threat. It was around this time Islamabad began purchasing huge arms caches from the United States. Today, Pakistan owes the World Bank $10 billion, a sum that, not astonishingly, is equal to that of its arms purchases from the U.S.
Pakistan has been ruled directly by U.S.-supported military dictators for 33 years of its "independent" existence. The first military coup leader Gen. Ayub Khan ruled from October 1958 to March 1969; his successor Gen. Yahya Khan from March 1969 to December 1971.
Gen. Ziaul Haq, like Ayub Khan was a coup leader, was the third military dictator who ruled the country from July1977 to August 1988. The latest among coup leaders is Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who seized power in October 1999 and is still the president.
In the backdrop of Cold War, the U.S. arms manufacturers saw an opportunity in Pakistan's paranoid behavior towards India and began pumping arms into that country. Pakistan was designated most "allied ally" of the U.S., or for lack of better words, a client state.
Officials in Washington defend Pakistan's right to arm itself to the teeth. "I think it's the right of every country to modernize its army," said William B. Milam, former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan. Milam said he had heard "rumors" about corruption in the Pakistan army leadership. "If that it's true or untrue I can't say for sure because I do not have conclusive proof," he added.
Milam also ruled out any possibility of Lockheed Martin giving bribes to Pakistan generals for the F-16 sales saying such a practice violates U.S. laws. "If this was true they would be in jail," he said.
But bribery is not a new thing for Lockheed Martin Corporation . The nearly 100-year-old company, which was once called Loughead Aircraft Manufacturing Company, got mired in bribery scandals that made international headlines in the mid 1970s. At that time the corprotation earned infamy for what was called the "Deal of the Century" - it was revealed that board members had bribed officials in West Germany, the Netherlands, and Japan starting from the late 1950s to the 1970s in the process of negotiating aircraft sales.
Pakistan might have missed mention, an interesting episode from the late 1990s reveals. At that point of time in the wake of Pakistan's nuclear program, the delivery of 28 F-16s for which Pakistan had paid the monies was cancelled under the Pressler Amendment, which forbade U.S. arms sales to countries engaged in clandestine nuclear weapons program.
Though the Pentagon was willing to reimburse the monies, a problem cropped up on how to account for the commissions that were given to generals close to coup leader Musharraf's predecessor, Gen. Ziaul Haq.
"One of Zia's closest generals, the late Gen. Fazle Haq, had got his commission and was dead and there was no way to give back those monies," Mir Hasil Bizenjo, secretary general of the National Party told this correspondent. During his lifetime Fazle Haq, who was also known as "Pakistan's Noriega", had unabashedly told the New York Times at a news conference that under Zia he "could get away with blue murder."
Enriched through corruption, Pakistani generals who ruled the country under direct U.S. tutelage for more than three decades , have left all democratic institutions, including the judiciary, destroyed. Instead, they promoted the military as a national institution. "This is strange. In my civic lessons I learned there are three institutions - legislature, executive and judiciary.
The army is supposed to be an organ of the executive not an institution by itself," says Senator Javed Laghari, a close confidante of slain premier Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated on December 27 last year. There is widespread suspicion that intelligence agencies related to the army had a hand in Bhutto's slaying.
Al-Qaeda Headquarters
Since its very inception, the masses in Pakistan have been fed on the opium of Islam to counter centrifugal nationalist tendencies. Pakistan has the dubious distinction of being the world's only Muslim country with nuclear weapons. Headquarters of Al Qaeda following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, in the rural countryside of the most populous Punjab province - stronghold of the army - Bin Laden is a folk hero called "Baba."
Pakistan's military also has refused to hand over the world's worst nuclear proliferators, father of the Islamic Bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan for international interrogation. U.S. media reports have belatedly cited Pakistan as one of the most dangerous places on earth.
According to the Arms Control Association, Pakistan is estimated as having an arsenal of approximately 60 nuclear warheads. Available delivery vehicles include ground-launched ballistic missiles and dual-use fighter aircraft, reportedly including U.S.-origin F-16 fighter jets. The fighter jets were not transferred for the purpose of delivering nuclear bombs, but Pakistan is believed to have modified the planes for that mission, the ACA believes.
The association says Pakistan continues to produce fissile material for weapons purposes and is seeking to expand its production capacity by building additional nuclear facilities, including a heavy water reactor. Pakistan is currently estimated to possess approximately 1,300 kilograms of highly enriched uranium and 90 kilograms of weapons plutonium.
Interestingly, the arms manufacturing lobbies in the U.S. appear to be in a position to continue to pump in arms in spite of the many threats emanating from Pakistan and its continued support to the Taliba'an. Casting aside diplomatic silence, both Afghan President Hamid Karzai and commanders of the International Security Assistance Force have come out openly against Pakistan in recent days.
Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. instead of putting Pakistan on a watch list for its Al Qaeda ties, the U.S. lifted the arms embargo that was put in place after Pakistan came out of nuclear closets and tested nuclear bombs in May 1998.
Since 9/11, the country has ranked among the top recipients of U.S. military equipment and received $1.5 billion in Coalition Support Funds, which is reimbursed as cash to partake in the war on terror with very little congressional oversight, according to the Center for Public integrity. A new installement of nearly $400 million was released Monday though the death toll in Afghanistan surpassed those in Iraq in the month of May. US officials said 18 coalition troops were killed in action last month in Afghanistan, compared with 16 killed in Iraq.
Human rights activists in and outside Pakistan fear the U.S. military supplies - in spite of Pakistan's Al Qaeda links and its blossoming nuclear weapons program - in the name of fighting terrorism , are being used against the area-wise Baluchistan province, bordering Iran and Afghanistan.
A bloody armed insurgency - the fifth of its kind - in Baluchistan over the last three years has left thousands killed, including former chief minister Nawab Akbar Bugti and a member of provincial assembly and guerilla leader Mir Bala'ach Marri, called Baluch Che Guevara. Baluchistan nationalists insist that their homeland was coerced into merger with Pakistan against the wishes of its people in March 1948.
London-based human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell denounced the F-16 jet sales to Pakistan. He told The American Reporter, "President George W. Bush is complicit in the war crimes, torture and other crimes against humanity being perpetrated by Musharraf's army of occupation in Baluchistan."
Dr. Wahid Baloch, founder of the Baloch Social Organization of North America, a group aimed at protecting human rights in Baluchistan, also deplores the continued U.S. arms dealings with Pakistan.
Baloch said the arms supplies escalate "collateral damage" in his home province of Baluchistan.
"The Pakistani Air Force Chief has acknowledged that fighter jets have been used in Baluchistan against 'the insurgents'," he adds. He said Pakistan's army has ruthlessly dealt with its national minorities, and drew a stark parallel between what is happening in Baluchistan to the bloodshed unleashed by Pakistan's army in the former East Pakistan. There, the army was justly accused of massacring hundreds of thousands of Bengali fighters in 1971.
Baloch cited published reports that claimed that the weaponry being used in Baluchistan includes American-supplied helicopter gunships, fighter jets, heavy artillery and missiles.
"Civilian concentrations have frequently been targeted. Many innocent civilians, including women and children, have been killed or have 'disappeared.' Exact numbers are hard to find given the complete clampdown on reportage and information from Baluchistan," he said.
A former member of Pakistan's National Assembly, Rauf Mengal, said people in Baluchistan were helpess before the army's offensive. "Many are still languishing in prisons," he said on phone from Quetta, capital of Baluchistan.
"U.S. arms sales have propped up the Musharraf dictatorship and facilitated Pakistan's murderous war against the people of Baluchistan," Tachell said from London. "The U.S. fought a war of independence to secure self-determination and self-rule. Yet, as Baluchistan mourns its 60 years of forcible incorporation into Pakistan, Washington is aiding the neo-colonialists in Islamabad," said Tatchell, who recently "ambushed" Musharraf's limousine in London with other demonstrators.
A new government assumed office in Pakistan in March, under Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani. It has set up a reconciliation commission for peace in Baluchistan, but Baluchi nationalists have taken the move with a proverbial grain of salt.
"Unless both the military's budget and its dominant role in Pakistan politics is cut drastically, nothing will change," said Baloch.
One dimension of the arms supplies is that the dangers they pose go far beyond Pakistan's borders, as these weapons could further destabilize the security environment in an already fragile South Asia. Pakistan has fought three wars with India, and fears still loom large that Pakistan's new nuclear-ready F-16s would be used against India. Pakistan has made it amply clear it would not shy away from being the first to use nuclear weapons.
"I would simply say there are two aspects of the U.S. military aid to Pakistan since 9/11 that raise questions," said Selig. S. Harrison, veteran journalist and Asia Director of the Center for International Policy. "One of them is the fact that much of the military equipment transferred to Pakistan in the name of war on terror is more suited to conventional warfare against India than to counter terrorism operations.
"The other is that the so-called Coalition Support Funds dispensed in cash to Pakistan armed forces - nominally as reimbursement for counterterrorism operations - which have amounted to nearly $6 billion dollars since 9/11, are not subject to strict accountability. In addition to the possibility of large-scale corruption, this lack of accountability also raises serious questions concerning the use of these funds to build capabilities relating to India."
Media Bigwigs
A regrettable aspect of military equipment sales to Pakistan is that many of the 16 members on the Lockheed Martin board are on the board of key centers of learning, like Stanford and Harvard universities, and at least two of them are associated with the U.S. media.
One of the officials is Douglas H. McCorkindale, a former chairman of Gannett Co., Inc. who is now on the board of directors of the global U.S.-based news service, the Associated Press.
A second board member is Frank Savage, who serves on the board of the global Bloomberg, L.P., news agency. It might be these kinds of links that have led many to criticize the U.S. media of playing cheer leaders to the Pentagon - key issues like arms supplies get scant mention in mainstream U.S. media. Ahmar Mustikhan is a freelance journalist, now based in the Washington D.C. area. He can be reached at ahmar_reporter@yahoo.com.
WASHINGTON -- The interests of the U.S. military-industrial complex appear to take precedence over U.S. national interests and human rights concerns, a recent transfer of fighter jets to Pakistan shows.
From behind the ivory tower called the White House on New Year's Eve, even as the ground in Rawalpindi - headquarters of Pakistan's military - was wet with the blood of twice-premier Benazir Bhutto, the Bush Administration okayed the delivery of deadly F-16 jets to Pakistan worth nearly $500 million.
The manufacturer in question, Lockheed Martin has had a history of bribing foreign officials for arms purchases and though a special law was enacted to quell such bribery three decades ago, the practice seems to still be continuing vis-à-vis Pakistan, an elected official in that country said.
The lone voice of protest to the arms sales was that of Senator Joseph Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations on the grounds that it was okayed prior to the general elections. Biden called the move "reckless."
Pakistan, with a population of 165 million, despite being rich in resources is one of the poorest nations in the world, ranking around 135 on the Human Development Index. Still the military generals in the South Asian country are filthy rich thanks to corruption and bribery, a big chunk of which comes through arms purchases from the United States.
Pakistan spends most of its $10 billion annual budget on its military on a plea of deterrence against arch-rival India, from which it was carved in a bloody war of independence that opitted Muslims against Hindus when the British left the Indian subcontinent in August 1947.
The country was formed by slicing off Muslim majority areas in the northwest and southwest portions of India. At the time of its formation, Pakistan had two parts, each separated by 1000 miles of Indian territory, called East Pakistan and West Pakistan. After the 1971-72 Indo-Pak War, East Pakistan became Bangladesh, a nation that has foundered in corruption, political chaos, natural disasters and poverty ever since.
Since its founding, Pakistan's main focus has been developing its military, which now ranks fifth in the world in size - just one step behind the U.S. - leaving its growth as a modern society stymied. Ironically, after assuming the leadership role of the so-called Free World after World War II, for more than a half-century now, the United States has nurtured Pakistan's military fotrces in the name of its own vital interests.
According to official U.S. thinking even to this day, Pakistan's military is "the greatest single stabilizing force in the country."
According to the World Bank, Pakistan's social indicators still lag far behind countries with comparable per-capita incomes - now less than $2 a day. Poverty rates, which had fallen substantially in the 1980s and early 1990s, have started to rise in the last 10 years. Among the most vulnerable are the poor in rural areas, where only 2 out of 10 girls and 4 out 10 boys complete their education. Less than half of the overall population is considered literate, but in the far-flung countryside the literacy rate plunges as low as 10 percent, thus providing fertile grounds for Islamic militancy.
Pakistan joined the World Bank in July of 1950 and by 1954 was a member of U.S.-lead aggressive military pacts called SEATO (South East Asian Treaty Organization) and CENTO (Central Treaty Organization) in the name of fighting the global communist threat. It was around this time Islamabad began purchasing huge arms caches from the United States. Today, Pakistan owes the World Bank $10 billion, a sum that, not astonishingly, is equal to that of its arms purchases from the U.S.
Pakistan has been ruled directly by U.S.-supported military dictators for 33 years of its "independent" existence. The first military coup leader Gen. Ayub Khan ruled from October 1958 to March 1969; his successor Gen. Yahya Khan from March 1969 to December 1971.
Gen. Ziaul Haq, like Ayub Khan was a coup leader, was the third military dictator who ruled the country from July1977 to August 1988. The latest among coup leaders is Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who seized power in October 1999 and is still the president.
In the backdrop of Cold War, the U.S. arms manufacturers saw an opportunity in Pakistan's paranoid behavior towards India and began pumping arms into that country. Pakistan was designated most "allied ally" of the U.S., or for lack of better words, a client state.
Officials in Washington defend Pakistan's right to arm itself to the teeth. "I think it's the right of every country to modernize its army," said William B. Milam, former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan. Milam said he had heard "rumors" about corruption in the Pakistan army leadership. "If that it's true or untrue I can't say for sure because I do not have conclusive proof," he added.
Milam also ruled out any possibility of Lockheed Martin giving bribes to Pakistan generals for the F-16 sales saying such a practice violates U.S. laws. "If this was true they would be in jail," he said.
But bribery is not a new thing for Lockheed Martin Corporation . The nearly 100-year-old company, which was once called Loughead Aircraft Manufacturing Company, got mired in bribery scandals that made international headlines in the mid 1970s. At that time the corprotation earned infamy for what was called the "Deal of the Century" - it was revealed that board members had bribed officials in West Germany, the Netherlands, and Japan starting from the late 1950s to the 1970s in the process of negotiating aircraft sales.
Pakistan might have missed mention, an interesting episode from the late 1990s reveals. At that point of time in the wake of Pakistan's nuclear program, the delivery of 28 F-16s for which Pakistan had paid the monies was cancelled under the Pressler Amendment, which forbade U.S. arms sales to countries engaged in clandestine nuclear weapons program.
Though the Pentagon was willing to reimburse the monies, a problem cropped up on how to account for the commissions that were given to generals close to coup leader Musharraf's predecessor, Gen. Ziaul Haq.
"One of Zia's closest generals, the late Gen. Fazle Haq, had got his commission and was dead and there was no way to give back those monies," Mir Hasil Bizenjo, secretary general of the National Party told this correspondent. During his lifetime Fazle Haq, who was also known as "Pakistan's Noriega", had unabashedly told the New York Times at a news conference that under Zia he "could get away with blue murder."
Enriched through corruption, Pakistani generals who ruled the country under direct U.S. tutelage for more than three decades , have left all democratic institutions, including the judiciary, destroyed. Instead, they promoted the military as a national institution. "This is strange. In my civic lessons I learned there are three institutions - legislature, executive and judiciary.
The army is supposed to be an organ of the executive not an institution by itself," says Senator Javed Laghari, a close confidante of slain premier Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated on December 27 last year. There is widespread suspicion that intelligence agencies related to the army had a hand in Bhutto's slaying.
Al-Qaeda Headquarters
Since its very inception, the masses in Pakistan have been fed on the opium of Islam to counter centrifugal nationalist tendencies. Pakistan has the dubious distinction of being the world's only Muslim country with nuclear weapons. Headquarters of Al Qaeda following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, in the rural countryside of the most populous Punjab province - stronghold of the army - Bin Laden is a folk hero called "Baba."
Pakistan's military also has refused to hand over the world's worst nuclear proliferators, father of the Islamic Bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan for international interrogation. U.S. media reports have belatedly cited Pakistan as one of the most dangerous places on earth.
According to the Arms Control Association, Pakistan is estimated as having an arsenal of approximately 60 nuclear warheads. Available delivery vehicles include ground-launched ballistic missiles and dual-use fighter aircraft, reportedly including U.S.-origin F-16 fighter jets. The fighter jets were not transferred for the purpose of delivering nuclear bombs, but Pakistan is believed to have modified the planes for that mission, the ACA believes.
The association says Pakistan continues to produce fissile material for weapons purposes and is seeking to expand its production capacity by building additional nuclear facilities, including a heavy water reactor. Pakistan is currently estimated to possess approximately 1,300 kilograms of highly enriched uranium and 90 kilograms of weapons plutonium.
Interestingly, the arms manufacturing lobbies in the U.S. appear to be in a position to continue to pump in arms in spite of the many threats emanating from Pakistan and its continued support to the Taliba'an. Casting aside diplomatic silence, both Afghan President Hamid Karzai and commanders of the International Security Assistance Force have come out openly against Pakistan in recent days.
Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. instead of putting Pakistan on a watch list for its Al Qaeda ties, the U.S. lifted the arms embargo that was put in place after Pakistan came out of nuclear closets and tested nuclear bombs in May 1998.
Since 9/11, the country has ranked among the top recipients of U.S. military equipment and received $1.5 billion in Coalition Support Funds, which is reimbursed as cash to partake in the war on terror with very little congressional oversight, according to the Center for Public integrity. A new installement of nearly $400 million was released Monday though the death toll in Afghanistan surpassed those in Iraq in the month of May. US officials said 18 coalition troops were killed in action last month in Afghanistan, compared with 16 killed in Iraq.
Human rights activists in and outside Pakistan fear the U.S. military supplies - in spite of Pakistan's Al Qaeda links and its blossoming nuclear weapons program - in the name of fighting terrorism , are being used against the area-wise Baluchistan province, bordering Iran and Afghanistan.
A bloody armed insurgency - the fifth of its kind - in Baluchistan over the last three years has left thousands killed, including former chief minister Nawab Akbar Bugti and a member of provincial assembly and guerilla leader Mir Bala'ach Marri, called Baluch Che Guevara. Baluchistan nationalists insist that their homeland was coerced into merger with Pakistan against the wishes of its people in March 1948.
London-based human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell denounced the F-16 jet sales to Pakistan. He told The American Reporter, "President George W. Bush is complicit in the war crimes, torture and other crimes against humanity being perpetrated by Musharraf's army of occupation in Baluchistan."
Dr. Wahid Baloch, founder of the Baloch Social Organization of North America, a group aimed at protecting human rights in Baluchistan, also deplores the continued U.S. arms dealings with Pakistan.
Baloch said the arms supplies escalate "collateral damage" in his home province of Baluchistan.
"The Pakistani Air Force Chief has acknowledged that fighter jets have been used in Baluchistan against 'the insurgents'," he adds. He said Pakistan's army has ruthlessly dealt with its national minorities, and drew a stark parallel between what is happening in Baluchistan to the bloodshed unleashed by Pakistan's army in the former East Pakistan. There, the army was justly accused of massacring hundreds of thousands of Bengali fighters in 1971.
Baloch cited published reports that claimed that the weaponry being used in Baluchistan includes American-supplied helicopter gunships, fighter jets, heavy artillery and missiles.
"Civilian concentrations have frequently been targeted. Many innocent civilians, including women and children, have been killed or have 'disappeared.' Exact numbers are hard to find given the complete clampdown on reportage and information from Baluchistan," he said.
A former member of Pakistan's National Assembly, Rauf Mengal, said people in Baluchistan were helpess before the army's offensive. "Many are still languishing in prisons," he said on phone from Quetta, capital of Baluchistan.
"U.S. arms sales have propped up the Musharraf dictatorship and facilitated Pakistan's murderous war against the people of Baluchistan," Tachell said from London. "The U.S. fought a war of independence to secure self-determination and self-rule. Yet, as Baluchistan mourns its 60 years of forcible incorporation into Pakistan, Washington is aiding the neo-colonialists in Islamabad," said Tatchell, who recently "ambushed" Musharraf's limousine in London with other demonstrators.
A new government assumed office in Pakistan in March, under Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani. It has set up a reconciliation commission for peace in Baluchistan, but Baluchi nationalists have taken the move with a proverbial grain of salt.
"Unless both the military's budget and its dominant role in Pakistan politics is cut drastically, nothing will change," said Baloch.
One dimension of the arms supplies is that the dangers they pose go far beyond Pakistan's borders, as these weapons could further destabilize the security environment in an already fragile South Asia. Pakistan has fought three wars with India, and fears still loom large that Pakistan's new nuclear-ready F-16s would be used against India. Pakistan has made it amply clear it would not shy away from being the first to use nuclear weapons.
"I would simply say there are two aspects of the U.S. military aid to Pakistan since 9/11 that raise questions," said Selig. S. Harrison, veteran journalist and Asia Director of the Center for International Policy. "One of them is the fact that much of the military equipment transferred to Pakistan in the name of war on terror is more suited to conventional warfare against India than to counter terrorism operations.
"The other is that the so-called Coalition Support Funds dispensed in cash to Pakistan armed forces - nominally as reimbursement for counterterrorism operations - which have amounted to nearly $6 billion dollars since 9/11, are not subject to strict accountability. In addition to the possibility of large-scale corruption, this lack of accountability also raises serious questions concerning the use of these funds to build capabilities relating to India."
Media Bigwigs
A regrettable aspect of military equipment sales to Pakistan is that many of the 16 members on the Lockheed Martin board are on the board of key centers of learning, like Stanford and Harvard universities, and at least two of them are associated with the U.S. media.
One of the officials is Douglas H. McCorkindale, a former chairman of Gannett Co., Inc. who is now on the board of directors of the global U.S.-based news service, the Associated Press.
A second board member is Frank Savage, who serves on the board of the global Bloomberg, L.P., news agency. It might be these kinds of links that have led many to criticize the U.S. media of playing cheer leaders to the Pentagon - key issues like arms supplies get scant mention in mainstream U.S. media. Ahmar Mustikhan is a freelance journalist, now based in the Washington D.C. area. He can be reached at ahmar_reporter@yahoo.com.
Friday, August 15, 2008
Verbal Feast In 'Barcelona'
Woody Allen's Verbal Feast In 'Barcelona'
Dan Zak in the Washington Post
It's the same old opening credits, the elegant white font on the black background, but the music is new. The pulse of a Spanish guitar replaces the big-band brass that usually heralds Woody Allen's films. Barcelona subs for Manhattan. The eroticism of Javier Bardem and Scarlett Johansson replaces the neuroticism of an aging New Yorker wringing his hands.
"Vicky Cristina Barcelona" goes down like sweet Riesling instead of a chalky matzoh ball, and it's all thanks to Allen's extended holiday in Europe.
It's done nothing but good for him -- and us. See his recent England-set Shakespearean tragedies "Match Point" and "Cassandra's Dream," in which he's pointed the camera toward something more reflective instead of self-reflexive. Now, from Spain, Allen brings a movie that plays like a greatest-hits album. "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" is nothing we haven't heard before, but the packaging is gorgeous.
And that's not just because the cast includes two of Spain's best (and best-looking) actors, Bardem and Penélope Cruz, as Juan Antonio and Maria Elena, two divorced painters who have driven each other to -- among other things -- attempted homicide, or because their explosive relationship is reignited by the luscious Johansson. "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" is beautiful because Allen blends an expatriate hipness with the sharpness of his older dramas and the effervescence of his older comedies.
So Cristina. In Barcelona. With Vicky, her best friend, played by the disarming British actress Rebecca Hall. Cristina is blond and carefree and unsure of what she wants from life and love. Vicky is brunet and staid and engaged to a thoroughly satisfactory man who wears khakis. When the two friends join Juan Antonio for a weekend in the country, both are charmed, and they fall for him in different ways. Cruz, as Maria Elena, blows into the movie almost an hour later and fractures the narrative hypotenuse of the love triangle. Cristina, the superego, only knows what she doesn't want out of life. Vicky, the ego, can't escape from what she does want from life. And Juan Antonio and Maria Elena are the lustful, vulgar ids who tear through the women's uncertainty and decorum.
Woody has given us Freudian love triangles before (in "Hannah and Her Sisters" and "September"). He's given us lustful rogues (himself in "Manhattan") and confused heroines (Mia Farrow in "The Purple Rose of Cairo"). He's spat out scripts that rehash the ecstatic futility of loving and living ("Love & Death," "Crimes & Misdemeanors," "Everyone Says I Love You").
if ( show_doubleclick_ad && ( adTemplate & INLINE_ARTICLE_AD ) == INLINE_ARTICLE_AD && inlineAdGraf )
{
placeAd('ARTICLE',commercialNode,20,'inline=y;',true) ;
}
') ;
}
// -->
"Vicky Cristina Barcelona" is different because it's really about Vicky and Cristina, and Juan Antonio and Maria Elena. This time Allen's philosophical musings emerge subtly from the interaction of these characters and their choices instead of through trademark dialogue. Though he relies too much on the curt observations of an omniscient narrator, the movie still feels more casual, more painterly, more about great characters than the invocation of Freud or Balzac or Ernest Becker. Through these characters and the natural performances, and without worrying about landing punch lines or wringing hands, Allen lets the movie unfurl toward a sublime conclusion and final shot, the kind that makes you sigh with gratitude (or relief) that he's in firm control of this phase of his career.
"Life is short," Juan Antonio says as a come-on to Vicky and Cristina, "life is dull, life is full of pain. The trick is to enjoy life, accepting it has no meaning whatsoever," and we think immediately of Allen's opening monologue from "Annie Hall" more than 30 years ago: Life is "full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly."
He's not lazily re-chewing this theme in 2008. It's merely a familiar melodic riff deftly woven into a mellower, deeper progression of chords.
Dan Zak in the Washington Post
It's the same old opening credits, the elegant white font on the black background, but the music is new. The pulse of a Spanish guitar replaces the big-band brass that usually heralds Woody Allen's films. Barcelona subs for Manhattan. The eroticism of Javier Bardem and Scarlett Johansson replaces the neuroticism of an aging New Yorker wringing his hands.
"Vicky Cristina Barcelona" goes down like sweet Riesling instead of a chalky matzoh ball, and it's all thanks to Allen's extended holiday in Europe.
It's done nothing but good for him -- and us. See his recent England-set Shakespearean tragedies "Match Point" and "Cassandra's Dream," in which he's pointed the camera toward something more reflective instead of self-reflexive. Now, from Spain, Allen brings a movie that plays like a greatest-hits album. "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" is nothing we haven't heard before, but the packaging is gorgeous.
And that's not just because the cast includes two of Spain's best (and best-looking) actors, Bardem and Penélope Cruz, as Juan Antonio and Maria Elena, two divorced painters who have driven each other to -- among other things -- attempted homicide, or because their explosive relationship is reignited by the luscious Johansson. "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" is beautiful because Allen blends an expatriate hipness with the sharpness of his older dramas and the effervescence of his older comedies.
So Cristina. In Barcelona. With Vicky, her best friend, played by the disarming British actress Rebecca Hall. Cristina is blond and carefree and unsure of what she wants from life and love. Vicky is brunet and staid and engaged to a thoroughly satisfactory man who wears khakis. When the two friends join Juan Antonio for a weekend in the country, both are charmed, and they fall for him in different ways. Cruz, as Maria Elena, blows into the movie almost an hour later and fractures the narrative hypotenuse of the love triangle. Cristina, the superego, only knows what she doesn't want out of life. Vicky, the ego, can't escape from what she does want from life. And Juan Antonio and Maria Elena are the lustful, vulgar ids who tear through the women's uncertainty and decorum.
Woody has given us Freudian love triangles before (in "Hannah and Her Sisters" and "September"). He's given us lustful rogues (himself in "Manhattan") and confused heroines (Mia Farrow in "The Purple Rose of Cairo"). He's spat out scripts that rehash the ecstatic futility of loving and living ("Love & Death," "Crimes & Misdemeanors," "Everyone Says I Love You").
if ( show_doubleclick_ad && ( adTemplate & INLINE_ARTICLE_AD ) == INLINE_ARTICLE_AD && inlineAdGraf )
{
placeAd('ARTICLE',commercialNode,20,'inline=y;',true) ;
}
') ;
}
// -->
"Vicky Cristina Barcelona" is different because it's really about Vicky and Cristina, and Juan Antonio and Maria Elena. This time Allen's philosophical musings emerge subtly from the interaction of these characters and their choices instead of through trademark dialogue. Though he relies too much on the curt observations of an omniscient narrator, the movie still feels more casual, more painterly, more about great characters than the invocation of Freud or Balzac or Ernest Becker. Through these characters and the natural performances, and without worrying about landing punch lines or wringing hands, Allen lets the movie unfurl toward a sublime conclusion and final shot, the kind that makes you sigh with gratitude (or relief) that he's in firm control of this phase of his career.
"Life is short," Juan Antonio says as a come-on to Vicky and Cristina, "life is dull, life is full of pain. The trick is to enjoy life, accepting it has no meaning whatsoever," and we think immediately of Allen's opening monologue from "Annie Hall" more than 30 years ago: Life is "full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly."
He's not lazily re-chewing this theme in 2008. It's merely a familiar melodic riff deftly woven into a mellower, deeper progression of chords.
Guest column in WPost
Pakistan Politics on the Brink Again
By Shuja Nawaz
As Pakistan lurches into another paroxysm of power politics with the threatened impeachment and expected resignation of President Pervez Musharraf, the post-Musharraf picture is not as clear or rosy as the authors of this move may want it to be. The unelected leaders of the coalition government of the Pakistan Peoples' Party and the Pakistan Muslim League (N), Messrs. Asif Ali Zardari and M. Nawaz Sharif respectively may yet find themselves facing a political mess even after Musharraf is gone. There is much that may yet split their on-again, off-again alliance and bring the country to the edge of a new political crisis. In the meantime, the country is sliding into economic chaos and there is no sign that the government has a credible strategy to cope with the impending disaster.
After two weeks of travel and conversations with citizens, civil leaders, military officials, and journalists in Pakistan, a complex picture emerges: a country beset by serious economic woes, a growing insurgency, and a fractured polity. In the shadows sits the powerful Pakistan army, the historical arbiter of Pakistani politics, headed by a publicly inscrutable but privately engaged and engaging new chief, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.
The open-ended impeachment threat by Zardari and Sharif ran counter to the expected 48-hour call for Musharraf to step down or be impeached by a joint session of the National Assembly and the Senate. Despite the public posturing that followed, it was not so much the political pressure as the absence of support from the army that spelled Musharraf's doom.
Talking to army officers of all ranks in the field (in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas near Afghanistan and the Swat sector) and at headquarters in Rawalpindi, one thing was clear: they would rather not be drawn into the current political squabble. They want to give the civilians the "time and space" to operate government as best as they can. Their ideal is a constitutional process that would allow Musharraf to depart without fear of retributive action. All other options were seen to carry severe costs for the polity and the teetering economy.
The public in Pakistan has been pummeled by double digit inflation, especially by a more than 30% jump in food prices. For the poorest, food costs account for up to half their earnings and expenditures. Both food and energy shortages have forced families to spend an inordinate amount of their time and effort searching for both. Hyperinflation may be in the cards, with its attendant societal upheaval. Major business houses are fearful of the future and of heavy handed tactics to subjugate them for political purposes. The cancellation of privatization plans crafted by the previous government may have cost the economy some $5 billion of foreign exchange reserves. Those reserves, according to international economists, are hemorrhaging at the rate of $1 billion a month and effectively are exhausted now. They dropped from a high of $16 billion under Musharraf to $9 billion recently. Of these over $5 billion are in foreign currency deposits, meaning they are not available to the government, whose only source of immediate financing is now the printing press that comes under the State Bank. Use of that press adds to inflation. Compounding the woes of the country is a sliding stock market, down from 16,000 to 9,000 points, and a drop in the Rupee exchange rate from Rs. 65 to Rs. 74 to the U.S. dollar.
The power games being played out in Islamabad keep the politicians and the television pundits occupied day and night. Meanwhile torrential rains and floods have inundated or affected nearly one third of the country. Except for the intrepid chief minister of Punjab, Shahbaz Sharif (Nawaz Sharif's younger brother), no one in the government or even the presidency was seen visiting the affected people. In the absence of civilian disaster management, as usual, the army has been helping with relief efforts.
If the impeachment drama launched last week ends quickly with Musharraf's resignation, the fledgling government may yet be able to turn its mind to the economy and the flood ravaged countryside. If it becomes drawn out, the wrath of the people may turn against the new rulers. And the patience of the army may be tested. No one wants the army to upend the political system again. But time may be running out for the coalition government to restore stability to Pakistan's shaky polity in a post-Musharraf Pakistan. If it fails, there is talk in Pakistan of another cycle of military intervention in the offing, this time on the Bangladesh model: of a longer duration, and using a civilian facade to restore the country's economic health. Yet again democracy will be the loser.
Shuja Nawaz is the author of Crossed Swords: Pakistan, its Army, and the Wars Within (Oxford University Press, 2008). He has just returned from a two-week visit to Pakistan and can be reached at www.shujanawaz.com.
By Shuja Nawaz
As Pakistan lurches into another paroxysm of power politics with the threatened impeachment and expected resignation of President Pervez Musharraf, the post-Musharraf picture is not as clear or rosy as the authors of this move may want it to be. The unelected leaders of the coalition government of the Pakistan Peoples' Party and the Pakistan Muslim League (N), Messrs. Asif Ali Zardari and M. Nawaz Sharif respectively may yet find themselves facing a political mess even after Musharraf is gone. There is much that may yet split their on-again, off-again alliance and bring the country to the edge of a new political crisis. In the meantime, the country is sliding into economic chaos and there is no sign that the government has a credible strategy to cope with the impending disaster.
After two weeks of travel and conversations with citizens, civil leaders, military officials, and journalists in Pakistan, a complex picture emerges: a country beset by serious economic woes, a growing insurgency, and a fractured polity. In the shadows sits the powerful Pakistan army, the historical arbiter of Pakistani politics, headed by a publicly inscrutable but privately engaged and engaging new chief, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.
The open-ended impeachment threat by Zardari and Sharif ran counter to the expected 48-hour call for Musharraf to step down or be impeached by a joint session of the National Assembly and the Senate. Despite the public posturing that followed, it was not so much the political pressure as the absence of support from the army that spelled Musharraf's doom.
Talking to army officers of all ranks in the field (in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas near Afghanistan and the Swat sector) and at headquarters in Rawalpindi, one thing was clear: they would rather not be drawn into the current political squabble. They want to give the civilians the "time and space" to operate government as best as they can. Their ideal is a constitutional process that would allow Musharraf to depart without fear of retributive action. All other options were seen to carry severe costs for the polity and the teetering economy.
The public in Pakistan has been pummeled by double digit inflation, especially by a more than 30% jump in food prices. For the poorest, food costs account for up to half their earnings and expenditures. Both food and energy shortages have forced families to spend an inordinate amount of their time and effort searching for both. Hyperinflation may be in the cards, with its attendant societal upheaval. Major business houses are fearful of the future and of heavy handed tactics to subjugate them for political purposes. The cancellation of privatization plans crafted by the previous government may have cost the economy some $5 billion of foreign exchange reserves. Those reserves, according to international economists, are hemorrhaging at the rate of $1 billion a month and effectively are exhausted now. They dropped from a high of $16 billion under Musharraf to $9 billion recently. Of these over $5 billion are in foreign currency deposits, meaning they are not available to the government, whose only source of immediate financing is now the printing press that comes under the State Bank. Use of that press adds to inflation. Compounding the woes of the country is a sliding stock market, down from 16,000 to 9,000 points, and a drop in the Rupee exchange rate from Rs. 65 to Rs. 74 to the U.S. dollar.
The power games being played out in Islamabad keep the politicians and the television pundits occupied day and night. Meanwhile torrential rains and floods have inundated or affected nearly one third of the country. Except for the intrepid chief minister of Punjab, Shahbaz Sharif (Nawaz Sharif's younger brother), no one in the government or even the presidency was seen visiting the affected people. In the absence of civilian disaster management, as usual, the army has been helping with relief efforts.
If the impeachment drama launched last week ends quickly with Musharraf's resignation, the fledgling government may yet be able to turn its mind to the economy and the flood ravaged countryside. If it becomes drawn out, the wrath of the people may turn against the new rulers. And the patience of the army may be tested. No one wants the army to upend the political system again. But time may be running out for the coalition government to restore stability to Pakistan's shaky polity in a post-Musharraf Pakistan. If it fails, there is talk in Pakistan of another cycle of military intervention in the offing, this time on the Bangladesh model: of a longer duration, and using a civilian facade to restore the country's economic health. Yet again democracy will be the loser.
Shuja Nawaz is the author of Crossed Swords: Pakistan, its Army, and the Wars Within (Oxford University Press, 2008). He has just returned from a two-week visit to Pakistan and can be reached at www.shujanawaz.com.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Terror tentacles
Al-Qa'ida sends its warriors from Iraq to wage 'jihad' in Lebanon
Robert Fisk in The Independent
Abdullah got it about right. Picking his fingernails in the ticket office of the local bus station, he lowered his eyes. He had seen everything; the severed arms and legs of Lebanese soldiers, the still uniformed but headless infantryman slumped out of the window of the minibus round the corner, and the bodies of all the little people who die when bombs go off here: the old man who sold sandwiches to the troops, the lemonade salesman, the child who polished shoes. All dead, of course. "Collateral damage" to the man who left the bomb in a bag on the pavement at 7.45am on Wednesday. "We think it was either Fatah al-Islam or some unknown forces," Abdullah said. "Why do you ask?"
Why indeed. Fatah al-Islam is a Salafist version of Sunni Islam, a weird al-Qa'ida satellite which held out against the Lebanese army in the Palestinian Nahr el-Bared camp north of here last year at the cost of 400 deaths and the flight of 40,000 civilians. Most Lebanese concluded that they were implanted in Lebanon's soil by Syria.
But Wednesday's bomb in Lebanon's second city, the ancient crusader port of the Chateau de Saint Gilles, disfigured by massive unemployment and grotesque advertising hoardings, was of Iraqi proportions: 15 dead, nine of them Lebanese soldiers, and 50 wounded.
Gunfire crackled like broken matchsticks across Tripoli yesterday as the local "martyrs" were buried. Most had been queuing for buses to the south, alongside the usual bus drivers – six of them – sipping coffee on the pavement. One of their number, Kasser Chebli, who had turned up as usual and begun to drink his morning coffee, woke up in hospital, minus one leg. On the streets, the printed funeral notes told their own story.
"The Martyr Mohamed Mustapha Mrai," it said in beautifully printed Arabic script above an army identity photo of the young man. "The martyr who died in the Tripoli bomb," the funerary notice added.
But who were Abdullah's "other forces"? A walk down Syria Street – and yes, that really is the name of this shattered, burnt- out, bullet-spattered thoroughfare – provides a few terrifying clues. It divides the large Sunni district of Tripoli from the tiny Alawite community. The Sunnis are generally loyal to Saad Hariri, son of the assassinated ex-prime minister whose Future Movement now forms part of the government in Lebanon.
The Alawis are, as the saying goes, an "offshoot" of Shia Islam and are close to Syria for a very obvious reason: President Bashar al-Assad of Syria is an Alawi and so are most of the powerful men in Syria.
The soldiers murdered in Wednesday's bomb were members of a large military force deployed after Sunni-Alawi sectarian gunbattles had killed 22 Lebanese and wounded another 68 in June and July alone. The battles still continue.
Syria Street is a shameful place of ethnic cleansing, of burnt-out apartments and smashed shops, of fear and unemployment. "Don't stand here any longer because you can be shot from the top of the side road," Rabih al-Badawi quietly informed me as we inspected the wreckage.
Rabih's business card says he is in "General Trading" – he is a Sunni and he sells lavatory fitings – but his "trading" took a blow this summer when he refused to pay protection money to local gangs. He takes me through his upper offices, carbonised, trashed, looted, his remaining windows starred with bullet holes. Outside, bullets crackle in the hot afternoon. It's like a return to the old Beirut of the war.
"Look at these shops," Rabih tells me as we stroll down Syria Street with a grotesque display of self-confidence. "This is Alawi-owned. Bullet holes in the door. This is Alawi. The same. These are Sunni shops: all burnt out."
Was all this, perhaps, the work of Abdullah's "unknown forces"? "I think this is the work of weapons' dealers," Rabih replies at once. "They want to sell guns. So here everyone needs a gun because everyone is frightened. So the place has filled up with guns. The army does nothing. Why not? Don't they know the names of the gangs? Don't they know who is behind this?"
I take a drive round the corner to the slums of the little Alawi community, and there is Ahmed Saadedin, sipping coffee opposite another row of "martyrs" pictures, this time of Alawis, who says, correctly, that at least 9,000 Alawi refugees have fled their homes here.
"The violence started after Hariri's assassination," Ahmed says. "When Syria's forces were here, all Lebanon enjoyed security." Which – if you forget the presence of 40,000 Syrian troops, two Israeli invasions and a 15-year civil war – is an absolutely correct statement.
The truth is that Tripoli has slunk back into the civil war, block after block of gaunt, workless homes in which the Salafists and the "al-Islamists" and the haunted young men who have returned from their "jihad" against the Americans in Iraq now nestle and ponder a dangerous, frightening future amid these disgraceful battles.
In Tripoli, the fears of every Lebanese are brought to fulfillment; it's the cold fear of those "outside forces" that roam throughout the Middle East.
Lebanon's bitter legacy
Independent from French rule since 1943, Lebanon has four million people made up of numerous religious groups. The 15-year civil war ended in 1990, but the country is still deeply unstable. The worst violence since the civil war erupted in 2006 when a month-long war broke out with Israel. When President Emile Lahoud's term finished in November 2007, the dispute over his successor led to a six-month power vacuum. Finally, in May, the former army chief Michel Suleiman was chosen as President, and on Tuesday a new cabinet was approved by MPs. The country has been shaken by political assassinations since the February 2005 killing of the former prime minister Rafik Hariri. The role of Syria, which withdrew its troops in 2005 after 29 years, has been a source of conflict. But this week Lebanon and Syria agreed to establish diplomatic relations.
Robert Fisk in The Independent
Abdullah got it about right. Picking his fingernails in the ticket office of the local bus station, he lowered his eyes. He had seen everything; the severed arms and legs of Lebanese soldiers, the still uniformed but headless infantryman slumped out of the window of the minibus round the corner, and the bodies of all the little people who die when bombs go off here: the old man who sold sandwiches to the troops, the lemonade salesman, the child who polished shoes. All dead, of course. "Collateral damage" to the man who left the bomb in a bag on the pavement at 7.45am on Wednesday. "We think it was either Fatah al-Islam or some unknown forces," Abdullah said. "Why do you ask?"
Why indeed. Fatah al-Islam is a Salafist version of Sunni Islam, a weird al-Qa'ida satellite which held out against the Lebanese army in the Palestinian Nahr el-Bared camp north of here last year at the cost of 400 deaths and the flight of 40,000 civilians. Most Lebanese concluded that they were implanted in Lebanon's soil by Syria.
But Wednesday's bomb in Lebanon's second city, the ancient crusader port of the Chateau de Saint Gilles, disfigured by massive unemployment and grotesque advertising hoardings, was of Iraqi proportions: 15 dead, nine of them Lebanese soldiers, and 50 wounded.
Gunfire crackled like broken matchsticks across Tripoli yesterday as the local "martyrs" were buried. Most had been queuing for buses to the south, alongside the usual bus drivers – six of them – sipping coffee on the pavement. One of their number, Kasser Chebli, who had turned up as usual and begun to drink his morning coffee, woke up in hospital, minus one leg. On the streets, the printed funeral notes told their own story.
"The Martyr Mohamed Mustapha Mrai," it said in beautifully printed Arabic script above an army identity photo of the young man. "The martyr who died in the Tripoli bomb," the funerary notice added.
But who were Abdullah's "other forces"? A walk down Syria Street – and yes, that really is the name of this shattered, burnt- out, bullet-spattered thoroughfare – provides a few terrifying clues. It divides the large Sunni district of Tripoli from the tiny Alawite community. The Sunnis are generally loyal to Saad Hariri, son of the assassinated ex-prime minister whose Future Movement now forms part of the government in Lebanon.
The Alawis are, as the saying goes, an "offshoot" of Shia Islam and are close to Syria for a very obvious reason: President Bashar al-Assad of Syria is an Alawi and so are most of the powerful men in Syria.
The soldiers murdered in Wednesday's bomb were members of a large military force deployed after Sunni-Alawi sectarian gunbattles had killed 22 Lebanese and wounded another 68 in June and July alone. The battles still continue.
Syria Street is a shameful place of ethnic cleansing, of burnt-out apartments and smashed shops, of fear and unemployment. "Don't stand here any longer because you can be shot from the top of the side road," Rabih al-Badawi quietly informed me as we inspected the wreckage.
Rabih's business card says he is in "General Trading" – he is a Sunni and he sells lavatory fitings – but his "trading" took a blow this summer when he refused to pay protection money to local gangs. He takes me through his upper offices, carbonised, trashed, looted, his remaining windows starred with bullet holes. Outside, bullets crackle in the hot afternoon. It's like a return to the old Beirut of the war.
"Look at these shops," Rabih tells me as we stroll down Syria Street with a grotesque display of self-confidence. "This is Alawi-owned. Bullet holes in the door. This is Alawi. The same. These are Sunni shops: all burnt out."
Was all this, perhaps, the work of Abdullah's "unknown forces"? "I think this is the work of weapons' dealers," Rabih replies at once. "They want to sell guns. So here everyone needs a gun because everyone is frightened. So the place has filled up with guns. The army does nothing. Why not? Don't they know the names of the gangs? Don't they know who is behind this?"
I take a drive round the corner to the slums of the little Alawi community, and there is Ahmed Saadedin, sipping coffee opposite another row of "martyrs" pictures, this time of Alawis, who says, correctly, that at least 9,000 Alawi refugees have fled their homes here.
"The violence started after Hariri's assassination," Ahmed says. "When Syria's forces were here, all Lebanon enjoyed security." Which – if you forget the presence of 40,000 Syrian troops, two Israeli invasions and a 15-year civil war – is an absolutely correct statement.
The truth is that Tripoli has slunk back into the civil war, block after block of gaunt, workless homes in which the Salafists and the "al-Islamists" and the haunted young men who have returned from their "jihad" against the Americans in Iraq now nestle and ponder a dangerous, frightening future amid these disgraceful battles.
In Tripoli, the fears of every Lebanese are brought to fulfillment; it's the cold fear of those "outside forces" that roam throughout the Middle East.
Lebanon's bitter legacy
Independent from French rule since 1943, Lebanon has four million people made up of numerous religious groups. The 15-year civil war ended in 1990, but the country is still deeply unstable. The worst violence since the civil war erupted in 2006 when a month-long war broke out with Israel. When President Emile Lahoud's term finished in November 2007, the dispute over his successor led to a six-month power vacuum. Finally, in May, the former army chief Michel Suleiman was chosen as President, and on Tuesday a new cabinet was approved by MPs. The country has been shaken by political assassinations since the February 2005 killing of the former prime minister Rafik Hariri. The role of Syria, which withdrew its troops in 2005 after 29 years, has been a source of conflict. But this week Lebanon and Syria agreed to establish diplomatic relations.
Billet doux for you!
Ever thine. Ever mine: How romantic are today's authors
Emma Hagestadt in The Independent
Earlier this month, a week ahead of schedule, British publisher Macmillan released Love Letters of Great Men, a book that promises "some of the most romantic letters ever written." Dominated by the greats - Pope, Flaubert, Browning, Burns and Keats – it opens with Pliny and closes with letters from the Great War. It features letters from the movie, including Beethoven's unsent missive to his Immortal Beloved ("Ever thine. Ever mine. Ever ours") and Napoleon's promise to shower Josephine with "a million burning kisses as under the Equator." Chosen with an eye to copyright, readers looking for examples of more contemporary tendresse - Dodi to Diana, Sarkozy to Carla - might have to look elsewhere.
The author's editor, Ursula Doyle, a former publisher at Picador, says that the entries were "self-selecting" and chosen for their narrative interest and what they revealed about the correspondents' relationships. Preferring the more domestic entries to the "great outpourings of devotion", she directs us to Charles's Darwin's plea for "a nice soft wife on a sofa with good fire..." and Daniel Webster's circumspect flirtation with a much younger woman, largely addressed to her mislaid bonnet.
Words of love: Some leading writers share their own moments of passion
Meg Wolizer
My very first boyfriend, when I was 15, used to send love letters from his suburban home to mine, sometimes using calligraphy and sealing wax and occasionally referring to me as "Milady," and often burning the pages around the edges so the whole thing resembled the Declaration of Independence. But a love letter is a love letter, and I will always keep these, even though, if they were to be published, they would have to appear in an anthology called Love Letters from Boys with Enlarged Adam's Apples and Posters of Led Zeppelin on Their Walls.
Zoe Heller
There's a sexy bit in one of Flaubert's letters to Louise Colet that I like very much: he writes about her looking back on their lovemaking when she's old and how he wants her "dry bones" to quake. And I've always liked Captain Wentworth's letter to Anne at the end of Persuasion. Not so much the prose as for the fantasy of having an apparently indifferent man turn out to be gagging for you.
Andrew St George
Pierre Abelard's 12th-century Historia Calamitatum (The Story of My Misfortunes) is one of the greatest of all love letters: it made Heloise fall in love with him all over again, even though the letter was not intended for her, and despite the fact that by then he was a castrated monk; platonic love ensued, and a handful of epistles on the nature of love itself. I'd also include Shakespeare's sonnets, language at full stretch knowing it will last longer than any of the loves it envisages. The 18th century made a mockery of love letters lost or misdelivered – Fielding and Smollett made careers out of it. In the 19th century, Elizabeth Barrett had the time and means to languish on a sofa in Wimpole Street and trade hundreds of arcane love letters with Robert Browning, using the five or six daily deliveries in London in the 1840s: the result was a happy elopement to Italy. My favourite 20th-century love communications are the ones we never see, like the weekly "familygram", when our submariners receive 40-word long messages from family, leagues from home. These are greetings which cannot be returned, as this would reveal their submarine's position.
Michele Roberts
I receive lots of love letters from time to time. Currently I enjoy receiving late-night poetic text messages: so intense and compressed, as good poetry should be. I first bought a mobile phone five years ago so that a lover and I could communicate secretly. I saved all his text messages. I write love letters whenever I'm in love. I write love poems as love letters. I know when I'm in love because I start writing love letters or love poems to that person. Physical desire, for me, needs expression in poetry. I need a symbolic language (ie not a romantic or sentimental one) to express desire.
Mark McCrum
Do people really write love letters any more? People seem to have converted to texts and emails instead. I have sent love letters, but rarely during the affair. Most were afterwards trying to get back together with the girl. Bit of advice for men: you should send the letters before or during the affair, not after. I have sent a few saucy texts; and people do seem to send texts instead. It's taken over from love letters. Who sits down and writes love letters? Apart from long distance relationships no one really, and even then it's normally emails. One woman informed me on day two or three that she didn't like my texting style and warned me it might put our relationship at risk. She eventually banned me from texting and emailing. But this is all in the past as I'm happily married now.
Jenny Colgan
Love letters are great, but anything will do. Personally I think the most romantic lines ever written are: "Some day when I'm feeling old, and the world is cold, I will get a glow just thinking of you, and the way you look tonight." And it makes it even more romantic to think that it is sung somewhere every second of every day. I admire anyone who can bear to write dirty in love letters, I can't even do it in my novels, writing about people who don't even exist.
Salley Vickers
The best love letters are written by children. My favourite one reads: "Dear Sal, I love you very much but next time, please buy me a train."
Kate Long
My best love letter was one where I thought the relationship was over, and then I got a letter from him saying, "Let's try again." He had drawn a picture of two dogs sitting contentedly in front of the fire. I cried my eyes out over it. The week before I got married, I re-read all my old love letters; I had a fair few because I'd been away to university, and spent months every year apart from the boys I was dating. Then I put all of them except a tiny bundle into a heap on my parents' lawn, and burned them. It felt as though, by doing that, I was making a commitment to my husband-to-be that I wouldn't "look elsewhere".
Emma Hagestadt in The Independent
Earlier this month, a week ahead of schedule, British publisher Macmillan released Love Letters of Great Men, a book that promises "some of the most romantic letters ever written." Dominated by the greats - Pope, Flaubert, Browning, Burns and Keats – it opens with Pliny and closes with letters from the Great War. It features letters from the movie, including Beethoven's unsent missive to his Immortal Beloved ("Ever thine. Ever mine. Ever ours") and Napoleon's promise to shower Josephine with "a million burning kisses as under the Equator." Chosen with an eye to copyright, readers looking for examples of more contemporary tendresse - Dodi to Diana, Sarkozy to Carla - might have to look elsewhere.
The author's editor, Ursula Doyle, a former publisher at Picador, says that the entries were "self-selecting" and chosen for their narrative interest and what they revealed about the correspondents' relationships. Preferring the more domestic entries to the "great outpourings of devotion", she directs us to Charles's Darwin's plea for "a nice soft wife on a sofa with good fire..." and Daniel Webster's circumspect flirtation with a much younger woman, largely addressed to her mislaid bonnet.
Words of love: Some leading writers share their own moments of passion
Meg Wolizer
My very first boyfriend, when I was 15, used to send love letters from his suburban home to mine, sometimes using calligraphy and sealing wax and occasionally referring to me as "Milady," and often burning the pages around the edges so the whole thing resembled the Declaration of Independence. But a love letter is a love letter, and I will always keep these, even though, if they were to be published, they would have to appear in an anthology called Love Letters from Boys with Enlarged Adam's Apples and Posters of Led Zeppelin on Their Walls.
Zoe Heller
There's a sexy bit in one of Flaubert's letters to Louise Colet that I like very much: he writes about her looking back on their lovemaking when she's old and how he wants her "dry bones" to quake. And I've always liked Captain Wentworth's letter to Anne at the end of Persuasion. Not so much the prose as for the fantasy of having an apparently indifferent man turn out to be gagging for you.
Andrew St George
Pierre Abelard's 12th-century Historia Calamitatum (The Story of My Misfortunes) is one of the greatest of all love letters: it made Heloise fall in love with him all over again, even though the letter was not intended for her, and despite the fact that by then he was a castrated monk; platonic love ensued, and a handful of epistles on the nature of love itself. I'd also include Shakespeare's sonnets, language at full stretch knowing it will last longer than any of the loves it envisages. The 18th century made a mockery of love letters lost or misdelivered – Fielding and Smollett made careers out of it. In the 19th century, Elizabeth Barrett had the time and means to languish on a sofa in Wimpole Street and trade hundreds of arcane love letters with Robert Browning, using the five or six daily deliveries in London in the 1840s: the result was a happy elopement to Italy. My favourite 20th-century love communications are the ones we never see, like the weekly "familygram", when our submariners receive 40-word long messages from family, leagues from home. These are greetings which cannot be returned, as this would reveal their submarine's position.
Michele Roberts
I receive lots of love letters from time to time. Currently I enjoy receiving late-night poetic text messages: so intense and compressed, as good poetry should be. I first bought a mobile phone five years ago so that a lover and I could communicate secretly. I saved all his text messages. I write love letters whenever I'm in love. I write love poems as love letters. I know when I'm in love because I start writing love letters or love poems to that person. Physical desire, for me, needs expression in poetry. I need a symbolic language (ie not a romantic or sentimental one) to express desire.
Mark McCrum
Do people really write love letters any more? People seem to have converted to texts and emails instead. I have sent love letters, but rarely during the affair. Most were afterwards trying to get back together with the girl. Bit of advice for men: you should send the letters before or during the affair, not after. I have sent a few saucy texts; and people do seem to send texts instead. It's taken over from love letters. Who sits down and writes love letters? Apart from long distance relationships no one really, and even then it's normally emails. One woman informed me on day two or three that she didn't like my texting style and warned me it might put our relationship at risk. She eventually banned me from texting and emailing. But this is all in the past as I'm happily married now.
Jenny Colgan
Love letters are great, but anything will do. Personally I think the most romantic lines ever written are: "Some day when I'm feeling old, and the world is cold, I will get a glow just thinking of you, and the way you look tonight." And it makes it even more romantic to think that it is sung somewhere every second of every day. I admire anyone who can bear to write dirty in love letters, I can't even do it in my novels, writing about people who don't even exist.
Salley Vickers
The best love letters are written by children. My favourite one reads: "Dear Sal, I love you very much but next time, please buy me a train."
Kate Long
My best love letter was one where I thought the relationship was over, and then I got a letter from him saying, "Let's try again." He had drawn a picture of two dogs sitting contentedly in front of the fire. I cried my eyes out over it. The week before I got married, I re-read all my old love letters; I had a fair few because I'd been away to university, and spent months every year apart from the boys I was dating. Then I put all of them except a tiny bundle into a heap on my parents' lawn, and burned them. It felt as though, by doing that, I was making a commitment to my husband-to-be that I wouldn't "look elsewhere".
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)