Inevitably, minutes after my last post, Something Big happened - the messy and hideous murder of Benazir Bhutto. It was perhaps hardly surprising in itself (I was almost relieved she made it over the tarmac from her plane), but none the less shocking. Since then, the event has been buried under the usual mountain of verbiage, none of which seems actually to be making much sense of what happened, what it meant, and what is likely to happen next. Loosely deconstructed, the media's saturation coverage amounts to:
1. O dear.
2. O dear o lor.
3. Well this is a pretty pickle and no mistake.
4. Er...
At times like this, we Thought Experimenters need the wise words of Captain B, if he's around. Oh Captain, art thou sleeping down below? Tell us - whither Pakistan?
Friday, December 28, 2007
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
Aside from the politics. Three young people are without a mother this morning, and very likely they will not be alone before this thing settles down.
ReplyDeleteThe media here in the USA is suddenly making her out to be saint and savior.
ReplyDeleteHere are a couple different looks at Benazir:
MSNBC: Be Careful of Pakistan's 'Ms. Liberty'
News at Eleven: Newspaper columnist and poet Fatima Bhutto
YouTube: Emergency - Fatima Bhutto Bashes Benazir - 16/11/0
The Facts
It is not my intention to spit on someone's grave. These links represent how Benazir had been represented before her death. My sense is to agree with Fatima, that Benazir was not serving to stabilize Pakistan, but bring turmoil back with her a few months ago.
That article linked at News at Eleven is just two months old: Bhutto must take responsibility for blast deaths: niece
Yours,
Rus
Your wish is my command. We were stuck for five hours in appalling traffic on the M11 as it happened.
ReplyDeleteCulprits: Jashkar-i-Jangvi with logistical support from Al Qaeda (they phoned the Asia Times an hour ago claiming responsibility) and connivance from the Inter-Services Intelligence service, to ensure Bhutto's promise to let US go after Al Qaeda in Waziristan, and the IAEA to question AQ Khan about nuc-prolif did not happen. Agree the west should not buy into the secular cult which peasants erected around her. She was corrupt, indolent and vain, and made herself head of the PPP for life after she probably murdered her brother. Musharraf will try to postpone elections; the West should insist on them going ahead to ensure a PPP 'sympathy vote', especially since the Saudi backed Nawaz Sharif is not standing......then it should urge reforms for further aid. We should not vaguely assume that because India is our new friend, we can let Pakistan go the way of Somalia. Anyway, that's my pennyworth. Happy New Year Nige.
Terrific - now I begin to understand. Thanks, Captain - and happy new year to you too!
ReplyDeleteRus says: "Benazir was not serving to stabilize Pakistan, but bring turmoil back with her.."
ReplyDeleteBy this argument, would he say that whoever wins the Democratic nomination is not "serving to stabilise the USA, but bring turmoil..."? I mean, for heaven's sake, Benazir was a politician standing for an election. Her opponents had banned her party from TV campaigning so it had been forced into more "on the ground" rallying, where all agree that security was a joke.
Benazir Bhutto was no saint (who is?) but she was conducting a political campaign to stand for office. Does Rus think she should not have bothered and just let the ruling party continue unopposed? (in order to keep the region stable according to Rus -- for whose benefit?)
I cannot see Rus's point of view -- is it typical of Americans? For themselves in their own country, Americans accept democracy and someone's right to lead their party in an election campaign, without blaming them for bringing "turmoil", so what's different here?
Hi Maxine,
ReplyDeleteFatima was insisting that Benazir stop grandstanding and take responsibility for the killings of the last few months since her return. But, she didn't stop, and thus Fatima is correct about the killings continuing. Nor is democracy served, and thus Fatima is correct. And so has turmoil been created, and thus Fatima was correct.
CaptainB mentions that Benazir may very well have something to do with her brother's murder as well. This is something Fatima, her brother's daughter, talks about on her web site, as linked above.
Also, Benazir has many enemies, some within her family. I suspect some sort of "inside" job as a possibility, and an al Qaeda or Taliban link as a way of sweeping it all under the rug. In fact, the Taliban link serves to distance Benazir from the Taliban, "clearing" her as a diametric enemy of the Taliban.
Although my gut tells me that Fatima would not have orchestrated the murder--I do think it likely that Benazir tried to strong arm Fatima into keeping quiet.
I won't have clarity until Fatima writes on this. She is a reporter as well as a poet. Up to now, she has been open in what she writes.
Yours,
Rus
Interesting as his comments are, how does Capn B know this stuff and why should we believe it? Al Qaeda did it cos they called the Asia Times - so that's that sorted then...It's unlikely she would have won any election under the current rules to enforce pro western policies. Maybe Musharraf and/or the ISI don't want a democracy. Maybe it's as simple as that. Wish I knew.
ReplyDeletehi spongebob, if I may . . .
ReplyDeleteCaptainB's assertions or summary amount to the common knowledge leading up to Benazir's death. You don't have to look too far to find it.
Here is a link to Marcus Gee's take from The Globe and Mail: The West's 'fix' was never in.
Also, it is only possible that al Qaeda is responsible. The problem is that she had so many enemies. al Qaeda seems relatively low on the probability list, although there. Responsibility could be being given to al Qaeda in an arranged hook, if other perpetrators don't care to have their responsibility discovered, and so happy to give it away.
This would explain the delay in anyone taking any responsibility, such that some discussion or just some waiting needed to take place. If I were part of the al Qaeda group taking responsibility, I would have spoken right into yesterday's news reports.
Yours,
Rus
What nonsense, Rus! Killings are the reponsibility of killers, and not of the intended target. I can't believe this moral relativity coming from a normally sensible blogger.
ReplyDeleteWhat are you talking about? I did not say the killing was the responsibility of the intended target. Benazir had plenty of enemies, and is a prime suspect in her brother's murder. What part of this isn't making sense to you? Since when does a murder investigation stop with a single phone call?
ReplyDeleteBefore her murder, the press was not like it is now. Click on the links I have provided above. The common knowledge about Benazir was completely different from the contrived fairy tale some want so hard to believe.
But I bet you have not clicked on the links. Here is another from the LA Times: Aunt Benazir's false promises. It's from November 14th this year and written by Fatima. These articles and videos are from all over the world. Fatima herself is from Pakistan, of course.
Suddenly everyone has different memories of Benazir. Here is Fatima today, remembering how the two liked the same sweets: Search on for PPP's successor.
When was Benazir a hope for democracy in Pakistan? Tell me when you blogged or mentioned to someone in a conversation that Benazir was such a hope? When was she saint and savior? Tell me when. Tell me what she was going to do? And process that through what we knew before in the LA Times article. Why argue with me if you are not going to look further than your own televisision set?
The real though experiment is to ponder why the world needs a false Benazir to have died today. The fact of the spin is commonplace. Why this particluar one?
Yours,
Rus
One can see why some governments are wary of killing certain troublesome individuals - the fact of being killed is usually enough to give anyone a halo (JFK, for example); and it's not that easy to suicide someone.
ReplyDeleteAlthough you claim you are not someone intending to spit on someone else's grave you certainly leave no doubt just how full of phlegm you are and what color it is. Thank you so much for sharing.
ReplyDeleteHere I'm just get home from work, and the color of my phlegm is called into question, this after the top news story for tonight, just signing onto AOL, is thus: Bhutto Aides Allege Cover-Up in Slaying. Quote:
ReplyDeleteBhutto's aides said they, too, doubted Mehsud was involved and accused the government of a cover-up.
"The story that al-Qaida or Baitullah Mehsud did it appears to us to be a planted story, an incorrect story, because they want to divert the attention," said Farhatullah Babar, a spokesman for Bhutto's party.
A hook, in other words, like I said. al Qaeda is only a possibility. Place you bets, ladies and gentlemen. The house wins if this goes unsolved. Hurry, bloggers, hurry!
We have a long way to go before history is written on this.
Ahem.
Yours,
Rus
What I referred to as nonsense in my original comment was your link to an article about Fatima Bhutto in which she explicitly states that Benazir was responsible for the deaths of her supporters in the October assassination attempt. As far as I am concerned, your link to that article (with comments of approval) constitutes an implicit endorsement of her ludicrous opinion.
ReplyDeleteNowhere in my comment did I refer to Benazir Bhutto as the "savior" of Pakistan. She was far from ideal and certainly not the best hope for the future of Pakistan. But she did have broad support across all sectors of Pakistani society, not simply in the Western press. I am far from an expert on Pakistan, but whatever views I have are not derived from simply watching TV. I have done two Air Naional Guard rotations in Afghanistan, and have taken the opportunity to immerse myself in Southwest Asian politics by reading as much in the regional print media as I could.
I have done some reading up, or course, but am not an expert. Any expertise I have is in breadth and approach. I re-assert: The reaction to Benazir's death was crazy when compared with the press leading up to it.
ReplyDeleteFatima is right on, though, so far. No one can be 100%, but this young lady seems to be both sincere and discerning. Pay attention to people whose eyes cut like hers do.
This discernment gift of hers, coupled with the openness of being a poet and reporter, is right now putting her life at high risk. I am not canonizing her, mind you, but giving respect where it is due. She called it. But, there may be no room for truth when such a murder with so much at stake, and with so much meaning being piled on, for so many has taken place.
By the way, without looking up the link, it is now being questioned why Benazir could have been buried so quickly without an autopsy, and why the crime scene was power-hosed down so soon after the murder.
Yours,
Rus
.
ReplyDeleteAgain, if I may, here is Fatima's statement on the murder via her column in The News:
Farewell to Wadi Bua
.