President Barack Obama has declared swine flu a ‘national emergency’ as the United States reels from millions of cases of infection and more than 1,000 deaths.

The emergency declaration, which was made public on Saturday, lets doctors and nurses temporarily bypass certain federal requirements so they can better handle a spike in influenza A(H1N1) patients.

The declaration comes just days after Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius warned that demand was outstripping supply of vaccine for the novel flu strain.

‘The 2009 H1N1 pandemic continues to evolve,’ Mr Obama said in the declaration.

‘The rates of illness continue to rise rapidly within many communities across the nation, and the potential exists for the pandemic to overburden healthcare resources in some localities.’

US officials however said the declaration was not issued due to any specific development, but rather as a pre-emptive measure.

As Americans waited for more vaccine shipments, 46 of the 50 states now report widespread swine flu activity – an unusually early uptick that ordinarily takes place in January or February at the peak of a normal flu season.

‘By rapidly identifying the virus, implementing public health measures, providing guidance for health professionals and the general public, and developing an effective vaccine, we have taken proactive steps to reduce the impact of the pandemic and protect the health of our citizens,’ Mr Obama said.

Among other things, the declaration gives the health secretary temporary authority to allow local authorities to set up makeshift emergency rooms to treat possible flu victims separate from regular patients.

In a note to Congress, Mr Obama said the move was implemented ‘in order to be prepared in the event of a rapid increase in illness across the nation that may overburden healthcare resources.’

At least 4,999 people have died from swine flu infections worldwide since April, when an outbreak was first reported in Mexico before rapidly spreading to the United States, according to the World Health Organisation.

In the United States, officials first declared a public health emergency in response to the virus on April 26, and renewed that declaration on July 24 and Oct 1.

Because of the vaccine shortage, the state of New York on Friday suspended a contentious requirement for healthcare workers to be inoculated against swine flu by the end of next month, or risk losing their jobs.

As of Friday, the CDC had 16.1 million doses of swine flu vaccine ready for shipping, and more than 11 million doses had been sent out to state health authorities.

But according to The New York Times, some states have requested 10 times the amount they have been allotted.

{Source: AFP}

By Pepe Escobar

It’s September 11 all over again – eight years on. The George W Bush administration is out. The “global war on terror” is still on, renamed “overseas contingency operations” by the Barack Obama administration. Obama’s “new strategy” – a war escalation – is in play in AfPak. Osama bin Laden may be dead or not. “Al-Qaeda” remains a catch-all ghost entity. September 11 – the neo-cons’ “new Pearl Harbor” – remains the darkest jigsaw puzzle of the young 21st century.

It’s useless to expect US corporate media and the ruling elites’ political operatives to call for a true, in-depth investigation into the attacks on the US on September 11, 2001. Whitewash has been the norm. But even establishment highlight Dr Zbig “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski, a former national security advisor, has admitted to the US Senate that the post-9/11 “war on terror” is a “mythical historical narrative”.

The following questions, some multi-part – and most totally ignored by the 9/11 Commission – are just the tip of the immense 9/11 iceberg. A hat tip goes to the indefatigable work of 911truth.org; whatreallyhappened.com; architects and engineers for 9/11 truth; the Italian documentary Zero: an investigation into 9/11; and Asia Times Online readers’ e-mails.

None of these questions has been convincingly answered – according to the official narrative. It’s up to US civil society to keep up the pressure. Eight years after the fact, one fundamental conclusion is imperative. The official narrative edifice of 9/11 is simply not acceptable.

Fifty questions

1) How come dead or not dead Osama bin Laden has not been formally indicted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as responsible for 9/11? Is it because the US government – as acknowledged by the FBI itself – has not produced a single conclusive piece of evidence?

2) How could all the alleged 19 razor-blade box cutter-equipped Muslim perpetrators have been identified in less than 72 hours – without even a crime scene investigation?

3) How come none of the 19’s names appeared on the passenger lists released the same day by both United Airlines and American Airlines?

4) How come eight names on the “original” FBI list happened to be found alive and living in different countries?

5) Why would pious jihadi Mohammed Atta leave a how-to-fly video manual, a uniform and his last will inside his bag knowing he was on a suicide mission?

6) Why did Mohammed Atta study flight simulation at Opa Locka, a hub of no less than six US Navy training bases?

7) How could Mohammed Atta’s passport have been magically found buried among the Word Trade Center (WTC)’s debris when not a single flight recorder was found?

Who is in the possession of the “disappeared” eight indestructible black boxes on those four flights?

9) Considering multiple international red alerts about a possible terrorist attack inside the US – including former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice’s infamous August 6, 2001, memo – how come four hijacked planes deviating from their computerized flight paths and disappearing from radar are allowed to fly around US airspace for more than an hour and a half – not to mention disabling all the elaborate Pentagon’s defense systems in the process?

10) Why the secretary of the US Air Force James Roche did not try to intercept both planes hitting the WTC (only seven minutes away from McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey) as well as the Pentagon (only 10 minutes away from McGuire)? Roche had no less than 75 minutes to respond to the plane hitting the Pentagon.

11) Why did George W Bush continue to recite “My Pet Goat” in his Florida school and was not instantly absconded by the secret service?

12) How could Bush have seen the first plane crashing on WTC live – as he admitted? Did he have previous knowledge – or is he psychic?

13) Bush said that he and Andrew Card initially thought the first hit on the WTC was an accident with a small plane. How is that possible when the FAA as well as NORAD already knew this was about a hijacked plane?

14) What are the odds of transponders in four different planes be turned off almost simultaneously, in the same geographical area, very close to the nation’s seat of power in Washington, and no one scrambles to contact the Pentagon or the media?

15) Could defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld explain why initial media reports said that there were no fighter jets available at Andrews Air Force Base and then change the reports that there were, but not on high alert?

16) Why was the DC Air National Guard in Washington AWOL on 9/11?

17) Why did combat jet fighters of the 305th Air Wing, McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey not intercept the second hijacked plane hitting the WTC, when they could have done it within seven minutes?

18) Why did none of the combat jet fighters of the 459th Aircraft Squadron at Andrews Air Force Base intercept the plane that hit the Pentagon, only 16 kilometers away? And since we’re at it, why the Pentagon did not release the full video of the hit?

19) A number of very experienced airline pilots – including US ally Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, a former fighter jet pilot – revealed that, well, only crack pilots could have performed such complex maneuvers on the hijacked jets, while others insisted they could only have been accomplished by remote control. Is it remotely believable that the hijackers were up to the task?

20) How come a substantial number of witnesses did swear seeing and hearing multiple explosions in both towers of the WTC?

21) How come a substantial number of reputed architects and engineers are adamant that the official narrative simply does not explain the largest structural collapse in recorded history (the Twin Towers) as well as the collapse of WTC building 7, which was not even hit by a jet?

22) According to Frank de Martini, WTC’s construction manager, “We designed the building to resist the impact of one or more jetliners.” The second plane nearly missed tower 1; most of the fuel burned in an explosion outside the tower. Yet this tower collapsed first, long before tower 2 that was “perforated” by the first hit. Jet fuel burned up fast – and by far did not reach the 2000-degree heat necessary to hurt the six tubular steel columns in the center of the tower – designed specifically to keep the towers from collapsing even if hit by a Boeing 707. A Boeing 707 used to carry more fuel than the Boeing 757 and Boeing 767 that actually hit the towers.

23) Why did Mayor Rudolph Giuliani instantly authorized the shipment of WTC rubble to China and India for recycling?

24) Why was metallic debris found no less than 13 kilometers from the crash site of the plane that went down in Pennsylvania? Was the plane in fact shot down – under vice president Dick Cheney’s orders?

25) The Pipelineistan question. What did US ambassador Wendy Chamberlain talk about over the phone on October 10, 2001, with the oil minister of Pakistan? Was it to tell him that the 1990s-planned Unocal gas pipeline project, TAP (Turkmenistan/Afghanistan/ Pakistan), abandoned because of Taliban demands on transit fees, was now back in business? (Two months later, an agreement to build the pipeline was signed between the leaders of the three countries).

26) What is former Unocal lobbyist and former Bush pet Afghan Zalmay Khalilzad up to in Afghanistan?

27) How come former Pakistani foreign minister Niaz Niak said in mid-July 2001 that the US had already decided to strike against Osama bin Laden and the Taliban by October? The topic was discussed secretly at the July Group of Eight summit in Genoa, Italy, according to Pakistani diplomats.

28) How come US ambassador to Yemen Barbara Bodine told FBI agent John O’Neill in July 2001 to stop investigating al-Qaeda’s financial operations – with O’Neill instantly moved to a security job at the WTC, where he died on 9/11?

29) Considering the very intimate relationship between the Taliban and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and the ISI and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), is Bin Laden alive, dead or still a valuable asset of the ISI, the CIA or both?

30) Was Bin Laden admitted at the American hospital in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates on July 4, 2001, after flying from Quetta, Pakistan, and staying for treatment until July 11?

31) Did the Bin Laden group build the caves of Tora Bora in close cooperation with the CIA during the 1980s’ anti-Soviet jihad?

32) How come General Tommy Franks knew for sure that Bin Laden was hiding in Tora Bora in late November 2001?

33) Why did president Bill Clinton abort a hit on Bin Laden in October 1999? Why did then-Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf abort a covert ops in the same date? And why did Musharraf do the same thing again in August 2001?

34) Why did George W Bush dissolve the Bin Laden Task Force nine months before 9/11?

35) How come the (fake) Bin Laden home video – in which he “confesses” to being the perpetrator of 9/11 – released by the US on December 13, 2001, was found only two weeks after it was produced (on November 9); was it really found in Jalalabad (considering Northern Alliance and US troops had not even arrived there at the time); by whom; and how come the Pentagon was forced to release a new translation after the first (botched) one?

36) Why was ISI chief Lieutenant General Mahmud Ahmad abruptly “retired” on October 8, 2001, the day the US started bombing Afghanistan?

37) What was Ahmad up to in Washington exactly on the week of 9/11 (he arrived on September 4)? On the morning of 9/11, Ahmad was having breakfast on Capitol Hill with Bob Graham and Porter Goss, both later part of the 9/11 Commission, which simply refused to investigate two of its members. Ahmad had breakfast with Richard Armitage of the State Department on September 12 and 13 (when Pakistan negotiated its “cooperation” with the “war on terror”) and met all the CIA and Pentagon top brass. On September 13, Musharraf announced he would send Ahmad to Afghanistan to demand to the Taliban the extradition of Bin Laden.

38) Who inside the ISI transferred US$100,000 to Mohammed Atta in the summer of 2001 – under orders of Ahmad himself, as Indian intelligence insists? Was it really ISI asset Omar Sheikh, Bin Laden’s information technology specialist who later organized the slaying of American journalist Daniel Pearl in Karachi? So was the ISI directly linked to 9/11?

39) Did the FBI investigate the two shady characters who met Mohammed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi in Harry’s Bar at the Helmsley Hotel in New York City on September 8, 2001?

40) What did director of Asian affairs at the State Department Christina Rocca and the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan Abdul Salam Zaeef discuss in their meeting in Islamabad in August 2001?

41) Did Washington know in advance that an “al-Qaeda” connection would kill Afghan nationalist commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, aka “The Lion of the Panjshir”, only two days before 9/11? Massoud was fighting the Taliban and al-Qaeda – helped by Russia and Iran. According to the Northern Alliance, Massoud was killed by an ISI-Taliban-al Qaeda axis. If still alive, he would never have allowed the US to rig a loya jirga (grand council) in Afghanistan and install a puppet, former CIA asset Hamid Karzai, as leader of the country.

42) Why did it take no less than four months before the name of Ramzi Binalshibh surfaced in the 9/11 context, considering the Yemeni was a roommate of Mohammed Atta in his apartment cell in Hamburg?

43) Is pathetic shoe-bomber Richard Reid an ISI asset?

44) Did then-Russian president Vladimir Putin and Russian intelligence tell the CIA in 2001 that 25 terrorist pilots had been training for suicide missions?

45) When did the head of German intelligence, August Hanning, tell the CIA that terrorists were “planning to hijack commercial aircraft?”

46) When did Egyptian President Mubarak tell the CIA about an attack on the US with an “airplane stuffed with explosives?”

47) When did Israel’s Mossad director Efraim Halevy tell the CIA about a possible attack on the US by “200 terrorists?”

48) Were the Taliban aware of the warning by a Bush administration official as early as February 2001 – “Either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs?”

49) Has Northrop-Grumman used Global Hawk technology – which allows to remotely control unmanned planes – in the war in Afghanistan since October 2001? Did it install Global Hawk in a commercial plane? Is Global Hawk available at all for commercial planes?

50) Would Cheney stand up and volunteer the detailed timeline of what he was really up to during the whole day on 9/11?

(Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com)

{Source: Asia Times Online}

By Ayaz Amir

“What do you consider to be the greatest blessing you have reaped from your wealth?

“…the great blessing of riches, I do not say to every man, but to a good man, is, that he has had no occasion to deceive or to defraud others, either intentionally or unintentionally; and when he departs to the world below he is not in any apprehension about offerings due to the gods or debts which he owes to men.”

– Plato: The Republic

Common experience, at least in our times, would suggest quite the opposite. The very rich, far from being content with their riches, seem caught in a perpetual frenzy to acquire more. The discontent of the very rich in our society would seem to stem from this cause. They are always on the look-out for more.

Among other evils, this has distorted the spirit of enterprise in our society. Honest investment, productive labour and the spirit of hard work are not looked upon as virtues worth aspiring to. The smart young man is considered to be the one who can make a fast buck, through shady deals or by exploiting connections in the power structure.

But this is a digression. In the passage from The Republic quoted above, it is Socrates asking Cephalus whether his wealth is acquired or inherited. And Cephalus says that the basis of his wealth is inheritance. Socrates goes on to ask the next question (noted above), to which Cephalus gives the above answer.

In Cephalus’s view, therefore, inherited wealth is a great advantage for it enables you to avoid fraud and other related evils. And by putting you in a position where you owe no man anything, it helps bring you peace of mind.

There was a time, and not too long ago either, when the leading lights of the political class in our country regularly used to sell off bits of their patrimony to stay in politics. How different from today when politics has become an avenue for making money, not losing it. The laidback style of the decade after Partition has given way to a more ruthless approach in which the amassing of wealth, through fair means or foul (but mainly foul), is considered an essential, nay inescapable, part of politics.

Where money is spent to get into politics and then any position attained is used as a lever to make more money, it is scarcely surprising if standards of public conduct take a nose dive and practices once frowned upon become the norm.

Nor is this state of affairs confined to the political class. The culture of acquisition cuts across administrative compartments, some of our biggest money-grubbers being mandarins and imposing figures in uniform.

Which is not to say that our people don’t give. They do indeed, as generosity towards the less favoured, and hospitality in general, is part of our psyche and culture. But this is probably true of society at large, not of the elite in positions of authority and privilege. Those least in a position to give, give wholeheartedly. Those favoured by fortune are either self-centred or past masters at deceit and fraud. As a result, the concept of public service on the part of our privileged classes is virtually non-existent.

This is a morbid line of thought and is prompted by the death of Senator Edward Kennedy. He came from a rich family (Joe Kennedy, the patriarch of the clan, having made his fortune through whisky smuggling during the US’s short-lived rendezvous with prohibition) which became famous and powerful when John F. Kennedy was elected as president. Compared to John and Robert (both tragically assassinated), Edward seemed not particularly gifted. But once elected to the Senate, he made his mark there. So much so that at his death he is being hailed as one of the most influential, even seminal, senators of the last century.

Along the way he had to cope with personal tragedy: the 1969 drowning of a girlfriend who was with him after a party at Chappaquiddick — Mary Jo Kopechne — an event which sank any hope he may have had of running for president. The memory of this incident clung to him always but as he made a career for himself in the Senate, championing liberal causes and speaking out for the less favoured, that memory receded.

Incidentally, he was among the minority in the Senate which opposed the Iraq war. The best speech against the rush to war in Iraq was perhaps delivered by Senator Robert Byrd (while writing these lines I have watched portions of it on YouTube…it is a remarkably prescient speech well worth watching, and pondering over). But Ted Kennedy also stood unequivocally against that march of folly whose consequences the US is likely to live with for some time. To no one’s surprise, he was an early supporter of Barack Obama.

Perhaps as a mark of his Irish heritage, Ted Kennedy was a heavy drinker. In the tragedies befalling his family he had much to forget and much to grieve over. He could have drowned himself in drink (as his wife nearly did). He could have made a career for himself as a playboy. There was a strong playboy streak in the Kennedy clan — John F. Kennedy’s serial affairs of a kind to make Bill Clinton’s adventures in the same league look like Sunday school escapades. But he devoted himself to public service and rose above his afflictions. A famous name is an advantage but it can also be a heavy cross to bear.

This doesn’t mean that privilege automatically leads to public service in the US. The Bushes are as privileged as the Kennedys and look what a disaster for the US and the world the younger Bush has been. All the same, there is a tradition of altruism and public service amongst America’s rich and famous which is well worth emulating. Of course, there has been no shortage of ‘robber barons’ in America’s past and corporate America remains as rapacious as ever. But greatness of empire does not come from rapacity alone. There is more to the American kaleidoscope than that.

The other event which has touched this reference to Plato is Jaswant Singh’s book on Jinnah and Partition. I haven’t read it but shall when I get my hands on it. But what I find striking, even more than the furore it has caused in India, is the fact that Jaswant Singh, an active politician, holding a senior position in the BJP (from which, to the party’s loss, he has been expelled) should have found the time, among his other activities, to research his book and then write it.

This is how it should be: politicians being not just politicians but also men of letters. What infuses politics with life and gives it a broad sweep — or the thing we call vision –comes from poetry (in the broadest sense of the word) and literature. If politicians are to rise above the level of common scum, they must live to higher ideals.

At the same time, citizens could do well to remember that politics should not be left to a tiny elite. It should be everyone’s business. As Pericles said of Athens (Thucydides quoting him as saying this), “…we do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics is a man who minds his own business: we say that he has no business here at all.”

Alexander, as Plutarch informs us, always with a copy of the Iliad under his pillow, Caesar writing his Commentaries even when campaigning in Gaul, Marcus Aurelius penning his meditations even when fighting what Rome called the Barbarians, Napoleon speed-reading and throwing the books he would read out of his carriage window as he sped across Europe (especially when in the throes of his infatuation with Marie Walewska…this beguiling image provided by Emil Ludwig in his less biography and more hagiography of Napoleon), Stalin, one of history’s great autodidacts, reading books at night even as he fought Hitler’s armies: this is the ideal for the man of affairs to aspire to, in war or peace.

This is why Jaswant Singh’s book is so welcome because quite apart from what it says, it is a reminder of the politician’s obligation, if he is to be true to his calling, to cultivate the arts and the muses.

Email: winlust@yahoo.com

{Source: The News}

By Pepe Escobar

PARIS – America’s convoluted, Alice-in-Wonderland interpretation of this summer’s top political show – the “free expression of the people” in the Afghanistan election – reads like an opium dream. In fact, it is actually a pipe dream – as in Pipelineistan. With the added twist that no one’s saying a word about the pipe that’s delivering the opium dream.

As in an opium dream, delusion reigns. The chances of United States President Barack Obama actually elaborating what his AfPak strategy really is are as likely as having his super-envoy Richard Holbrooke share a pipe with explosive uber-guerrilla warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

Obama says “success in Afghanistan” involves “diplomacy, development and good governance” – but all dazed and confused world public opinion sees are packs of extra marines being deployed to “fight the Taliban”.

Former Waziristan jihad master Baitullah Mehsud, a “Pak”, not an “Af” Taliban, may have been done in by a clever US Predator drone. But one Osama bin Laden – as in an opium dream – still ghostly roams across the Hindu Kush, eight years after the 9/11 fact. A vision or a waking dream, he may be playing Return of the Living Dead in “Pak”, not “Af” – so why all these extra marines frantically canvassing Afghan lands?

Or should we believe Pakistan Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira, who said there “is no evidence that Osama bin Laden is present in Pakistan” and that “those making claims of his presence in the country should provide valid proof of it”?

Furthermore, the US notion that a motley crew of Pashtun peasants, angry young religious men, gangsters, highway robbers and anti-government rabble-rousers sprinkled around Pashtun country in Afghanistan would suddenly start welcoming shady al-Qaeda new breeders bent on destroying Western civilization as we know it is, well, no less than an opium dream.

As for the sham election, who cares who’s the winner – Pashtun President Hamid Karzai, aka “the kebab seller”, Tajik Abdullah Abdullah or anyone else? Afghanistan will be ruled by Barack Hussein Obama anyway. “The Taliban” – this ghostly, immaterial entity – may start getting less cash from their former Pakistani intelligence masters; but pious, Salafi Persian Gulf potentates will still make sure they more than balance their budget – unlike certain Western powers. They couldn’t care less about super-envoy Holbrooke’s recently announced campaign to freeze wire transfers to “the Taliban”.

Unable to fire Karzai, Washington watches impotently as he drafts psycho killer Uzbek General Rashid Dostum to campaign for him – as if sporting Tajik commander Muhammad Fahim as his running mate was not enough. It’s Do the Warlord Dance in Kabul – and the prize is buckets of drug money for everybody so funding for private militias remains as free as a full supply of opium to the world economy.

And in the end, the warlords will find a shortcut to get rid of Karzai anyway.

Just ask the perennial Hekmatyar – who is fighting not only Karzai but the US and coalition troops (as if he’s reading too much recent Iraq history, he insists on a timetable for Western troop withdrawal). Incidentally, good ol’ friend of Saudi Arabia Hekmatyar is not a “Taliban” – but a Pashtun nationalist.

As for installed-by-George W Bush Karzai, he may be an Americanized aristocrat from the minor Popolzai tribe who knows his Pashtunwali – the inflexible Pashtun tribal code; but he’s also a no-holds-barred opportunist who studied in India, so he’s betting on India to counter Pakistani influence over Afghanistan. He wants no “Pak” dominating “Af”, while for Washington everything is now “AfPak”. He knows that “the Taliban” control the day and virtually all the night in over half of Afghanistan. He knows he’s got to do something to try to stop Westerners killing Pashtuns in droves. Yet another American puppet turns against his masters.

Ich bin ein Talibanistaner

And what to make of the McChrystal, Gates and Mullen show – worthy of the Marx Brothers? To amuse the galleries, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen did a two-on-one and faced down commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan General Stanley McChyrstal’s inimitable Dr Strangelove impersonation by asking him to take it easy and submit his new Afghan report to Obama only after the Afghan election.

Iron Gates wants an orgy of new troops; super-envoy Holbrooke, for his part, wants a massive nation-building squad – he’s building his own (doomed), counterinsurgency-heavy, Afghan shadow government. The bottom line is that, mired in the opium dream that all Afghans love the concept of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) occupying their country, the Pentagon wants a star-studded AfPak show running for decades.

McChrystal first said the Taliban are winning. Then he said they’re not. Then he asked for – what else – more troops and more help on the civilian side. There will be 68,000 US troops in Afghanistan by the end of 2009. At the moment there are 96,500 US plus NATO troops on the ground – including 4,050 Germans, 485 Norwegians, 470 Bulgarians and 2,378 from “other nations”.

The extrapolations into ridicule boggle the mind. The 4,050 members of the Bundeswehr fighting “Taliban” in northern Afghanistan near Kunduz now have to shout out a trilingual warning before getting down to the nitty gritty. First, in English, it’s “United Nations – stop, or I will fire!” Then comes the Pashto remix – “Melgaero Mellatuna-Dreesch, ka ne se dasee kawum!” And then the Dari remix. Forget about the cool and crisp Achtung! Sounds more like a Monty Python sketch about the European Commission in Brussels. Even German top commander General Wolfgang Schneiderhahn is embarrassed.

While all this funky charade goes on, virtually nobody – apart from Canadian energy economist John Foster, in an op-ed published by The Star newspaper – is talking about the (real) Afghan pipe dream. Once again, since the late 1990s, it all comes back to TAPI – the Turkmenistan/Afghanistan/Pakistan/India gas pipeline, the key reason Afghanistan (as an energy transit corridor) is of any strategic importance to the US, apart from being deployed as an aircraft carrier stationed right at the borders of geopolitical competitors China and Russia. TAPI, financed by the Asian Development Bank, should in theory start to be built in 2010.

Both Russia and Iran, accomplished chess masters, are honing their moves to make TAPI unworkable. Until then, the AfPak theater basically boils down to the US and NATO at war against nationalist Pashtuns. Washington hysteria will continue to rule – as in “the Taliban” about to take over Islamabad’s nukes and convert the US into TalibanUStan. And last but not least, please save the last bowl of opium for that oh-so-savvy wild bunch – the warlords.

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).

He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.

-Source: Asia Times-

By Ahsan Butt

Last weekend Richard Holbrooke made another visit to Pakistan in his capacity as Barack Obama’s special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan. More than anything else, what struck me most about this was that Richard Holbrooke made another visit to Pakistan in his capacity as Barack Obama’s special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

There do exist, after all, communication technologies that render the concept of distance between people obsolete. A recent report said that close to 40 percent of Americans hold jobs that could be done at home, communication with their office or headquarters left to digital devices and the like. Surely Holbrooke, whose primary task is to hold talks with stakeholders in South Asia, can be counted as amongst that 40 percent?

It is not just fuel costs which should push Holbrooke to reconsider his traveling. There are sound geostrategic reasons for doing so too.

Simply put, the United States remains deeply unpopular in Pakistan. In a survey released last May, the International Republican Institute – an organization that has been polling Pakistanis regularly for three years – reported that a mere 37 percent of respondents thought that Pakistan should cooperate with the U.S. in its so-called war on terror (to be fair, this was the highest reported percentage since February 2007).

More recently, a Pew survey revealed that only 9 percent of Pakistanis think of the U.S. as a partner, with 64 percent considering it an enemy. A Gallup/Al-Jazeera poll showed similar disenchantment with the U.S. A clear majority of respondents, 59 percent to be precise, consider the U.S. the greatest threat to Pakistan; the corresponding numbers for India and the Taliban were eighteen and eleven respectively.

Why does this matter? It matters because Pakistan’s leaders over the last five years, whether they are military rulers or elected civilians, have faced great difficulties in convincing the public that taking on the Taliban is in Pakistan’s national interest. Until very recently, the dominant line of thinking in Pakistan held that Pakistan was bullied into fighting America’s war in the border regions with Afghanistan under duress, that the Taliban would cease their campaign of bombings and violence against Pakistanis if Pakistan discontinued its alliance with the U.S., and that the billions of dollars that Washington sent Pakistan’s way was better thought of as blood money than aid to a beleaguered partner.

Notwithstanding the empirical questionability of these claims, they made it extremely difficult for Pakistani decision makers to launch aggressive action against armed militants in the north west of the country. Such action would surely result in the death of innocent civilians — as military action invariably does — as well as in the Pakistani military losing more men, which in turn would produce yet greater anger at the government.

Both Pervez Musharraf toward the end of his tenure, and Asif Zardari in the beginning of his, were constrained by public opinion in prosecuting the war against the Taliban with military means. This is not to argue that public opinion was the only factor in holding back more aggressive action, but it was among the more salient ones.

For a number of reasons, the Taliban’s popularity has fallen in recent months, which has made fighting and owning the war against the Taliban easier. Pakistanis are more likely to consider the Taliban a real threat and one worthy of tackling than ever before. But the charge of “America’s war” is still one that resonates for many, and just because Pakistanis now rightly see the Taliban as an enemy does not mean that they see the U.S. as a friend.

This is why it is important for Richard Holbrooke to maintain as low a profile as possible. During the Bush years, it became a running joke – think of it as the Muslim equivalent of a drinking game – to predict when Richard Boucher would make his next trip to Pakistan. Holbrooke is poised to break all of Boucher’s records; this weekend represented his fifth trip to Pakistan since his appointment as special envoy in January.

Every Holbrooke visit, and every follow-up press conference featuring a Pakistani diplomat telling the assembled media that Pakistan will do all it can to eradicate the terrorist threat, makes it easier to paint Pakistan’s leaders as marching to the tune of American drummers. If this is Pakistan’s war — and it is — then Pakistanis and Americans must act like it. As things stand, the monthly visits from American officials look too much like acts of lecturing and prodding rather than the symbols of close cooperation they are designed to be.

Given that Holbrooke can conduct his business over secure telephone lines or video conferencing (I don’t recommend Skype; the connection is often suspect), it behooves him and his office to consider doing more of it behind closed doors. Out-of-sight out-of-mind diplomacy promises the same benefits as the status-quo arrangement, without the appreciable P.R. costs of the latter. It is an option Holbrooke would do well to keep in mind.

Ahsan Butt is a PhD student in political science at the University of Chicago and contributes to the blog Five Rupees.

-Source: FOREIGN POLICY-

Punjab-born Preet Bharara has been confirmed by the US Senate as the new Attorney for Manhattan in New York, considered the most prestigious federal prosecutor’s post outside Washington.

President Barack Obama had announced his intent to appoint Bharara as the US Attorney on May 15.

Bharara’s nomination was confirmed by the Senate on Friday, New York senator Charles Schumer said in a statement. He served as chief counsel to Schumer for more than four years.

In his new post, Bharara will oversee more than 200 lawyers who handle some of the country’s most prominent cases, like the prosecution of Bernard L Madoff for his multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme, The New York Times reported.

A naturalised American citizen from India, The Times said Bharara brings a diversity of background to the post.

“He contributes things that we’ve not seen before,” Daniel C Richman, a law professor at the Columbia University and a former Southern District prosecutor, said.

“He’s thought hard about what a US attorney’s place should be within a broader federal enforcement system and the train wrecks that can develop when unthinking or ill-thinking bureaucrats tamper with that,” The Times quoted him as saying.

Bharara was born in Ferozepur India and moved to the US as an infant as his parents migrated to America in 1970.

Bharara grew up in Monmouth County, NJ, and graduated from Harvard in 1990 and Columbia Law School in 1993. That summer, he worked for several weeks as a volunteer in Mark Green’s campaign for public advocate, occasionally driving

the candidate to campaign events, the NYT said.

His father, a Sikh, and his mother, who was Hindu, were born in what is now Pakistan, before India and Pakistan were separate countries.

In the violent migration that occurred after the 1947 partition, his father and mother both moved to the Indian side, with their families losing property and most of their possessions, Bharara said, according to The Times.

A Wall Street Journal blog said Bharara played a major role in the Senate Judiciary Committee’s investigation into the firings of United States attorneys around the country – an investigation that was, by its nature, political, Bharara won points from both sides of the aisle.

The NYT said Bharara even won over fired prosecutor David C Iglesias of New Mexico, a Republican who said he had wavered over whether to testify voluntarily before the panel, fearing that it would degenerate into a “partisan circus.”

But after their conversations, Iglesias said, he concluded that Bharara was approaching the investigation like a prosecutor, not a politician.

-Source: DNA-

Two US-based consultancy firms who had played a key role in Barack Obama’s presidential campaign last year have agreed to help Indian-American Raja Krishnamoorthi in his bid for Illinois State Comptroller.A former Deputy State Treasurer, Krishnamoorthi has announced to run for the 2010 Democratic primary for State Comptroller if incumbent Dan Hynes chooses to leave the office he has held since 1999.

Illinois is the home state of US president Barack Obama.

AKPD Message and Media and Hartsad Strategic Research have agreed to campaign for Krishnamoorthi, according to an announcement made yesterday.

Formerly headed by White House Senior Adviser David Axelrod, AKPD Message and Media has agreed to provide message and media consulting for his campaign, while Strategic Research, the polling firm that helped Obama win the Iowa caucuses and polled for him in dozens of primary and battleground states, will perform polling and analysis for the campaign.

Both firms had also worked on Obama’s 2004 US Senate campaign, in which he won an upset primary bid and a landslide general election victory.

“I’m delighted that these firms, which played such a key role in President Obama’s political rise, will be providing me with their assistance in reaching the voters of Illinois,” Raja said in a statement.

“With their help, I hope to communicate my heartfelt commitment to our State and my ideas for reforming government and bringing new openness and transparency to its financial dealings,” he said.

Earlier, Raja announced that former-FCC Commissioner Newton Minow has agreed to chair his campaign. Now senior counsel at the Sidley Austin law firm in Chicago, Minow has been a lifelong voice for ethics and reform.

He worked closely with former Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson, Attorney General Robert F Kennedy, and former US President John F Kennedy.

President Barack Obama has named Rajiv J Shah, an Indian American scientist managing a programme at the Billand Melinda Gates Foundation to help the world’s poor lead healthy and productive lives, to a key post.

Obama intends to nominate Shah as under secretary for research, education and economics in the Department of Agriculture, the White House announced on Friday.

Shah is currently the director of agricultural development in the global development programme for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, where he manages the foundation’s agricultural development programme with the goal of helping the world’s poor lead healthy and productive lives.

His work includes grant-making portfolios in science and technology, farmer productivity, market access, and policy and statistics.

Shah joined the foundation in 2001 and previously served as its sirector of strategic opportunities and deputy director of policy and finance for global health.

In these roles, he helped develop and launch the foundation’s global development programme and the international finance facility for immunisation – an effort that raised more than $5 billion for child immunisation and hopes to save more than five million lives around the world.

Prior to joining the foundation, Shah was the health care policy advisor on the Al Gore 2000 presidential campaign and a member of Pennsylvania Governor Edward Rendell’s transition committee on health.

Shah is the co-founder of Health Systems Analytics and Project IMPACT for South Asian Americans. In addition, he has served as a policy aide in the British parliament and worked at the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Currently, Shah serves on the boards of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, Seattle Public Library and Seattle Community College District.

He earned his MD from the University of Pennsylvania Medical School and Master of Science in health economics from the Wharton School of Business.

He is a graduate of the University of Michigan and the London School of Economics (LSE)and has published articles on health policy and global development.