btchd

With Anti-American sentiment high in Pakistan from the continued drone strikes and the war on terror, a recent news report disclosed that the United States is planning a massive expansion of its diplomatic missions in Pakistan. While the State Department continues to claim that the expansion is to replace an already overcrowded, dilapidated and unsafe facilities and to support the “surge” of diplomatic officials in line with President Obama and Secretary Clinton’s strategy for South Asia, you have to wonder whether there is a deeper plan.

According to the report, the White House has asked Congress for $736 million for a new embassy in Islamabad, along with permanent housing and office space for US government civilians. The project is on the same scale as the US embassy in Baghdad at a cost of $740 million.

Additional expansions are planned for Peshawar, Lahore and Kabul. The plan for Peshawar includes the purchase of the Pearl Continental Hotel, Peshawar’s only 5 star hotel. Oddly, the Pearl Continental Hotel is owned by Sadruddin Hashwani – the same person that owns the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, which was the target of a massive terrorist attack. Read the rest of this entry »

First, it was Christopher Hitchens that took the challenge to prove that waterboarding was not torture. His view changed after 15 seconds being waterboarded.

Then, Sean Hannity said on his show that he would be waterboarded for charity taking the debate about torture to a sick level – as if it was a comedy.

Now, Eric Mancow has taken the challenge and learned in 6 seconds that it is definately torture.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Crusades begin in Afghanistan!

A U.S. church raised money to send Bibles, printed in the Pashtu and Dari languages, to American soldiers stationed in Afghanistan, a report on Al Jazeera documented Sunday night.

It is against military rules to proselytize — a regulation one of the soldiers filmed by the network readily acknowledged. “You cannot proselytize, but you can give gifts,” says the soldier. It is a crime in Afghanistan to attempt to convert anyone from Islam to any other religion. “I also want to praise God because my church collected some money to get Bibles for Afghanistan. They came and sent the money out.” The footage is said to be roughly a year old.

The Al Jazeera report also shows a military preacher urging army parishioners to “hunt people for Jesus.”

“The Special Forces guys, they hunt men. Basically, we do the same things as Christians. We hunt people for Jesus. We do, we hunt them down. Get the hound of heaven after them, so we get them into the Kingdom. That’s what we do, that’s our business,” he says.

Read the whole story on The Huffington Post.

Daniel Markey, senior fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote an interesting piece in Foreign Policy magazine called “Zardari’s War.” Markey sets forth a clear analysis of the current situation in Pakistan and where we could be heading if the political and domestic unrest continues.

This time, it wasn’t Islamist militants or al Qaeda stirring up trouble. Rather, Pakistan’s government — elected in the wake of former President Pervez Musharraf’s resignation — has gone to war with itself.

The country’s Supreme Court is once again implicated in the action, having disqualified from office the leaders of Pakistan’s main opposition party: former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his brother, the sitting chief minister of Punjab. Soon after the court’s decision, President Asif Ali Zardari imposed governor’s rule, effectively placing his own man in charge of his country’s most populous and politically dominant province.

In response, the Sharif brothers accused Zardari of manipulating the court and have vowed to take their case to the streets. This is no idle threat. According to public opinion surveys, Sharif is now Pakistan’s most popular politician. His party, the Pakistan Muslim League (N), might well succeed in mobilizing violent street rallies that would test the capacity of state security and could even deliver a deathblow to the coalition government in Islamabad.

In short, Pakistan’s major political leaders are now in a no-holds-barred contest for political power. The time for unity and compromise appears to have passed; the era of stable democratic governance (and a loyal opposition) was fleeting.

Markey’s question of where this puts the Obama administration in terms of the US led War on Terror reveals startling options being considered by the powers that be in Washington. While Pakistan’s newspapers have been full of articles about the hustle and bustle of US and UK diplomats between President’s House, Prime Minister House and Raiwind trying to keep the political battle that has broken out between the Sharif led PML-N and Zardari’s PPP, but Washington is already considering its options if things spin out of control in Pakistan.

But three other, less pleasant outcomes are now more likely. First, Zardari could succeed in quelling Sharif’s protests, effectively sidelining his primary opponent and consolidating his own national standing. Second, Sharif could leverage street protests and existing cleavages within Zardari’s party to claw his way to power. Third, destabilizing violence and prolonged political uncertainty could convince the Army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, to reassert control and sideline both civilian contenders. Read the rest of this entry »

As the final days tick down on the worst President of the United States, it seems that history has already started judging his legacy. Today’s Guardian has a couple of interesting pieces both about the Bush White House.

David Miliband, UK Foreign Secretary, writes that:

The terrorist attacks in Mumbai seven weeks ago sent shock waves around the world. Now all eyes are fixed on the Middle East, where Israel’s response to Hamas’s rockets, a ferocious military campaign, has already left a thousand Gazans dead.

Seven years on from 9/11 it is clear that we need to take a fundamental look at our efforts to prevent extremism and its terrible offspring, terrorist violence. Since 9/11, the notion of a “war on terror” has defined the terrain. The phrase had some merit: it captured the gravity of the threats, the need for solidarity, and the need to respond urgently – where necessary, with force. But ultimately, the notion is misleading and mistaken. The issue is not whether we need to attack the use of terror at its roots, with all the tools available. We must. The question is how.

The idea of a “war on terror” gave the impression of a unified, transnational enemy, embodied in the figure of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida. The reality is that the motivations and identities of terrorist groups are disparate. Lashkar-e-Taiba has roots in Pakistan and says its cause is Kashmir. Hezbollah says it stands for resistance to occupation of the Golan Heights. The Shia and Sunni insurgent groups in Iraq have myriad demands. They are as diverse as the 1970s European movements of the IRA, Baader-Meinhof, and Eta. All used terrorism and sometimes they supported each other, but their causes were not unified and their cooperation was opportunistic.

So it is today.

The 2nd, and in my opinion, more interesting article tells the story of torture and the Bush plan to protect its own: Read the rest of this entry »

I stumbled on this website today and it has really gotten my attention for a few reasons. Before I get into the reasons, let me share a little about MEMRI TV.

MEMRI TV based on the information listed at the About page:

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) was founded in 1998 in Washington, DC to bridge the language gap between the Middle East and the West by monitoring, translating, and studying Arab, Iranian and Turkish media, schoolbooks, and religious sermons. MEMRI is headquartered in Washington, D.C. and has branches in Baghdad, Tokyo and Jerusalem, and a staff of over 70 working around the globe. MEMRI’s research is translated into English, German, French, Italian, and Spanish with a subscriber list of over 75,000. MEMRI is a 501 (c)3 organization and is incorporated in Washington, D.C.

Seems like a simple media monitoring organization that is funded through donations. But when you start to browse the site, you realize that it is nothing more than a collection of speeches, schoolbooks and media stories that are geared at pointing out that Muslims are terrorists.

Check out the page that has been created for Pakistan. The videos posted are from Baithullah Mehsud and others that the Western world consider terrorists translated from our national languages into english for the Western media to reference when creating biased stories.

Why don’t the Muslim bloggers do the same thing for the Christians? Many Christians say that if Jesus Christ were to come back today, most of the Christian world would not recognize Him.

Watching what is happening in Gaza, I find it hard to dispute that belief.