Pakistan's Nukes accessible to Al-Qaeda??

[debbie mannas]

Scary but not surprising, considering Al-Qaeda and the Taliban were trained in Pakistan and supported actively by powerful groups there.



www.abc.net.au/news/newsi...842494.htm



Pearl book alleges Pakistani involvement in extremism



Daniel Pearl, the US reporter beheaded in Karachi last year, was killed because he had discovered dangerous secrets about Pakistani involvement in Islamic extremism, according to an investigation by French philosopher and media personality Bernard-Henri Levy.



"He was the man who knew too much. His work as a journalist took him down trails which he should probably never have followed.



"Basically he was killed to stop him writing an article," said Mr Levy, author of Who killed Daniel Pearl? which has just been published in France.



Pearl, who was 38, was kidnapped in January 2002 while working on a story about Islamic militants for The Wall Street Journal.



His remains were found in May after a gruesome video showing his murder was sent to a news agency in Karachi.



In a 525-page volume Mr Levy retraces the reporter's last steps in freedom, and the trap set for him by Omar Sheikh, the British-born Islamic extremist sentenced to death in Pakistan for the murder last year, who forms the book's counter-theme.



According to Mr Levy, Sheikh was acting for the Pakistani intelligence services.



"Pearl's assassin was not a fanatic but an agent, a double-agent, of the Pakistani secret services, and also of Al Qaeda," he told Le Figaro newspaper.



The reporter, who was lured into captivity by the promise of an interview with leading Islamic militant Mubarak Gilani, may have been about to expose how close Al Qaeda was to acquiring nuclear weapons from supporters inside the Pakistani scientific establishment, according to Mr Levy.



Or he may have had information about how relatively unknown Pakistani individuals such as Gilani were in fact controlling Al Qaeda's apparent leader Osama bin Laden.



"My hypothesis is that bin Laden, this scarecrow of whom we are quite rightly afraid, is in some respects a puppet. He is there on stage but behind him are more secret, but more important, individuals who are his inspiration. That was what Pearl discovered. That was why he was killed," Levy said. Who killed Daniel Pearl? is a highly personalised account by the 54-year-old French author, who has written extensively about the conflicts in Bosnia and Afghanistan and the emergence of radical Islam as a challenge to western liberalism.



His journey takes him to California to meet Pearl's family and to London where Sheikh was educated at the respected London School of Economics, as well as to Pakistan, Bosnia and the Gulf.



"Radical Islam is as much to be feared today as the communist and fascist totalitarianisms of yesterday were," said Mr Levy.



"Everything must be done to stop a frontal collision between the west and Islam in general. The only war of civilisations must be within Islam, between the democrats and the fascists."

[Galmin]

It is stuff like this "Operation Enduring Freedom" should be concentrating on.



Damn.

[debbie mannas]

There's another more forceful article I read, but since I couldnt trace its source I didnt post it. But that's far more outright in its accusations.



These guys are all allies of the US - its truly sleeping with the enemy.

[questionnaire]

This is very worrying, but we must also remember that a vast nuclear arsenal is also accessible to Bush and his corporate cronies. Only one nation has used nuclear weapons in the past. In academic circles, Monsieur Levy has a bit of a reputation as a middle-brow pop-philosopher and a scaremonger who prefers the rhetorical flourish to the hard analysis. A much more interesting French philosopher, Jean Baudrillard, has claimed that the 'spirit of terrorism' now rearing up in the radical elements of Islam is a reaction to the power imbalance that was created after the fall of the Soviet Union, and the subsequent expansion of corporate interests that threatens to destroy different ways of life, both traditional and modern, across the globe.



I think that America needs to rediscover its democratic politics and bring its corporations under control. It is a nation with great potential, but it has for the moment lost its way. The only alternative is for a more united Europe - which would have even greater economic power than America - to start flexing its muscles and establish trade with the developing world in a different way. If Europe started trading oil in Euros (which are currently gaining strength against the dollar) the dollar would become less attractive and developing nations would be able to stop having unfair deals forced upon to earn dollars. Thus the American-based corporations' stranglehold would be significantly loosened, and a move towards a rebalancing of power would be made. The hurt this would cause the American economy could be obviated by adopting a more Keynesian approach to regenerate domestic trade and industry.



America must understand that cultural groups within many of the weaker nations are terrified of its immense military power and nuclear capability, and the invasion of Iraq has magnified that fear. Extremists know that the only way to oppose such a power is by use of the international guerilla tactics of terrorism. Some people will just not be bullied into changing their ways of life, no matter how bad they might seem to American eyes, and the only way to diminish the threat of terrorism is for America to adopt radically different foreign policies on the issues of trade, corporate expansion, cultural imperialism and the use of military force.



Steve H

[debbie mannas]

I've seen you on the mp3.com boards... too thin skinned to post there hehe.



cheers

d

[questionnaire]

Don't blame you at all, Debbie, it's swarming with trolls over there and seems to be unmoderated .... but they don't frighten this big old Billy Goat Gruff .....



Steve

[DreamTone7]

Don't disagree with you at all, Steve. But I would point out that the use of atomic weapons during WWII by the US saved 5 million lives at the expense of less than 1 million. (It would be interesting to see what kind of choice in this instance would be made by other members of this board.)

[questionnaire]

"... the US saved 5 million lives at the expense of less than 1 million."



Ah, a utilitarian cost-benefit analysis devoid of any morality or emotion. Who estimated 5 million anyway? Germany and Japan were on their knees at the time.



OK, let's follow your logic for a moment, DT. If killing a lot of right-wing Americans will save a lot of lives that we might estimate will be lost in the future in their expansionary programme, then, by the same logic, every terrorist in the world must be justified.



Clausewitz, the foremost authority on war, when asked what caused it, said 'war causes war'. Payback - interminable cycles of revenge.



Steve H



Steve H

[DreamTone7]

The difference, of course, is that Japan had to be stopped from fighting by getting them to surrender. The only way to do that was to either invade, or drop the big one.

[debbie mannas]

by its might and power. But it too is an invader.



How long before the world says enough is enough - the only way to stop US invasion is to get them to surrender or drop the big one...???



I'm sure there are countries working on this scheme right now, and will eventually join hands to stop this madness.



This is scary. I have family in the US, LOTS.

[DreamTone7]

"How long before the world says enough is enough - the only way to stop US invasion is to get them to surrender or drop the big one...???"



Won't ever happen Deb. US companies are currently (and have been for quite awhile) spreading their manufacturing across the globe. I work for Boeing, and I will tell you that we have an ICREASINGLY vast number of parts (including a lot of the tail fins) being made overseas......especially in China where the labor is cheap. (And Boeing is relatively late to the game.) I don't like it as it threatens jobs here, but the US is attempting to intertwine its economy with the world so that governments will be inclined to buy from US companies, and will tend to suffer if the US economy takes a dive (like from, say, being wiped out by a bunch of nukes?) Eventually, any person or persons who attempt to take out the US will have the governments of an increasingly large number of countries world-wide down on their necks. I don't like it.....but that's the way it is. In fact, if you take a good look with this in mind, you can see that it has already begun.

[questionnaire]

You're absolutely right, DT. US corporations have been infiltrating foreign economies, creating dependency and either hamstringing or destabilising their governments since the 1950s. The fact is the the US domestic economy has run into deep trouble after Greenspan's 'V-shaped' recovery proved to a non-starter, and thus the corporations have no choice to continue their expansion across the globe. Globalisation, driven by the core logic of the commodity market, is, for the time being, an unstoppable force. Since the Soviet Union fell and the balance of power was disturbed, no state possesses the power to oppose (or even negotiate with to any significant extent) the US corporate/federal alliance. They have even had Europe, along with China the only potentially more powerful economic and political force, in a pinfall because its national domestic economies have been over-dependent on US investment trends since the Marshall aid plan just after WWII.



But, historically speaking, vanquishing the opposition is the worst thing a budding empire can do. This gets very complex, but in a nutshell it encourages intractable forms of degeneracy, dissent and terrorism to grow both internally and externally. The empire creates its own cancer (a disease caused by cells being TOO SUCCESSFUL at reproducing themselves). The massive escalation of external terrorist activity and the huge rises in the US internal corruption, fraud, crime and violence rates since the 1980s are the first symptoms; enemies against which the empire has no defence. All empires start slowly dying the minute they are born.



This is not sci-fi speculation - it has happened time and time again across history and is verifiable by a lot of hard evidence. The disturbing thought is that NOT ONCE, since ancient Babylon and Egypt, has any empire had the sense to see this happening and do something about it, with the possible exception of the de-colonialisation process at the end of the British Empire in the 1940s. Even that was a belated and very messy affair. Given the extremely low calibre of the current US administration, the stupidity of its mass culture and the electoral weakness of its intelligent opposition, I can't see them being the first in history to do something sensible. Blade-Runner, here we come.



Steve H

[Galmin]

Quote:

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US companies are currently (and have been for quite awhile) spreading their manufacturing across the globe./ /.........especially in China where the labor is cheap

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It's not a US phenomenon, DT, all western industry struggle to get an edge. It's called competition.

[debbie mannas]

complacency makes you weak. Militarily the US might be strong but complacency in other areas that badly need attention is likely to be its undoing.

[NRKofOver]

Quote:

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It's not a US phenomenon, DT, all western industry struggle to get an edge. It's called competition.

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Although 'competition' drives much of global economic expansion, the truth for many companies is that greed drives their desire to move their manufacturing to other nations. Take Phil Knight of Nike for instance. He builds shoes in Korea, China, Indonesia, wherever he can find cheap labor. And then those shoes which cost a couple bucks to make are sold for $100+ in the US. In the meantime, the person getting the most out of this is Mr. Knight, worth around $5 billion. Obviously, Nike shoes don't have to be made in foreign countries, he could have them made in the US and still show a profit, or he could sell Nike shoes for 30% of their retail price now and still show a profit, but those profits and subsequently his personal wealth would be smaller. The only conclusion has to be that Mr. Knight is greedy.

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