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The Imperial Mind

American rage at Pakistan over the punishment of a CIA-cooperating Pakistani doctor is quite revealing

Americans of all types — Democrats and Republicans, even some Good Progressives — are just livid that a Pakistani tribal court (reportedly in consultation with Pakistani officials) has imposed a 33-year prison sentence on Shakil Afridi, the Pakistani physician who secretly worked with the CIA to find Osama bin Laden on Pakistani soil. Their fury tracks the standard American media narrative: by punishing Dr. Afridi for the “crime” of helping the U.S. find bin Laden, Pakistan has revealed that it sympathizes with Al Qaeda and is hostile to the U.S. (NPR headline: “33 Years In Prison For Pakistani Doctor Who Aided Hunt For Bin Laden”; NYT headline: “Prison Term for Helping C.I.A. Find Bin Laden”). Except that’s a woefully incomplete narrative: incomplete to the point of being quite misleading.

What Dr. Afridi actually did was concoct a pretextual vaccination program, whereby Pakistani children would be injected with a single Hepatitis B vaccine, with the hope of gaining access to the Abbottabad house where the CIA believed bin Laden was located. The plan was that, under the ruse of vaccinating the children in that province, he would obtain DNA samples that could confirm the presence in the suspected house of the bin Laden family. But the vaccine program he was administering was fake: as Wired‘s public health reporter Maryn McKenna detailed, “since only one of three doses was delivered, the vaccination was effectively useless.” An on-the-ground Guardian investigationdocumented that ”while the vaccine doses themselves were genuine, the medical professionals involved were not following procedures. In an area called Nawa Sher, they did not return a month after the first dose to provide the required second batch. Instead, according to local officials and residents, the team moved on.”

That means that numerous Pakistani children who thought they were being vaccinated against Hepatitis B were in fact left exposed to the virus. Worse, international health workers have long faced serious problems in many parts of the world — including remote Muslim areas — in convincing people that the vaccines they want to give to their children are genuine rather than Western plots to harm them. These suspicions have prevented the eradication of polio and the containment of other preventable diseases in many areas, including in parts of Pakistan. This fauxCIA vaccination program will, for obvious and entirely foreseeable reasons, significantly exacerbate that problem.

As McKenna wrote this week, this fake CIA vaccination program was “a cynical attempt to hijack the credibility that public health workers have built up over decades with local populations” and thus “endangered the status of the fraught polio-eradication campaign, which over the past decade has been challenged in majority-Muslim areas in Africa and South Asia over beliefs that polio vaccination is actually a covert campaign to harm Muslim children.” She further notes that while this suspicion “seems fantastic” to oh-so-sophisticated Western ears — what kind of primitive people would harbor suspicions about Western vaccine programs? – there are actually “perfectly good reasons to distrust vaccination campaigns” from the West (in 1996, for instance, 11 children died in Nigeria when Pfizer, ostensibly to combat a meningitis outbreak, conducted drug trials — experiments — on Nigerian children that did not comport with binding safety standards in the U.S.).

When this fake CIA vaccination program was revealed last year, Doctors Without Borders harshly denounced the CIA and Dr. Afridi for their “grave manipulation of the medical act” that will cause “vulnerable communities – anywhere – needing access to essential health services [to] understandably question the true motivation of medical workers and humanitarian aid.” The group’s President pointed out the obvious: “The potential consequence is that even basic healthcare, including vaccination, does not reach those who need it most.” That is now clearly happening, as the CIA program “is casting its shadow over campaigns to vaccinate Pakistanis against polio.” Gulrez Khan, a Peshawar-based anti-polio worker, recently said that tribesman in the area now consider public health workers to be CIA agents and are more reluctant than ever to accept vaccines and other treatments for their children.

For the moment, leave to the side the question of whether knowingly administering ineffective vaccines to Pakistani children is a justified ruse to find bin Laden (just by the way, it didn’t work, as none of the health workers actually were able to access the bin Laden house, though CIA officials claim the program did help obtain other useful information). In light of all the righteous American outrage over this prison sentence, let’s consider what the U.S. Government would do if the situation were reversed: namely, if an American citizen secretly cooperated with a foreign intelligence service to conduct clandestine operations on U.S. soil, all without the knowledge or consent of the U.S. Government, and let’s further consider what would happen if the American citizen’s role in those operations involved administering a fake vaccine program to unwitting American children. Might any serious punishment ensue? Does anyone view that as anything more than an obvious rhetorical question?

There are numerous examples that make the point. As’ad AbuKhalil poses this one: “Imagine if China were to hire an American physician who would innocently inject unsuspecting Americans with a chemical to obtain information for China.  I am sure that his prison term would be even longer.” Or what if an American doctor of Iranian descent had done this on behalf of the Quds Force, in order to find a member of the designated Iranian Terror group MeK who was living in the United States (one who, say, has been working with Israel to help assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists and wound their wives, or one who was trained by the U.S.), after which Iranian agents invaded his American home, pumped bullets in his skull and shot a few others (his wife and a child) and then dumped his corpse into the Atlantic Ocean? Or take the case of Orlando Bosch, the CIA-backed anti-Cuban Terrorist long harbored by the U.S.; suppose a Cuban-American doctor sympathetic to Castro had injected American children as part of a fake vaccination program in order to help Cuba find and kill Bosch on U.S. soil; he’d be lucky to get 33 years in prison.

In fact, the U.S. Government tries to impose the harshest possible sentences on Americans who do far less than Dr. Afridi did in Pakistan. The Obama administration charged former NSA official Thomas Drake with espionage and tried to imprison him fordecades merely because he exposed serious waste, corruption and illegality in surveillance programs — without the slightest indication of any harm to national security. Right now, they’recharging Bradley Manning with “aiding the enemy” — Al Qaeda — and attempting to impose life imprisonment on the 23-year-old Army Private, merely because he leaked information to the world showing serious war crimes and other government deceit(something The New York Times does frequently) which nobody suggests was done in collaboration with or even with any intent to help Al Qaeda or any other foreign entity. Given all that, just imagine how harshly they’d try to punish an American who secretly collaborated with a foreign intelligence service — who created a fake vaccine program for American kids — to enable secret military action on U.S. soil without their knowledge.

But of course none of these comparisons is equivalent. It’s all different when it’s done to America rather than by America. That’s the great prize for being the world’s imperial power: the rules you impose on others don’t bind you at all. I’m quite certain that none of the people voicing such intense rage over Pakistan’s punishment of Dr. Afridi would voice anything similar if the situation were reversed in any of the ways I’ve just outlined. Can you even imagine any of them saying something like: yes, this American doctor injected American kids with ruse vaccines in order to help the intelligence service of Iran/Pakistan/China/Cuba conduct clandestine operations on U.S. soil without the knowledge of the U.S. Government, but I think that’s justified and he shouldn’t be punished.

If you read or watch any accounts of life in the Roman empire, what you will frequently witness is someone being severely punished for an act against a Roman citizen. That was the most severe crime and the one most harshly punished: one could do any manner of bad things to non-citizens, but not so much as raise a hand to a Roman citizen.

 Watch how often that formulation is used in our political discourse: he tried to kill Americans, people will emphasize when justifying all sorts of U.S. government actions. In other words, there are ordinary, pedestrian crimes (like this one, from today: “An American drone fired two missiles at a bakery in northwest Pakistan Saturday and killed four suspected militants, officials said, as the U.S. pushed on with its drone campaign despite Pakistani demands to stop. This was the third such strike in the country in less than a week”). But then there is the supreme crime: he tried to kill Americans! It’d be one thing if this outrage were honestly expressed as self-interest (we give massive aid to Pakistan so they should do our bidding), but instead, it is, as usual, couched in moral terms.

That is the imperial mind at work. Its premises are often embraced implicitly rather than knowingly: American lives are inherently more valuable; foreign lives are expendable in pursuit of American interests; the U.S. has the inalienable right to take action in other countries that nobody is allowed to take in the U.S. (just imagine: “An Iranian drone fired two missiles at a bakery in the northwest U.S. Saturday and killed four suspected militants, Iranian officials said, as Iran pushed on with its drone campaign despite American demands to stop. This was the third such strike in the country in less than a week” or “Thirty five women and children were killed by a Yemeni cruise missile armed with cluster bombs which struck an alleged Marine training camp in Texas”).

These self-venerating imperial prerogatives are the premises driving the vast bulk of American foreign policy and military discourse. It is certainly what’s driving the spectacle of so many people pretending that the punishment of Dr. Afridi is some sort of aberrational act which the U.S. and other Decent, Civilized Countries would never do.

* * * * *

Two related points:

(1) NPR emphasizes what appear to be the genuine due process deficiencies in the punishment imposed on Dr. Afridi, though he certainly is receiving more due process than those informally and secretly accused of Treason by the U.S. Government and given the Anwar Awlaki treatment, or accused of Terrorism and targeted with a U.S. drone or locked for a decade or so in a cage without charges of any kind.

(2) Zaid Jilani, formerly of Think Progress, asks a really good question about the Hollywood Election Year film depicting the bin Laden raid being produced by Sony Pictures with the help of the Obama administration: “Will the movie feature Pakistani kids tricked into getting fake vaccines? Probably not.” If the film does mention this, I’d bet it will be to marvel at and celebrate the James-Bond-like ingenuity of the CIA.

 

Reference

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حافظ سعید کے معاملہ پر شواہدملے توکاروائی کی جائے گی، گیلانی

اسلام آباد ۔وزیراعظم سید یوسف رضا گیلانی نے کہا ہے کہ صدر آصف علی زرداری کا دورہ بھارت کامیاب رہا‘ بھارت اور امریکہ نے حافظ سعید کے معاملہ پر شواہد دیئے تو قانون کے مطابق کارروائی کی جائے گی ہمسائیوں سے اچھے تعلقات چاہتے ہیں ‘ آئی ایس آئی کا سیاسی ونگ نہیں ہونا چاہئے یہ تاثر غلط ہے کہ حسین حقانی کو ہم نے فرار کرایا لاہور میں اپنی رہائش گاہ پر میڈیا سے گفتگو کرتے ہوئے انہوں نے کہا کہ پاکستان کے بھارت اور امریکہ سے باہمی تعلقات ہیں حافظ سعید سے متعلق شواہد ہیں تو پاکستان کو دیئے جائیں، پاک بھارت سیکرٹری داخلہ مذاکرات سولہ اپریل کو اسلام آباد میں ہوں گے مذاکرات میں حافظ سعید کے معاملہ پر بھی بات ہوگی۔

امریکہ حافظ سعید کے سر کی قیمت لگانے کے بجائے ہم سے بات کرے‘ حافظ سعید کا معاملہ پاکستان کا اندرونی معاملہ ہے انہوں نے کہا کہ صدر آصف علی زرداری اور بھارتی وزیراعظم من موہن سنگھ کی ملاقات میں کشمیر سمیت تمام مسائل پر بات ہوئی ہے بھارت سے معمول کی تجارت دونون ملکوں کے عوام کے مفاد میں ہے اس سے خطے میں خوشحالی آئے گی چین نے بھی مشورہ دیا ہے کہ بھارت سے تجارت کریں وزیر اعلیٰ پنجاب نے توانائی کانفرنس کی میزبانی کی درخواست کی ہے وہ توانائی کانفرنس میں شرکت کریں گے توانائی کے مسئلے پر قابو پانے کیلئے تمام فریقوں اور ماہرین کی رائے لی جائے گی۔

بجٹ میں عوام کو سب سے زیادہ ریلیف دیا جائے گا انہوں نے کہا کہ امریکہ نیٹو اور ایساف سے تعلقات کے بارے میں پارلیمنٹ جائزہ لے رہی ہے قومی سلامتی کی پارلیمانی کمیٹی میں مسلم لیگ ن کا اہم کردار ہے ایک سوال پر انہوں نے کہا کہ یہ تاثر غلط ہے کہ حسین حقانی کو ہم نے فرار کرایا حسین حقانی کا نام ای سی ایل میں تھا عدالت نے نکلوایا۔ پیپلزپارٹی میں کوئی بغاوت نہیں ہے سب کو ساتھ لے کر چل رہا ہوں اور چلنا بھی چاہئے سرائیکی صوبے پر کام کررہے ہیں سرائیکی صوبہ جنوبی پنجاب کے عوام کا حق ہے

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Mr.Haqqani-Special Guest Speaker Among Friends

Special Guest Speaker at TBK
Ambassador Hussain Haqqani
Director of the Center for International Relations & Associate Professor of International Relations Boston University
Topic: Global Terror Networks Sunday, December 16 at 7:00 p.m.
This is the first public lecture of the TBK-AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) Partnership, to further our knowledge and understanding of the many issues that surround Israel and the Middle East. Please come and bring a friend!

Special Guest Speaker at TBKAmbassador Hussain HaqqaniDirector of the Center for International Relations & Associate Professor of International Relations Boston UniversityTopic: Global Terror Networks Sunday, December 16 at 7:00 p.m.This is the first public lecture of the TBK-AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) Partnership, to further our knowledge and understanding of the many issues that surround Israel and the Middle East. Please come and bring a friend!

http://www.tbk.org/_kd/Items/actions.cfm?action=Show&item_id=1027&destination=ShowItem


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Pakistan Taliban Leader Reportedly Killed in U.S. Drone Strike

SLAMABAD –  Intercepted militant radio communications indicate the leader of the Pakistani Taliban may have been killed in a recent U.S. drone strike, Pakistani intelligence officials said Sunday. A Taliban official denied that.
The report coincided with sectarian violence — a bomb blast in eastern Pakistan that killed 14 people in a Shiite religious procession.
The claim that the Pakistani Taliban chief was killed came from officials who said they intercepted a number of Taliban radio conversations. In about a half a dozen intercepts, the militants discussed whether their chief, Hakimullah Mehsud, was killed on Jan. 12 in the North Waziristan tribal area. Some militants confirmed Mehsud was dead, and one criticized others for talking about the issue over the radio.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to reporters.
Pakistani Taliban spokesman Asimullah Mehsud denied the group’s leader was killed and said he was not in the area where the drone strike occurred.
In early 2010, both Pakistani and American officials said they believed a missile strike had killed Hakimullah Mehsud along the border of North and South Waziristan. They were proved wrong when videos appeared showing him still alive.
The Pakistani Taliban is linked to attacks against U.S. targets. They trained the Pakistani-American who tried to detonate a car bomb in New York City’s Times Square in 2010 and is tied to a suicide bombing that killed seven CIA agents at an Afghan base in 2009.
There was no claim of responsibility for Sunday’s bombing that killed 14 people during a Shiite observance in Punjab province in the east — the latest of a series of sectarian attacks in volatile Pakistan.
Hundreds of Pakistani Shiites gathered in the town of Khanpur in Punjab province for a traditional procession to mark the end of 40 days of mourning following the anniversary of the death of Imam Hussein, a revered seventh-century figure.
The explosion went off as the mourners left a mosque, said District Police Chief Sohail Chatta. The bomb appeared to have been planted ahead of time in the path of the procession, he said.
The Pakistani Taliban and other Sunni extremist groups have in the past claimed responsibility for the bombings of Shiite religious sites and ceremonies. Many Sunni extremists in Pakistan regard Shiites as heretics.
The Taliban and other groups have carried out hundreds of bombings over the last five years that have killed thousands of Pakistani troops and civilians as part of a campaign to install a hard-line Islamist government.
The attacks are so common that the country’s interior minister in December actually thanked the Taliban for acting on what he said was a “request” not to stage attacks during the Shiite rituals of Ashoura that month.
Punjab law minister Rana Sanaullah said police investigators were still examining the area of Sunday’s bombing for clues. Security was provided for the procession, but it was breached, Sanaullah said.
The continuing strikes by presumed religious extremists come during a political crisis that pits the Pakistani civilian government against the military, sparking rumors of an impending coup.
Last week the military warned the government of possible “grievous consequences” ahead, and President Asif Ali Zardari took a one-day trip to Dubai that renewed speculation that he might flee the country.
Analysts say the military may be looking for the Supreme Court to push out Zardari rather than risk an outright takeover.

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ESSENCE OF AMERICAN FREEDOM DENIED: The Immigration Nightmares at American Airports

 

Statue of Liberty National Monument
Emma Lazarus’ Famous Poem
A poem by Emma Lazarus is graven on a tablet
within the pedestal on which the statue stands.
The New Colossus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Statue of Liberty National MonumentEmma Lazarus’ Famous PoemA poem by Emma Lazarus is graven on a tabletwithin the pedestal on which the statue stands. The New Colossus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
The Immigration Nightmares at American Airports
By Saeed Qureshi
If you have gone through the immigration procedures at the American airports, you will bear me out that it is nothing short of a nightmare. The immigration officers randomly pick up the passengers and send them to a separate enclosure where they are subjected to intriguing and harassing enquiries starting from their visits aboard, purpose of staying, whom they met and how long and where they stayed etc.
Even if a passenger has already made several visits to and fro United States and also is an American citizen, he or she is asked these redundant questions and fingerprinted again. From every incoming flight quite a few passengers are made to wait in special rooms for additional questioning. Such patently discriminating treatment is mostly meted out to the passengers from the Indian subcontinent and Arab countries.
A passenger with a beard, turban, wearing long robes, women wearing headscarf or those having wheatish pigment are vulnerable to additional scrutiny. For travelers of Pakistani origin and more specifically with such suffixes or prefixes as Muhammad and Ali, the interrogation is nothing short of a torture.
There were such instances at the airports that the passengers with a beard or long trousers as the Muslims wear, was not allowed to travel and offloaded for fear of sabotage or due to the concern expressed by fellow passengers. The fundamental rights, the trust in citizens and civil liberties are not taken seriously and their infringement at the airports is now a common practice.
While the TSA (Transport Security Administration) is responsible for baggage and body search of the passengers, the immigration staff checks the traveling documents one of which is the passport with visas if required.
“The TSA created in response to the September 11, 2001 attacks, is charged with developing policies to protect U.S. transportation, especially in airport security and the prevention of aircraft hijacking.”
Its budget for fiscal year 2011 was around $8.1 billion. Various security experts including Bruce Schneier accused TSA for fostering a false sense of safety via harsh measures employed at the airports.
As for body search it is an abject humiliation and utter degradation for the humans to be stripped off their shoes, jewelry items, their purses, cell phones and even excessive clothing and walk half naked through the security door that might beep even if it was the belt that he forgot to tak off.
The 9/11 has changed the social environment and the mindset and world- view of a sizeable segment of American population to an appalling extent. Now even the American citizens carrying the American passports but having different pigment or color of skin are treated as potential suspects and therefore not trusted.
Gone are the days when one could walk though the security check points with such items as water, beverages, and food items without any fear of questioning or waylaying. One could go so close to the aircraft that only a wall barrier would be left between the passengers and the aircraft. Such was the carefree, easy, liberal and free environment of air traveling only a decade ago.
The conditions for traveling and the environment at the U.S. airports are rife with immense tension and stark apprehensions not only for the travelers but also for the staff posted on security check points. The passengers would remain under the nagging fright that despite their extreme precautions, there might be anything left in his baggage that could be used to profile them as potential terrorists or suspicious characters.
The immigration officers are repositories of absolute and unfettered powers to detain, deport or confine any passenger even without cogent grounds. One’s being elderly and those with family members should be taken as enough evidence that such people cannot be mischievous and dangerous. But there are no exceptions even for this category of harmless passengers.
In case of refusal to enter, there is no option available for remedy to the genuine passengers traveling either alone or with their families members. A passenger sent to the special rooms feels himself under the lurking fear and paranoid that his segregation and special questioning could result in his expulsion or deportation from the United States or he could be arrested as a potential terrorist.
It is invariably futile for the harried passengers to reason with the immigration officers and convince them about the legitimacy of the visit to the United States. It is primarily the whims and perfunctory assessment of the entry officers to grant or refuse entry to any person, no matter how genuine and justified the documents would be.
Occasionally some officers draw out sadistic satisfaction by using their immense powers to hold or detain a person even without any solid reason. The inspectors sometimes allegedly ridicule passengers; use racial and sexual taunts.
It would be heart- gripping to witness the show of authority and occasional mocking on the part of the officer in comparison to the helpless and traumatized passengers. One may also imagine the stark anguish of those passengers who for flimsy and frivolous reasons or mere doubts are refused entry and forced to take return flights.
In many instances, the panicked, nerve-shattered, terrified and absolutely helpless passengers had to miss the next connecting flight due to the enforced waiting period for clearance or refusal of the admission to enter. Those who have gone through this agonizing waiting period only can express how one suffers from two pangs of agonies simultaneously: one the overwhelming fear of denial to enter and second to miss the next flight.
These passengers may have to attend a time sensitive extremely crucial business meeting, reach their families for bereavement or funeral rites, join a wedding ceremony, take part in a graduation ceremony or attend a course of vital import, or to be present in a court hearing. The immigration staff is usually unconcerned about the nature of the visit as their entire focus is on finding some clue to prove the man was a suspect traveler.
In his article,” U.N. Report Cites Harassment at American Airports of Asylum Seekers” published in the New York Times some time back, the writer Rachell L Swarns mentions about a confidential report conducted by the United Nations in cooperation with the Department of Homeland Security.
The report found that “airport inspectors with the power to summarily deport illegal immigrants have sometimes intimidated and handcuffed travelers fleeing persecution, discouraged some from seeking political asylum and often lacked an understanding of asylum law.”
There is a dire need to inject some modicum of sanity and rationale into the immigration procedures at the American airports. In case of a person who has been previously fingerprinted at the embassy or at the airport, the bizarre practice of taking his fingerprints again, and detained for intensive interrogation, should be stopped. His entire profile and background that is already in the system should be sufficient to verify his particulars on the spur of the moment.
The people who come to the United States carry genuine visas and get these visas on the strength of heavy and authentic documentation. So to suspect these previously traveling passengers and even the new ones under the suspicion that some of these might be trouble makers or so called terrorist is to cast doubts on the performance and ability of the concerned American embassies abroad.
The American embassies do not grant visas in the air. They do so after absolute satisfaction and procurement of voluminous documentation and thoroughly and comprehensively checking the background of the visa seekers.
Due to these stringent and rigorous immigration rules enforced after 9/11 incident, the quantum of visitors coming to the United States reportedly, has considerably dwindled. Also the enrolment of foreign students in American educational institutions has drastically decreased causing immense economic loss to them.

 

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