The times they are a not changing

Hola amigos, wie gehts denn allderweil? It’s been a while so it’s time for another post it seems, and it might as well be about what is on everybody’s lips, the change in the Australian government. So here goes, bottoms up.

Hurray, the king is dead, long live the king.

Let us all rejoice for we are young and free of John Howard. No more Abbot, Andrews and Costello, no more Ruddock, just Rudd. And boy is he a fresh face or what?

Unlike Howard, Rudd plans to keep immigrants locked up in detention camps and is happy to have "seaworthy" refugee boats turned around before they reach Australian waters.

SIEV X all over. According to the SMH it’s a bit like this:

The measures bring Labor broadly into line with the coalition's policies.

"You would turn them back," Mr Rudd said of boats approaching Australia.

He said Labor believed in an orderly immigration system enforced by deterrence.

A Labor government would aim to deter asylum seekers by using the threat of detention and Australia's close ties with Indonesia.

Australia's close ties with Indonesia are indeed a threat. I am not sure about you, but to me that sounds like "we decide who will come to this country" in Mandarin. Following logic, in order for refugees to be deterred from trying to make it to Australian shores the conditions in the camps must be as unwelcoming as possible. Far more unwelcoming than a homeless shelter in Brisbane. Kevin Rudd as quoted in The Age:

He also declared himself passionate about tackling homelessness, after visiting three homeless shelters and spending several hours talking to residents there during the election campaign."I think we can do much, much better as a nation for people who don't have anywhere to stay or anywhere secure to stay," he said...

What a man. So hypocritically compassionate, so very Labor. If the human being who has nowhere save to stay is Australian, we can do so much more for her then provide shelter, if they are Non-Australian and got nowhere save to go, they can piss off. There is no other way says Kevin:

But, asked what was compassionate about turning back refugee boats or incarcerating asylum seekers on Christmas Island, Mr Rudd defended the immigration laws… "You've got to have an orderly migration system. The only way you have an orderly migration system is if you have an enforcement mechanism. What's the alternative? There isn't one," he said…

Lock'em up, the only way!!! Kids 'n all, in concentration camps with aggressive guard dogs waiting for a chance to bite. Reminds me of something else I've seen on 60 year old black and white footage taken in similar set ups. Kevin knows what I am talking about:

Citing the history of the refugee convention, forged after the horrors of the Holocaust during World War II in which millions of European Jews were murdered by the Nazi regime, Mr Rudd said: "This is deeply ingrained in my soul about what's important."

How do you reconcile the two statements? The plight of European Jews ingrained in his soul, but ready to lock up people for trying to flee to a secure country with a decent chance of survival.

Death by neglect. Just remember Kev, you now carry the license to kill. And the scary part is that he seems to have no qualms to use it. Following good old Labor tradition, he promised to snuggle up to the only country in the world openly threatening to use its nuclear arsenal, the mighty USA, but that’s probably because their flag looks a bit like ours and is sporting the ALP colours of red, blue and white.

Let me state unequivocally that America remains an overwhelming force for good in the world. Let me state equally unequivocally that America remains an overwhelming force for strategic stability in the region.

Not a word about how the USA has yet again invaded a foreign country and in no time killed upwards of 100'000 civilians and maimed many more. Not a syllable about how this big friend of ours is instigating military coups across the world, their "water-boarding is not torture" camps. Overwhelming force for good. My arse Kevin.

But then, what do I read, cheng beng in the middle of the new Prime Minister's ALP security policy:

...Australia’s participation in the war in Iraq represents the single greatest failure of national security policy since Vietnam...

How is that possible? The two greatest failures of our security policies were both times the result of following the overwhelming force for good into senseless wars, killing millions. My oh my, Kevin, Kevin, Kevin, your hypocrisy stinks to the heavens mate. An apologist if I've ever seen one.

Any schmonz coming from George Bush is regurgitated and presented as Australia's best interest, see also his stance on Iran:

Iran is now casting a longer shadow over the Persian Gulf and the wider Middle East. Iran’s influence in Iraq itself through the Shia majority adds to the overall picture of strategic destabilisation. And this emboldened Iran (a state which has long supported terrorist organisations like Hezbollah and Hamas) continues with its nuclear activities.

So then Kevin, are Australian troops on stand by to assist the US & Israel in any military actions taken against Iran? In which drawer is the pair of socks?

Pakistan, Taliban & Iran v. USA

Today, as I was reading my daily dose of blogs, I came across a post by Henry on Crocked Timber , in which he quotes a Financial Times story on Pakistan and the precarious situation the country finds itself in at the moment. Dictating President General Musharraf just dismissed the chief justice of the Supreme Court, Iftikhar Chaudhary, a move which sparked widespread opposition and protests. The reason for his suspension are most likely some of the judge's recent court rulings, which have the potential to turn out uncomfortable for Musharraf. This was a political hatchet job, and the press / people smelled the roast.

The political climate in Pakistan has been shaky at best since General Musharraf's coup 8 years ago, pitching the pro-democracy civilians against the country's military rulers. This article on Asia Times Online tries to analyse the recent history in Pakistan and comes to the following conclusion:

The military establishment faces the choice of clamping down hard on opposition or allowing the protests to run their course.

"There is undoubtedly a political eruption after a prolonged political lull in the country, and if it is sustained it could go a long way. However, there is always a threat from the establishment that it will make some moves to divide the politicians and lawyers," commented retired Lieutenant-General Hamid Gul, a former head of the Inter-Services Intelligence.

"Musharraf created the situation where a clash of the military establishment and civil society seems to be imminent. There is .... anger among the masses towards the present military rulers," Gul said.

Militants feed off such anger, so once again Washington is pondering whether Musharraf may be more the problem than the solution.

From what I can gather, Musharraf has been walking on rather thin ice for quite a while. He was lucky to survive three assassination/coup attempts since taking over in 1999, the last one just recently was foiled and has shown that his own military is infiltrated by Al-Quaida supporters. Which sort of explains why he has no sympathy for them, catch 22 so to say, but demonstrates at the same time his weakness of being undermined from within his own supposed powerbase.

For the last 5 years Musharraf has found himself in a US - Taliban sandwich. It appears that he is trying to hedge his bets both ways.

With the Taliban as his proxy army he is trying to grind of the thorn of an India friendly Kabul. Pakistan is the vital logistics and hardware supplier the Taliban needs to have a fighting chance against the US & Nato forces in Afghanistan (which helps appeasing the Muslim Pakistani population at home). Afghanistan's mujaheddin have been receiving strong support from Pakistan during the Soviet days 20 years ago, an alliance which is still honored and deemed existing in sections of Pakistan's military and religious establishment.

At the same time he must continue to appease the US by giving Al-Quaida as hard a time as possible in its heartland in the Afghan/Pakistani border region. Since the relationships between Al-Quaida and the Taliban aren't as rosy anymore as they used to be, Musharraf seems to think he can solve the conundrum of how to support the force of Muslim guerilla warriors in Afghanistan whilst simultaneously keeping the US happy by fulfilling his role as reliable ally of the US administration's WoT, by sending his own army after their common foe, the Al-Quaida gang.

For instance, the alleged chief operations manager of AQ, who is currently in the news with his astounding admissions of having orchestrated if not even executed most of AQ's terrorist attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was hunted down and arrested in Pakistan 4 years ago.

Since Pakistan has also a border with Iran, its role as a US ally becomes even more important. With Pakistan being largely Sunni, one would think that not a great deal of sympathy exists between the people of these two countries, but quite contrary, according to this story from Asia Times large portions of the Pakistani population would not support any US attacks on its Shia neighbors. Unlike the man at the helm, General Musharraf, who sees Pakistan in matters Iran firmly on the West's side, in line with other Sunni leaders eg. the House Saud or Mubarak et al.

But Tehran probably has fresh grounds to reassess Musharraf's intentions. Or, it is running out of patience. Last month, terrorists killed 13 officials of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Zahedan. Last week, in another incident in the town of Negor in Sistan-Balochistan, four Iranian policemen were killed, one abducted and another wounded. The perpetrators fled across the border into Pakistan.

Iran last week announced its intention to erect a 3-meter-high concrete wall reinforced with steel rods along its border with Pakistan. Islamabad put on a brave face, with the Foreign Ministry maintaining, "The fence is on the Iranian side of the border, and we have no problem with that." But Tehran calculates that the sheer humiliation of being treated as an infectious gangrene by all its neighbors - Afghanistan, India and Iran - should eventually begin to tell on the Musharraf regime...

What I found most interesting though in the above quoted AT article were the the last 4 paragraphs, where the author, M K Bhadrakumar, a former Indian Foreign Service diplomat, is suggesting that the real issue for America in the US-Iran-Pakistan politics triangle is, surprise surprise, natural resources and their distribution, as in pipelines and US access to them:

...there is a sideshow to these happenings that is no less profound. US intelligence operatives must be laughing all the way to Washington that they could manage with such ease what their suave diplomats (and wily Congress members) have had a hard time achieving in recent years - arresting Islamabad and New Delhi from finalizing the $7 billion Iran-Pakistan-India gas-pipeline project. In geopolitical terms, the project holds the definite potential to forge a unified Asian energy market, with deep implications for US energy security.

Washington was increasingly finding it counterproductive to resort to arm-twisting New Delhi and Islamabad into putting the project on the back burner until such time as US-Iran relations were normalized and Washington, too, could dip into Iran's energy reserves.

Now, just as it was becoming clear that the three regional capitals were inching toward finalization of the project at a trilateral meeting in Tehran in June, the high volatility in the security situation in the Iran-Pakistan border region puts question marks on their energy dialogue. To be sure, the pipeline project is predicated on a climate of trust and confidence prevailing among the three parties.

There was much merit in US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's recent fulsome praise that "this has been a stalwart fighter, Pakistan's Musharraf, in this fight". Those in Washington who insinuated that he deserved "an unusually tough message" over the "war on terror" have since hastily beaten a retreat. They didn't know what they were saying.

Should Musharraf be ousted and Pakistan find its way back to a democratic system, the US would probably loose in the medium to long-term an important ally in the region. 90% of todays 165 million Pakistanis are Muslims (20 Shia, 70 Sunni), of whom many would certainly vote for parties which express the anti-western views many muslims hold.

The US can't afford to loose Pakistan's cooperation, thus any US plans to influence events and outcomes there are probably based on the switch module, replacing one dictator with another, one who'll be grateful for any assistance in overthrowing Musharraf. Straight after the motto "He might be a bastard, but he is our bastard."
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