Pakistan in world politics

“China Hand” has a truly great post on “The China Factor in Pakistani Politics” over at her/his China Matters blog. I had noted it briefly toward the end of (the revised version of) this JWN post this morning, but it’s worth a lot more attention.
CH notes– correctly in my view– that, “China’s presence and interests in Pakistan dwarf America’s” and judges that,

    Pakistan’s alliance with China, which supports Islamabad’s confrontation with India and underpins its hopes for economic growth in its populous heartland, is probably a lot more important to Islamabad than the dangerous, destabilizing, and thankless task of pursuing Islamic extremists on its remote and impoverished frontiers at Washington’s behest.

So the question I’m wrestling with now is What role is the present unrest in Pakistan playing in the broader drama of global politics? (That is, the withering of US power on the dessicated vine of the Bushites’ incompetence, and the concomitant rise of China onto the world scene.)
I should note that in the past couple of days, some Chinese officials have done quite a lot to spur the current run on the dollar. As part of a “grand plan” by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, or not?
Not at all clear.
WaPo’s Neil Irwin echoed a lot of other reporting on the currency markets story when he reported in today’s paper,

    Top Chinese officials suggested at a conference yesterday that they would direct more of their future reserves into European assets — that the euro, not just the dollar, would increasingly be a currency of choice…
    “We will favor stronger currencies over weaker ones and will readjust accordingly,” said Cheng Siwei, vice chairman of China’s National People’s Congress. Another official said the dollar was losing its position as the world’s default currency.
    The words were consistent with signals the Chinese have been sending about wanting to move away from pouring all their reserves into dollars…

The Economist’s always-anonymous writers cast doubt on the “Beijing grand plan” theory when they noted that the “mid-ranking Chinese officials” concerned were “not actually responsible for foreign-exchange policy.”
So we by no means have enough evidence yet to conclude that a 1956 moment is at hand. (That’s a reference to the train of events in late-October 1956 when Eisenhower decided to pull the plug on the US’s support of the pound sterling, in an attempt– successful, as it turned out– to “persuade” the Brits to withdraw from Egypt… a development which by 1970 had led to the dismantling of the entire British military presence east of Suez and curtains for Britain as any kind of an independent global power.)
But regarding the current Chinese-US tussle for power, who yet knows what is actually happening? My judgment is that the Chinese are nowhere near ready yet to “move in” on the task of global governance that US hegemony has been performing with such disturbing results in recent years. Though some adjustment in the global power balance, as between Washington, Beijing, and a number of lesser players, is by now inevitable.
We should remember, too, that in the always-jittery and risk-ridden world of international financial and currency transactions– which has become a lot more potentially risky in the 51 years since 1956– it wouldn’t necessarily require a central “grand plan” from the CCCCP for extremely deep damage to be done to the global financial system. Sometimes, in the horrendous game of poker that international finance has now become, rumors can become self-fulfilling prophecies; what is “traded” internationally often has no relationship to any underlying reality; graft, speculation, and hyper-profits are rampant; and hundreds upon hundreds of millions of the world’s poorest people stand to get hurt very badly indeed…
So while we all ponder these matters more, let me just return to China Hand’s blog post, and tease some more of the interesting portions of that out for you…
S/he writes:

    Beijing and Islamabad’s strategic priorities—countering India and nurturing economic development before confronting extremists in the hinterland—are in perfect sync.
    The two nations grew even closer when the Bush administration abandoned the Pakistan-centric order of battle of the Global War on Terror and opted for closer ties with India in the service of what looks like a different strategic objective—an attempt to counter China’s growing influence in South Asia.
    So, it would be rather ironic if the road to President Musharraf’s downfall began at a Chinese massage parlor in Islamabad.

Actually, not particularly ironic, as such. Intriguing, possibly. Titillating, perhaps…
But CH then goes on to lay out– with lots of good hyperlinked sources– how the actions that the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) Islamist extremists took against Chinese citizens working in that massage parlor back in June prompted Musharraf to launch the big crackdown on the Lal Masjid people… and that led to the security crisis.. that led (later) to last Saturday’s suspension of portions of the Pakistani constitution by Musharraf.
Well, CH doesn’t really adequately describe for us the last link in that causal chain. But s/he does cites this report from the June 22 edition of Pakistan Today as noting that,

    The Chinese ambassador contacted President Hu Jintao two times during the 15-hour [Chinese masseuse] hostage drama, sources said… The Chinese president expressed confidence that the Pakistan government would find out a peaceful solution to the hostage crisis. Sources quoted President Hu Jintao, expressing shock over the kidnapping of the Chinese nationals, has called for security for them.

China Hand notes this:

    China did not want to see its citizens and interests to become pawns in Pakistan’s internal strife.
    It’s a non-trivial point for China, which lacks the military reach to effectively protect its overseas citizens itself, but does not want to see them turned into the bargaining chip of first resort for dissidents in dangerous lands like Pakistan, Sudan, Nigeria, and etc. who are looking to get some leverage on the local government–or Beijing.
    It looks like China demanded that Pakistan draw a red line at the abduction, extortion, and murder of its citizens.
    A week after the kidnapping incident, Pakistan’s Federal Interior Minister was in Beijing…

So in early July, handpicked units of the Pakistani security forces finally went in to storm the Red Mosque. Three Chinese workers at an auto-rickshaw factory in the North West Frontier Province were killed in revenge– and as CH notes, the story was “splashed all over the Chinese media.” (As, here.)
CH sums up:

    A trusted ally demands real, meaningful, and risky action by Pakistan against terrorism. Because of the importance of the ally, the proximity of the threat to the political and economic heart of the country, and the tactical and strategic merits of the action, Pakistan responds positively.
    That ally is, of course, China.
    Not the United States.
    And that’s probably not going to change even if Benazir Bhutto takes power.

Tangled webs, huh?
Here, by the way, is what China’s Xinhua News Agency was writing about Pakistan on Tuesday:

    China is highly concerned about the situation in Pakistan, and believes the country has the ability to solve its own issues, said Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao Tuesday.
    “Pakistan is one of the important neighbouring countries of China. We believe the Pakistani government and people have the ability to solve their own problems and hope Pakistan could maintain stability and development,” Liu told a regular press conference.

By the way, as always, I’d love it if any JWN readers who can throw more light on these issues than I can would contribute their own analyses, hyperlinks, etc. to the Comments section here.

32 thoughts on “Pakistan in world politics”

  1. The Communist Party of China has recently completed its 17th National Congress. There is a Congress web site. The page on foreign relations is at:
    http://english.cpcnews.cn/92247/6277761.html
    Chang’e 1, the lunar probe, successfully entered its working orbit around the moon yesterday. Google Chang’e 1.
    A Chinese bank purchased a 20% stake in South Africa’s Standard Bank a few days ago. Standard is one of the four major SA retail banks, of which it has the biggest network in other African countries. At the same time, another Chinese Bank purchased an interest in a significant Nigerian bank. Google News will find all this if you want it.
    China is generally well respected in Africa.
    Just to contrast, just this week in Chad a child-trafficing racket involving “sans-frontierist” NGOs (i.e. MSF). This is a big story in Europe. We do not have such problems with China.

  3. “China is generally well respected in Africa.”
    No doubt it is!
    http://www.cfr.org/publication/9557/
    Selling arms to African countries helps China cement relationships with African leaders and helps offset the costs of buying oil from them. China doesn’t have the same human rights concerns as the United States and European countries, experts say, so it will sell military hardware and weapons to nearly anyone. Indeed, Beijing sees Africa as a growth market for its military hardware.

  5. Is this the “Lobby” view, Vadim?
    Depends, Dominic… do you suppose Human Rights Watch to be an arm of the Zionist Conspiracy? Is ‘Dino Mahtani’ [the author of the FT report] a conspirator as well??
    Do tell! Is it perhaps your posture that China ISN’T awash in african blood? That they aren’t trading African oil resources for military hardware on a very large scale? Seems to me what they’re doing in Africa is exactly what you accuse the US of doing everywhere else.

  8. While communicating with a neighbouring lady, I had realised she worked at the time for a Pakistani consulate locally, involved in a program dealing with resources this country can offer worldwide.
    Not much really known of this pragmatic possibility of a still poor and undeveloped British Commonwealth appendix.

  9. Long ago, long before “The Lobby”, it was not the case that we as communists would expect such hostility from that quarter. When the Jews arrived in the Nazi concentration camps, they found that communists were already there. I dare say that some of those communists were Jews, but there as communists. In the book “IBM and the Holocaust”, by Edwin Black, published in 2001 by Little, Brown and by Crown Publishers, the list that follows is given on page 362. It is the IBM punched-card codes for the standard sixteen camp categories:
    Political Prisoner, 1; Bible Researcher, 2; Homosexual, 3; Dishonourable Military Discharge, 4; Clergy, 5; Communist Spaniard, 6; Foreign Civilian Worker, 7; Jew, 8; Asocial, 9; Habitual Criminal, 10; Major Felons, 11; Gypsy, 12; Prisoners of War, 13; Covert Prisoner, 14; Hard Labour Detainee, 15; Diplomatic consul, 16.
    “Bible Researcher” refers to Jehovah’s Witnesses.
    There used to be a complicated and sometimes tender solidarity felt between these categories. For example, a Jehovah’s Witness once said to me: “We and the Communists were the only ones who could explain to ourselves why we were there.” True or false I don’t know, but I took it very emotionally. I can’t forget it.
    Now I have to wonder, what is The Lobby doing when it is dumping on the Chinese, because they are communists? Where does that come from?

  10. Dominic, although I am a card-carrying “Lobby” conspirator, I bear no ill will toward the government of China. Without China I would have none of the material luxuries I take for granted (manufactured for me in slave labor like conditions in that state, exchanged for worthless pieces of green paper.) No ipod, no flat panel TV, poof!
    Like you I try not to think about the provenance of the fuel used to run those slave factories, or what manner of product was supplied in exchange (UPI:”Chinese weapons currently in service in the Sudanese forces include Type 54 122-mm howitzers, Type 59-I 130-mm cannons, Type 81 122-mm rocket guns, Type 59 57-mm air-defense guns, mortars of different calibers, eight J-6 fighters and a number of J-7 fighters…At the Zhuhai Air Show, which opened last Thursday, military delegations from Angola and Sudan were allowed to make very careful examinations of FC-1 fighters and K-8 trainer aircraft. Angola and Ethiopia were the first African countries to receive Su-27 SK fighters; Angola has ordered eight.”)
    Also, I wouldn’t be counting my profits from Sinopec, a stock I’ve owned from its earliest days listed on the New York Stock Exchange (a rather unconvential place to find Communists hawking their wares if you ask me, but hey – you’re the expert.)
    Seems like this type of “Communism” looks very much like your worst portrayal of capitalism. Overt imperialism (check that Beeb documentary on the colonization of Angola…why are there more Chinese ‘guest workers’ in Angola than US troops in Iraq?) – racism (did you hear the boss in Luanda explaining that his workers are all chinese because Angolans are lazy?) Colonization (Monopoly control of markets. “Pseudo development” in the form of bribery with no cultivation of autonomous local industry or transfer of technology. Total lack of transparency. Total absence of labor unions. Etc. Just like capitalism eh? Only without any of the checks and balances even that imperfect system usually admits. It’s fascinating to see a deeply committed communist like yourself shilling for them here, esp. as their imperialism serves no one so much as the US consumer.
    The idea that China would threaten the US economy is equally ridiculous. The US is China’s largest individual customer & its #1 market (for ipods, Yankee Bonds, and common stock.)

  11. That’s just another load of the same pungent stuff, Vadim. My question stands, but not to you this time, please. Your reply is understood. Rather the question goes to JWN as a whole. What happened? How did our former friends and comrades turn into our enemies? Why has The Lobby got an attitude to everything around the globe, so that you meet them everywhere, even in third-party situations that have absolutely nothing to do with them?

  12. Why has The Lobby got an attitude to everything around the globe
    Why shouldn’t they? Don’t you? What on earth do you (an resident african of european birth) have to do with matters in Pakistan, or China or Israel?
    On that score, the threads about Israel are below. This thread is about China and pakistan, not Africa, and not the “Lobby” which seems to be your preoccupation.
    Speaking of freudian projection, your “enemies” are of your own making. I for one surely don’t consider you “my enemy!”

  13. “Why has The Lobby got an attitude to everything around the globe, so that you meet them everywhere, even in third-party situations that have absolutely nothing to do with them?”
    Possibly a better question would be, “why do you see the hand of ‘The Lobby’ every time your favourite things are criticised, even if the context of the criticism is (in your words) ‘a third-party situation that has absolutely nothing to do with them?”
    It seems that in your lexicon, “The Lobby” has become the approximate equivalent of the term “Communist” to a 50s-era John Bircher: i.e., an epithet to be flung indiscriminately at one’s political opponents. As someone who you would no doubt consider a “Lobbyist” myself, I am grateful for your contribution to making the term meaningless.

  14. Hi flim.
    I invite you to look at Helena Cobban’s post, which asks for information about China, including URLs.
    So I do that. Then Vadim rips into me. Twice. I know Vadim’s posts. So I ask him without prejudice, is this the “Lobby” view? See that? Fourth comment from the top.
    He dodges around, does not deny it, and then chucks a whole lot more of the same stuff at me.
    You describe yourself as a big-L Lobbyist. So read what I have written here. Don’t attack some stereotype. I am right here.
    Maybe you saw what happened when I put something on JWN about the vile neo-fascist plan to have a “Kristallnacht Anniversary” march in Prague, which could still happen, I suppose. It was going to be tomorrow, Saturday 10 November. I wrote how much I was (and am) opposed to it. Two people flew at me for that, furiously. Where were you Lobby guys on that day? Is it because the Czech Republic has an anti-communist government that banned the local Young Communist League a few months ago? So you keep shtum?

  15. does not deny it
    Once more: there is no “Lobby”, there is no “Lobby view” and if one existed Human Rights Watch and Nigerian FT freelancers aren’t involved. The Lobby is (exactly as the Birch “communist” slur) a well-poisoning diversionary slur.
    Two people flew at me for that, furiously.
    it was refreshing seeing you come to the defense of Jews somewhere on earth (taking a break from cheerleading for Hezbollah which considers the Holocaust a Jewish invention and Jews worldwide target practice). But going after anti-semites could be a full time job, and anti-semitism isn’t relevant to every discussion, despite what Abe Foxman says on the topic.

  16. “So I do that. Then Vadim rips into me. Twice. I know Vadim’s posts. So I ask him without prejudice, is this the ‘Lobby’ view?”
    Which begs the question of why it would occur to you to ask this, in the context of a discussion about China, Pakistan and Africa.
    “You describe yourself as a big-L Lobbyist.”
    Please reread how I actually described myself, and whose perspective I was hypothetically speaking from. I don’t consider myself a “Lobbyist.” I do believe, based on the Mearsheimer/Walt definition that you evidently espouse, that _you_ would consider me one.
    “Maybe you saw what happened when I put something on JWN about the vile neo-fascist plan to have a ‘Kristallnacht Anniversary’ march in Prague”
    I’m new to this forum and wasn’t around for that thread. Looking back at it I see that one person attacked you viciously (if briefly) and someone else accused you of off-topic posting. Had I been there I would have defended you; I have no particular ax to grind against communism or in favor of the Czech government. But the fact that you see the “Lobby’s” hand in the failure of others to jump to your defence, when in fact the exchange might simply have been missed in the heat of a very long thread, stands as evidence for my thesis of three comments above.

  17. Thanks, flim, for taking the trouble to look that up. I appreciate that. Since you are new to this forum I could mention that there is a concern with fascism on here that is bound up with a discussion on Spain, “transition” (or not) in Spain, and memorialisation, selective or otherwise, in Spain.
    The first time I read Edwin Black’s book, which I cam across by chance browsing through a bookshop, (and immediately purchased) the category “Communist Spaniard” in that list quoted above hit me like a brick. How many? Who knows?
    The outrageous “Kristallnacht Anniversary” provocation is part of the same story. I don’t agree with Vadim that dealing with anti-semitism is like putting out little brush fires here and there. The problem is fascism. Fascism is anti-communism. We have to be together if we are going to beat it. If the Lobby is not really an Isreali or Zionist lobby, but really (or even partially) an anti-communist, pro-fascist lobby masquerading as a Zionist one, then we are all in some serious trouble.
    I hope you get my drift at this stage. For the purposes of this particular topic, the I’m saying that there is no good going to come out of a Cold-War style rant against China. Helena is right. let’s try and get some genuine info about this huge part of the human race.

  18. Surprise surprise, vadim points out some rather unsavory aspects of China in world affairs and Dominic immediately starts attacking him as a member of “the lobby.”
    Why are Jews not so friendly towards communists now Dominic? The same reason just about everyone else is no longer sympathetic to communism. It was a failed ideology that in its most prominent forms led to some of the most repressive states on earth.
    Of course, to the extent that the official communist line bears the same pathological hatred toward Israel that you spew out, it would not be a surprise that many Jews find it particularly distasteful. One not need be a member of any “lobby” to recognize and reject such bigotry trying to disguise itself as a progressive movement.

  19. Fascism is anti-communism
    Dominic, if your position is that anyone who is opposed to communism is a fascist then we may never agree on much. The political world is more than “us” versus “them.” Is your implication that I am “pro-fascist?” for criticising China?China’s government is more fascist than communist. Nothing about its economy is remotely communist and the way its government conducts its economic relations with other nations and its own people is unquestionably exploitative, anti-labor, colonial, militaristic and authoritarian.
    there is no good going to come out of a Cold-War style rant against China
    This isn’t a “Cold war style rant” any more than criticism of the US misbehavior abroad amounts to the same. “China is generally well respected in Africa” seems to gloss over some rather serious issues and I’m sorry you took these as personal attacks. You haven’t even tried to address any of the points I’ve introduced, choosing instead to divert the topic to Lobbyism and Jews.
    let’s try and get some genuine info about this huge part of the human race
    If you’re claiming the facts I’ve offered about China’s government aren’t genuine, please state your basis for doing so.

  20. Fascism is anti-communism
    “Dominic, if your position is that anyone who is opposed to communism…”
    O.k., let’s take this slowly, for the grammatically challenged. You may well not be a communist, you may as a liberal or whatever be opposed to the communists in the normal way, but all of that does not make you an anti-communist, unless you opposition tips over into persecution. Anti-communism is a prodigious existing movement that started long ago. It kills people, and it has done terrible things on a large scale all over the world.
    The statement: “Fascism is anti-communism” is literally and factually true. The reason for fascism is to run a capitalist system by command, because the people cannot be trusted not to support the communists. It is what happens when bourgeois democracy wants to vote itself out of existence. Suddenly it decides not to be democratic after all. Kissinger was very frank about this in relation to Chile, which was a typical but not unique case.
    Fascism is irrational and arbitrary. Anti-semitism is not essential to fascism. It is adopted (if it is adopted, which is not inevitable) upon a monstrous whim, if I can put it that way. I think it was Oswald Moseley who said that they (the fascists, of which he was one) really had nothing against Jews. It was all just a jolly good way of stirring people up, he said.
    I don’t want fascism or any other kind of anti-communism that threatens me and my family with discrimination, persecution and even death. I continue to be shocked at Jews like Joshua who go down the anti-communist road. I prefer the old anti-fascist solidarity, when communists learnt how to talk to capitalists and they learnt how to talk to us, and we stood together against barbarism.

  21. “If the Lobby is not really an Isreali or Zionist lobby, but really (or even partially) an anti-communist, pro-fascist lobby masquerading as a Zionist one, then we are all in some serious trouble.”
    Might I suggest, then, that discussing “the Lobby” in terms of Zionism alone might be a flaw in the conception? Fascism and zionism are two different things albeit linked through the nexus of nationalism, much like social democracy and Communism are distinct despite the presence of common roots. Looking for fascists under the Zionist bed might only obscure the real fascists’ positions and goals. If so, then the adoption of Mearsheimer/Walt rhetoric represents an own goal.
    At any rate, while I dislike echoing the comments of others, I also have to ask whether criticising Chinese policies automatically makes one an anti-communist, a cold warrior or part of the “Lobby.” Is it germane to wonder, for instance, whether the working conditions in Chinese-owned Zambian copper mines is exploitative, and whether Michael PC Sata’s performance in the last election might cut against your statement that China and its policies are generally respected in Africa? Since we’re apparently on the subject of Israel, I certainly wouldn’t argue that criticism of Israeli policies, even if harsh, makes the critic an anti-semite or anti-zionist, so what’s different about criticism of China?

  22. Well, I agree that “The Lobby” may well not be what Mearsheimer and Walt think it is. In fact that is precisely my worry. What I see first is the anti-communism of this Lobby. That’s where I’m coming from. I see this anti-communism as the base, the root. The extent to which it has exploited the Israeli situation, and the extent to which once-Red Jews are now true-blue Thatcherite anti-communists or worse – these things are dreadful but they are secondary. The main act is still “socialism or barbarism”, to my way of thinking.
    So, to repeat, I don’t want to “discuss the Lobby in terms of Zionism”. I don’t.
    When it comes to China, I don’t know who “Michael PC Sata” is. Tell us, please. I don’t know about any particular copper mine, but I would take the Zambian Congress of Trade Unions’ advice on something like that. I expect they are glad of the jobs and prepared to do what they have always done to secure decent pay and safety. The Copperbelt has a long history. The DRC mines too. I doubt if any individual knows very much about these places and what is going on, in total. Maybe Barry Sergeant who writes the “Fear and Loathing” column on Moneyweb knows more than most. I think I can defend what I have said in the first place – that we do not fear the Chinese, we feel they have respect, and they do not have any history of Imperialism, only anti-Imperialism. When they do a really big project they bring their own workforce, we know that, it has always been the case, for example the Tazara railway from Dar to Kabwe. This has very little to do with communism as such, either way.

  23. Vadim has criticized me for making this point before, but I will say again here that the interests of the ostensibly pro-Israel “lobby” in the United States (or at least those of its most influential proponents) should not be confused with the interests of the State of Israel, the Israeli people, Zionists, Jews in general, or anything else. It is, as pointed out by Dominic, an essentially fascist movement, which uses fear of anti-semitism, Islamic terrorism, Chinese communism, even fundamentalist Christian nihilism (and anything else handy) to convince people to give up democratic government in exchange for promises of security. As such, it has no trouble aligning itself with fascist elements in other countries. Witness Charles Krauthammer’s lovely column in today’s WaPo:
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/08/AR2007110801812.html
    “Pakistan is not the first time we’ve faced hard choices about democratization. At the height of the Cold War, particularly in the immediate post-Vietnam era of American weakness, we supported dictators Augusto Pinochet in Chile and Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines. The logic was simple: The available and likely alternative — i.e., communists — would be worse.”
    Ding, ding, ding! The alarm bells are ringing.

  25. Communist rants about the “lobby” call to mind that Communist classic, “A World Without Jews”, written by the Founding Father of Communism (and, yes, a Jew himself) in 1844.

  26. Just as John C steers us back on topic, putting Pakistan back in the centre of the discussion, Truesdell rushes in with a steaming turd of an allegation to get us all rushing hither and thither again. What is it? Well, it’s a perfect doppelganger, a kind of “Protocols of the Elders of Marxism”.
    Truesdell has helped us, if people have eyes to see. Truesdell is playing the same game as Moseley played, but with a twist. The “Jewish Question” is being used once again by the fascists to disguise their dirty work. Only now they pretend to support the Jews, whereas before they persecuted them. Whereas before the bugbear was the “Jewish Communist”, now it is the “Self-Hating Jewish Communist”!
    In 1844 Marx (b. 1818) was involved in polemics with the other faction of the Young Hegelians (the “Holy Family”). One of them, Bruno Bauer, had in 1843 written something called “The Jewish Question”. Marx’s response is called “On The Jewish Question”, a reference to Bauer’s work. It begins:
    “I
    Bruno Bauer,
    The Jewish Question,
    Braunschweig, 1843
    “The German Jews desire emancipation. What kind of emancipation do they desire? Civic, political emancipation.
    “Bruno Bauer replies to them: No one in Germany is politically emancipated. We ourselves are not free. How are we to free you? You Jews are egoists if you demand a special emancipation for yourselves as Jews. As Germans, you ought to work for the political emancipation of Germany, and as human beings, for the emancipation of mankind, and you should feel the particular kind of your oppression and your shame not as an exception to the rule, but on the contrary as a confirmation of the rule.”
    And so on. As it happens, Marx’s works are easily available on the Internet. This one is at:
    http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/jewish-question/index.htm
    In the same year, Marx wrote his main and as far as I know, his last ever work on religion as such. This is the “Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right” (an introduction to a book that was never written). In it, among other universally famous things, he says: ““the criticism of religion is the prerequisite of all criticism.” It is a very wonderful and surprising piece of writing, and it is short. It is at:
    http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm
    Now, where were we?

  27. What is the point, vadim, of such transparently false statements about Hezbollah? Does the mask slip whenever an Arab target appears? It is utter nonsense, and everyone reading this thread knows it, to talk of Hezbollah regarding Jews ‘around the globe’ as ‘target practice.’
    It is disturbing to note that, as the Israel lobbyists are driven further to the right, they really are beginning to adopt the characteristically fascistic disdain for truth as evidenced also in the repetition of all the old canards about Marx.
    It is never too late to grow up.

  29. Let the Chinese get in bed with Pakistan, so we can get out of that sickly bed. 10B$ and nothing to show. There isn’t enough money to bribe a Shariacratic people into democracy. Side with hard working, humble, democratic India and leave these two to their own misery.
    Oh, and next door to Pakistan the Iranians broke arm, jailed, and condemned to flogging a poor woman’s right demonstrator. I wonder if that will bubble to Helena’s peet peeves. Speaking about Iran while kissing their rear is too much of a multi tasking challenge, Scott is there to take turns.

  31. Wow. Where to start? The vast majority of the comments here so far are completely off-topic. Many have descended into name-calling. The light-to-heat ration is almost zero.
    Could everyone cool it down and we could return to a discussion of the Pakistan-China-US nexus?

  32. bevin last time I checked Israel was not part of Lebanon. Nor is Argentina, halfway around the world. Hezbollah has no business staging attacks in either country (or their own, but that’s another issue).
    Funny M&W didn’t mention fascism or communism once anywhere in their manifesto. Seems to me the ‘Israel Lobby’ should have something to do with Israel, no?? Maybe they were really talking about Nazis? Maybe Islamofascists?? the IRS? Not nice of them to keep us guessing like this. Good thing Charles Krauthammer is there to let John C. And Dominic know what we’re all about.
    Down with communism and Islamofascism!
    Can we talk about Pakistan now?

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