Zardari learns how not to deal with jihadists while the US weighs how to play the bully

By the Editorial Board of the Christian Science Monitor
As a candidate in 2008, Barack Obama criticized George W. Bush for giving billions in aid to Pakistan even as that country made “peace treaties with the Taliban.”

Now in the Oval Office, Mr. Obama has learned how easy it is for Pakistan, a democratic but Muslim country, to ignore US pleas and take its money – while it simply keeps coddling Islamic militants.
Last week, the US was helping line up $5.3 billion in new development aid from foreign donors for Pakistan. This week, Richard Holbrooke, special US envoy to the region, was trying to persuade Congress to increase US development aid to Pakistan. But at the same time, President Asif Ali Zardari was hailing a deal that allowed the Taliban to impose harsh Islamic law – including public floggings – in the country’s Swat Valley.

In essence, Pakistan gave up territory to Muslim militants.
The deal reveals a strange unwillingness by Pakistan’s 500,000-strong Army to confront the violent jihadists that pose an existential threat to this country’s democracy, just as Al Qaeda’s headquarters in Pakistan still pose a threat to the West.

Hawkish leaders in the Army remain too focused on a perceived threat from India and not on the jihadists along the western border with Afghanistan. This misplaced nationalism comes at the expense of Pakistan’s democracy.

The government’s appeasement of the Taliban also reflects an ambivalence about suppressing a group that the Army helped create in Afghanistan during the 1990s as a strategic tool. Pakistan may still want to retain ties to the Taliban in its jockeying with India and the US.

In sealing the deal last week, President Zardari likely took a cue from the Obama administration in its eagerness for Afghanistan to talk with factions of the Taliban in that country. But alas, Zardari soon discovered that Islamic fanatics don’t make good partners.
Instead of laying down their arms as promised, the Taliban used the stand down of Pakistani forces in Swat to take over ever-larger areas. The 6,000 to 8,000 fighters even came within 60 miles of the nation’s capital this week.

Rightly so, this close call with an Islamic takeover of a nuclear-armed state of 170 million Muslims set off alarm bells in Washington. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Pakistan was “basically abdicating to the Taliban and the extremists” while Obama dispatched the Pentagon’s top military chief to Islamabad.

Pakistan then responded weakly by sending some forces back into the area, while the Taliban, having made its point about its potency, appeared to make a strategic retreat.

Pakistanis prefer democracy, but many also decry the country’s widespread lapse in the rule of law. Justice is hard to come by for common folk and many, especially along the border with Afghanistan, welcome the strict social controls that Islamic fanatics offer.

A country cannot have two types of rule – theocracy vs. democratic rights and freedoms – let alone rival governments. The two are radically different concepts about the role of the individual and how to organize society.

Pakistanis must make a choice. They need only look to Iran to see how Islamic authoritarianism has made a sham of democratic ideals.
And the US, too, needs to decide how much pressure to place on Pakistan to make that choice. Attaching strings to aid could backfire by playing to Pakistani nationalism. Obama must be careful not to act like a bully while at the same time quietly nudging Pakistani leaders to reform their courts, police, and politics.

In the past three years, Islamic militants have stepped up their vicious attacks on civilians within Pakistan. Now that the Swat deal has revealed the Taliban’s duplicity and its rough sense of justice, the choice for Pakistan is even clearer.

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(Submitted by a reader)

Airplane collisions with birds have more than doubled at 13 major U.S. airports since 2000, according to recent Federal Aviation Administration data.

By Jimmy Orr | 04.25.09
The Federal Aviation Administration made big news yesterday when it released a database that details the number of collisions between wildlife and airplanes.

Although more than 98,000 incidents of aircraft striking birds or other wildlife since January of 1990 are reported, the number of actual collisions is undoubtedly much higher.

Why? The FAA estimates its voluntary reporting system captures only 20 percent of wildlife strikes. For more than a decade, the National Transportation Safety Board has argued for making the reporting of wildlife strikes mandatory. The lack of such a requirement is part of the reason the NTSB didn’t want the database released — it’s incomplete.

But after much public pressure, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood relented and made the data public.

Caution
The FAA cautioned passengers against making too much of it. Comparing airports from the database produces an incomplete picture, the FAA says.

“If a certain airport is very diligent in reporting these kinds of events, its diligence could make it appear as if it has more bird strikes than an airport that isn’t as diligent,” a spokesman told the Associated Press.

Top ten
Noting that such a list is inherently flawed, the following airports have reported the highest numbers of wildlife strikes since 1990.
1) Denver International, Colorado, 2,416 reported incidents.
…
2) Dallas-Fort Worth International, Texas, 2,376 reported incidents.
…
3) Chicago O’Hare, Illinois, 2,346 reported incidents.
…
4) JFK International, New York, 1,811 reported incidents.
…
5) Memphis International, Tennessee, 1,541 reported incidents.
…
6) Dulles International, Virginia, 1,204 reported incidents.
…
7) Salt Lake City International, Utah, 1,113 reported incidents.
…
8 Orlando International, Florida, 1,085 reported incidents.
…
9) San Francisco International, California, 1,021 reported incidents.
…
10) Pittsburgh International, Pennsylvania, 994 reported incidents.

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(Submitted by a reader)

Scotland today joined Ireland and South Africa when the Scottish Trade Union Congress, representing every Scottish trade union, voted overwhelmingly to commit to boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel. This is the third example of a national trade union federation committing to BDS and is a clear indication that, while Israel can kill Palestinians with impunity and Western support, it has lost the battle for world public opinion. It is now seen to be a state born out of ethnic cleansing and still expanding through the violent dispossession of the Palestinian people.

Speaker after speaker expressed intense anger at Israel’s butchery of 1,300 Palestinians in Gaza over the New Year, as well as the much longer history of Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. The vote followed a visit to Israel/Palestine by an STUC Delegation in March which heard from a wide range of trade union and other bodies and returned with a unanimous recommendation that the parent body adopt BDS.

The STUC move to a position of BDS followed debate on the Delegation report with affiliated unions as well as consultations across Scotland. There were written and oral submissions from Zionist as well as human rights bodies.

The commitment to BDS was made despite aggressive lobbying by Zionist groups, including an absurd warning that a commitment to active support for Palestinian human rights would lead to attacks on Scottish Jews, and the parachuting into Scotland of the Histadrut’s Head of Communications from Israel.

The STUC’s new position is a dramatic breakthrough which has the potential to greatly accelerate the boycott campaign already underway in Scotland against, for example, Israeli companies and sporting or cultural visits. The Scottish Government earlier in the year yielded to public concerns and cancelled a trade delegation to Israel.

It will also make easier the task of building a mass boycott campaign across the land surface of Scotland, in every town and small community, in every supermarket and every sporting and cultural event.

Israel’s New Year mountain of corpses in Gaza, together with its frequent murder of unarmed civilians across Palestine was only the latest in a long series of Israeli massacres. We may be unable to stop the next one, but our job of building the sort of mass BDS campaign that can confront Israeli violence with a countervailing force has just become easier. An aroused world opinion is increasingly ready to ensure that all don’t die in vain.

We can only offer hope to the hard-pressed Palestinians that their freedom is coming, however long Israel and its allies work to delay it.

Speaking prior to the debate, STUC General Secretary, Grahame Smith, said: “The STUC General Council is recommending support for boycott and calls for sanctions against Israel because of its attacks on the human rights of Palestinian people and its breaches of international laws.

Mr Smith continued: “On our recent visit to Israel and Palestine we witnessed the human rights violations experienced by ordinary Palestinians on a daily basis. We saw how restrictions on movement and checkpoints prevent people from going to work, to school and to visit their families – even when they are sick and dying.”

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(Submitted by Ingrid B. Mork)

By Vanessa Buschschluter

Few Icelanders seem concerned about the PM’s sexual orientation

Johanna Sigurdardottir, named as Iceland’s prime minister on Sunday, is the first openly lesbian head of government in Europe, if not the world – at least in modern times.

The 66-year-old’s appointment as an interim leader, until elections in May, is seen by many as a milestone for the gay and lesbian movement.

Up until now, if a gay man or woman has been prime minister, they have done their best to conceal the fact.

In Iceland itself, however, the new prime minister’s sexual orientation appears to be causing less excitement than it is abroad.
What is really historic about this new cabinet, says Skuli Helgeson, the general secretary of Ms Sigurardottir’s Social Democratic Alliance, is not the fact that its leader is a lesbian, but that for the first time in Icelandic history it boasts an equal number of men and women.

“I don’t think her sexual orientation matters. Our voters are pretty liberal, they don’t care about any of that,” he told BBC News.
But not all European countries are as tolerant, says Juris Lavrikovs of the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA) in Brussels.
There is a huge divide between eastern and western Europe, he says.
“The countries of the former Soviet Union were cut off from some of the social developments which have brought us this far in the past 50 years.

“A pink curtain divides us. And it will probably take a long time for eastern European countries to reach the same level of tolerance,” Mr Lavrikovs says.

However, even in these countries he notes signs of change.
“In Latvia, where I’m from, some of the political parties are approaching gay, lesbian and transgender groups and talking to them about including gay candidates in their party lists,” he says.

No reason to hide
In most of western Europe the coming-out of a politician will still make headlines.

Only last week, Roger Karoutchi became the first French government minister to disclose his homosexuality.

A minister for parliamentary relations, he said he was happy with his male partner and saw no reason to hide it.
But friends of his have been quoted as saying that he came out with the revelation because “attacks by his enemies” left him no choice.
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From United Nations World Health Organization
26 April 2009 — As of 26 April 2009, the United States Government has reported 20 laboratory confirmed human cases of swine influenza A/H1N1 (8 in New York, 7 in California, 2 in Texas, 2 in Kansas and 1 in Ohio). All 20 cases have had mild Influenza-Like Illness with only one requiring brief hospitalization. No deaths have been reported. All 20 viruses have the same genetic pattern based on preliminary testing. The virus is being described as a new subtype of A/H1N1 not previously detected in swine or humans.

Also as of 26 April, the Government of Mexico has reported 18 laboratory confirmed cases of swine influenza A/H1N1. Investigation is continuing to clarify the spread and severity of the disease in Mexico. Suspect clinical cases have been reported in 19 of the country’s 32 states.

WHO and the Global Alert and Response Network (GOARN) are sending experts to Mexico to work with health authorities. WHO and its partners are actively investigating reports of suspect cases in other Member States as they occur, and are supporting field epidemiology activities, laboratory diagnosis and clinical management.
On Saturday, 25 April, upon the advice of the Emergency Committee called under the rules of the International Health Regulations, the Director-General declared this event a Public Health Emergency of International Concern.

WHO is not recommending any travel or trade restrictions.

For more information
Thomas Abraham
Communications in English
Mobile: +41 79 516 3136
E-mail: abrahamt@who.int
Fadela Chaib
Communications in English and French
Mobile: +41 79 475 5556
E-mail: chaibf@who.int
Sari Setiogi
Communications in English and Bahasa
Mobile: +41 79 701 9467
E-mail: setiogis@who.int
Gregory Hartl
Communications in English, French, German and Spanish
Mobile: +41 79 203 6715
E-mail: hartlg@who.int
Aphaluck Bhatiasevi
Communications in English, Thai and Hindi
Mobile: +41 79 484 2997
E-mail: bhatiaseviap@who.int
RELATED LINKS
– WHO Swine influenza website
Daily updates will we posted on this site.

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Encarnación Bail Romero at an Easter service in Carthage, Mo. A Guatemalan, Ms. Bail is battling to regain custody of her son, Carlos, 2.
By GINGER THOMPSON
Published: April 22, 2009

CARTHAGE, Mo. — When immigration agents raided a poultry processing plant near here two years ago, they had no idea a little American boy named Carlos would be swept up in the operation.

Ms. Bail’s son, Carlos

One of the 136 illegal immigrants detained in the raid was Carlos’s mother, Encarnación Bail Romero, a Guatemalan. A year and a half after she went to jail, a county court terminated Ms. Bail’s rights to her child on grounds of abandonment. Carlos, now 2, was adopted by a local couple.

In his decree, Judge David C. Dally of Circuit Court in Jasper County said the couple made a comfortable living, had rearranged their lives and work schedules to provide Carlos a stable home, and had support from their extended family. By contrast, Judge Dally said, Ms. Bail had little to offer.

“The only certainties in the biological mother’s future,” he wrote, “is that she will remain incarcerated until next year, and that she will be deported thereafter.”

It is unclear how many children share Carlos’s predicament. But lawyers and advocates for immigrants say that cases like his are popping up across the country as crackdowns against illegal immigrants thrust local courts into transnational custody battles and leave thousands of children in limbo.

“The struggle in these cases is there’s no winner,” said Christopher Huck, an immigration lawyer in Washington State.
He said that in many cases, what state courts want to do “conflicts with what federal immigration agencies are supposed to do.”
“Then things spiral out of control,” Mr. Huck added, “and it ends up in these real unfortunate situations.”

Next month, the Nebraska Supreme Court is scheduled to hear an appeal by Maria Luis, a Guatemalan whose rights to her American-born son and daughter were terminated after she was detained in April 2005 on charges of falsely identifying herself to a police officer. She was later deported.

And in South Carolina, a Circuit Court judge has been working with officials in Guatemala to find a way to send the baby girl of a Guatemalan couple, Martin de Leon Perez and his wife, Lucia, detained on charges of drinking in public, to relatives in their country so the couple does not lose custody before their expected deportation.
Patricia Ravenhorst, a South Carolina lawyer who handles immigration cases, said she had tried “to get our judges not to be intimidated by the notion of crossing an international border.”
“I’ve asked them, ‘What would we do if the child had relatives in New Jersey?’ ” Ms. Ravenhorst said. “We’d coordinate with the State of New Jersey. So why can’t we do the same for a child with relatives in the highlands of Guatemala?”

Dora Schriro, an adviser to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, said the agency was looking for ways to deal with family separations as it prepared new immigration enforcement guidelines. In visits to detention centers across the country, Ms. Schriro said, she had heard accounts of parents losing contact or custody of their children.

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By George Monbiot (Published in the Guardian, 21st April 2009.)

The rightwing press has briefly turned against the police, but normal service will soon resume.

If a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged, a liberal is a conservative who has been twatted by the police. As the tabloids turn their fire onto an unfamiliar target – the unprovoked aggression of Her Majesty’s constabulary – the love affair between the cops and the rightwing press has never been more fragile.

The policing of the G20 protests at the beginning of this month was routine. Policemen hiding their identification numbers and beating up peaceful protesters is as much a part of British life as grey skies and red buses. Across 20 years of protests, I have seen policemen swapping their jackets to avoid identification, hurling people against vans and into walls and whomping old ladies over the head with batons. A friend had his head repeatedly bashed against the bonnet of a police van; he was then charged with criminal damage to the van. I have seen an entire line of police turn round to face the other way when private security guards have started beating people up. I have seen them refuse – until Amnesty International got involved – to investigate my own case when I was hospitalised by these licensed thugs (the guards had impaled my foot on a metal spike, smashing the middle bone).

But none of this featured in the conservative press. The story was always the same: we would stagger home after our peaceful protests were attacked by uniformed skinheads to discover that we were “Anarchist Thugs on the Rampage” whose attempt to destroy civilisation had been thwarted only by the calm professionalism of the police. Violent police action mutated into violent protests. The papers believed everything the police told them.

This began to change when the police foolishly attacked a Countryside Alliance march in 2004. In the spirit of impartial policing, the cops gave these reactionaries the treatment they had been doling out to generations of progressives. It was grotesque, disportionate and entirely familiar policing, but there’s a world of difference between bloodstained hemp ponchos and bloodstained tweeds. The exposure of the lies the police then told about the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes and the shooting of Mohammed Abdul Kahar made the newspapers – which had reproduced the official version – feel stung.
In other circumstances, Ian Tomlinson, the passer-by who died after being thrown to the ground by police, would have been treated by the press as a violent anarchist who had assaulted the road with his body. But video footage and disillusionment has changed that – for a few days at least. On Friday the front page of the Daily Express carried lurid pictures of the injuries sustained by a woman at the G20 protests, under the headline “Police Did This to Me: It was just like being whipped by the Taliban”.

Yesterday the Daily Mail posted up a film made by climate camp activists(1). Its columnist Melanie Phillips, who is yet to be celebrated for her support of radical causes, opined that “there are always elements in the ranks [of the police] who want to give people a good kicking.”(2) A column in the Telegraph explained that “there are individuals who join the police just because they like hitting people”(3), while the Spectator lamented the “disgraceful actions of a few Met officers”(4). Today’s Guardian poll suggests that the police are losing the wider battle for public opinion too.

The papers maintain that a few rogue officers got out of control. But as testimonies collected by Climate Camp’s legal team show, police violence at the G20 demos was organised and systematic(5). It is true that the police appear to have been carried away by testeria (a useful word which describes testosterone-fuelled male rampages). But this keeps happening, and senior officers make no attempt to prevent it.

Before the protests, the police fed stories to the media about terrorist plots hatched by G20 demonstrators(6). “We’re up for it and we’re up to it,” Commander Simon O’Brien told the press(7). Organisers from Climate Camp asked if they could attend police briefings to journalists in order to put their side of the story. They were rebuffed. The police initially refused to meet them even to discuss the protesters’ intentions. The police plan was called Operation Glencoe: it was named after the site of a notorious massacre.

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His Highness the Aga Khan meeting with The Honorable Hillary Rodham Clinton, United States Secretary of State, at the State Department.

Photo credit: AKDN / Zahur Ramji
President Jane Wales, thank you for those very generous comments.
I’d like to say how happy I am to share in this year’s Global Philanthropy Forum.

Participants,
Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is a special pleasure for me to be with you tonight, for I look upon you as particularly serious and informed partners in the work of global understanding and international development.

As you may know, I recently marked my 50th anniversary in my role as Imam of the Shia Imami Ismaili Muslims. This responsibility connects me intimately with the traditions of the Islamic faith and cultures, even while my education and a host of personal and professional associations have acquainted me with the non-Islamic West. The relationship of these two worlds is a subject of considerable importance for me – a relationship which some define, regrettably, as an inevitable Clash of Civilizations. My own observation, however – and my deep conviction – is that we can more accurately describe it as a Clash of Ignorances.

It is not my purpose tonight to detail the misunderstandings which have plagued this relationship. Let me only submit that educational systems on both sides have failed mightily in this regard – and so have some religious institutions. That – at this time in human history – the Judeo Christian and Muslim societies should know so little about one another never ceases to astonish – to stun – and to pain me.
As a Muslim leader speaking in Washington this evening, it seems appropriate that I cite the words of President Obama, in his recent speech in Ankara. As he put it, pledging a “broader engagement with the Muslim world, we will listen carefully, we will bridge misunderstandings, and we will seek common ground.” I know that the vast majority of the Islamic world shares these objectives.

Among the areas where we can find common ground is our mutual effort to address the problem of persistent global poverty, especially the endemic poverty of the developing world. Surely this is an area where we can listen and learn and grow together – establishing ever-stronger bonds of understanding. One of the great principles of Islam, in all its interpretations, is the elimination of poverty in society, and philanthropy’s centrality in this duty.

When I succeeded my grandfather as Aga Khan in 1957, I was a student at Harvard – but speaking mostly French. I got extra English practice, however, from my new official routine of regular communication with Africa and Asia – and, in the bargain, was kept in great good humour by the amazing typographic errors which inevitably arose. But then computerized spell check programs came along – and all those charming idiosyncrasies disappeared!

I recently noticed, to my joy, however, that this new invention is not a fail safe protection. Consider this recent item in the publication “The Week: “Bad week for spell-check: Several Pennsylvania high school students had their last names changed in their yearbook by an automatic computer program, Alessandra Ippolito was listed as Alexandria Impolite, while Max Zupanovic was rechristened Max Supernova. And Kathy Carbaugh’s photo appeared next to the name Kathy Airbag.”

After reading this, I decided that maybe I should act prudently and spell check my own name. And I found that, while there was no “Aga Khan”, there was an “Aga” Cooker. It was defined as one of England’s oldest stoves and ovens – now somewhat outdated – but with a distinctive whistle every time it frizzled the food within!

But returning to a more serious topic let me submit this evening a few of my own reflections on the developing world that I know a central focus of my interests over fifty years. For, in coming to understand the life of widely dispersed Ismaili communities across the globe, I have also become immersed in their host societies.

The essential goal of global development has been to create and sustain effective nation states – coherent societies that are well governed, economically self-sustaining, equitable in treating their peoples, peaceful amongst themselves, and sensitive to their impact on planetary sustainability.

This is a complex objective, a moving target, and a humbling challenge. Sadly, the response in the places I know best has often been “one step forward and two steps back.“ Today, some forty percent of UN member nations are categorized as “failed democracies” – unable to meet popular aspirations for a better quality of life. The recent global economic crisis – along with the world food crisis – has sharply accentuated these problems.

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(Submitted by Nizar Dhanani, Alkarim Amersi, and a reader)

LONDON (Reuters) –- Spider silk is already tougher and lighter than steel, and now scientists have made it three times stronger by adding small amounts of metal.

The technique may be useful for manufacturing super-tough textiles and high-tech medical materials, including artificial bones and tendons.

“It could make very strong thread for surgical operations,” researcher Seung-Mo Lee of the Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics in Halle, Germany, said in a telephone interview.

Lee and colleagues, who published their findings in the journal Science, found that adding zinc, titanium or aluminum to a length of spider silk made it more resistant to breaking or deforming.

They used a process called atomic layer deposition, which not only coated spider dragline silks with metal but also caused some metal ions to penetrate the fibers and react with their protein structure.

Lee said he next wanted to try adding other materials, including artificial polymers like Teflon.

The idea was inspired by studies showing traces of metals in the toughest parts of some insect body parts.

The jaws of leaf-cutter ants and locusts, for example, both contain high levels of zinc, making them particularly stiff and hard.

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