Sabbah Report » India

Framing Pakistan: How the pro-Israel media enables India’s surrogate warfare

Maidhc Ó Cathail — Wed, 26 May 2010 18:09:43 +0000

By Maidhc Ó Cathail* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

In its bitter rivalry with India, Pakistan is at a fatal disadvantage. Unlike its South Asian neighbour, Islamabad lacks an ally with considerable influence over American mainstream media.

The latest example of US media complicity with the Indo-Israeli alliance came in the aftermath of the much-hyped Times Square "car-bomb" incident. Typical of the media orgy of Pakistan-bashing that followed the discovery of an SUV packed with 250 pounds of non-explosive fertilizer was a piece written by Newsweek's Indian-born editor, Fareed Zakaria, in which he brands Pakistan as "a terrorist hothouse."

"For a wannabe terrorist shopping for help, Pakistan is a supermarket," writes Zakaria. "There are dozens of jihadi organizations: Jaish-e-Muhammad, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Al Qaeda, Jalaluddin and Siraj Haqqani's network, Tehrik-e-Taliban, and the list goes on. Some of the major ones, like the Kashmiri separatist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, operate openly via front groups throughout the country. But none seem to have any difficulty getting money and weapons."

Zakaria is in no doubt about who's to blame.

"From its founding, the Pakistani government has supported and encouraged jihadi groups, creating an atmosphere that has allowed them to flourish," claims the CNN pundit.

To back up his assertions, Zakaria cites no less an authority that Pakistan's ambassador to the United States. In Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military, which Zakaria considers a "brilliant history," Husain Haqqani claims that support for jihad has been "a consistent policy of the state."

Case closed for the prosecution? Perhaps not.

The Pakistani diplomat's credibility as an objective critic of jihadism is undermined somewhat by his intimate ties to the Israel-centric neoconservative network. A former fellow at the Likudnik Hudson Institute, Haqqani co-chaired Hudson's Project on Islam and Democracy. Its director, Hillel Fradkin, was a Project for a New American Century signatory to a 2002 letter to George W. Bush equating Yasser Arafat with Osama Bin Laden in an effort to convince the White House that "Israel's fight against terrorism is our fight."

Haqqani also collaborated with another neocon, Stephen Schwartz, on the Institute for Islamic Progress and Peace. A project of the notorious Islamophobe Daniel Pipes, it is widely suspected to be an attempt to "divide and conquer" the American Muslim community. In short, if Tel Aviv had handpicked Pakistan's ambassador to Washington, they could hardly have found a more suitable candidate than Haqqani.

Also advancing "the Pakistan Connection" to the Times Square plot is Haqqani's onetime collaborator Stephen Schwartz. Writing in Rupert Murdoch's staunchly pro-Israel Weekly Standard, Schwartz pushes "the Pakistani Taliban did it" storyline. Faisal Shahzad's arrest, he writes, "lends credibility to the claim by Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the branch of the Afghan terrorist movement operating there, that they planted the unsuccessful car-bomb."

Like Zakaria, Schwartz holds Pakistani authorities responsible.

"Pakistani reality cannot be evaded," he writes. "The jihadist domination seen in the Pakistani army and intelligence services (ISI) is visible everywhere South Asian Muslims congregate. It explains the reluctance of the Pakistani government to fulfill its commitment to fighting the Taliban. And it equally accounts for conspiracies like that foiled in Times Square."

The one evading "Pakistani reality," however, is Schwartz. If any government is to be held responsible for terrorism carried out by Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), it is not in Islamabad but in Tel Aviv or New Delhi.

As Gordon Duff, senior editor of Veterans Today, revealed in a recent interview: "We have very little doubt that the Indians and the Israelis, that are all over Afghanistan with German passports pretending to be military contractors, are operating 17 camps along the Taliban regions training and arming terrorists."

According to Duff, "The Pakistani Taliban is in close cooperation with, supplied, financed, armed and trained by Israel and India to attack Pakistan."

Duff's claims are based on a February 2010 fact-finding tour of Pakistan, where he was briefed by the highest levels of the country's military and intelligence establishment, including Lieutenant General Hamid Gul, former director general of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Admiral Iftikhar Ahmed Sirohey, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and General Mirza Aslam Beg, former Chief of Army Staff.

Fearful of offending their Israel-conscious paymasters in Washington, the Pakistani military and intelligence services have been forced into the humiliating position of leaking their side of the story through the Veterans Today website.

According to the ISI leak, the Times Square terror plot was a "false flag operation to implicate the Pakistani Taliban and then threaten and force Pakistan to 'do more' in North Waziristan." This was followed by "a massive media disinformation war" to induce the belief that "all global terrorism is emerging from the Pakistani tribal pocket of North Waziristan, and that the ISI/army is either hands and gloves with the Taliban or not willing to do more."

Clearly, Israel and India share a common geostrategic interest in the destabilization of the nuclear-armed Muslim nation. As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stated, "Our ties with India don't have any limitation...."

Israel, however, has proven itself a rather dubious ally-as a growing number of Americans are beginning to realize. Perhaps one day policymakers in New Delhi will have a similar awakening. But for the time being, the media component of its alliance with Tel Aviv affords India a powerful weapon to wage surrogate warfare against Pakistan.

* Maidhc Ó Cathail is a widely published writer based in Japan.

Flipping Out – Israel’s Drug Generation [Video]

Haitham Sabbah — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 19:43:01 +0000

Military service is compulsory in Israel for all Jewish men and women. After their years of service, they are granted a discharge bonus, which many of them use to fly to India to recover from their experiences (daily killing innocent Palestinians). Approximately 90 per cent will use drugs during their stay, and each year some two thousand of them will need professional help due to this drug use. The psychotic break with reality they experience is commonly referred to as "flipping out."

Shot over a period of two years by Yoav Shamir, Flipping Out offers a close-up look at these former terrorists (a.k.a. soldiers), most of them under the age of 25, as they follow this strange post-military odyssey. From the guest houses of northern India to the beach resorts of Goa in the south, the film reveals the pervasive culture of drugs and hedonism that leaves some of these young people battling for their sanity. It also offers a look at the efforts by Israelis to rescue them such as people like Helik Magnus, an ex- Mossad agent hired by families in Israel to bring some of the most disturbed backpackers home.

This is Israel's drug generation.

Part 1/6:

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXlwn6ezG2g

Part 2/6:

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16MsvcU-eJY

Part 3/6:

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gktvx-bH0Aw

Part 4/6:

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXnf4fLZkp4

Part 5/6:

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY2DTfSEcig

Part 6/6:

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzRRtsfi57A

The most atrocious defense video of all time

Haitham Sabbah — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 08:37:12 +0000

Israeli Armsdog-Millionaires Assault Bollywood

Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, Israel's armament development authority, has launched a promotional film that was dubbed "the most atrocious defense video of all time" by Wired, the popular technology magazine.

Let's say you're a defense-company marketing executive. And you want to make a splash at the Indian defense ministry's annual air show. Do you: (a) buy expensive gifts for New Delhi's generals; (b) treat the press to Kingfishers and samosas; (c) produce a Bollywood-esque video featuring bare-midriff girls, flower-draped missiles, and the catch phrase "dinga dinga dee?"

Unfortunately for us, Israeli arms-maker Rafael chose C. Which means we may have just found the most atrocious defense video of all time, just days into the Iron Eagles - our celebration of the awesomely bad videos of the military-industrial complex. Trust me, Slumdog Millionaire it ain't. Thanks to Stephen Trimble for dredging this up. You bastard.

Every element of the promotional film is just plain wrong. The sari-clad, "Indian" dancers look all too ashkenaz and zaftig. The unshaven, hawk-nosed, leather-clad leading man appears to be a refugee from You Don't Mess With the Zohan. Then of course, there's the implication that the Indian military is somehow like a helpless woman who "need(s) to feel safe and sheltered."

But for my rupees, the worst thing about the video is the damn theme song they've concocted for the thing. To pimp its weapons, Rafael produced a sitar-heavy twist on Rick Astley's love letter to Satan, "Together Forever," complete with a new chorus: "Dinga dinga, dinga dinga, dinga dinga, dinga dinga dee." The rest of us now have to suffer for that bad, bad choice. [Source]

The Bollywood-esque video, aired last month for the Indian annual air show, features sari-clad women dancing between flower-draped missiles, as a man in a leather jacket promises them "security and protection" to the sound of a sitar-tinted version of the famous pop song Together Forever.

The video cost $15,000 to produce, and was directed by the independent director Avishai Kfir in Israel. The actors are Israelis of Georgian and Indian origin.

A Rafael spokesperson said that the video had been received with much acclaim in India.

"Rafael is constantly trying to demonstrate innovation and creativity not only in the field of defense technology," he said. "In every international fair we launch a film that corresponds with the local culture. In Brazil, for example, our clip revolved around soccer. Over the past few years, we have won first prize for design and production almost annually."
[Source]

Internet Enemies and Corruption Index 2006

Haitham Sabbah — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 18:06:37 +0000

Yesterday, Transparency International published the annual report, where it showed that most Arab states are among worst ranked (UAE - 31, Qatar - 32, Bahrain - 36, Oman - 39, Jordan - 40, Kuwait - 46, Tunisia - 51, Lebanon - 63, Saudi - 70, Egypt - 70, Morocco - 79, Algeria - 84, Mauritania - 84, Syria - 93, Libya - 105, Yemen - 111, Sudan - 156, Iraq - 160, Palestine - n/a,
Somalia - n/a)

Today, Reporters Without Borders published the list of 13 Internet enemies. Guess what? In this list, our beloved Arab states score 4 out of 13. The list includes Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Tunisia.

Here are some excerpts from the report:

Three countries - Nepal, Maldives and Libya - have been removed from the annual list of Internet enemies, which Reporters Without Borders publishes today. But many bloggers were harassed and imprisoned this year in Egypt, so it has been added to the roll of shame reserved for countries that systematically violate online free expression.

[...]

- Egypt

Aside from a few sites linked to the Muslim Brotherhood’s religious movements, Egypt does little online filtering. But President Hosni Mubarak, who has been in power since 1981, displays an extremely disturbing authoritarianism as regards the Internet. Three bloggers were arrested in June 2006 and were held for two to three months for calling for democratic reforms. Others have been harassed, such as Coptic blogger Hela Hemi Botros, who was forced to close down her blog in August under pressure from the police. Finally, a Council of State administrative court recently ruled that the authorities could block, suspend of close down any website likely to pose a threat to "national security." This could open the way to extensive online censorship.

[...]

- Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia does not hide its online censorship. Unlike China, where website blocking is disguised as technical problems, Saudi Arabia’s filters clearly tell Internet users that certain websites are banned. Censorship concentrates on pornographic content, but it also targets opposition websites, Israeli publications, or sites dealing with homosexuality. Blogs also pose a problem to the Saudi censors. Last year they tried to completely block access to the country’s biggest blog tool, blogger.com. But they backed off a few days later and now they just block the blogs that are deemed unacceptable. In June of this year, for example, the intimate diary of "Saudi Eve," a young woman who dared to talk about her love life and criticise government censorship, was added to the blacklist.

- Syria

Syria is the Middle East’s biggest prison for cyber-dissidents, with three people currently detained for criticising the authorities online. They are systematically tortured and subjected to inhumane conditions. The government bans access to Arabic-language opposition sites and sites dealing with Syria’s Kurdish minority.

- Tunisia

In 2005, Tunisia had the honour of hosting the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), a big UN event about the Internet’s future. Yet President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali’s Internet policies are among the most repressive in the world. All the Internet cafes are state-controlled. They filter web content and are under close police surveillance. It is, for example, impossible to access the Reporters Without Borders website from inside Tunisia. The security services also constantly harass independent bloggers and opposition website editors to ensure that self-censorship prevails. One cyber-dissident, Mohammed Abbou, has been imprisoned since March 2005 for criticising the president in an online newsletter.

[...]

Countries removed from the list

- Libya

Reporters Without Borders confirmed, during a fact-finding visit, that the Internet is no longer censored in Libya. Furthermore, no cyber-dissident has been detained since Abdel Razak Al Mansuri’s release in March 2006. Reporters Without Borders nonetheless still regards President Muammar Gaddafi as a press freedom predator.

[...]

Full report can be found here.

This is a lot of bad news in the last 48 hours!

India denies ban on Arabic TV channels

Haitham Sabbah — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 19:34:11 +0000

Some good news for a change: Indian authorities have denied that they have imposed any ban on Arabic-language television channels.

"This is not true. No specific instruction has been issued by our ministry to ban any Arabic channel. Cable operators and hotels are free to beam them," a spokesman for the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting told Gulf News yesterday.

Raining Red Aliens in India

Haitham Sabbah — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 09:56:08 +0000

As bizarre as it may seem, the sample jars brimming with cloudy, reddish rainwater in Godfrey Louisï¿½s laboratory in southern India may hold, well, aliens. In April, Louis, a solid-state physicist at Mahatma Gandhi University, published a paper in the prestigious peer-reviewed journal Astrophysics and Space Science in which he hypothesizes that the samplesï¿½water taken from the mysterious blood-colored showers that fell sporadically across Louisï¿½s home state of Kerala in the summer of 2001ï¿½contain microbes from outer space.

Specifically, Louis has isolated strange, thick-walled, red-tinted cell-like structures about 10 microns in size. Stranger still, dozens of his experiments suggest that the particles may lack DNA yet still reproduce plentifully, even in water superheated to nearly 600?F. (The known upper limit for life in water is about 250?F.) So how to explain them? Louis speculates that the particles could be extraterrestrial bacteria adapted to the harsh conditions of space and that the microbes hitched a ride on a comet or meteorite that later broke apart in the upper atmosphere and mixed with rain clouds above India. If his theory proves correct, the cells would be the first confirmed evidence of alien life and, as such, could yield tantalizing new clues to the origins of life on Earth. [Full story here]