$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', 'I') dunno about the rest of you but I'm sick and tired of the way any and every international event is attributed to a BushCo conspiracy or blamed on BushCo events regardless of how many levels of cause and effect you need to traverse. It's like some dumb game of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.
The Bush administration has plenty to answer for, but by using them as a constant scapegoat for everything just hides legitimate criticism under the constant noise.
PeakOil is You
THE Bhutto Assasination Thread (merged)
Re: BHUTTO ASSASSINATED!
by btu2012 » Sat 29 Dec 2007, 02:56:26
Hmm, maybe Bush's moving speech about Benazir's death would have been more convincing had he done something, anything about the main promoters of extremism in Pakistan. Since he is so deeply engaged with the War on Terror right there together with Musharraf et al. Guess he was too busy looking for Bin Laden in every Afghani cave. He also seems to have confused Iraq with the true source of the hijackers. Quite a pattern to say the least. Did I mention that he tried to put the same guys in charge of US port security ?
You shouldn't be surprised that some can't resist the temptation of conspiracy explanations given the magnitude of the illogic of his actions. One must solve that cognitive dissonance one way or another. Many foreign governments are about as puzzled as some of the conspiracy-prone observers.
Btu
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Re: BHUTTO ASSASSINATED!
by Carlhole » Sat 29 Dec 2007, 07:41:00
After some reflection and a review of her record, I've decided to place Benazir Bhutto in the "Dumb Bitch" category.
Dumb Bitch
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Wiki', '[')b]Charges of corruption
French, Polish, Spanish, and Swiss documents have fueled the charges of corruption against Bhutto and her husband. Bhutto and her husband faced a number of legal proceedings, including a charge of laundering money through Swiss banks. Her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, spent eight years in prison on similar corruption charges. Zardari, released from jail in 2004, has suggested that his time in prison involved torture; human rights groups have supported his claim that his rights were violated.[11]
A 1998 New York Times investigative report[12] indicates that Pakistani investigators have documents that uncover a network of bank accounts, all linked to the family's lawyer in Switzerland, with Asif Zardari as the principal shareholder. According to the article, documents released by the French authorities indicated that Zardari offered exclusive rights to Dassault, a French aircraft manufacturer, to replace the air force's fighter jets in exchange for a 5% commission to be paid to a Swiss corporation controlled by Zardari...
Switzerland
On July 23, 1998, the Swiss Government handed over documents to the government of Pakistan which relate to corruption allegations against Benazir Bhutto and her husband.[19] The documents included a formal charge of money laundering by Swiss authorities against Zardari. The Pakistani government had been conducting a wide-ranging inquiry to account for more than $13.7 million frozen by Swiss authorities in 1997 that was allegedly stashed in banks by Bhutto and her husband. The Pakistani government recently filed criminal charges against Bhutto in an effort to track down an estimated $1.5 billion she and her husband are alleged to have received in a variety of criminal enterprises.[20] The documents suggest that the money Zardari was alleged to have laundered was accessible to Benazir Bhutto and had been used to buy a diamond necklace for over $175,000.[21]
The PPP has responded by flatly denying the charges, suggesting that Swiss authorities have been misled by false evidence provided by Islamabad.
On August 6, 2003, Swiss magistrates found Bhutto and her husband guilty of money laundering.[22] They were given six-month suspended jail terms, fined $50,000 each and were ordered to pay $11 million to the Pakistani government. The six-year trial concluded that Bhutto and Zardari deposited in Swiss accounts $10 million given to them by a Swiss company in exchange for a contract in Pakistan. The couple said they would appeal. The Pakistani investigators say Zardari opened a Citibank account in Geneva in 1995 through which they say he passed some $40 million of the $100 million he received in payoffs from foreign companies doing business in Pakistan.[23]
Dumb Bitch
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Wiki', '[')b]Charges of corruption
French, Polish, Spanish, and Swiss documents have fueled the charges of corruption against Bhutto and her husband. Bhutto and her husband faced a number of legal proceedings, including a charge of laundering money through Swiss banks. Her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, spent eight years in prison on similar corruption charges. Zardari, released from jail in 2004, has suggested that his time in prison involved torture; human rights groups have supported his claim that his rights were violated.[11]
A 1998 New York Times investigative report[12] indicates that Pakistani investigators have documents that uncover a network of bank accounts, all linked to the family's lawyer in Switzerland, with Asif Zardari as the principal shareholder. According to the article, documents released by the French authorities indicated that Zardari offered exclusive rights to Dassault, a French aircraft manufacturer, to replace the air force's fighter jets in exchange for a 5% commission to be paid to a Swiss corporation controlled by Zardari...
Switzerland
On July 23, 1998, the Swiss Government handed over documents to the government of Pakistan which relate to corruption allegations against Benazir Bhutto and her husband.[19] The documents included a formal charge of money laundering by Swiss authorities against Zardari. The Pakistani government had been conducting a wide-ranging inquiry to account for more than $13.7 million frozen by Swiss authorities in 1997 that was allegedly stashed in banks by Bhutto and her husband. The Pakistani government recently filed criminal charges against Bhutto in an effort to track down an estimated $1.5 billion she and her husband are alleged to have received in a variety of criminal enterprises.[20] The documents suggest that the money Zardari was alleged to have laundered was accessible to Benazir Bhutto and had been used to buy a diamond necklace for over $175,000.[21]
The PPP has responded by flatly denying the charges, suggesting that Swiss authorities have been misled by false evidence provided by Islamabad.
On August 6, 2003, Swiss magistrates found Bhutto and her husband guilty of money laundering.[22] They were given six-month suspended jail terms, fined $50,000 each and were ordered to pay $11 million to the Pakistani government. The six-year trial concluded that Bhutto and Zardari deposited in Swiss accounts $10 million given to them by a Swiss company in exchange for a contract in Pakistan. The couple said they would appeal. The Pakistani investigators say Zardari opened a Citibank account in Geneva in 1995 through which they say he passed some $40 million of the $100 million he received in payoffs from foreign companies doing business in Pakistan.[23]
On balance, it looks like those charges against Bhutto and her husband are sticking, and are NOT purely fabricated.
And she thought she could go back into the country as some sort of female Messiah figure? With a history of ineffectual reform, fake benevolence, big-time bribery and political corruption? Without any security? In the middle of a pitched battle between raw Central Asian capitalists, militant Islamic Fundamentalists and who knows who else? Dumb bitch!
But I'd have to say that Uncle Sam is an even dumber bitch for having attempted to force the yesterdays-bad-news of Benazir Bhutto onto the contentious, competing power factions currently warring in Pakistan. This was like supporting a figure like Ferdinand Marcos (corrupt Phillipino tyrant) except that Bhutto had been knocked out of power twice before, whereas Marcos had never relinguished it.
I'm surprised to learn that a highly educated, sophisticated person like Bhutto is really just a dumb bitch but somehow I'm not so surprised to learn that the US has been one too.
- Carlhole
Re: BHUTTO ASSASSINATED!
by virgincrude » Sat 29 Dec 2007, 09:10:20
Carlhole, it's not just the Wiki stuff, her own family have reason to disassociate themselves:
"Why did Ms. Bhutto and her party cronies demand that her corruption cases be dropped, but not demand that the cases of activists jailed during the brutal regime of dictator Zia ul-Haq (from 1977 to 1988) not be quashed? What about the sanctity of the law? When her brother Mir Murtaza Bhutto -- my father -- returned to Pakistan in 1993, he faced 99 cases against him that had been brought by Zia's military government. The cases all carried the death penalty. Yet even though his sister was serving as prime minister, he did not ask her to drop the cases. He returned, was arrested at the airport and spent the remaining years of his life clearing his name, legally and with confidence, in the courts of Pakistan.
Ms. Bhutto's repeated promises to end fundamentalism and terrorism in Pakistan strain credulity because, after all, the Taliban government that ran Afghanistan was recognized by Pakistan under her last government -- making Pakistan one of only three governments in the world to do so.
And I am suspicious of her talk of ensuring peace. My father was a member of Parliament and a vocal critic of his sister's politics. He was killed outside our home in 1996 in a carefully planned police assassination while she was prime minister. There were 70 to 100 policemen at the scene, all the streetlights had been shut off and the roads were cordoned off. Six men were killed with my father. They were shot at point-blank range, suffered multiple bullet wounds and were left to bleed on the streets.
My father was Benazir's younger brother. To this day, her role in his assassination has never been adequately answered, although the tribunal convened after his death under the leadership of three respected judges concluded that it could not have taken place without approval from a "much higher" political authority"
Aunt Benazir's False Promises
"Why did Ms. Bhutto and her party cronies demand that her corruption cases be dropped, but not demand that the cases of activists jailed during the brutal regime of dictator Zia ul-Haq (from 1977 to 1988) not be quashed? What about the sanctity of the law? When her brother Mir Murtaza Bhutto -- my father -- returned to Pakistan in 1993, he faced 99 cases against him that had been brought by Zia's military government. The cases all carried the death penalty. Yet even though his sister was serving as prime minister, he did not ask her to drop the cases. He returned, was arrested at the airport and spent the remaining years of his life clearing his name, legally and with confidence, in the courts of Pakistan.
Ms. Bhutto's repeated promises to end fundamentalism and terrorism in Pakistan strain credulity because, after all, the Taliban government that ran Afghanistan was recognized by Pakistan under her last government -- making Pakistan one of only three governments in the world to do so.
And I am suspicious of her talk of ensuring peace. My father was a member of Parliament and a vocal critic of his sister's politics. He was killed outside our home in 1996 in a carefully planned police assassination while she was prime minister. There were 70 to 100 policemen at the scene, all the streetlights had been shut off and the roads were cordoned off. Six men were killed with my father. They were shot at point-blank range, suffered multiple bullet wounds and were left to bleed on the streets.
My father was Benazir's younger brother. To this day, her role in his assassination has never been adequately answered, although the tribunal convened after his death under the leadership of three respected judges concluded that it could not have taken place without approval from a "much higher" political authority"
Aunt Benazir's False Promises
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Re: BHUTTO ASSASSINATED!
by Twilight » Sat 29 Dec 2007, 09:35:12
That's not all. There was an analyst on BBC saying her husband was known as Mr Ten Percent during her first term in office and Mr Twenty Percent during her second term in office. Looking at archived articles that checks out. Let's not be naive, in the third world nepotism goes with the territory. You have to wonder how long her popularity would have lasted had she won. Probably not even a year.
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Re: BHUTTO ASSASSINATED!
by Carlhole » Sat 29 Dec 2007, 11:21:33
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('virgincrude', 'C')arlhole, it's not just the Wiki stuff, her own family have reason to disassociate themselves:
Aunt Benazir's False Promises
Aunt Benazir's False Promises
Thanks. I had not seen that article before.
It's a little strange - the treatment that Benazir Bhutto has received on US television coverage so far. They seem to treat her as if she were some sort of gentle martyr, a lost potential savior, like a Mother Teresa devoured by the terrible beast of Al-Quaeda. It's probably much more complicated and whole lot grittier than that. Bhutto was no saint.
Women members of the press and authors like Gail Sheehy seem sympathetic to her even though I've heard at least one of them verify that the corruption charges are accurate. They seem to want to regard her as an heroic figure even though, upon examination, she's appears no better than the rest of the usual bastards in charge. She strikes me as a dreamer who allowed the people around her, particlarly her husband, to get away with huge crimes against the state. I wonder if we will ever get to hear about the psychology of this woman and that of the characters surrounding her?
It actually sounds like a pretty good history to read. But when I looked over some of the books written on the subject, all of them seem to have shortcomings. The most authoritative one apparently is a tedious, difficult read.
- Carlhole
Re: BHUTTO ASSASSINATED!
by btu2012 » Sat 29 Dec 2007, 12:25:23
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Carlhole', 'I')t's a little strange - the treatment that Benazir Bhutto has received on US television coverage so far. They seem to treat her as if she were some sort of gentle martyr, a lost potential savior, like a Mother Teresa devoured by the terrible beast of Al-Quaeda. It's probably much more complicated and whole lot grittier than that. Bhutto was no saint.
They try to present her as an innocent victim of Al-Qaeda in order to gain brownie points for the war on terror. The recent chill off between Bush and Musharraf might also be at play.
The likelihood of getting a meaningful analysis of this in the Western media is close to zero at this particular moment.
And we have those who are already crying that Pakistan is a "failed state" with nuclear weapons etc.
It will take a while before one can draw any solid conclusions about who and what is behind her assassination. But I get a feeling that her relationship with the White House might be one of the factors.
Btu
Last edited by btu2012 on Sat 29 Dec 2007, 12:33:01, edited 2 times in total.
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