You Will Anyway: Another Fine Mess

Sunday, December 4, 2011

Another Fine Mess

[November 29] Washington: Gen Martin Dempsey, the most senior figure in the US. military has refused to apologize for an air strike at the weekend that killed 26 Pakistani soldiers. The Pakistani army claimed the attack lasted almost two hours, and that it continued even after commanders on the ground contacted NATO to ask what was going on.

In an interview with ITV News, Gen Dempsey said he telephoned the Chief of Pakistan’s army General Ashfaq Kayani and “expressed regret”.

[...]

Asked if there was anything apologize for however, Gen Dempsey said: “absolutely not.”

News Tribe

[December 4] Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, has expressed condolences to Pakistan's prime minister in the wake of a NATO air strike that killed 24 Pakistani troops and has caused one of the most serious rifts between the two countries in recent years.

In her call with Yousuf Raza Gilani, Clinton "reiterated America's respect for Pakistan's sovereignty and commitment to working together in pursuit of shared objectives on the basis of mutual interest and mutual respect," according to a statement released by the state department on Saturday.

alJazeera

But did she apologize?

In response, Pakistan has so far refused to take part in a US probe into the air strike. It has also shut down a vital NATO supply line into Afghanistan and boycotted an international conference in Bonn focused on how to move forward after the coming US withdrawal.

A statement from PM Gilani's office said that he told Clinton that Pakistan's non-attendance in Bonn was not open to review, as it had been approved by the parliament's national security committee.

Apparently not. Or else an apology will no longer cut it.

The Pakistani government has already given military commanders the authority to return fire on the border without first seeking permission, a change in the rules of engagement.

It has also ordered American personnel to leave Shamsi Air Base, widely understood to have been a hub for a covert drone war on Taliban and al-Qaeda commanders in Pakistan's troubled border areas with Afghanistan.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

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"It takes only a bit of knowledge of history to realize how dangerous it is to think that the people who run the country know what they are doing." -- Howard Zinn

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"Terrorism is the willingness to kill large numbers of people for some presumably good cause.” -- Howard Zinn

"What we have is a foreign policy which is essentially a marketing strategy for selling weapons." -- Jill Stein

"We should always remember that the danger to societies from security services is not that they will spontaneously decide to embrace [Stasi style] mustache twirling and jackboots to bear us bodily into dark places, but that the slowly shifting foundation of policy will make it such that mustaches and jackboots are discovered to prove an operational advantage toward a necessary purpose.” ~ Edward Snowden

"America: just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable." ~ Hunter S. Thompson

"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws." ~ Mayer Rothschild

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"What matters in journalism isn't politics, which are as universal and inescapable as breathing. What matters -- along with a fundamentally adversarial attitude toward government, without which "journalism" is simply public relations -- is integrity, transparency, evidence, coherence, and principle. These are the principles on which we should evaluate the quality of journalism, and their absence is why some journalists are so desperate to get you to focus on something else." ~ Barry Eisler

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Life, as Explained in "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead"

GUILDENSTERN: What a fine persecution---to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened.

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ROSENCRANTZ : The only thing that makes it bearable is the irrational belief that somebody interesting will come on in a minute.

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GUILDENSTERN: But for God's sake what are we supposed to do?!

PLAYER: Relax. Respond. That's what people do. You can't go through life questioning your situation at every turn.

GUILDENSTERN: But we don't know what's going on, or what to do with ourselves. We don't know how to act.

PLAYER: Act natural. You know why you're here at least.

GUILDENSTERN: We only know what we're told, and that's little enough. And for all we know it isn't even true.

PLAYER: For all anyone knows, nothing is. Everything has to be taken on trust; truth is only that which is taken to be true. It's the currency of living. There may be nothing behind it, but it doesn't make any difference so long as it is honoured. One acts on assumptions.

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GUILDENSTERN : We act on scraps of information... sifting half-remembered directions that we can hardly separate from instinct.

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PLAYER: Life is a gamble, at terrible odds-if it was a bet you wouldn't take it.