Universal and timeless principles

Since time immemorial human beings have devised certain moral and ethical principles which are observed by peoples of all colour, creed and race all over the world and across all cultural frontiers to govern themselves peacefully. They are also called virtues and vices and some of these have even been made into laws by all civilised nations. Foremost among these universal and timeless principles are truthfulness and lying, because they constitute the foundation all other moral values, ethics and laws and because the very existence, peace, progress and prosperity of a society depends on the observance of these two principles. It is not without reason that perjury has been made a crime in all states.Islam has equally and even more strongly forbidden its followers from lying.It takes such a serious view of lying that it debars a person who has lied even once from being admitted as a witness in a court of law. On the other hand the quality of truthfulness, particularly in a leader, is regarded as the most essential and important requirement because he who holds an office of state holds the destiny of a nation and welfare of millions of his compatriots.It was this quality of the Prophet of Islam (PBUH) that made the people of Makkah give him the title of Ameen and entrust him with the heavy responsibility of resolving the dispute over the issue of who should place the Black Stone (Hajr-e-Aswad) in the corner of the rebuilt Great Mosque (Khanay-e-Kaaba). This was such a ticklish issue that a wrong decision could have led to a long and bloody civil war, deaths of thousands in and around Makkah and bloodshed and for years to come. However, the people trusted only one man and only because he had never lied and never broken his promise in his life. That man was Mohammad bin Abdullah, not yet a Prophet, in whose fairness they had an unimpeachable faith even though he belonged to the ruling tribe of Makkah.No one felt uncomfortable about placing their trust in him because they were absolutely certain that though he was a member of "the majority party" he would never favour it in the choice of Kaaba's stewardship at the cost of dividing the community and laying the foundation of a bloody and long term civil war. They were sure that the unity and welfare of the entire community would be his prime motive and not some financial benefit that would come to his tribe from the control of the Kaaba.Most of our present day leaders seem to believe that lying in politics is not only justified but fair, a virtue, a sign of the cleverness even his manliness. They seem to think that no one can be a great leader unless he can speak white lies and befool the people.That is how President Musharraf thought and acted. Throughout his nine years as president he lied to the nation on every occasion which in his views was necessary to prolong his rule.He lied about Kargil, he lied about the circumstances of Nawaz Sharif's visit to Washington, he lied about doffing his uniform in December 2004, he lied in the judicial reference about Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, he lied about not putting him and his family under house arrest, and he lied about resigning if his party was defeated in the 2008 elections. He lied to his family, he lied to the Pakistanis, he lied to the Americans and he lied to the world.Now we are again witnessing a similar act of blatant lying and attempt to hoodwink the nation by the PPP leader. He has used every tactics, semantics, and excuse to wriggle out of the several verbal and written commitments to reinstate the judges, including the CJ, who were unconstitutionally removed by the illegal president General (retd) Musharraf. Now, having exausted all the excuses he says that these agreements "are not holy like the Holy Quran and the Hadith" and can be modified if circumstances change.This point is too brazenly frivolous even to be argued. But I would like to remind the co-chairman that the Prophet had not yet received a single revelation when he was given the title of Ameen and called by the people of Makkah to find a solution to the dispute over the Hajr-e-Aswad. And it was the same faith of the people in his truthfulness that made them believe that Jibreel Aleyhiss Salam (Angel Gabriel) had come to him and given him the revelation "read, read in the name of thy Lord..."
By MANSOOR ALAM

Russia shows its paces

Gone are the days when Russia had sucked it up and resigned itself to a second fiddle role at the international front. Now, quite the contrary. Russia has started throwing its weight around and it has, in no small measure, come out to put a kibosh on the Bush Administration's idee fixe to actualise US global hegemony. To all intents and purposes, Russia has telegraphed a calculated and patent message to the US that Moscow will henceforth feel free to mount guard over its interests and further them in precisely the same way that Washington does.Russia's recent onslaught against Georgia is a case in point. By mounting military swoop on Georgia, Russia has lent colour to the fact that it retains the initiative. On the night of August 7, Russian troops and tanks poured into Georgia and lobbed missiles on it after the Georgian army rolled out an offensive to regain control of South Ossetia, the Moscow-backed region which broke away from Tbilisi in the early 1990's.Georgia, a supposed Western ally and applicant to NATO, is a fully-fledged US satellite. Its forces are armed and trained by the US and Israel. Georgian leader Saakashvili's links with the neo-conservatives in Washington are suspiciously close and intimate. Above all, it is Georgia that controls the oil and gas pipeline from Azerbaijan to Turkey that offers Europe a degree of independence from the operation of Russia's energy muscle. One million barrels of oil are delivered through this pipeline per day.If we delve, the low-down on the war against Georgia is that it is constitutive of Russia's grand strategy to assert itself and send shivers down America's spine. Ever since the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia has watched with growing alarm, how the successive US administration have failed to keep faith with the covenant made by President George W Bush not to trifle with the status quo existing at the time when the Cold War was at its buzzer in 1990. The eastward expansion of NATO, which started during the Bill Clinton presidency, has covered not only the Baltic States, but also all of the east European members of the now-defunct Moscow-led Warsaw Pact. As if this were not enough, plans are on the stocks to expand NATO to admit Ukraine, a former European constituent of the Soviet Union and Georgia, a former Caucasian constituent of the Soviet Union.Already the Pentagon has established its presence in Georgia and Azerbaijan. It posted its officers in Caucasian Republic to train Georgian and Azeri forces to guard the Baku - Tbilisi - Ceyhan (BTC ) oil pipeline - connecting Baku, the source of oil, with the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan in Turkey. Moreover, under the smokescreen of waging War on Terror, the Azeri government. allowed the Pentagon to upgrade the Nasosnaya military airfield north of Baku. All this has conferred greater flexibility to the US in transporting troops and deploying its air power in the region.The Pentagon's continuing intrusion into Russia's backyard has made the military leaders hacked off in Moscow. They see it as a link of Washington's over-arching policy of hemming Russia in. Now Georgian leader Saakashvili's dunderheaded move has provided them with a rationale to flex their muscles and claw back some of the influence the Kremlin has been wont to exercise in the Caucasus over the past two centuries. Russia seeks not only to prevent Georgia and Ukraine from joining NATO but also to bring them under Russian control.Russia dubs its rampage through Georgia as a peace-keeping operation to end the Tbilisi government's genocide and ethnic cleansing of South Ossetia, where many people hold Russian passports. These were the words which were pressed into service by the US and NATO during their 1999 bombing campaign against Serbia which has culminated in the breaking away of Kosovo.America has regarded Russia's attack on Georgia as "disproportionate and unacceptable." American president George W Bush has inveighed against Russia for invading a sovereign and independent state. He has insisted that such actions are not acceptable in the 21st century. Was US not living in 21st century when in 2003, it invaded and occupied the sovereign state of Iraq on a false pretext at the expense of hundreds and thousands of lives and in 2006 aided and abetted Israel to pulverise Lebanon's infrastructure and bump off upwards of a thousand civilians in retaliation for the capture or killing of five soldiers.Russia's mood, at the moment, is reminiscent of Germany after World War I. It has now squarely challenged US pre-eminence in world affairs and sent a shot across its bows by serving notice that the days of automatic deference to Washington's decrees are over. Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, a peerless leader having unrivalled capabilities, who had once lamented the collapse of the Soviet Union "the greatest geo-political catastrophe of the 20th century" is pulling out all the stops to catapult the country to its once-dominant role in the world. Armed with wealth from oil and gas; holding a near-monopoly over the energy supply to Europe; with a million soldiers, thousands of nuclear warheads, the world's third largest military budget and above all the leader of a lifetime in the shape of Mr Putin, Russia thinks that it is time to strike.
By IRFAN ASGHAR

Resurgent Russia

Russia has never been a friend to Pakistan, but that is no reason for any government in Islamabad to avoid movement towards more cordial relations with an increasingly important country. As has been shown in Georgia recently, the Russians are in no mood to take any nonsense from anyone, and are intent on once again being a power to be reckoned with. The declaration by the psychotic Dick Cheney that the recent Russian operation in the territory of South Ossetia "must not go unanswered" was silly bluster, and the remarks by Bush and Condoleezza Rice about Russian "aggression" and so forth are equally absurd. In early August Georgia's president, Mikheil Saakashvili, an erratic US-educated, US-backed demagogue, ordered his US-trained, US-equipped troops to rocket villages and then invade the enclave of would-be independent South Ossetia, whose largely Russian-origin inhabitants were being protected by Russian soldiers. His soldiers fired thousands of rockets from multi-barrelled launchers into villages and towns, killing hundreds of civilians. The Russian army went in and thumped the Georgians. So who does much of the West blame for the conflict? Why, Russia, of course. The hypocrisy of Western reaction to Russia's justifiable involvement in Georgia is ridiculous. Washington's condemnation of Moscow is bizarre, and for Bush to state, as he did on August 15, that "Bullying and intimidation are not acceptable ways to conduct foreign policy in the 21st century" is preposterous to the point of fantasy. Bush pronounced that "We insist that Georgia's sovereignty and territorial integrity be respected" which is rich, coming from a man whose drones continue to violate Pakistan's airspace to fire missiles that have killed scores of Pakistani civilians. Because of George W Bush there is an ongoing US military occupation of Iraq, a country which posed no threat whatever to the United States and which on his orders was invaded illegally and mercilessly subjugated. His soldiers, outside the NATO command system (such as that is), have killed hundreds of Afghan civilians, resulting in futile protests by Afghanistan's President Karzai. Sovereignty, anyone? For the West to try to assume a lofty moral position about Russian troops moving into South Ossetia to protect civilians from the rockets and other barbarity of the Georgian leader is not just laughably hypocritical, it demonstrates a weird consistency in an essentially US-centric view of international affairs. "You are with us or against us" is the battle refrain of Bush Washington's Crusade, and with some honourable exceptions the European Union governments (if not the peoples) are toeing the line of the lame-duck US president, pathetic in his desperation to show he is a force in international affairs. The West ignores the fact that the US has been training and equipping Georgia's armed forces for six years and had a considerable military presence in the country, close to the Russian border. Last week US aircraft flew Georgian troops back home from Iraq, where they had been part of the US occupation "coalition," which needlessly provocative action will not be forgotten by Moscow. Washington has been trying to persuade NATO members (it is inappropriate to use the word 'partners') that Georgia should join that obsolete military grouping, which is merely a military vehicle for US foreign strategy. Moscow sees this as deliberate provocation, mainly because the stationing of American and other foreign troops so close to its border, for whatever purpose, was and is considered by Moscow to be an open threat. (If there were Russian troops in South America or the Caribbean there would be an almighty howl of indignation from Washington, so let's have no nonsense about "legitimate presence.") The machinations of the White House are regarded rightly in Moscow as meddling in affairs that have nothing whatever to do with US security. Russia was already uneasy about the increase in NATO's presence along its borders (ten more countries enlisted in a obviously anti-Russian alliance, so far) and by creation of bases for US anti-missile missiles in Poland and supporting radar installations in the Czech republic, with both to be surrounded by US Patriot missile batteries. Moscow could not be expected to ignore this massing of hostile forces in a threatening semi-circle of US-inspired intimidation. Those Western nations which follow the American line, however reluctantly, forget or ignore the fact that there is justifiable national pride in Russia, which suffered mightily from the explosion of corrupt capitalism in the 1990s. Most Russians have no reason to be grateful to the West, and understandably resent the gloating over them after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Millions were thrust into poverty by the machinations of western-inspired mega-criminals who made billions from the suffering of ordinary people, and whose grim and clever antics were energetically supported by wily multinational companies whose contribution to world-wide suffering has been so effective. Their pursuit of profit, most of it extracted from Russia to tax-free havens abroad, involved years of economic plunder from which the country is only just recovering. In spite of attempts by Bush to manipulate him, Prime Minister Putin has shown that he is a true Russian patriot, and the country's President, Mr Medvedev, is equally forthright in his insistence that his nation should be accorded the courtesy and consideration that is its due. If the West resents this, then too bad. It so happens that Russia's economic position is improving and therefore the Cheney threat concerning "serious consequences" is empty, because Europe is not going to join in lunatic schemes for sanctions or other economic measures aimed at bringing down Moscow's government. Reports last week indicated that foreign investment in Russia had taken a downturn, but the Russian response to that is: So What? ; because it is no bad thing that greedy western corporations should cease to suck out profits from the country. Russia is sick and tired with being regarded with condescension and disdain by the West and especially by America which it regards, justifiably, as an arrogant imperial power that obeys no laws and brooks no dissent on the international stage. But there was one hilarious comment by Bush, when he said that Russia "must" repair its relations with the United States, Europe and other nations...." How fascinating that he thinks "Europe," of which Russia is part, is a nation. And as to the word "must," which is used by Rice and Bush with arrogant condescension to other nations at every opportunity, one is reminded of Catherine the Great of Russia who to a foreigner said words to the effect that "Little man, one does not use the word "must" to Princes." So Medvedev and Putin to Bush. The trouble in South Ossetia had been brewing for months and there is no doubt that Moscow was waiting for the US-backed Saakashvili to take a gamble that there would be no reaction when he ordered his vicious attack. What a fool. Equally, there is no doubt that the team of Medvedev and Putin want to see Saakashvili thrown out of power. In fact this was said to Condoleezza Rice by Russia's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, on the understanding that his statement would be subject to the normal diplomatic convention of confidentiality. Fat chance. Diplomatic decency means nothing in Bush Washington, and Mr Lavrov's private comment was publicised at the Security Council. If Washington imagines that there will ever again be trust on the part of Moscow, then it is entirely mistaken. Russia is going places. It is no pussy cat: it is an increasingly powerful bear, and a welcome counter to the self-righteous Imperial Eagle that so enjoys demonstrating its ferocious doctrine of Shock and Awe. Confrontation is the thrust of Washington's foreign policy, but it has now been met with determination on the part of a proud nation that refuses to be intimidated. There is a lesson here; and it would be wise for other countries, and especially for Europe, to decide where to place their own interests.
By Brian Cloughley

Accountability and equality before law

The government and some political leaders have advanced a number of different arguments against holding Pakistan’s former dictator accountable for his actions in a court of law. Some of these arguments are based on moral considerations while others are premised on expediency and pragmatism. One needs to look critically at the reasons provided for ‘safe or honourable exit’ and ‘indemnity’ to evaluate their merits and demerits. The following are some of the most common reasons offered against a trial in a court of law: 1) No dictator in the past has been punished or held accountable even when an elected civilian prime minister was hanged; 2) The government does not want to engage in the politics of revenge; 3) The nation has already undergone an agonising period of turmoil and tribulation and should be spared the prolonged tumult of a trial; 4) A trial is likely to bring up the names of senior civil and military personnel and politicians who were complicit in the actions; 5) Saudi Arabia, a brotherly country, would be annoyed and may block its sorely-needed facility of deferred oil payments to the tune of 5.9 billion dollars; 6) The US would be displeased and may withhold the promised aid of billions of dollars needed by a cash-strapped and beleaguered government for balance of payment support and development. Let us take each rationale one by one.Firstly, the fact that no dictator to date has been held accountable should not deter a nation from finally doing the right thing. It is precisely because as a nation we failed to bring violators of the constitution to justice that the sacred contract was violated repeatedly with impunity. If we had not spared the first dictator, we may never have had subsequent ones. It is time now to set a precedent of answerability to prevent future adventurism and takeovers. It is illogical to argue that since we kept doing the wrong thing in the past, we should never change course and do the right thing. If we do not diverge from past practices and continue to forgive and forget in the name of ‘national reconciliation’ we will reconcile forever with dictatorships. Second, the invocation of the notion of revenge is completely misplaced in the context of crimes committed at the national level. The idea of revenge is personalised and refers to the actions of an individual or a group of individuals who take the law into their own hands and commit violence in response to aggression or injustice against them. Revenge is considered a primitive concept that is associated with less evolved societies where overarching modern state systems are not developed. It has been replaced by notions of retribution, rectification and punishment that is commensurate with the crime. In contemporary times the state, as the embodiment of the collective will, takes cognizance of crimes and punishes a culprit in accordance with agreed upon principles of justice in proportion to the crime committed. The idea is to establish the writ of state and uphold the rule of law, especially the principle that no individual is above the law. This kind of accountability by the public is far from the notion of personalised revenge and is necessary for the reiteration of the consensual rules that order collective existence.Thirdly, the argument that our nation has already suffered enormous political, moral, legal and social upheaval and may not be able to withstand the turbulence of a trial is flawed because it aims to protect the guilty from accountability by absolving them from being responsible for the turmoil and mayhem. It is not the process of accountability that would lead to unrest and agony. Rather, the actions of the dictator in the ruthless violations of the rule of law, the merciless killing of dissenting citizens, the callous sale of citizens in return for money, the unprincipled selling off of national assets and the decimating of vital national institutions, have caused intense mental anguish and sorrow among citizens. The process of a fair and just trial would not only lead to the ‘ritual cleansing and healing’ of the wounds inflicted upon the nation, it would also allow the world, and the dictator himself, to witness the operation of civilised law rather than the law of the jungle that we observed in the last few years. The fear that the trial would inevitably bring up the names of many closeted ‘dictators’ who aided and abetted the leading one is ill-founded. It would be a greatly healing exercise if not only the main culprit but all the accomplices, including civil and military officers and politicians involved in sustaining, aiding, misguiding, reinforcing and justifying the illegal actions were to be exposed. This would not only establish the fairness of the trial, it would also purge the system of the rot that has set in over years of authoritarian rule. Fifth, the fear that Saudi Arabia, a country that seems to provide safety shelters to our beleaguered and tormented leaders, would be incensed is a pragmatic one. With our economy in tatters and hugely dependent on Saudi Arabian oil on deferred payments, we can hardly afford to annoy this benefactor. However, ‘friendly countries’ are increasingly realising that instead of befriending only dictators and single individuals, they need to express their solidarity towards the people of this country. It would be too much to hope for human rights considerations from a country that is still a monarchy and where the population does not have the most basic right to choose its own government. The notions of due process, justice, equality before law and accountability of the powerful are alien to its anachronistic political system.Finally, there are calls from the United States to spare the dictator and billions of dollars are being dangled in front of the elected government to induce it to let the culprit off the hook. The government needs this money to plug a massive deficit created by profligacy of the previous dispensation (the foreign trips, the lavish lifestyles of the rulers). We may not be able to withstand the pressure exerted by the US because of our chronic dependence on it for our military and non-military needs. However, it is pertinent to mention that the US also has an extremely questionable human rights record. Even before 9/11 the record was not exactly one to be proud of, but after 9/11 the US administration descended into the worst depths of depraved and morally reprehensible acts. The current US administration in particular has a seriously blemished record with Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and the genocide of millions in Iraq and Afghanistan. One can hardly imagine that such a government would have any moral qualms about letting their favourite dictator go scot-free. Our benefactors are thus not ones who would press us for rule of law, due process, justice and fair play. The deafening noises about ‘good governance’, accountability, transparency and rule of law that have made by international donors since the dawn of the new millennium, ring hollow in the face of their efforts to scuttle these norms and principles in our blighted land. The double standards and hypocrisy of our foreign ‘friends’ are only too visible for us to imagine that they would recommend the trial of our tormentors.It needs to be reiterated, and this cannot be emphasised enough, that if the nation ever decides to put our rulers on trial, it should be a completely fair one. Their right to defend themselves must be upheld despite the fact that they never allowed this right to others. The government would need to keep the moral high ground and not fall to the same level as the ones accused. For obvious reasons, none of the deposed judges, or those favoured by the rulers, should be involved in the trial. As the old maxim goes, justice must not only be done, but should be seen to be done. It is only by taking the powerful to trial that the government would be able to establish its writ and the rule of law. If the government foregoes this necessary process of purging and cleansing, then it will not have the justification for bringing others, for example the militants, and ordinary citizens to justice. The law must apply equally to all, or else the very reason for having law and the constitution would evaporate.by Dr Rubina Saigol

Politics and the Quran

It has been reported that during the final phase of their meeting, Asif Ali Zardari promised to restore judges within 24 hours of the impeachment or resignation of the self-appointed president, the retired General, now a virtual prisoner of his own deeds, and offered to take an oath on the Holy Quran to show his honesty. At that crucial moment, Nawaz Sharif is reported to have said: “Leave the Quran out of politics.”Had Nawaz Sharif let him take an oath on the Quran for a promise he never intended to keep, Asif Ali Zardari will now be under double obligation: his conscience and the Quran. Both carry huge spiritual, emotional, and psychological consequences. But more than the wishy washy personality of Asif Ali Zardari, who is reported to be suffering from serious psychological illnesses, the episode is more a reflection of the personality of Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif and his views, convictions, and beliefs. Sharif’s comment reflects the great chasm that has spread like a plague in Muslim psyche: supposedly there are things of this world (politics included) in which the Quran has nothing to do and there are things of the next world in which the Quran has something to do. This split is a product of the secularisation of the Muslim mind through education, social and cultural norms, and through a blind following of Islam without ever understanding its true essence.Most Muslims believe Islam is a complete religion, but in actual life, they suffer from a deep psychological split that construes Islam as a religion which has something to do with the next world only. This confusion manifests at numerous planes of existence. In public life, this confusion splits Muslim politicians into leftist and rightist groups, into those who are Islamists and those who are not. Whereas in their personal beliefs, they continue to claim that Islam is a complete religion, in their public life they act as if it has nothing to do with their views, beliefs, and practices.Mian Mohammad Nawaz Sharif has built a public career that has been marred by incompetence and during his last stint as prime minister the “heavy mandate” he received at polls went to his head, but he is known to be a man of good moral character and a believer who believes in Islam as a religion. Thus, his response to Zardari (leave the Quran out of politics) is rather alarming, because if one leaves the Quran, nothing is left in life whether public or private. At least, that is how believers conceive the Quran. For them, it is the source of guidance, a key to the life of this world and the next. Sharif’s remark is, furthermore, disturbing because, unlike Zardari, he is seen as a long-term political public personality in Pakistan. Unlike Zardari, he has a solid base of public support built over a long period of time. His political career is entrenched in Pakistani soil and he is not perceived as a puppet. Coming into politics on the shoulders of a military dictator who played with Islam more than he implemented it, Sharif has carried the stigma of a dictator’s protégé for a long time, but this is in the past. He has matured in many respects over the last decade, especially during his most recent exile. But he still clinches on to a deceitful pragmatism that robs him of all moral strength.One cannot be a principled person while trampling basic principles of moral behaviour at the same time. His moral victory over Zardari is obvious, but this politics of principles, rather than that of exigency, needs to be an all-encompassing motif; it cannot be beneficial if it is piecemeal. What is needed at this stage is a clear-sighted view of the future of Pakistan. In the short run, it seems that Asif Ali Zardari has it all – from the presidency to the prime minister and from the judiciary to the foreign office. But for any person of keen insight, all of this is built on flimsy base; there is no solid foundation for this power grab; it is merely a product of deceit, deals, and duplicity and nothing built on such flimsy base can endure.For all practical purposes, Zardari’s is a one time fluke appearance granted by the sudden death of his wife, the deal she had made with the general courtesy a few influential persons in the state department, and the feudalism that runs through Pakistan’s political culture. In addition to this chance of history, he has come to the forefront of Pakistan’s political scene through dishonesty and lack of integrity. Such a person cannot stay at the top for long; this is a given. Nawaz Sharif should very clearly understand this and if he does, he should look upon his political setup as the only true political force in the country. As such, he needs to reconsider his entire political strategy.Leaving the Quran out of politics leaves only the humanly conceived values as the basis of politics. These values are terribly flawed, because they suggest to the mind short-term gains, self-interest, and egotistic behaviour. True guidance, both in private and public life, comes from the ever-lasting message and from the conduct and sayings of Allah’s chosen Messenger, upon whom be peace. This is not merely a creedal statement; it is a conviction borne of experience of generations of men and women over centuries.
by Dr Muzaffar Iqbal

Obama breaks down historic racial barrier

DENVER: Barack Obama was to accept his historic nomination on Thursday as the first black to top a major US political party’s presidential ticket, delivering on the closing night of the Democratic convention an impassioned call for change in a country where exactly 45 years earlier civil rights leader Martin Luther Kiing challenged Americans to embrace his “dream” of equality. Obama, who has made little of his race in a so-far bruising run for the White House, was sure to include his personal story in his acceptance address before 75,000 fellow Democrats at a Denver stadium, and millions more watching on television. But he was to also talk about the US’s many challenges today, from health care to international threats, campaign manager David Plouffe said on ABC’s “Good Morning America” news show. His acceptance of the Democratic nomination comes on the 45th anniversary of the Rev. King’s Aug 28, 1963, “I Have a Dream” speech, an exhortation about the frustration of blacks at a time when African Americans in many southern states were denied their voting rights more than 90 years after federal legislation guaranteed them that right. Given America’s tortured racial history Obama was just 2 when King delivered his speech the candidate’s nomination is a gamble for the Democrats in the Nov 4 election as they work to wrest the White House from the Republicans and their candidate McCain, a veteran Arizona senator and Vietnam war hero who turns 72 on Friday. “This is a monumental moment in our nation’s history,” Martin Luther King III, the civil rights icon’s oldest son, told The Associated Press on Wednesday. “And it becomes obviously an even greater moment in November if he’s elected.” The stakes were, of course, equally high for Obama, a relative newcomer to the national stage who rose to prominence after delivering the keynote address at the Democratic convention in 2004 and who is still in his first term in the Senate. While his speech four years ago was widely praised as inspirational, on Thursday’s address was expected to convey a simpler message about what he would do for the country as president. “I think what Sen. Obama wants to do is make sure everyone watching at home is going to have a clear sense of where he wants to take the country, that we’re on the wrong path and Barack Obama is going to put us back on the right track both here at home and overseas,” Plouffe said. McCain offered mild criticism ahead of Obama’s speech, telling a Pittsburgh radio station on Thursday that he admires and respects Obama but “I don’t think he’s right for America.” “I think I’m more in touch with the American people as far as my policies, my proposals and my ideas,” McCain told KDKA News Radio. The veteran Arizona senator, whose search for a running mate has recently been largely eclipsed by the fanfare surrounding Obama’s nomination, also told the station that he has not made a decision. Still, he was expected to name his pick this week, possibly on Friday, with the hope that he can generate new momentum for his party’s convention, which begins next Monday in St. Paul, Minnesota.Former Vice President Al Gore also will speak at the Democratic convention on Thursday. Adding a touch of celebrity to the convention’s final night, singers Sheryl Crow, Stevie Wonder and will.i. am were scheduled to perform, with Academy Award-winner Jennifer Hudson singing the national anthem. Obama had been campaigning in battleground states during the week before turning up on the Denver convention stage unannounced on Wednesday night after running mate Joe Biden’s acceptance speech. Biden used his speech to laud Obama and to tear into McCain, even as he called the latter a “friend” whose “personal courage and heroism ... still amaze me.” Delighting the crowd with his appearance, Obama praised the one-time front-runner for the Democratic nomination Hillary Rodham Clinton, and her husband former President Bill Clinton, as well as his wife for their prime time speeches in support of him this week.

Ghosts of the past

CONTEMPORARY Pakistan finds itself at the nexus of a number of intersecting conflicts that have generated unbridled violence across the length and breadth of the country.The suicide bombing at the Pakistan Ordnance Factory was the continuation of a series of attacks on state institutions including the ISI, the SSG unit, the air force as well as civilian law-enforcement agencies such as the FIA building in Lahore.News of bloodshed is splashed across the front pages of dailies from attacks on utility installations such as Sui gas pipelines in Balochistan to the regular bombing and torching of girls’ schools in Mingora, Swat, and other areas of Pakhtunkhwa. Added to these horrific news items are the almost daily attacks by Nato forces on the innocent people of Bajaur and other Fata areas from where populations are forced to flee and become displaced.There is a virtual civil war going on between the security forces and militants, and among militants themselves, in Waziristan. A number of outfits such as Lashkar-i-Islam of Mangal Bagh and Amr Bil Maroof Wal Nahi Al-Munkar of the slain Haji Namdar have sprung up. Among all religio-militant contraptions, the biggest and most deadly by far are the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan led by Baitullah Mehsud and Maulvi Omar and the revitalised Tehrik Nifaz-i-Shariat-i-Mohammadi.Nobody knows which ones have been spawned by the spymasters themselves and which ones sprung up in resistance to US and Pakistani siege of the areas. Similarly, one hears whispers of the Balochistan National Army being active in the province with the backing of some powerful actors.We need to understand our plight in a historical perspective. What we see all around us today is not a sudden or recent uprising but goes way back into the very process of the formation of our state in a communal split and the subsequent festering of wounds inflicted over years of insensitivity exhibited by a highly centralised state. As Pakistan emerged in the context of the divisive two-nation paradigm, the state came to be defined in religious terms early on in our history.There were two major consequences of the birth of the country within a primarily religious idiom: 1) The state acquired a communal, religious and sectarian character which generated sectarian and religious violence; and 2) the overemphasis on religious identity excluded and denied the existence of older and more entrenched ethnic, linguistic and regional identities which were suppressed in the name of religious homogenisation.Let us take the communalisation of the state first. As early as 1949 the Objectives Resolution was adopted which declared that sovereignty belongs to Allah and the religious and social system of Islam would be fully observed. In spite of serious objections raised by the minority members of the constituent assembly, the resolution was passed on the insistence of the Muslim members who took their cue from the two-nation concept.In 1985, during Gen Zia’s Islamisation drive, Article 2-A was inserted into the constitution and the Objectives Resolution was made a substantive part of the constitution thereby making its provisions justiciable. At that time the minorities were deprived of the right to practise their religions freely as the word ‘freely’ was deleted.The Afghan jihad, coupled with the Islamisation measures designed to legitimise Zia’s illegal rule, provided enormous impetus for the growth of madressahs supported by Saudi, US and Iranian funds. The greatest increase in religious parties was recorded between 1979 and 1990, and this is accounted for by the staggering rise in the number of sectarian outfits.While jihad-related organisations doubled, there was a 90 per cent increase in sectarian parties. In the same period, religious seminaries began to proliferate in Pakistan. Prior to 1980, there were 700 religious schools in Pakistan and the annual rate of increase was three per cent.By the end of 1986, the rate of increase of deeni madaris reached a phenomenal 136 per cent. By 2002, Pakistan had 7,000 institutions awarding higher degrees in religious teaching. The new schools were mostly set up in the Frontier province, southern Punjab and Karachi. Religious leaders were provided with economic incentives to create militants for the Afghan war.The situation was now rife for sectarian conflict as arguments and interpretations of the ‘true’ meaning of an Islamic state became ubiquitous. In Punjab, 1994 was one of the worst years in terms of sectarian killing when 73 people were killed and many more wounded. In the latter half of 1996, sectarian violence in Parachinar and part of the Kurrram Agency claimed hundreds of lives. In March 2004, unidentified gunmen opened fire on an Ashura procession in Quetta killing over 40 people and injuring scores of others. Sectarian violence escalated in Oct 2004 when on Oct 1 29 people were killed in an imambargah in Sialkot. On Oct 7, a bomb explosion in Multan killed 40 people in a mosque while three days later a blast ripped through a Shia mosque in Lahore killing four people. The latest was in Dera Ismail Khan where a hospital full of Shia mourners was attacked.Another major consequence of a state emerging within a religious theory was that Pakistan failed to evolve a viable federal structure. Religious nationalism became a centralising force and the unique identities of ethnic minorities came to be denied or erased because of the promotion of an overriding religious identity. As early as 1963 Ayub Khan declared that “I do hope that in a few decades, which is not a long time in the history and progress of nations, our people will forget to think in terms of Punjabi, Pathan, Sindhi, Balochi and Bengali and think of themselves as Pakistanis only … our religion, our ideology, our common background, our aims and ambitions unite us more firmly than any geographical boundaries could have.”The denial of the rights of smaller provinces in recognition of language, NFC award, royalties or water share led to various conflicts one after another which culminated in East Pakistan’s secession and ensuing resistance movements in Balochistan, Fata and Sindh. In 1970-71 the state was locked in a power struggle against the Bengalis, in the mid-1970s against the Baloch, in the 1980s against the Sindhis during the MRD movement and in the early 1990s against Urdu-speaking migrants from India.An over-centralised state, dominated by one ethnic group along with a powerful army and bureaucracy drawn primarily from one or two ethnic groups, drew its ideological inspiration from religious nationalism to create a false sense of unity. The foundational paradigm of the state’s emergence ironically created existential crises for it, as the founding theory blew up in its face and its repressive response simply added fuel to the fire of ethnic disaffection. Today its own policies have come back to haunt the state.
Courtesy: Daily Dawn Lahore / By Dr Rubina Saigol

Joe Biden’s selection

BARACK OBAMA, we are told, chose Joe Biden to be his running mate because he needed an older man, more experienced in foreign policy, to fill the gaps in his resume and reassure American voters that the United States would be safe under an Obama presidency.That’s true, but it is assumed that he also chose him because Biden’s views on foreign policy are not radically different from his own. Since American foreign policy still affects almost everybody in the world that makes Biden’s views very interesting.Joe Biden, now 65, has been a senator since he was 29. For almost half that time he has been a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which he now heads. He has been around long enough to leave plenty of evidence about his view and his reflexes, and it is safe to say that he qualifies as a liberal interventionist (or, as they say on the other side of the Atlantic, a liberal imperialist). He has never met an international problem that he didn’t think the US should help to solve.Unlike the neo-conservatives, who are brothers under the skin to the liberal interventionists, Biden does not believe that every problem in the world can be solved by the application of US military power, but he does think that many of them can. He backed the US military intervention in Bosnia, the bombing of Serbia during the Kosovo crisis, the invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11, and the invasion of Iraq (although he subsequently had the grace to admit he was wrong and apologise for that).On larger issues, by contrast, Biden has usually been a voice of moderation among the chorus of Democratic hawks vying to outdo their Republican colleagues in their hostility to Russia and their enthusiasm for the “war on terror.” He did support the expansion of NATO right up to Russia’s frontiers (and visited Georgia immediately after the recent fighting), but he has resisted the temptation to paint Russia as the Soviet Union in sheep’s clothing.“Terror is a tactic,” Biden has said. “Terror is not a philosophy.” It is a mantra that everybody in US politics should be required to chant each morning before work, even if it is slightly inaccurate. (“Terror” is actually an emotion. “Terrorism,” however, is a tactic — a political tool or technique, more precisely — that can be used in support of a wide variety of causes. It is as misleading to declare war on terrorism as it would be to declare war on propaganda.)Knowing this has enabled Biden to concentrate (most of the time, at least) on the need to eliminate the particular groups of terrorists that had attacked the United States, who were mostly located in Afghanistan and Pakistan. When he briefly supported the invasion of Iraq, he did not do so out of an ignorant belief that Saddam Hussein had links with those terrorists. It was his liberal interventionism that drove his decision, combined with a naive belief that the US intelligence services would not bend the evidence on Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction to serve the president’s purposes.So that is Joe Biden’s take on foreign policy, and it probably isn’t vastly different from Barack Obama’s. The difference lies mostly in the “experience” factor, which tells you all you needed to know about the value of experience in these matters. It is Biden’s long residence at the heart of the Washington political/military/intelligence machine that makes him such a conventional character.All that stuff about Obama being “not ready to lead” is simply a coded warning that he might not lead in the time-honoured, conventional way. John McCain certainly would, and so would have Hillary Clinton if she had won the Democratic nomination The selection of Joe Biden as his running mate is intended to allay those fears by linking Obama to someone who is deeply embedded in the conventional wisdom, but it doesn’t actually prove that Obama is too.There is still room for suspicion that Barack Obama harbours a secret desire to take American foreign policy in a quite different direction, away from the traditional great-power realpolitik and the occasional forays into liberal interventionism. That would probably appal Biden, and it would horrify the rest of the Washington establishment.Vice-presidents don’t have a veto, so the choice of Biden poses no problem there. But the Washington establishment probably does have a veto, so whatever Obama intends, Biden will not be disappointed by the outcome.
Daily Dawn Lahore / By Gwynne Dyer

No to another Cold War

WHEN President George Bush first met President Vladimir Putin, he claimed that having looked into the latter’s heart he had found in it a good man with whom he could do business.One wonders what Bush is saying in the wake of Russia’s incursion into Georgia. Not surprisingly, the western media stirred up quite a sob story in Georgia’s favour, claiming that it was a small, defenceless victim at the hands of marauding Russian soldiers.The reality however, is far more complex and goes back to the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991. Truly, its result — the emergence of a sole superpower — represented a historic transformation, for it destroyed the concept of the balance of power enunciated as far back as 1648 in the Treaty of Westphalia. Western politicians and scholars jumped to the conclusion that the event confirmed the triumph of western democracy and capitalism and thus marked the ‘end of history’.Consequently, the US embarked on a policy that showed scant regard for Russian interests. The chaotic years of Boris Yeltsin were taken advantage of, while Russia lay supinely in a state of drunken stupor. Yeltsin’s many transgressions, including his military assault on the duma were overlooked, Moscow’s regional and global issues were ignored, and in the meanwhile, the former communist states of Eastern and central Europe were made a part of the West’s fabric of economic and military alliances.But Russia is a millennium-old country, with a glorious history of achievements, possessing tremendous resources — both economic and human. It was therefore inevitable that Putin’s strong and resolute leadership would refocus the nation’s energies on economic and military reconstruction. The galloping international oil and gas prices helped in filling up its coffers, enabling it to alter its bargaining power as well.This newfound confidence enabled the Kremlin to exert influence far afield — claiming the North Pole and renewing nuclear bomber patrols near Guam and Scotland. But it was in the Caucuses where an increasingly assertive Kremlin decided to put its foot down, helped unwittingly by the irresponsible policies of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. By making a rash move to occupy the breakaway province of South Ossetia, Saakashvili may have wanted to prove his ‘nationalist’ credentials and enhance his ‘usefulness’ to the West.But when Moscow responded with its own military incursion, he could do no more than fret that the Russians were repeating what the Soviets had done in earlier years, while senior US officials made the preposterous claim that such an action could not be permitted in this era. How ironic coming from an administration that had invaded not one but two sovereign states!Saakashvili’s frustration at having been left to fend for himself was understandable. For long a favourite of the Bush administration, the former New York lawyer was viewed by Moscow as unreliable and an instrument to promote the West’s interests in Moscow’s backyard. As the Economist wrote, his thrust into South Ossetia “was foolish and possibly criminal”, and Gorbachev was right to observe: “Russia was dragged into the fray by the recklessness of Saakashvili. He would not have dared to attack without outside support. Once he did, Russia could not afford inaction.” Whether acting alone or at the behest of the US, Saakashvili’s grab for the enclaves has unleashed forces that are likely to have a deep, long-lasting impact not only on the region, but on East-West relations as well.President Bush and Secretary Condoleezza Rice have threatened to isolate Russia, while others have called for its expulsion from the G-8, as well as for keeping it out of the WTO. There have also been calls to rethink relations with Russia. But the rethinking needs to be directed at establishing a relationship of trust and mutual advantage, not to promote unilateral American advantage.The US must also be careful not to push Russia against the wall. It has already made the mistake of basing its policy on two major fallacies. One, that Russia was inherently aggressive and therefore needed to be kept ‘encircled’ and two, that Russia had been so weakened by the Soviet Union’s disintegration that it would not be able to ever endanger the West.It has, however, been proven again that nothing can be a more explosive mix than national humiliation and massive resources! Washington must not forget that it was the West that in inelegant haste brought in the former Soviet republics into economic and military alliances, while converting Nato into a global military force to be used at American behest to promote Washington’s global interests.The latest provocation has been the placement of US missiles in Poland, ostensibly to counter the Iranian threat, a claim no one takes seriously. All this has only reinforced Russia’s resolve to assert its place under the sun.Bush may see the Russian action in Georgia as directed against the West but it will have a far greater impact on the other states of the Caucuses and Caspian. Many of them have sizeable Russian minorities and long-established relations with Moscow. They cannot afford to be caught in a US-Russia confrontation. The energy pipelines too originate or go through this region and Europe would not want to see this area in a state of turmoil.Moscow’s show of strength in Georgia, coupled with Washington’s failure to come to the latter’s aid, has made countries such as the Ukraine and Poland nervous. Some see this as confirming their fears that the bear’s claws remain as sharp as ever.However, this would be a serious misreading of Russia’s intentions and interests. Any effort to create an anti-Russia coalition would be counter-productive, because Moscow recognises that its strategic objectives, such as bolstering its weight in world affairs, fortifying its presence in the Caucuses and regaining control over the region’s vital oil and gas transport corridor, can only be achieved in cooperation with the West.The US too cannot expect to tackle the grave challenges of global terrorism, climate control, energy security and even peace in the Middle East, without Russia’s support and cooperation. A new Cold War would be utterly disastrous for us all.
Courtesy: Daily Dawn Lahore / By Tariq Fatemi

Georgia the graveyard of US’s unipolar world

If there were any doubt that the rules of the international game have changed for good, the events of the past few days should have dispelled it. On Monday, President Bush demanded that Russia’s leaders reject their parliament’s appeal to recognise the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Within 24 hours, Bush had his response: President Medvedev announced Russia’s recognition of the two contested Georgian enclaves.The Russian message was unmistakable: the outcome of the war triggered by Georgia’s attack on South Ossetia on August 7 is non-negotiable – and nothing the titans of the US empire do or say is going to reverse it. After that, the British foreign secretary David Miliband’s posturing in Kiev about building a “coalition against Russian aggression” merely looked foolish.That this month’s events in the Caucasus signal an international turning point is no longer in question. The comparisons with August 1914 are of course ridiculous, and even the speculation about a new cold war overdone. For all the manoeuvres in the Black Sea and nuclear-backed threats, the standoff between Russia and the US is not remotely comparable to the events that led up to the first world war. Nor do the current tensions have anything like the ideological and global dimensions that shaped the 40-year confrontation between the west and the Soviet Union.But what is clear is that America’s unipolar moment has passed – and the new world order heralded by Bush’s father in the dying days of the Soviet Union in 1991 is no more. The days when one power was able to bestride the globe like a colossus, enforcing its will in every continent, challenged only by popular movements for national independence and isolated “rogue states”, are now over. For nearly two decades, while Russia sunk into “catastroika” and China built an economic powerhouse, the US has exercised unprecedented and unaccountable global power, arrogating to itself and its allies the right to invade and occupy other countries, untroubled by international law or institutions, sucking ever more states into the orbit of its voracious military alliance.Now, pumped up with petrodollars, Russia has called a halt to this relentless expansion and demonstrated that the US writ doesn’t run in every backyard. And although it has been a regional, not a global, challenge, this object lesson in the new limits of American power has already been absorbed from central Asia to Latin America.In Georgia itself, both Medvedev’s recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia’s independence and Russia’s destruction of Georgian military capacity have been designed to leave no room for doubt that the issue of the enclaves’ reintegration has been closed. There are certainly dangers for Russia’s own territorial integrity in legitimising breakaway states. But the move will have little practical impact and is presumably partly intended to create bargaining chips for future negotiations.Miliband’s attempt in Ukraine, meanwhile, to deny the obvious parallels with the US-orchestrated recognition of Kosovo’s independence earlier this year rang particularly hollow, as did his denunciation of invasions of sovereign states and double standards. Both the west and Russia have abused the charge of “genocide” to try and give themselves legal cover, but Russia is surely on stronger ground over South Ossetia – where its own internationally recognised peacekeepers were directly attacked by the Georgian army – than Nato was in Kosovo in 1999, where most ethnic cleansing took place after the US-led assault began.“Moralising on Georgia”There has been much talk among western politicians in recent days about Russia isolating itself from the international community. But unless that simply means North America and Europe, nothing could be further from the truth. While the US and British media have swung into full cold-war mode over the Georgia crisis, the rest of the world has seen it in a very different light. As Kishore Mahbubani, Singapore’s former UN ambassador, observed in the Financial Times a few days ago, “most of the world is bemused by western moralising on Georgia”. While the western view is that the world “should support the underdog, Georgia, against Russia ... most support Russia against the bullying west. The gap between the western narrative and the rest of the world could not be clearer.”Why that should be so isn’t hard to understand. It’s not only that the US and its camp followers have trampled on international law and the UN to bring death and destruction to the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan. In the early 1990s, the Pentagon warned that to ensure no global rival emerged, the US would need to “account for the interests of advanced industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership”. But when it came to Russia, all that was forgotten in a fog of imperial hubris that has left the US overstretched and unable to prevent the return of a multipolar world.Of course, that new multipolarity can easily be overstated. Russia is a regional power and there is no imminent prospect of a serious global challenger to the US, which will remain overwhelmingly the most powerful state in the world for years to come. It can also exacerbate the risk of conflict. But only the most solipsistic western mindset can fail to grasp the necessity of a counterbalance in international relations that can restrict the freedom of any one power to impose its will on other countries unilaterally.One western response, championed by the London Times this week, is to damn this growing challenge to US domination on the grounds that it is led by autocratic states in the shape of Russia and China. In reality, western alarm clearly has very little to do with democracy. When Russia collapsed into the US orbit under Boris Yeltsin, his bombardment of the Russian parliament and shamelessly rigged elections were treated with the greatest western understanding.The real gripe is not with these states’ lack of accountability – Russian public opinion is in any case overwhelmingly supportive of its government’s actions in Georgia – but their strategic challenge and economic rivalry. For the rest of us, a new assertiveness by Russia and other rising powers doesn’t just offer some restraint on the unbridled exercise of global imperial power, it should also increase the pressure for a revival of a rules-based system of international relations. In the circumstances, that might come to seem quite appealing to whoever is elected US president.—Dawn/Guardian News Service/ By Seumas Milne

Now, or perhaps never

FOR the last three decades the establishment has flirted with brinkmanship in exploiting religious passions to fuel a controlled delivery of exported political trouble. First it was in the form of mercenary support for one superpower. Then, using the residual, but battle-hardened firepower it perpetuated a simmering bilateral dispute heating it up to destructive temperatures. It is another matter that we then witnessed a complete somersault by surrendering the initiative and acquiescing to diplomatic browbeating.Historically, controlled delivery agents have always grown larger and more powerful than their handlers in the cobweb-weaving agencies. As a result, Pakistan is being taken for a ride by some so-called Islamists, thriving on a conviction founded in ignorance and funded by domestic and foreign agents who fear the establishment of democracy in the country.Ziaul Haq and his legacy of generals — autonomously wise, exclusively patriotic and entirely independent of the state — allowed a perverted perception of Islam to be owned and proliferated by a sizeable part of the gullibly unintelligent and economically vulnerable population. The perception grew out of dogma, ingrained in a past irrelevant to the present-day world. It was an attempted recall of days of yore, but without the accompanying political and material strength. This worldview was the creation of self-styled ideologues in the military and could be superimposed upon a corrupt political outfit.The intention is now to inflict a perverted perception of Islam at gunpoint. We can be cajoled, blackmailed and coerced into a kind of social behaviour that may be a declaration of defiance, but that has nothing to do with real Islam. For decades, since Islamists, with poor intellectual content, acquired political clout, the agencies’ intelligentsia and their brilliant ideologues reposed their trust in these controlled agents of destruction within or outside Pakistan. Islamic knowledge was being measured according to the cut, size and extent of the dishevelled growth of facial hair.It is an insult to intelligent and educated people that the interpretation of Muslim philosophy and Islamic behaviour is squarely the domain of the least intellectually equipped, and whose Islamic interpretation of political responses is entirely out of sync with the Quran and Sunnah. It is a shame that we are condemned to be led into social and religious behaviour which is condemnable in true Islam; merely because the brute force of the gun trained on Muslims prevents us from exercising the courage to defy the untruth. The brilliant strategists and thinkers of the agencies consider it a right to impose their wish on the will of the people.What are the recent-day neo-Taliban of the NWFP doing now? Coercing fellow Muslims, abducting fellow Muslims, killing fellow Muslims — all in the name of an authority, discretion and privilege that do not vest in them! And the clergy that derives political influence from such pockets of indefensible insurgencies, does not have the courage to disown these irreligious, immoral activities.Recently, scholars of the calibre of Muftis Munib-ur-Rahman and Rafi Usmani (only conditionally) and the rationalist scholar Javed Ahmed Ghamidi have distanced themselves from such untenable interpretations of Muslim behaviour. But the saddest part is that leaders of the religious political parties have not had the courage to demonstrate the knowledge and conviction to denounce such utterly un-Islamic acts and are unwilling to state the truth for the sake of political convenience.Because the so-called religious political parties, averse to the cause of Pakistan before 1947, derive their strength from these bigots, these parties refuse to condemn what is obviously and outright un-Islamic. Every time there is a discussion on terrorism their favourite refrain is the cause of such terrorism. Its consequences are either lost on them, or are irrelevant to their politics.We all know where the roots of Muslim defiance and mistrust of western capitalist hegemony lie. But can we forget the partners of the West in the destruction and denial of the Palestinian cause — Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, et al? And why should ordinary Islam-loving, practising Muslims pay a price under the hammer of illiterate Pakistani bigots with ill-begotten military hardware?We know that even Maulana Maudoodi refused to sanctify the Kashmir jihad of 1948. Now his political progenies are unconcerned with the tenets of religion and are more mindful of political gains; and, therefore, refuse to make proactive pronouncements on the legitimacy of what insurgents in the NWFP are doing in the name of religion. At best, they offer reactive responses.Religion is unfortunately becoming the proprietary domain of those who espouse a particular physical appearance. Without regard to any intellectual content they are willing to impose a particular social conduct upon the people, at the point of pain, in a perverted display of irreligious thuggery in the name of religion.Whatever the causes of this terrible conduct damaging the noble concept of jihad, we must be mindful of the outcome of such pervasively destructive socio-political movements. The fair name of Islam cannot be allowed to be soiled by these negatively motivated and poorly educated exponents of Islamic militancy. More than others, it is the duty of the true scholars of Islam to proactively condemn such pursuits and help purge these victims of the indoctrination of untrue Islam.Importantly, the leaders of religious political parties should rise above short-term political advantages and denounce these un-Islamic acts in a forthright manner. The time to do so is now. Later perhaps sanity may become unredeemable and the delirium now being demonstrated may become uncontrollable. Religious political leaders owe it to Islam and to posterity to act before it is too late.
Courtesy: Daily Dawn Lahore / By Javed Hasan Aly

Kashmir on edge

IT is not yet possible to determine who is to blame for the situation in Jammu and Kashmir. The jury is still out. There is no doubting the inept handling by the Indian government and its advisors.Religious ferment is the consequence of what has happened in the two regions, not the cause. The cause is the lack of political will and the inadequacy of successive governments at the centre to take decisions when they should have.Influenced by the hawkish bureaucracy and ill-informed intelligence agencies, New Delhi has failed to appreciate the depth of the people’s alienation in the Valley on the one hand and the widening gulf between Kashmir and Jammu on the other. Muslim-majority Kashmir and Hindu-majority Jammu had been drifting apart for some years. Yet the government did very little to reverse the trend by balancing the share of both in governance or economy.The Valley’s estrangement from the rest of the country has been visibly increasing since 1990. Statements like ‘the sky is the limit’, were never concretised, either during talks with Kashmiri leaders or by transferring all subjects except defence, foreign affairs and communications to the state unilaterally.Some well-meaning persons are suggesting that India should quit Kashmir. They do not realise that the Yasin Maliks and Umar Farooqs will be pushed out in no time and the Valley will be taken over by the Taliban or terrorists. The unfortunate part is that Kashmiryat, akin to Sufism, has got burnt. Kashmir has become avowedly Islamic and Jammu avowedly Hindu. Very little grey area is available. New Delhi, still clueless, knows only one way: the use of force.Whatever can be retrieved from the ashes of decimated Kashmiriyat is valuable and will be important for tomorrow’s democratic, pluralistic India which needs to prove its secular credentials. Democracy is a constant dialogue. But it is yet to be appreciated by the 61-year-old nation which is still in the making. It lacks patience and perseverance.India’s ethos of pluralism has been hit the most. What effect the stand taken by the Valley, more Islamic than Indian, would have on the polity is difficult to say. But secular forces in the country have been weakened.There is still no effort to talk to the Kashmiri leaders though interlocutors of the government say that they had done most of the job. What have they done so far is what people want to know. New Delhi would be well advised to issue a white paper on Kashmir, containing talks with Kashmiri leaders and the Pakistan government.I still believe that talks with the Hurriyat leaders may reveal that they are not for secession but for the separate identity which was guaranteed when the state joined the Union of India. But religious elements and the intelligence agencies have exploited the situation to such an extent that people can’t see the wood for the trees. The problem is political and needs deft handling.The pressure of events may force the Pakistan government to take a stand, not only because of the smouldering situation in the Valley but also because Azad Kashmir may eventually lend support to the concept of azadi.The tragedy is that the governments in both countries are in no position to discuss azadi. The Gilani government in Islamabad has yet to attain stability. The Manmohan Singh government has no verdict from the Indian electorate to change the country’s borders and is left with only six to eight months of its five-year tenure. Even if it were to hold talks with the Hurriyat, it would not be able to offer anything concrete because it cannot prejudge who will hold office after the Lok Sabha elections.Temperatures in Kashmir have already reached boiling point. Even if Hurriyat leaders were to think of waiting until after the polls, they would find it hard to convince the people to defer the agitation. The threat that the terrorists would take over from the Hurriyat leaders is a superficial reading of the situation. Were the movement to take that direction, the security forces would use maximum force to crush the insurgency.My fear is that the demand of secession may give a handle to the Bharatiya Janata Party which has been looking for an emotive issue after the Babri Masjid-Ram Janambhoomi dispute or the Sethu Bridge in the sea down south. The nation is not prepared for another partition and that too on the basis of religion. It is difficult to imagine the fallout in the country. The northeast too is watching developments in Kashmir. Manipur is in ferment and communities like the Nagas are demanding the right of self-determination.Fundamentalists in Pakistan may be happy over the developments in the Valley. The ISI may want to fish in its troubled waters. But they should realise that azadi holds as good for Kashmir under Pakistan as for the Kashmir on the Indian side. Islamabad has opposed an independent status for Kashmir in the past. There is no indication that it has changed its policy.However, there is no time to waste. New Delhi should hold talks with the Kashmiri leaders to assure them of an independent status, minus foreign affairs, defence and communications. Kashmir can have a UN seat as did Ukraine in the Soviet Union.In the meanwhile, New Delhi must address the fears of the Muslim community in India. It feels insecure and helpless. In recent days I have travelled to some parts of the country and talked to many people, including well-placed Muslims. I have found them complaining against the authorities, particularly the police. The community knows that the happenings in Jammu and Kashmir have polluted the atmosphere. But it believes that the arrests of the young among them are not because of Kashmir. Their concern is that on the pretext of curbing the activities of the Students Islamic Movement of India (Simi), scores of Muslims are picked up. Even if they are released after a few days, the tag of terrorism sticks with them.What is most disturbing is that the Muslim community finds the pluralistic ethos in India to be weakening and the sense of tolerance lessening. This means that even after 61 years of independence, the nation has failed to establish a secular polity. It is, indeed, disturbing.
Courtesy: Daily Dawn Lahore / By Kuldip Nayar

Political personality disorder

CITING court documents, London’s Financial Times has reported that as recently as last year presidential contender Asif Ali Zardari was “diagnosed with a range of serious illnesses including dementia, major depressive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.” This has been attributed in part to the alleged torture he suffered while in prison in Pakistan.In fact, people possess a number of traits that are components of their personality. Collectively these characteristics present themselves in the form of certain behaviour patterns that are either desirable or undesirable. Some of these traits are paranoia, jealousy, obsession, attention-seeking, dependence, sensitiveness or an exaggerated sense of self-importance.These traits can create problems for the person possessing them during social interaction. However, these traits become threatening when they assume the form of a fully fledged personality disorder. This has been defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual IV as “enduring pattern(s) of inner experience and behaviour” that are sufficiently rigid and deep-seated to bring a person into repeated conflict with his or her social and occupational environment.Pakistan has been unfortunate in that many of its leaders have played havoc with the country and caused it immense harm. This can be attributed to the fact that a number of them have suffered from personality disorders. Yet this has not been widely recognised because little emphasis is placed on the mental health aspect of people in a position of responsibility in public life.One wonders why this is so when professional institutions subject candidates desirous of entering them to rigorous psychological tests before appointing them. Why are political leaders not subjected to similar screening before getting unrestricted licence to enter politics? A suitable personality test would be worthwhile for highlighting undesirable traits or personality disorders falling under the psychiatric diagnostic category.Is such screening and suitable counselling that focuses on ethics and morality too impractical a proposal? Those elected and aspiring to take oath of public office must be subjected to similar physical and psychological tests as many institutions, such as the armed forces, prescribe. Revalidation and annual appraisal would be ideal but may prove to be too ambitious a suggestion at this stage.In some of our leaders, we have observed strong traits of narcissism that is reflected in feelings of self-importance, a craving for admiration and exploitative attitudes towards others. They have unrealistic and inflated views of their talents and accomplishments and may become extremely angry if criticised.The anti-social traits of some leaders have been widely discussed in the print media. They have been described as having a propensity to lie, being manipulative and selfishly disregarding the rights of others. A majority of political leaders have no doubt displayed histrionic behaviour at times that have caused great embarrassment internationally.A number of reasons are given for these personality disorders. Besides being inherited through genes, they may be triggered by faulty or dysfunctional upbringing and malfunctioning environmental influences. An example of this can be seen in the president who has just stepped down. He identified some of his own problems in his autobiography. He writes about his bullying tendencies; an extension of this behaviour was manifested in his authoritarian attitude, love of power, low frustration tolerance, anger and sensitivity to criticism. Such personalities generally tend to be rigid. They may take some very good decisions but later commit mistakes as a result of over-vigilance and anxiety.Some leaders have displayed behaviour reflecting a high sense of insecurity and personal inadequacies. Our political leaders are also in the habit of constantly blaming others and holding each other responsible for faulty outcomes of policymaking or decisions. Bullying is also a trait which prompts politicians to level allegations against their opponents and subjects them to torture, defamation etc.It seems that there is a problem with the country’s politics which has attracted a large number of politicians with faulty personality traits. By forming a mafia they strengthen their hold on power. Those few who tried to do something better for the nation were assassinated or wiped out.A number of leaders remained in exile, had luxurious lives and plenty of money but were always craving to return with the intention of acquiring power. This can be explained in terms of power addiction, a condition which drives personalities with moderate to severe degrees of craving to gain power. It is sometimes argued that those addicted to power may have specific brain receptors for such addiction or there may be a specific gene that is coupled with a particular type of personality. However, there is no conclusive evidence.It is interesting to note that if gratification is not acquired such individuals may develop complications like anxiety, depression and paranoid disorders. The existing faulty personality trait if combined with power addiction may result in faulty administration if such individuals are given the reins of power. One wonders whether diagnostic manuals will consider a new category by the name of ‘political personality disorder’. Besides, the idea of personality testing is not too ambitious if we wish to improve the socio-political scenario of the country.
Courtesy: Daily Dawn Lahore / By Dr Amin A. Gadit

Supremacy of law in Islam

THE laws of Islam comprise rules of conduct revealed by God to His Prophet, whereby people are directed to lead their lives. Thus, revelation is the source of Islamic law which is available to us in the form of the Quran and the Sunnah of the Prophet.A unique aspect of Islamic law is that it attributes the authority of making laws to God only. According to Islam, no man or body of men can ever be capable of or allowed to make laws for other men; “.... We have bestowed from on high upon thee, step by step, this divine writ, to make everything clear, and to provide guidance ....” (16: 89)However, where there is no room for the making of new laws, there is also no prohibition on the innovation, extension, and re-interpretation of the existing laws. This very process is denoted by Ijtehad. It is the method of Ijtehad by which God has enabled Muslim jurists to: (1) make provisions for the developing circumstances; and (2) prove Islam as a system of life practical for all times.In Islam, unlike the western legal systems, there is no room for the authorities to be immune from the law. Even the head of an Islamic state may be challenged, in both official and private capacity, in the court. Obedience to a ruler for that matter is contingent on his enforcement of Islamic laws. In other words, if the government fulfils the requirements prescribed by the Quran and the Sunnah, its claim to the allegiance of the people becomes absolute. The Prophet said: “A Muslim has to listen to and obey (the order of his ruler), whether he likes it or not, as long as his orders do not involve disobedience (to Allah). But if an act of disobedience (to Allah) is imposed, one should not listen to it or obey it.”It also becomes evident that the accountability of the ruler of an Islamic state is twofold: (1) he is answerable to God, as power bestowed on him by God is a sacred trust; and (2) to the people who are his subjects.The office of judge is independent of all executive control and he can exercise his authority without any form of interference from influential quarters. He decides all disputes in the light of the Quran and the Sunnah. Further, a judge is required to be impartial and decide on the merits of the case.The following statement of the Prophet, which he made while deciding the case of a noble woman who had committed theft illustrates the same: “Verily those who were before you were destroyed because when a noble man from among them committed theft, they passed no sentence on him. By Allah, had Fatima, the daughter of Muhammad, committed theft, I would have cut off her hand.”The Quran and the Sunnah define the main responsibilities of a judge. The Pious Caliphs issued detailed instructions about the qualification, appointment, and conduct of judges. Letters written by Caliph Ali to his governors regarding the administration of justice in their territories thoroughly explain who should be a judge and what should be the conduct of a judge. Caliph Umar’s case is an example of how unsuitable judicial behaviour must be dealt with. He once had a lawsuit against a Jew. When both parties went before the judge, the latter rose in his seat out of deference to Umar who looked upon the act as an unpardonable judicial weakness and dismissed the judge at once.
Courtesy: Daily Dawn Lahore/ By Sidrah Unis

Ex-general, foreign minister vie to replace Olmert

A party vote to choose a successor to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will be a close race that may stall Middle East diplomacy and affect the nuclear standoff with Iran.The two top contenders in the Sept 17 centrist Kadima party ballot are Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Israel’s chief negotiator with the Palestinians, and Iranian-born Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz, a former army chief.Livni, 50, a former Mossad spy who would be the first woman premier since Golda Meir in the 1970s, has the edge in polls, with one on Thursday giving her a 21 point lead over Mofaz.But such surveys have been wrong before, especially on party primaries. Analysts see a more open race, amid signs of mounting support among Kadima members for Mofaz – seeking to become the first Israeli prime minister of non-European descent.Whoever wins could take weeks to build a new government leaving Israel, and the US-brokered talks with Palestinians, in political limbo, with Olmert staying on as caretaker leader.There is also a possibility that neither candidate would actually end up becoming prime minister.Analysts say both Livni and Mofaz, lacklustre speakers with limited political experience, may fail to piece together a new coalition among rival religious and left-wing parties.If that happens, parliament could step in and call a snap election. That could be held early in the new year.Olmert, who has pledged to step down after months of police investigations into graft allegations, would remain caretaker.But, like the outgoing US president George W. Bush, sponsor of the latest round of peace negotiations with the Palestinians, he would be a lame duck, bereft of lasting political clout.“It’s a part of a national soap opera that has taken hold of Israeli politics,” said political scientist Orit Galili-Zucker, of Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv, of the political stalemate spurred by Olmert’s slow-motion departure.The Kadima contest has garnered limited public interest so far. Neither taciturn candidate seems capable of riveting an audience and only a fraction of Israelis can vote – an estimated 70,0000 party members, one per cent of the population.There are no stickers or posters on public display, no jingles on the airwaves, little advertising and the candidates have kept their public rallies to a minimum.When they do speak, both Livni and Mofaz tend to put a hawkish spin on their support hitherto for peacemaking with Palestinians, mindful their political futures are also clouded by the rising popularity of rightist leader Benjamin Netanyahu.Opinion polls show Netanyahu, a former prime minister, could defeat either Livni or Mofaz if an election were held soon.Mofaz touts his military record, a message with some resonance in a country that has seen half a dozen wars in the past 60 years. As defence minister several years ago, he oversaw moves to crush a Palestinian uprising in occupied territory.He takes a tough stance on halting his native Iran’s nuclear programme, which the West says seems destined to produce atomic weapons, despite Iranian denials. Israel is widely assumed to have the Middle East’s only nuclear arsenal at the moment.If he becomes prime minister, Mofaz could escalate Israeli pressure for action to decide the nuclear standoff. He said recently an Israeli military strike on Iran may be “inevitable.”As a boyhood immigrant from Tehran, Mofaz has built a strong following among fellow immigrants, many of whom are enthused by the prospect he could become the first Israeli of Sephardic, or Middle Eastern, origin to attain the job of prime minister.Some Israelis blame the popularity of generals for a shortage of women candidates for high office. Livni may be the first woman in decades to overcome this disadvantage.“There’s a struggle between Israel’s civilian and military needs,” Galili-Zucker, the political scientist, said. “There are those who say that if we are making peace, better a general should do it than a woman.”Livni climbed the political ranks as a confidante of former prime minister Ariel Sharon, joining him in bolting from Likud in 2005 to found Kadima when Sharon pulled troops out of Gaza.As foreign minister, Livni is Israel’s main negotiator with the Palestinians, but she has sought to toughen the image of peacemaker to compete against Mofaz, and in time, Netanyahu.In remarks to reporters last week, Livni cautioned against racing to a peace deal with Palestinians as Washington wants to do by January, warning it could lead to possible violence if both sides’ expectations weren’t met. Though Livni leads Mofaz in opinion polls, some analysts say a contingent of rightists in Kadima could help sway the vote in his favour. Israeli media say several thousand party members also belong to Netanyahu’s rightist Likud party.—Reuters

Sony to launch world's thinnest LCD TVs

Sony Corp said on Thursday it would launch the world's thinnest liquid crystal display (LCD) TVs this year, broadening its product line-up ahead of the critical year-end shopping season.
The new 40-inch model, which is 9.9 mm thick, is estimated to sell for 490,000 yen ($4,478) in Japan, Sony said.
The Japanese electronics and entertainment conglomerate will also offer the world's first LCD TVs that display 240 frames per second, compared with 120 frames for Sony's existing models.
More frames in a given time make fast-moving images in sports programs and action movies look seamless.
Sony, the world's second-largest LCD TV maker behind Samsung Electronics Co Ltd expects a 46-inch model with the 240 frame function to sell for around 400,000 yen.
Both models will go on sale in Japan on November 10, closely followed by overseas launches.
Sony said a slowing economy has had little effect on its LCD TV sales, and that the maker of Bravia brand flat TVs is on track to hit its target to sell 17 million LCD TVs in the year to March 2009.
Sony shares were down 0.7 percent at 4,140 yen, outperforming the Tokyo stock market's electrical machinery index IELEC. which fell 1.1 percent.

Obama speech inspires fans, turns off Republicans

Supporters of Barack Obama found the inspiration they were seeking in the Democratic nominee's prime-time speech on Thursday but many Republicans said it only compounded their concerns about him.
Phyllis Ring, 81, of Fort Collins, Colorado, watched the speech from her wheelchair in the end zone of Denver's Invesco football stadium. She said she found the speech "very, very inspirational," adding: "It definitely lived up to my expectations."
She was joined at the mass rally by her friend Alice Buchholz, also 81, of Barrington, Illinois. "I thought it was marvelous. He laid out what he is going to do. It's not going to be easy but he is going to try."
The speech gave Obama an opportunity to state the case for why he should be elected over Republican John McCain in November to succeed President George W. Bush.
Obama, who would be the first black American president, delivered a hard-hitting address vowing to renew his vision of the American Dream.
"Individual responsibility and mutual responsibility. That's the essence of America's promise," he said.
Obama spoke to two audiences -- the one in the stadium, which was filled with passionate, flag-waving supporters as well as curious onlookers -- and millions more who tuned in to watch on television.
CELEBRITY?
"Call him a celebrity? Call him an elitist?" said Betsy Hyder, who watched the speech with her children at home in Davis, California. "I see him as very Midwestern, pragmatic yet generous."
Susan French, a Democrat who watched the speech in Cincinnati, Ohio, said she was impressed by how forceful Obama was, though she thought the speech could still leave him open to attack.
"He did a great job addressing the areas where he has been attacked: patriotism, his qualifications for the job and how he plans to pay for all his ideas," she said.
"The over-the-top stadium show (surrounding the speech) might help motivate his supporters but it might be playing into the hands of his critics who try to paint him as a rock star with no substance," she said.
But to many Republicans, the speech merely amplified many of their concerns about the candidate who, at 47, would be one of America's youngest presidents if elected on November 4.
"He described a chance to keep the American promise and he made a lot of promises. He is the pied piper of promises," said Mike Vanderboegh, of Pinson, Alabama.
"A government that is powerful enough to give you everything you want can take everything you have," he said, adding, "He is scarier than (former President Bill) Clinton because he is arrogant and a true believer."
'FEEL-GOOD SPEECH'
Bob Lindsey, a business owner in Birmingham, Alabama, picked up on a frequent criticism of Obama -- that little lies behind the candidate's capacity to spin fine words.
"It was a feel-good speech. It made you think about yourself and where you wanted the United States to go. It was just him making you feel good for the purpose of him getting elected," Lindsey said.
Obama put himself on the map when he delivered the keynote address at the Democratic convention in 2004 and his capacity to inspire Democrats with soaring oratory has proved fundamental to his appeal since he launched his bid for the nomination in February 2007.
But soaring oratory has brought its own pressures and one of his challenges was to win over independent voters.
Matthew Steffey, a professor at Mississippi College, said the speech's success was to tap into the economic discontent of voters. "There was great resonance with his criticism of the Bush administration and McCain's support for it," he said.

Obama masters his moment

Barack Obama has a dream, a dream embodied in a speech, a speech he gave at the Democratic National Convention Thursday night to introduce himself to America.
Yes, introduce. Hard as it is to believe, most Americans are just getting to know him. And this is what they got to know Thursday night: He is a man who can master a moment.
He did a little inspiration, he did a little substance, he did a little attack, he did a little defense, he did a little everything except let his audience down.
Even when it sounded like he was going to lapse into old and tired political rhetoric — he talked about the struggles of ordinary, hardworking Americans — he gave it a new twist and managed to blunt the attacks of his opponent to boot.
“I don’t know what kind of lives John McCain thinks that celebrities lead, but this has been mine, these are my heroes,” Obama said as the enormous crowd at Invesco Field roared. “Theirs are the stories that shaped me. And it is on their behalf that I intend to win this election and keep our promise alive as president of the United States.”
Obama’s speech soared many times, but it always came back to earth. And it usually came back to earth on John McCain’s head.
Obama mentioned McCain by name no fewer than 21 times, praising his service and patriotism, but attacking him not just on specifics, but on one, general point.
“McCain doesn’t get it,” Obama said. McCain is “grasping at the ideas of the past.”
Need a translation? Here’s one: McCain, who turns 72 on Friday, is old and out of it. His ideas are tired and he is tired, and this is no time in the history of America or the world for a tired president.
You can accuse Barack Obama of a lot of things — and no doubt McCain will do so next week at the Republican National Convention — but you can’t accuse Obama of being a cream puff. He is ready to get it on, high road, low road, or middle road, against the Republicans.
Their greatest sin? Well, much of what they have told us about fighting terror, Obama said, has been a fiction.
“For while Sen. McCain was turning his sights to Iraq just days after 9/11, I stood up and opposed this war, knowing that it would distract us from the real threats we face,” Obama said. “When John McCain said we could just ‘muddle through’ in Afghanistan, I argued for more resources and more troops to finish the fight against the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11, and made clear that we must take out Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants if we have them in our sights.”
And then Obama really lowered the boom. “John McCain likes to say that he’ll follow bin Laden to the Gates of Hell,” Obama said, “but he won’t even go to the cave where he lives.”
Obama sought to undo Thursday night what George Bush had done in 2004: convince voters that only a Republican administration could protect America from terrorism.
Wrong, said Obama. “Don’t tell me that Democrats won’t defend this country; don’t tell me that Democrats won’t keep us safe,” he thundered. “The Bush-McCain foreign policy has squandered the legacy that generations of Americans — Democrats and Republicans — have built, and we are here to restore that legacy.”
Nor is Obama cowed by the current success of the surge in Iraq, upon which McCain has staked so much. “John McCain stands alone in his stubborn refusal to end a misguided war,” Obama said. “That’s not the judgment we need. That won’t keep America safe. We need a president who can face the threats of the future, not keep grasping at the ideas of the past.”
The past, the past, the past. Old, old, old. Tired, tired, tired. That was Obama’s continuing line of attack as he stood on a vast stage in a vast football stadium looking young, vigorous and enthusiastic.
Enthusiasm is a concern for the Republicans this year. The most extraordinary sight in Denver Thursday afternoon was the line of people waiting to get into Invesco Field. It stretched not just for blocks, but for miles. People filled every inch of the sidewalks on main streets and side streets. They inched under viaducts and scampered across highway entrance ramps. They stood in line for hours to get into the stadium to wait in the hot sun for even more hours. All to see a man give a speech that they could have stayed home and watched on TV.
That’s enthusiasm. And, for John McCain, that’s going to be a challenge. McCain has another one: giving speeches is not his strongest point. And even though there will be debates and commercials and town hall meetings in the weeks ahead, presidential campaigns are still largely about giving speeches. They used to be done on stumps and now they are done on television, but they still have to be done.
And Barack Obama knows how to do them. All his speeches, however, can be summed up in one word. Those Americans who have not heard it before, will be hearing it a lot. It is his theme, his campaign, his promise.
“I believe that as hard as it will be, the change we need is coming,” he said. “Because I’ve seen it. Because I’ve lived it.”

Obama makes unscripted appearance at the DNC

DENVER - Sen. Barack Obama dropped in on his own party at the Democratic convention a day early Wednesday to praise his wife, his former rival, and former President Bill Clinton for going to bat for him.

"I think Michelle Obama kicked it off pretty well, don't you think?" Obama said, as delegates at the Pepsi Center roared.

As his wife clapped and smiled and mouthed, "I love you," Obama joined his running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, on the platform.

"If I'm not mistaken, Hillary Clinton rocked the house down last night!" Obama said.

He also praised former President Bill Clinton, who spoke earlier Wednesday night, as someone who reminds us about "what it's like when you've got a president who actually puts people first. Thank you President Clinton."

Obama told the crowd he was proud to have "the whole Biden family on this journey with me to take America back."

He said the convention was moving to Invesco Field at Mile High on Thursday because, "We want to open up this convention to make sure that everybody who wants to come can join in the effort to take America back."

After his appearance, Obama made a late-night visit to Invesco Field to check out the stage where he will deliver his speech. He arrived with his wife, Michelle, and staff members.

Obama aides said he had substantially finished the speech he will deliver on Thursday night, but would probably continue to edit it right up until he delivers it Thursday night.

Senior strategist David Axelrod said Obama will lay out a case for sweeping political change and illustrate the choice voters face between his candidacy and that of Republican John McCain.

The stakes for the speech were high for Obama, a relative newcomer to the national stage who rose to prominence after delivering the keynote address at the Democratic convention in 2004. While that speech was widely praised as an inspirational stem-winder, Axelrod said Obama would use his nominating address to convey a more simple message about what he would do for the country as president.

"His goal is to talk to the American people about the challenges we face and what we need to do to solve them, and the stakes of continuing to do what we are doing," Axelrod said. "I will leave it to others to decide the inspiration factor."

Axelrod said Obama had looked to past nominating speeches as models, including Bill Clinton's in 1992, Ronald Reagan's in 1980 and John F. Kennedy's in 1960.

Obama won't shy from drawing a stark contrast between himself and McCain, especially on economic matters. But he will do so in a respectful way, Axelrod said.

Obama set to woo nation with historic speech

DENVER - Barack Obama will stand before delegates and the nation Thursday — the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s historic "I Have a Dream" speech — to accept the Democratic presidential nomination, the first black man to claim such a prize.

The drama of his long, emotional primary struggle against Hillary Rodham Clinton behind him at last, Obama's long-awaited convention speech will propel him into a tough sprint to Election Day, a mere nine weeks away.

Obama's march into history will be coupled with a modern-day technological effort to get most of the 75,000 packed into Invesco Field at Mile High stadium to form the world's largest phone bank — text-messaging thousands more to boost voter registration for the fall.

Any edge is imperative as polls show a close race between Obama and Republican presidential candidate John McCain in the bid to become the nation's 44th president, succeeding George W. Bush.

Obama accepts his party's nod on a day few could ever imagine decades ago, when King fought for civil rights.

"This is a monumental moment in our nation's history," Martin Luther King III, the civil rights icon's oldest son, told The Associated Press on Wednesday. "And it becomes obviously an even greater moment in November if he's elected."

Obama was just 2 years old when King addressed a sea of people on the National Mall in Washington on Aug. 28, 1963. The civil rights leader proclaimed on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, "I have a dream, that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed — 'We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.'"

Obama, known for his stirring oratory, has been trying to lower expectations for his acceptance speech. Senior strategist David Axelrod said Obama would lay out a case for sweeping political change and illustrate the choice voters face between his candidacy and that of McCain.

"His goal is to talk to the American people about the challenges we face and what we need to do to solve them, and the stakes of continuing to do what we are doing," Axelrod said. "I will leave it to others to decide the inspiration factor."

Adding a touch of celebrity to the convention's final night, singers Sheryl Crow, Stevie Wonder and will.i.am were scheduled to perform, with Academy Award-winner Jennifer Hudson singing the national anthem.

After days of suspense over whether Clinton supporters would fall in line behind Obama when the roll call of the states was called, it all fell into place in the end for Obama.

Delegates in dozens of states were allowed to apportion their votes between Obama and the former first lady before Clinton herself stepped forward to propose that Obama be declared the nominee by acclamation.

Obama himself paid a late-night visit to the Pepsi Center, home for the first three nights of the convention, where he embraced Biden and implored the delegates to help him "take back America" in the fall campaign.

"Change in America doesn't start from the top down," he told the adoring crowd, "it starts from the bottom up."

Former President Clinton did his part to bring about unity too, delivering a strong pitch for the man who outmaneuvered his wife for the nomination, and going through a litany of GOP policies the former president said were hurting the country.

"My fellow Democrats, America can do better than that. And Barack Obama will do better than that," Clinton said.

Clinton and Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, who accepted the vice presidential nomination by acclamation Wednesday night, brought Democratic jabs at McCain and President Bush into prime time as Democrats sharpened their attacks after two days of largely feel-good rhetoric.

"These times require more than a good soldier. They require a wise leader," Biden said. "A leader who can change ... the change that everybody knows we need."

Biden's attacks on McCain were a big hit among delegates eager to put aside their intraparty squabble so they can start going after Republicans.

The reconciliation was taking place, delegate by delegate.

"I was a Clinton delegate," said Darlene Ewing, a delegate from Texas. "I'm an Obama person now."

On Thursday, former Vice President Al Gore will add his voice to the lineup of Democratic luminaries trying to motivate party members for the fall.