Before you make up your mind about whether Benazir Bhutto’s assassination is bad for Pakistan, you might want to read this. I was looking around on some blogs and trying to remember why I never thought very much of Ms. Bhutto. Perhaps because I remembered that she was tossed out for corruption. But this op-ed in the LA Times makes her look as bad as Musharraf.

It is widely believed that Ms. Bhutto lost both her governments on grounds of massive corruption. She and her husband, a man who came to be known in Pakistan as “Mr. 10%,” have been accused of stealing more than $1 billion from Pakistan’s treasury. She is appealing a money-laundering conviction by the Swiss courts involving about $11 million. Corruption cases in Britain and Spain are ongoing.

It was particularly unappealing of Ms. Bhutto to ask Musharraf to bypass the courts and drop the many corruption cases that still face her in Pakistan. He agreed, creating the odiously titled National Reconciliation Ordinance in order to do so. Her collaboration with him was so unsubtle that people on the streets are now calling her party, the Pakistan People’s Party, the Pervez People’s Party. Now she might like to distance herself, but it’s too late.

Why did Ms. Bhutto and her party cronies demand that her corruption cases be dropped, but not demand that the cases of activists jailed during the brutal regime of dictator Zia ul-Haq (from 1977 to 1988) not be quashed? What about the sanctity of the law? When her brother Mir Murtaza Bhutto — my father — returned to Pakistan in 1993, he faced 99 cases against him that had been brought by Zia’s military government. The cases all carried the death penalty. Yet even though his sister was serving as prime minister, he did not ask her to drop the cases. He returned, was arrested at the airport and spent the remaining years of his life clearing his name, legally and with confidence, in the courts of Pakistan.

[...] And I am suspicious of her talk of ensuring peace. My father was a member of Parliament and a vocal critic of his sister’s politics. He was killed outside our home in 1996 in a carefully planned police assassination while she was prime minister. There were 70 to 100 policemen at the scene, all the streetlights had been shut off and the roads were cordoned off. Six men were killed with my father. They were shot at point-blank range, suffered multiple bullet wounds and were left to bleed on the streets.

My father was Benazir’s younger brother. To this day, her role in his assassination has never been adequately answered, although the tribunal convened after his death under the leadership of three respected judges concluded that it could not have taken place without approval from a “much higher” political authority.

Read it all. Then read some more about Bhutto before wondering if her assassination is good or bad for Pakistan—and for the U.S.

Update: Here’s another post from the same blog that you should read: Pakistan’s Arafat. Now there’s an epithet.

How do you reconcile negotiating for the release of a kidnapped soldier on the one hand—with the probability that hundreds of convicted terrorists will go free to terrorize more—with the fact that rockets are raining down daily on Sderot. Nine on Tuesday. Eleven so far today.

I really don’t understand how the Israeli leadership thinks that this won’t lead to anything less than more kidnappings—unless it’s being done so that the IDF can go full-blown into the Gaza Strip after they get Shalit back. Now that—that I could live with. Not this.

The Palestinian News Agency Maan reported Thursday that a breakthrough has been accomplished in regards to kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Shalit.

According to the report, Egypt has been able to convince Israel to accept some of Hamas’ demands, including the release of 200 Palestinian prisoners – some of them militant cell leaders – who Israel considers to be “extremely dangerous”.

However, we’ve read conflicting news reports about this subject a dozen times before. Yesterday Reuters reported that Hamas is not moving an inch on its demands for the release of over a thousand terrorists:

Hamas will not release a captured Israeli soldier unless Israel meets its demand to free nearly 1,400 Palestinian prisoners, including 350 with life sentences, a leader of the Islamist group in Gaza said on Wednesday.

[...] Muzaini said Hamas would not budge on its demand for 1,400 prisoners. “In March we closed discussions on this issue and we have no intention of reopening them. The ball is in Israel’s court,” he said.

Olmert will release terrorists with blood on their hands, putting more Israeli soldiers—and Israelis everywhere—at risk of kidnapping. The Palestinians think their tactics are working. And why not? Terrorism got Israel out of Gaza. Terrorism is turning Sderot into a ghost town. Kidnapping is about to pay off, big-time.

Only when the IDF is systematically killing terrorist leadership do the terrorists stop their murderous actions. You would think that Israel would catch on to that, sooner or later.

via memeorandum

Keith Richburg has a front page report Not Relevant? Sharpton Scoffs at the Idea in yesterday’s Washington Post. Clearly the reporter scoffs too. There’s a sub-head line
“Activist’s Busy Calendar and Ringing Phone Speak to His Role in Civil Rights” which would have been more correct if it read “… His Role in Self-Promotion.” The article is a highly selective view of Sharpton’s career until now.

Richburg, of course, is scrupulous enough to mention that unpleasantness that plagued him early in his career.

In New York, his home base, Sharpton remains a polarizing figure for many, best remembered for championing the cause of Tawana Brawley, a black teenager who said she was abducted and raped by six white law enforcement officials but whose claims were later discredited.

That’s the sanitized Cliff Notes version of the incident. Sharpton made his name in the case. He accused the prosecutor in the area, Stephen Pagones, of raping Brawley and defiantly challenged Pagones to sue him if he was wrong. When Pagones did sue for defamation and won Sharpton refused to pay, or even apologize.

And the article doesn’t mention that Sharpton inserted himself into the 1991 Crown Heights riots on the side of rioters. He didn’t call for calm. He didn’t call for understanding. Rather he used Gavin Cato’s funeral as an opportunity to rail against the Jewish diamond merchants and falsely accuse Hatzaloh of being an “apartheid ambulance service.” (Hatzaloh personnel were directed away from the injured children by police who feared for their safety.)

Richburg uncritically echoes Sharpton’s case for relevance:

As evidence of his continued relevance on the political scene, Sharpton pointed to the presidential candidates chasing his endorsement. He planned to fly to South Carolina earlier this month to meet former president Bill Clinton until his flight was canceled. Last month, he shared a meal of chicken wings, cornbread and coconut shrimp with Obama at Sylvia’s, a Harlem soul food restaurant.”On the one level, they say we don’t matter. On the other level, they want to know who we’re endorsing,” Sharpton said, smiling at his own position.

Sharpton said he is going to decide among Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, Obama and former senator John Edwards of North Carolina. And like much of the black community, he is torn about which way to go.

“I really haven’t decided,” he said. He said he is most concerned about finding the candidate who will pursue his racial justice agenda.

It’s hard to see exactly how Sharpton’s endorsement would help anyone. Look at the primary results for 2004. Except for D.C. and South Carolina Sharpton didn’t reach 10% of the vote. Even in NY which is his supposed base he only got 8% of the vote. His delegate total was 27, just 4 more than Dennis Kucinich. And we won’t be seeing articles in the paper promoting Kucininch’s relevance. It’s only because he’s a self-proclaimed civil rights leader that anyone pays attention to him.

Bitsblog writes:

Sharpton gets media attention because editors have not forced their lazy reporters to update their Rolodexs.

Exactly. And politicians seek his endorsement because they’re really bad at math. Since it’s not about the math, Sweetness & Light is correct to observe

And what an appalling indictment of the Democrat candidates, that they are all seeking this racist thug’s endorsement.

Maybe you could understand it if Sharpton had some grass roots support that he could lend a candidate. Sure it would be cynical, but at least there’d be a purpose in sucking up to him. But all his support comes from the chattering classes. So there’s no excuse for supporting him.

Richburg quotes an admirer:

“He seems to have evolved into a new respectability, at least in the city,” said Norman Siegel, a lawyer and former director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, who has known Sharpton for 20 years. Regarding the King celebrations, Siegel said, “Every single elected official, no matter what they said about him in the past, they’ll show up.”

“[N]ew respectability?” Where have I heard that before?

The primary battle silenced many detractors, whites and Republicans among them, who found “the Rev” more dignified — that was the word they used — than the seasoned politicians he faced. As Robert Abrams, the Attorney General, Geraldine A. Ferraro, the one-time Vice Presidential candidate and Elizabeth Holtzman, the City Comptroller, traded barbs, Sharpton followed the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s advice to “fly above the storm.”Everyone took note. Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, after one particularly vicious debate, singled out Sharpton by favorable contrast, “Because he was positive, because he was mature.” The other three candidates, the Governor concluded, “all got hurt” in their debate. Reflecting on that change, Representative Maxine Waters of California, who herself successfully balances activism and mainstream politics, says she, too, was surprised by his transformation. “He obviously made a decision to show how smart he really is.”

Less than two years later, Sharpton got involved in a tenant/landlord dispute and led protests against a “Jewish interloper.” Kathryn Jean Lopez quotes Fred Siegel’s account of what happened.

Sharpton and his National Action Network turned a dispute between a Jewish tenant who rented the space for his store (Freddy’s) from a black church and his black subtenant into a racial hailstorm. Sharpton set up pickets outside the store, led by his lieutenant in the National Action Network, Morris Powell.Powell was an intimidating figure to many on 125th Street. An escaped mental patient who had thrice been accused of attempted murder, he had long threatened that “there will be war” against white merchants and “this street will burn.” His protesters, sometimes joined by Sharpton, shouted racial epithets like “Jew bastards” and “the bloodsucking Jews,” while referring to other whites as “crackers” and black customers as “traitors.”

One of the protesters, a man who called himself “Shabazz,” forced his way into the store shouting, “I will be back to burn the Jew store down.” He didn’t, but a man named Abubunde Mulocko did.

Apparently angered by the mistaken assumption that the store had hired Hispanics instead of blacks, Mulocko, a man with a long criminal record, his “paranoia goosed by the protests,” burned the store down.

Armed with a .38, he shot three whites and a Pakistani in cold blood (he had mistaken the light-skinned Pakistani for a Jew) and then set the fire that killed five Hispanics, one Guyanese and one black, the security guard who the protesters had taunted as a “cracker lover.”

Those are the wages of coddling a hate-monger like Sharpton.

Michelle Malkin explains why there’s a need to continue exposing Sharpton:

Some readers wonder why I continue to write about the Sharpton-MSM lovefest. Why? Because the enablers deserve to be held responsible and shamed publicly until they stop.If you hold up the mirror long enough, one of these fools is bound to glance over and see what slavish, race-hustling tools they all appear to be. And are.

Freddy’s happened another time after Sharpton had been declared “respectable.” So whenever someone in the media praises Sharpton for his activism they will now mention him in conjunction with the Jena 6. But the number they should remember is the Freddy’s 7. That defined who Sharpton is.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

It’s been 3 years since a tsunami devastated large parts of southeast Asia.

Since then the Negev Institute for Strategies of Peace and Development (NISPD) has been involved in the rebuilding effort.

“When the stage of the immediate disaster relief is over, the media, the celebrities and even most of the donors are gone,” Dr. Yehudah Paz, chairman of the Negev Institute for Strategies of Peace and Development (NISPD), said last week.Not so the NISPD, one of several Israeli organizations that initiated a program to assist Sri Lankan cooperatives to get back on their feet after the 2004 tsunami ruined their livelihood.

Here’s the background:

The NISPD works closely in Sri Lanka with the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA), an umbrella organization of the world’s cooperatives and the largest non-governmental organization in the world.A few months after the tsunami, NISPD representatives arrived in Sri Lanka with a plan to rebuild ruined businesses by establishing an educational business program.

B’nai B’rith International joined this effort, with envoys that were at first busy providing Sri Lankan survivors with food and rebuilding their houses, and later helped finance and coordinate the NISPD program.

The third participant in the Israeli-Jewish humanitarian collaboration is the American Jewish Committee (AJC), which funded most of the activity and allocated $300,000 for the entire project.

IsraAID - the Israel Forum for International Humanitarian Aid - served as the overall coordinator.

The four organizations contacted the ICA in Sri Lanka, which has six million members in the disaster-stricken country.

Specifically this is the role they played:

Over the past three years, the groups have worked with the cooperative movement in Sri Lanka, training 1,500 business managers of agricultural, tourist and retail cooperatives that were damaged in the tsunami. These business managers reach out to thousands of small businesses and merchants in southern Sri Lanka.”The purpose was not to rebuild what was ruined, but to use this disaster as an opportunity to promote these cooperatives and the local economy,” Rafi Goldman, director of the International Center for Cooperative Studies, a division of the NISPD, told the Post.

In related news, Israel recently joined a committee of the UN devoted to responding to disasters:

The United Nations emergency teams that support Member States in coordinating disaster response within hours of tragedy striking conducted nine missions to the Americas this year, the highest ever, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported today.Overall, the UN Disaster Assessment and Coordination (UNDAC) teams carried out 14 missions in 2007, higher than the usual yearly number, 70 per cent of them in response to hurricanes and floods, “possibly a glimpse of the shape of things to come given the reality of climate change,” OCHA said.

The UNDAC system consists of more than 160 national emergency managers from 57 countries together with staff from OCHA and 12 other international organizations, including UN agencies and the Red Cross and Crescent movement in cooperation with non-governmental organizations and private sector companies. This year Israel and the United Arab Emirates joined the system.

Though it’s largely under the radar, Israel continues to be one of the world leaders in disaster response.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Harrison’s blogging again.

Harrison, I can read your blog without having to crack a rib from trying not to laugh out loud now. I work from home four days a week. Not that I read blogs during the time I should be working. I just have to work a little longer if I check out blogs during the daytime.

Huckabee. Hmph. We’re Rudy Guiliani voters in this house. Well, I am. The cats frankly don’t give a damn who gets elected, so long as I keep the food and treats coming.

If you’ve never read Harrison, do yourself a favor and check any of the links under “Harrison’s Crunchy Bits,” and trust me when I tell you not to read them at work if you’re not supposed to be laughing at your desk, or while drinking or eating. Spit-monitor warning is in effect for most of them. (It’s been a while, I think at least one is serious, but I can’t recall.)