Rescue teams and aid pledges have poured into Pakistan from around the world after the devastating earthquake that has killed about 20,000 people.
"We are rushing against the clock here," a spokeswoman for the United Nations (UN) Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.
Rescue workers are struggling to pull survivors of Saturday's 7.6 magnitude earthquake from the rubble.
The spokeswoman says an eight-member UN team has begun coordinating the relief effort in the hardest hit areas, and teams from Turkey, China, Britain and Germany are on the ground.
She says the greatest need is for field hospitals, water purification and blankets.
"The logistical problems will be big. We are going to need more helicopters for example."
US, Australia, Japan, the Netherlands, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are among others dispatching help.
The quake, which General Musharraf's spokesman calls the worst devastation in Pakistan's history, has also killed more than 550 people in India and at least one in Afghanistan.
By In Solidarity 8 October 05
Pakistani Muslims living in Australia have held a special prayer service for the 20,000 people killed in the earthquake that rattled Pakistan, India and Afghanistan on Saturday.
Khawar Saleem Khan, from the Pakistan Australia Friendship Association, says hundreds of people attended the service.
He has also called on the community to donate to Pakistan's national earthquake relief fund.
"That's what we did in the Canberra Islamic Centre," he said.
"We also did a, we call it prayer for the ones who passed away, we did that and approximately 400 attended over there."
Meanwhile, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) says there are no reports of any Australian casualties.
Consular officials from Islamabad and New Delhi are checking on the welfare of Australians in the region.
President George W. Bush's speech Thursday on "the war on terror" constitutes a sobering measure of both his government's desperate political crisis and the threat that it will try to extricate itself from this crisis through escalating militarism.
The speech was a compendium of lies delivered with the aim of terrorizing the American people and rallying his extreme right-wing base. In remarks that at times bordered on lunacy, he invoked the unlikely bogeyman of an Al Qaeda terrorist network poised to "establish a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia."
Bush delivered his remarks to the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the agency created by the Reagan administration in the 1980s to conduct political propaganda and subversion operations overseas previously carried out covertly by the CIA.
It was to this same audience that the US president proclaimed nearly two years ago a "forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East." Then he was predicting that the successful US imposition of "democracy" in Iraq would lead to a "global democratic revolution" that would topple regimes throughout the region.
In Thursday's address, Bush advanced the reverse of this domino theory, warning that unless the US military achieves unconditional victory, the result will be "Zarqawi and bin Laden in control of Iraq," and the spread of radical Islamist regimes internationally.
This latest assertion has no more credibility than the one advanced in 2003. It is indicative, however, of the growing desperation within US ruling circles over the debacle in Iraq and of the administration's decision to rely on fear as its main means of coercing the American people into submitting to its policies.
As if on cue Thursday, the authorities in New York City issued a terror alert for the city's subways, only hours after Bush's speech and just in time for the evening television news and scare headlines in the next day's papers. Almost as soon as the alert was announced, however, intelligence officials acknowledged that the threat was of "doubtful credibility." Friday saw Pennsylvania Station shut down because of the discovery of a "suspicious" soda bottle.
The aim of such alerts, like Bush's speech itself, is to instill fear, thereby keeping the public off balance and suppressing the growth of political opposition and social unrest.
The Bush administration has returned to the mantra of terrorism that it utilized in paving the way to the invasion of Iraq, when it claimed that Baghdad was developing weapons of mass destruction and preparing to hand them over to Al Qaeda terrorists.
It was lying then, and it is lying now, but under changed political conditions. The New York Times quoted an unnamed White House official as saying that Bush had given his speech "to remind Americans after 'a lot of distractions' in recent months, that the country was still under threat and had no choice but to remain in Iraq..."
What are these "distractions"? Opposition to the Bush government has never been greater, with polls showing barely 37 percent of the population supporting the administration and majorities believing that the war in Iraq was a mistake and that US troops should be withdrawn.
Moreover, the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe has exposed before millions the profound social crisis and class polarization that exist in the United States and the breakdown of governmental and social institutions under the impact of policies designed solely to advance the accumulation of wealth by the financial elite.
After all of the hysteria over terrorism and "homeland security" in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, the response to this natural disaster demonstrated that the US government is even less prepared to deal with a catastrophe than it was four years ago. It did not take its own terror warnings seriously, except as a means of politically terrorizing the American people.
Meanwhile, there are signs of growing disaffection and outright opposition within the military itself.
Seven more American soldiers were killed in Iraq on the day that Bush delivered his speech, bringing the US military death toll to over 1,950. There are over 100 armed attacks daily, and the country remains in a state of economic and social paralysis. Many of those knowledgeable about Iraq warn that it is either on the brink of an ethno-religious civil war, or one has already begun. The upcoming referendum on a draft constitution-touted by Washington as another step toward democracy-is emerging as yet more fuel for this fire.
Bush disputed the obvious fact that the US occupation of Iraq has fed support for armed resistance and acts of terrorism both there and throughout the region. US commanders are not so sanguine, however, and have publicly suggested the need to reduce a US military presence that is seen by Iraqis as an oppressive occupation.
Bush's invocation of a supposedly ubiquitous terrorist threat is aimed at quashing such internal dissension and intimidating popular opposition. The tone of the speech echoed the kind of "red scare" hysteria of McCarthyism, though his arguments made even less sense than those of the fanatical anti-communists 50 years ago.
The speech equated the "global war on terror" with the Cold War against the Soviet Union and World War II, likening Osama bin Laden to Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler. Such assertions are absurd on their face.
The Soviet Union was a superpower armed with nuclear weapons and covering one-sixth of the earth's surface.
Al Qaeda consists of at most a couple of thousand fanatics. Osama bin Laden controls no state and his movement has no credible chance of coming to power anywhere in the world-including Iraq. By toppling that country's government and destabilizing its society, Washington has provided Al Qaeda with a new, previously inaccessible field of operations as well as a source of recruits drawn from among the masses of Arabs outraged by the US invasion and occupation.
In prosecuting the "war on terror" and the "struggle for freedom" Bush declares that the enemy "extremists want to end American and Western influence in the broader Middle East... Their tactic to meet this goal has been consistent for a quarter century: They hit us and expect us to run."
Why stop at a quarter century? Wasn't the struggle to "end Western influence in the broader Middle East" what the anti-colonial movement that emerged in the region in the aftermath of World War II was all about? Were not those the goals and tactics of the nationalist movements that drove the French out of Algeria and ejected the British from Egypt?
The US war in Iraq has nothing to do with democracy or terrorism; it is an attempt to recolonize the region in order to seize control of its oil resources and establish the strategic hegemony of US imperialism.
In making his case for the terror war, Bush strung together a series of disparate movements and presented them as all part of a global "Islamic radical" movement that the US military is supposedly confronting in Iraq.
He claimed that the US is threatened by "paramilitary insurgencies and separatist movements in places like Somalia, and the Philippines, and Pakistan, and Chechnya, and Kashmir, and Algeria."
Lumped together are clan warfare in Somalia, a small local gang in the Philippines, the more than half-century dispute over Kashmir and an Islamist political movement in Algeria that has been brutally repressed, at the cost of 150,000 lives. None of these movements-with widely different social bases and political objectives-have been linked to any acts of international terrorism.
To the extent Islamist fundamentalism has grown, it is largely with the support of the US government, which provided billions of dollars in arms and aid to Osama bin Laden and his Mujahedin allies to overthrow the Soviet-backed government in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Washington likewise backed Islamist elements in Indonesia, where they led anticommunist pogroms that claimed one million lives in 1965, as well as in Chechnya and Bosnia, where they were seen as counterbalances to Russian and Serbian influence. Wherever such movements could be used as instruments in the pursuit of US strategic aims, they have gotten either overt or covert US support.
Bush's speech was characterized by his usual messianic tone, referring to the "war on terror" as a "calling" and declaring, "We will confront this mortal danger to all humanity." This type of language is directed to the administration's base among the evangelical Christian right and is part and parcel of an attempt to sell the war in Iraq as some kind of new crusade against Islam.
The great bulk of humanity, however, sees US imperialism itself as the greatest danger. After the deaths of over 100,000 Iraqis, the words that Bush used to describe those the US is supposedly fighting would widely be accepted as applying to the American president himself: "Throughout history, tyrants and would-be tyrants have always claimed that murder is justified to serve their grand vision. And they end up alienating decent people across the globe."
Among the more ominous and seemingly irrational sections of Bush's speech was an open threat against Syria and Iran, which he described as terrorism's "allies of convenience."
"State sponsors like Syria and Iran have a long history of collaboration with terrorists and they deserve no patience from the victims of terror," declared Bush. "The United States makes no distinction between those who commit acts of terror and those who support and harbor them, because they're equally guilty of murder."
This is an open justification for launching military attacks on both countries. Indeed, it is the same phony pretext used in the invasion of Iraq two-and-a-half years ago.
The regime in Damascus is secular and has ruthlessly repressed Syria's Islamic movement. It provided substantial intelligence assistance to Washington in the wake of September 11, and US intelligence agencies have sent suspects to be tortured in Syria under Washington's so-called extraordinary rendition program.
As for Iran, the government there has established close political ties with the Shia majority which dominates the Iraqi regime that the US is supporting. Teheran has backed the elections in Iraq as well as the draft constitution and is virulently opposed to the Al Qaeda movement, which has conducted sectarian terrorist attacks on the Iraqi Shia population.
Why the saber-rattling now against these two regimes? First of all, it makes clear that the US war in Iraq has nothing to do with combating terrorism. It is an attempt to impose US neo-colonial control. Leading elements within the administration and the ruling establishment have concluded from the deepening debacle in Iraq that this will prove impossible without widening the war.
Intensified militarism is, in the final analysis, the product of the deep crisis of American society itself, characterized by vast social inequality and an increasingly corrupt and parasitic corporate ruling stratum.
Bush's speech is a warning that this ruling elite is preparing even greater crimes and bloodshed. His diatribe provoked little critical analysis either from the Democratic Party or the mass media, neither of which provide any political expression to the growing popular opposition to the war and the administration's domestic policies.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/oct2005/bush-o08.shtml
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By peptide posted 10 October 05
The tragedy (for the entire world) is not that Bush is delusional, mentally unstable and intellectually challenged - that is well known. Rather, it is that he remains as commander in chief of the USA - placed in that position by commercial and other financial interests.
The result for the world is war and innocent lives lost in favour of the accumulation of wealth for the few. That is the tragedy for the world, a tragedy of monumental proportions.
When government ceases to be representative, that is, "of the people for the people", democracy is lost. It should be clear to all that governments not of the people would place the people's interests behind the interests of those who control the governments. The formation of police states through the implementation of draconian laws and the erosion of civil liberties is a sure sign that freedom is under siege; not by the 'other'/outsider or 'enemy' but by those forces that subvert all the freedoms our forefathers have fought so hard and so long to establish.
The world now faces a crucial challenge, it has arrived at a crossroads; our leaders have sold us to the dogs. The interests of the people (majority) have taken a 'backseat' to the interests of the minority. The people are being harnessed once again as a class of subservient beasts of burden - slaves.
We are all confronting the hard reality that our leaders have failed us, the period of leaders and followers is at an end. Opposition parties are nothing more than defeated groups who failed to serve their masters expeditiously. Different shades of a similar colour - there are no effective opposition parties in today's world!
Lasting social change originates from the grassroots (people's movements) and then permeates the whole social structure. It is self-evident that a people's movement places the interests of the people above other interests. But it is the people who must act for the benefit of all - waiting to be led is to be consigned to sheep (for slaughter) status once again.
The implementation of social change is best achieved through steady and persistent application of specific behaviours designed to weaken existing social hierarchies while simultaneously strengthening the will and momentum of the people's movement - there is nothing new in this - nor should there be. It is a tried and proven formula/strategy that never fails - as history has proven time and again. But to which specific behaviours do we refer? Very little has changed in that regard - target the crucial area imperative to the perpetuation of the system you wish to change and it must change.
Regardless of the prevailing social system - the most effective means for bringing that system to attention is the general strike and/or boycott. However, it is not helpful to view this strategy in its classical socialist context. In terms of the Capitalist 'machine' that runs on consumerism/consumption (production is secondary to demand) people become/are both units of production and consumption - a most powerful position!
By adopting the strategy of the uniform 'no-buy-day' and 'no-work-day', referred to many times in other papers on this site, the factor both of production and consumption (the person) effectively ceases the cycle and the 'machine' grinds to a halt. The interests that manipulate governments would be forced to 'surface' and show their ugly faces to the world. In this way the criminals who have hijacked democracy can be surrendered to the ICC with the puppets they have placed in power; all would answer for their heinous crimes against humanity (Iraq in particular).
Leaders cannot exist without followers, therefore follow no-thing and no one; mutual cooperation is the sustainable and preferred mode of social behaviour. To prevent the re-emergence of ultra-right ideologies in the future it is imperative that the principals behind the invasion of Iraq are surrendered to the ICC at the Hague. This is the appropriate location where state leaders can answer for their crimes. The death of thousands of innocent civilians and combatants on all sides in Iraq is a by-product of companies like Halliburton pursuing the dollar. Well known state leaders facilitated the exploitation of Iraq by these Transnational Corporations.
Most of the principals of the Bush, Blair and Howard regimes would qualify for trial at the Hague. Regardless of any other consideration, failure to surrender these criminals to the ICC would result in more of the same corrupt government we suffer today.
All current political systems go to extreme lengths to prevent people realising their prominent and powerful position in society. Purchase nothing on the tenth day of every month and do not attend your work on the third day of every third month - perform these actions as a personal statement against the nefarious forces that would rob us all of our liberties and hard-won freedoms. Do not seek leadership at any time, surrender all political criminals to the ICC and implement (once again) representative government, "of the people for the people".
The enemies of the people are the elitists and divisionists, those who would divide us for any reason whatsoever are liars, frauds and murderers. A successful strike is an expression of unified simultaneous action, what would you? Divisionism is death!
We are One.
http://cleaves.zapto.org/clv/newswire.php?story_id=114
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