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Jews cursed rebuked in Bible


Muslims are blamed for cursing Jews:
“Those of the children of Israel who went astray were cursed by the tongue of David, and of Jesus, son of Mary. That was because they rebelled and used to transgress”.(Qur’an;5:78)
The Israelites Violated The Covenant with God and thus were disgraced, rebuked in Bible:
1) Became rebellious against God (Deuteronomy;32:15;9:7; Isaiah;1:2,Exodus;32:9)
2) The Israelites became unfaithful to covenant engagements (Jeremiah;3:6-8, 31:32; Ezekiel;16:59).
3) They were punished by God for; Idolatry (Psalms;78:58-64; Isaiah;65:3-7), Unbelief (Romans;11:20), Breaking covenant (Isaiah;24:5; Jeremiah; 11:10), Transgressing the law (Isaiah;1:4; 24:5-6), Changing the ordinances (Isaiah;24:5), and Killing the prophets (Mathew;23:37-38, 27:25).
4) They often displeased God by their sins (Numbers;25:3; Deutreronomy;32:16; 1Kings;16:2; Isaiah;1:4; 5:24-25). 5) They were scattered among the nations (Deuteronomy;28:64; Ezekiel; 6:8; 36:19).
6) Despised by the nations (Ezekiel;36:3), their country trodden under foot by the Gentiles (Deuteronomy;28:49-52; Luke;21:24).Their house left desolate (Mathew;24:38) and were deprived of civil and religious privileges (Hosea;3:4).
Rebelliousness of Jews has also been mentioned in Bible: “And the LORD said unto Moses, I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiff necked people: (Exodus; 32:9)”
“Understand therefore, that the LORD thy God giveth thee not this good land to possess it for thy righteousness; for thou art a stiffnecked people. Remember, and forget not, how thou provokedst the LORD thy God to wrath in the wilderness: from the day that thou didst depart out of the land of Egypt, until ye came unto this place, ye have been rebellious against the LORD. Also in Horeb ye provoked the LORD to wrath, so that the LORD was angry with you to have destroyed you.” (Deuteronomy; 9:6-8)
“Likewise when the LORD sent you from Kadeshbarnea, saying, Go up and possess the land which I have given you; then ye rebelled against the commandment of the LORD your God, and ye believed him not, nor hearkened to his voice. Ye have been rebellious against the LORD from the day that I knew you.” (Deuteronomy; 9:23-24) “Remember thy servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; look not unto the stubbornness of this people, nor to their wickedness, nor to their sin”: (Deuteronomy; 9:27)
They taught about God but did not love God — they did not enter the kingdom of heaven themselves, nor did they let others enter. (Matt 23:13-14)
The Woes of the Pharisees is a list of criticisms by Jesus against scribes and Pharisees in the Gospel of Luke 11:37-54 and Gospel of Matthew 23:1-39. Mark 12:35-40 and Luke 20:45-47 include warnings about scribes. Seven are listed in Matthew, and hence Matthew's version is known as the seven woes, while only six are given in Luke, whose version is thus known as the six woes. The woes mostly criticise the Pharisees for hypocrisy and perjury. They illustrate the differences between inner and outer moral states. The seven woes of hypocrisy are:
They taught that an oath sworn by the temple or altar was not binding, but that if sworn by the gold ornamentation of the temple, or by a sacrificial gift on the altar, it was binding. The gold and gifts, however, were not sacred in themselves as the temple and altar were, but derived a measure of lesser sacredness by being connected to the temple or altar. The teachers and Pharisees worshiped at the temple and offered sacrifices at the altar because they knew that the temple and altar were sacred. How then could they deny oath-binding value to what was truly sacred and accord it to objects of trivial and derived sacredness? (Matt 23:16-22)
They preached God but converted people to dead religion, thus making those converts twice as much sons of hell as they themselves were. (Matt 23:15) They taught the law but did not practice some of the most important parts of the law — justice, mercy, faithfulness to God. They obeyed the minutiae of the law such as tithing spices but not the weightier matters of the law. (Matt 23:23-24) They presented an appearance of being 'clean' (self-restrained, not involved in carnal matters), yet they were dirty inside: they seethed with hidden worldly desires, carnality. They were full of greed and self-indulgence. (Matt 23:25-26)
The Children of Israel as a community did not adhere to the Covenant in totality, though there were some exception. Some Exceptions:
They exhibited themselves as righteous on account of being scrupulous keepers of the law, but were in fact not righteous: their mask of righteousness hid a secret inner world of ungodly thoughts and feelings. They were full of wickedness. They were like whitewashed tombs, beautiful on the outside, but full of dead men's bones. (Matt 23:27-28) They professed a high regard for the dead prophets of old, and claimed that they would never have persecuted and murdered prophets, when in fact they were cut from the same cloth as the persecutors and murderers: they too had murderous blood in their veins. (Matt 23:29-36) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woes_of_the_Pharisees
“If they would have believed (in Islam) and kept themselves away from evil, there would have been a better reward from Allah, if they could understand it!”(Qur’an;2:103).
“There are some among the people of the Book who truly believe in Allah and what has been revealed to you, (Muhammad), and what has been revealed to them before you. They humble themselves before Allah and do not sell the revelations of Allah for a petty price. For them, there will be a reward from their God. Surely Allah is very swift in settling the accounts.(Qur’an;3:199). “Rest assured that the believers (Muslims), the Jews, the Sabians and the Christians - whoever believes in Allah and the Last Day and does righteous deeds - will have nothing to fear or to regret”.(Qur’an;5:69).


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India must change attitude towards Pskistan

India & Pakistan  have hurt each other incessantly through the past several decades and vested interests have formed, inevitably. A new beginning is needed. Modi should not allow himself to be taken in by the seductive cloak-and-dagger tales of the great game in the Hindu Kush, lest it became an entrapment of the mind and precluded new thinking. The AfPak buck stops at Modi’s desk, finally.
-------------------------
The Af-Pak buck stops at Modi’s desk:
By M K Bhadrakumar
Strange reports are filtering in from Kabul to the effect that the Afghan spy agency National Directorate of Security [NDS] and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence [ISI] have signed a memorandum of understanding to jointly fight terrorism. Some reports even suggested that the agreement envisaged that the ISI would train the NDS personnel equip them as well. (TOLO)

The reports as such have not been denied so far by Kabul or Islamabad, although the bit news about ISI training the Afghan spooks may be premature. At any rate, this becomes a momentous development in the politics of the region and in the tumultuous fraternal relationship between the two countries.

Looking back, the visit by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif earlier this month to Kabul, accompanied by army chief Gen. Raheel Sharif, has been a turning point in regional security. While in Kabul, Sharif had condemned in no uncertain terms, with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani standing by and listening in, the Taliban’s spring offensive, calling it in plain terms as terrorism, which was unprecedented.

Pakistan seldom, if ever, criticizes the Afghan Taliban publicly and Sharif did it in full view of the Afghan bazaar. For Ghani, any decision to engage the ISI directly would be a very pragmatic decision. He’d see three main advantages in doing so.

One, he will be conclusively addressing Pakistan’s number one concern, namely, the demand to shut down the Afghan-Indian intelligence tie-up. There is also a regional dimension to it, since Kabul is institutionalizing the cooperation with the the ISI at a time when Pakistan’s heightened sensitivities are bordering on paranoia lately.

Two, Ghani will be making Pakistan a “stakeholder” in Afghanistan’s counterterrorist capability. Cynics might say this is something like having the fox guarding the chicken coop, but then, the NDS also gets an opportunity to make the ISI accountable.

Three, in political terms, Ghani will be putting a ring of goodwill around Pakistan that the latter will be hard-pressed not to reciprocate — a benign version (in reverse) of Dritarashtra’s deadly embrace in the Indian epic of Mahabharata.

But what highlights the “upgrade” of the Afghan-Pakistan security cooperation is that it also happens to coincide with the first-ever visit by the Afghan Minister of Interior Noorulhaq Olomi to Beijing. Olomi disclosed in Beijing on Sunday that his visit related to the signing of an agreement between the Afghan and Chinese intelligence to expand their cooperation in the fight against terrorism.

Indeed, these developments in rapid succession within the space of a few weeks follow Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Pakistan last month. Xi had announced $46 billion worth Chinese investment to build an Economic Corridor across the Karakoram connecting Xinjiang with the Arabian Sea.

Pakistan understands that China has thrown in its direction a vital lifeline, which it must clasp gratefully with both hands. Pakistan is getting the opportunity of a lifetime to become a thriving economy and to emerge as the economic hub of the region, which would enhance its status manifold as a major regional power in South, West and Central Asia.

But then, China has added the caveat that Pakistan needs to get its act together first and cleanse the region of the terrorist groups so that the Silk Road projects involving the deployment of hundreds (or thousands) of Chinese personnel can get implemented. Sharif’s visit to Kabul must be seen in this context.

And the Pakistani army chief accompanying Sharif was intended to underline that the civilian and military leaderships in Islamabad are jointly committed to dispersing the strategic distrust that blocked any genuine security cooperation between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Having said that, China also knows that Pakistan cannot handle this cleanup alone and it will have to be a coordinated Afghan-Pakistani effort. Of course, China has some self-interest here too insofar as it also hopes to be a direct beneficiary of the decimation of the terrorist groups based in the Af-Pak region. To be sure, China would have encouraged Olomi to strengthen the cooperation between the Afghan and Pakistani intelligence.

It i s also useful to recall that China participated in the recent Track II in Qatar where the representatives of the Kabul government and the Taliban held discussions. There is reason to believe that China is acting as a moderating influence on Pakistan and nudging it to get the Taliban to the peace talks. (See a Xinhua commentary here.)

The fact that Olomi was received by none other than Meng Jianzhu, member of the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party and the head of the Commission for Political and Legal Affairs of the CPC Central Committee underscores that Beijing attaches the highest importance to the security of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which is of course linked to the fight against terrorism in Afghanistan. (Meng is China’s intelligence czar, successor to Zhou Yongkang and a rising star in Chinese politics.)

It doesn’t need much ingenuity to figure out that a tripartite entente is appearing on the strategic landscape to India’s north, involving China, Pakistan and Afghanistan, in the sphere of regional security and stability. It stems from a remarkable congruence of interests on the part of the three protagonists.

Russia and Iran would only encourage such a regional process aimed at stabilizing the Afghan situation. (By the way, Moscow announced on Monday the closure of the NATO’s transport corridor through Russian territory for delivering supplies to Afghanistan.)

Of course, all this comes as a severe blow to the Indian foreign and security policy establishment. The Indian intelligence had enjoyed until recently very close ties with the Afghan intelligence, which in turn provided much “strategic depth” to us vis-à-vis Pakistan.

But India has been summarily left in the lurch and Kabul is gearing up to do business with the newfound Pakistani (and Chinese) partners. Without doubt, Pakistan’s bottom line for cooperation with the Kabul government regarding peace talks with the Taliban has been the latter’s willingness to guarantee that the Indian intelligence presence is eliminated from Afghan soil.

The NDS-ISI tie-up rankles, as it is happening within a month of Ghani’s visit to Delhi. No doubt, there has been a colossal breakdown of India’s Af-Pak policies. There is no other way to put across the bitter truth.

Hopefully, Prime Minister Narendra Modi who reportedly places emphasis on making the bureaucracy accountable, will want to know why such a policy failure could have taken place right under his nose, relating to a core area of India’s regional policies.

How does India propose to dig its way out of this fox hole? Whispering to China not to trust Pakistan is not going to take us very far. Nor is our hubris that India can afford to “ignore” Pakistan helping matters.

Truly, the intellectual bankruptcy on the foreign policy front is surging to the surface. India should see the writing on the wall – Sino-Pak relationship has transformed and is no longer “India-centric”; Pakistan’s approach to terrorist groups has changed.

Our rejectionist stance vis-à-vis China’s Belt and Road Initiatives becomes increasingly untenable and will only prove counterproductive in the long run. There are things that are beyond India’s capabilities. Zero sum mindset is doomed to fail in a globalized world.

The root problem is that India doesn’t have a “big picture” as regards the regional politics. A good beginning will be to decide on a Pakistan policy without further delay — a policy that is viable, forward-looking and sustainable. The right-wing pundits are whistling in the dark when they claim that India should “ignore” Pakistan. The recent developments in regional politics amply testify that Pakistan is far too important a regional power to be “ignored”.

Secondly, more importantly, the time has come to ask some fundamental questions regarding the wisdom of remaining fixated on Dawood Ibrahim or Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi. The history of India-Pakistan rivalry didn’t begin with these two personalities.

The two countries have hurt each other incessantly through the past several decades and vested interests have formed, inevitably. A new beginning is needed. Modi should not allow himself to be taken in by the seductive cloak-and-dagger tales of the great game in the Hindu Kush, lest it became an entrapment of the mind and precluded new thinking. The AfPak buck stops at Modi’s desk, finally.
http://blogs.rediff.com/mkbhadrakumar/author/bhadrakumaranrediffmailcom/

The many problems with Seymour Hersh's Osama bin Laden conspiracy theory


Recently the legendary investigative journalist Seymour Hersh finally released a story that he has been rumored to have been working on for years: the truth about the killing of Osama bin Laden. According to Hersh's 10,000-word story in the London Review of Books, the official history of bin Laden's death — in which the US tracked him to a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan; killed him in a secret raid that infuriated Pakistan; and then buried him at sea — is a lie.

Hersh's story is amazing to read, alleging a vast American-Pakistani conspiracy to stage the raid and even to fake high-level diplomatic incidents as a sort of cover. But his allegations are largely supported only by two sources, neither of whom has direct knowledge of what happened, both of whom are retired, and one of whom is anonymous. The story is riven with internal contradictions and inconsistencies.

Related Every movie rewrites history. What American Sniper did is much, much worse.
The story simply does not hold up to scrutiny — and, sadly, is in line with Hersh's recent turn away from the investigative reporting that made him famous into unsubstantiated conspiracy theories.

A decade ago, Hersh was one of the most respected investigative journalists on the planet, having broken major stories from the My Lai massacre in 1969 to the Abu Ghraib scandal in 2004. But more recently, his reports have become less and less credible. He's claimed that much of the US special forces is controlled by secret members of Opus Dei, that the US military flew Iranian terrorists to Nevada for training, and that the 2013 chemical weapons attack in Syria was a "false flag" staged by the government of Turkey. Those reports have had little proof and, rather than being borne out by subsequent investigations, have been either unsubstantiated or outright debunked. A close reading of Hersh's bin Laden story suggests it is likely to suffer the same fate.

What Seymour Hersh says really happened to Osama bin Laden

The truth, Hersh says, is that Pakistani intelligence services captured bin Laden in 2006 and kept him locked up with support from Saudi Arabia, using him as leverage against al-Qaeda. In 2010, Pakistan agreed to sell bin Laden to the US for increased military aid and a "freer hand in Afghanistan." Rather than kill him or hand him over discreetly, Hersh says the Pakistanis insisted on staging an elaborate American "raid" with Pakistani support.

According to Hersh's story, Navy SEALs met no resistance at Abbottabad and were escorted by a Pakistani intelligence officer to bin Laden's bedroom, where they killed him. Bin Laden's body was "torn apart with rifle fire" and pieces of the corpse "tossed out over the Hindu Kush mountains" by Navy SEALs during the flight home (no reason is given for this action). There was no burial at sea because "there wouldn’t have been much left of bin Laden to put into the sea in any case."

In this telling, the yearslong breakdown in US-Pakistan relations, which had enormous ramifications for both Pakistan and the war in Afghanistan, was all staged to divert attention from the truth of bin Laden's killing. The treasure trove of intelligence secured from bin Laden's compound, Hersh adds, was manufactured to provide evidence after the fact.

What is the proof?
The evidence for all this is Hersh's conversations with two people: Asad Durrani, who ran Pakistan's military intelligence service from 1990 to 1992, and "a retired senior intelligence official who was knowledgeable about the initial intelligence about bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad." Read that line again: knowledgeable about the initial intelligence. Not exactly a key player in this drama, and anonymous at that.

Hersh produces no supporting documents or proof, nor is the authority of either source established. We are given no reason to believe that either Durrani or the "knowledgeable official" would have even second- or thirdhand knowledge of what occurred, yet their word is treated as gospel. His other two sources are anonymous "consultants" who are vaguely described as insiders.

Beyond that, Hersh's proof is that he finds the official story of the Osama bin Laden raid to be unconvincing. And he points out that in the first days after the raid, the administration released details that cast bin Laden in a negative light — saying he tried to use one of his wives as a shield, for example — that it later walked back. But raising questions about the official story is not the same as proving a spectacular international conspiracy.

If that seems like worryingly little evidence for a story that accuses hundreds of people across three governments of staging a massive international hoax that has gone on for years, then you are not alone.

On Sunday night, national security journalists and analysts on Twitter picked through the story, expressing dismay at its tissue-thin sourcing, its leaps of logic, and its internal contradictions.

Some of the problems with Hersh's history of Abbottabad

Perhaps the most concerning problem with Hersh's story is not the sourcing but rather the internal contradictions in the narrative he constructs.

Most blatant, Hersh's entire narrative turns on a secret deal, in which the US promised Pakistan increased military aid and a "freer hand in Afghanistan." In fact, the exact opposite of this occurred, with US military aid dropping and US-Pakistan cooperation in Afghanistan plummeting as both sides feuded bitterly for years after the raid.

Hersh explains this seemingly fatal contradiction by suggesting the deal fell apart due to miscommunication between the Americans and Pakistanis. But it's strange to argue that the dozens of officials on both sides would be competent enough to secretly plan and execute a massive international ruse, and then to uphold their conspiracy for years after the fact, but would not be competent enough to get on the same page about aid delivery.

And there are more contradictions. Why, for example, would the Pakistanis insist on a fake raid that would humiliate their country and the very military and intelligence leaders who supposedly instigated it?

A simpler question: why would Pakistan bother with the ostentatious fake raid at all, when anyone can imagine a dozen simpler, lower-risk, lower-cost ways to do this?

Why not just kill bin Laden, drive his body across the border into Afghanistan, and drop him off with the Americans? Or why not put him in a hut somewhere in Waziristan, blow it up with an F-16, pretend it was a US drone strike, and tell the Americans to go collect the body? (Indeed, when I first heard about Hersh's bin Laden story a few years ago from a New Yorker editor — the magazine, the editor said, had rejected it repeatedly, to the point of creating bad blood between Hersh and editor-in-chief David Remnick — this was the version Hersh was said to favor.)

"helping Obama boost US-Pakistan relations seems like an unusual hobby for an al-Qaeda leader"

If Pakistan's goal is increased US aid, why do something that will virtually force the US to cut aid, as it indeed did? For that matter, why retaliate against the US for the raid that you asked them to conduct? Pakistan's own actions against the US, after all, ensured that it had less influence in Afghanistan.

By the same token, why would the US cut a secret deal with Pakistan to allow that country a "freer hand" in Afghanistan — essentially surrendering a yearslong effort to reduce Pakistani influence there — rather than just taking out bin Laden without Pakistan's permission?

There are smaller but still troubling inconsistencies. Why, for example, would the US need to construct a massive double of the Abbottabad compound for special forces to train in, if the real compound were going to be totally unguarded and there would be no firefight?

See also, for example, the intelligence material that the US brought back from bin Laden's compound and then displayed to the world. Hersh says that, in fact, bin Laden had spent the previous five years a hostage of Pakistani intelligence rather than an active member of al-Qaeda. The intelligence "treasure trove" was thus a fabrication, cooked up by the CIA after the raid to back up the American-Pakistani conspiracy.

This is a strange thing to argue, as Carnegie Endowment Syria research Aron Lund points out, because al-Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri subsequently said the intelligence materials were real, and had quoted from them himself. So either Hersh is wrong or, Lund writes, "Zawahiri is helping Obama forge evidence to boost US-Pakistan relations, which seems like an unusual hobby for an [al-Qaeda] leader."

when facts seem to contradict his claims, his answer is that this only shows how deep the rabbit hole goes

In other words, for Hersh to be correct that the intelligence material was faked, and thus that bin Laden was a secret prisoner of Pakistani intelligence, and thus that the raid to kill him was a staged American-Pakistani ruse, then al-Qaeda would have had to be in on it — even though al-Qaeda was also the supposed victim of Pakistan's plot.

As for Hersh's story of what really happened to bin Laden's body — "torn to pieces with rifle fire" and thrown bit by bit out the door of the escaping helicopter, until there was not enough left to bury — it is difficult to know where to begin. It is outlandish to imagine small arms fire reducing a 6-foot-4 man "to pieces," not to mention the sheer quantity of time and bullets this would take. Are we really to believe that special forces would spend who knows how long gleefully carving up bin Laden like horror movie villains, and then later reaching into the body bag to chuck pieces of him out of a helicopter, for no reason at all? On the most sensitive and important operation of their careers?

When Hersh acknowledge the vast evidence against his theory, he typically dismisses it out of hand, at times arguing that it is in fact proof that the Pakistani-American-Saudi architects of this plan were so brilliant that they spent years meticulously engineering their actions at every level so as to appear to be doing the opposite of what Hersh suggests.

For example, Hersh says the CIA station chief in Islamabad, Jonathan Bank, was a key player in helping the Pakistanis stage the bin Laden raid. But the year before the raid, a Pakistani journalist publicly named Bank (many suspect, and Hersh agrees, that this was done at Pakistani intelligence's behest), thus imperiling his life, forcing him to flee the country and sparking a diplomatic incident that set back US-Pakistan relations. Hersh says this entire monthslong incident was staged, a "cover in case their co-operation with the Americans in getting rid of bin Laden became known."

Hersh's story is littered with such justifications: when facts seem to squarely contradict his claims, his answer is that this only goes to show how deep the rabbit hole goes.

Seymour Hersh's slide off the rails

In early 2004, Hersh reported one of the most important stories of the Iraq War: the torture of detainees at the American-run prison complex in Abu Ghraib, Iraq. In a series of articles for the New Yorker, Hersh revealed horrific and systemic American torture, as well as its authorization at the highest levels of the Bush administration. While earlier investigations by the Associated Press and Amnesty International had uncovered aspects of this story, the depth of Hersh's reports proved both damning and shocking, contributing to a public backlash against both Abu Ghraib and the war itself.

The Abu Ghraib stories were in line with Hersh's reputation as one of the most respected investigative reporters alive. That reputation goes back to 1969, when Hersh uncovered the My Lai massacre, in which American troops killed hundreds of Vietnamese civilians. He later broke elements of the Watergate story while working for the New York Times.

In recent years, however, Hersh has appeared increasingly to have gone off the rails. His stories, often alleging vast and shadowy conspiracies, have made startling — and often internally inconsistent — accusations, based on little or no proof beyond a handful of anonymous "officials."

Supporters of Hersh will often point to his earlier stories in defense of his more recent work, saying that we should trust his sources and not dismiss his reporting so easily. Fair enough. But Hersh's stories on Abu Ghraib or My Lai or Watergate were sourced with documented evidence (in the case of Abu Ghraib, a damning internal military report) and interviews with firsthand participants.

For his bin Laden story, however, he has no documented evidence, and his sources are limited to a couple of "consultants," one "retired official with knowledge," and a Pakistani spymaster who left that world 23 years ago. If Hersh still has his once-famous connections in the American intelligence world, they do not show up here.

Similarly, Hersh's earlier blockbusters were all quickly confirmed by dozens of independent reports and mountains of physical proof. That's how such exposés typically work: the first glint of sunshine brings a rush of attention, which uncovers more evidence and encourages more sources to come forward, until the truth is incontrovertible.

That is not how things have gone with Hersh's newer and more conspiratorial stories. Rather, they have tended to remain all alone in their claims, and at times have been debunked. This is not, in other words, the first time.

The growing list of conspiracy theories
The first hints came in the latter years of the Bush administration, when Hersh reported repeatedly that the US was on the verging of striking Iran. These included reports stating that the US might even bomb Iran with a nuclear warhead, and later that the administration had considered using US special forces disguised as Iranians to launch a "false flag" attack as a premise for war.

These reports seemed a bit far-fetched, particularly since Hersh kept predicting a strike that never came. And, troublingly, they were often sourced to perhaps one or two anonymous "consultants" or "former officials" who were said to "have knowledge" of high-level discussions.

The Iran stories were difficult to accept on anything much more than faith. How do you prove that Dick Cheney never had a meeting in his office during which someone verbally proposed pinning a false flag attack on Iran? You can't. In any case, Hersh had a long record of excellence, and who was going to doubt Cheney's capacity for hawkishness?

The moment when a lot of journalists started to question whether Hersh had veered from investigative reporting into something else came in January 2011. That month, he spoke at Georgetown University's branch campus in Qatar, where he gave a bizarre and rambling address alleging that top military and special forces leaders "are all members of, or at least supporters of, Knights of Malta ... many of them are members of Opus Dei." He suggested that they belong to a network first formed by former Vice President Dick Cheney that is steering US foreign policy toward an agenda of bringing Christianity to the Middle East.

They do see what they’re doing — and this is not an atypical attitude among some military — it’s a crusade, literally. They see themselves as the protectors of the Christians. They’re protecting them from the Muslims [as in] the 13th century. And this is their function.

... That’s the attitude. "We’re gonna change mosques into cathedrals." That’s an attitude that pervades, I’m here to say, a large percentage of the Joint Special Operations Command.

As Blake Hounshell pointed out at the time, there is no evidence for any of this — many of the US military leaders that Hersh named are known as personally liberal and not outwardly religious, and in any case both Opus Dei and Knights of Malta are Catholic service organizations very different from the shadowy forces portrayed in Dan Brown novels.

The next year, in 2012, Hersh reported in the New Yorker that the Bush administration had secretly armed and funded an Iranian terrorist group known as the MEK in 2005. Two sources, neither with direct knowledge, told Hersh that American special forces had flown the Iranians all the way to Nevada to train at a base there. This detail was both spectacular and puzzling: the US has bases throughout the world, including several in the Middle East; why bring terrorists to Nevada?

To be clear, the story was never specifically discredited, but neither has it ever been confirmed by any subsequent investigations into Bush-era national security policy, of which there have been many. Hersh's story was greeted skeptically by many reporters and analysts. Hersh is still employed by the New Yorker, but he has not written an investigative piece for the magazine since.

The Syria chemical weapons story

Since the 2012 MEK story, Hersh has published his primary investigative work in the London Review of Books.

Two of these articles have focused at great length on the August 2013 chemical weapons attack in Ghouta, Syria, that killed hundreds of civilians. An extensive UN report, while barred from formally assigning responsibility, pointed out that the chemical weapons were delivered by munitions only used by the Syrian military, and had been fired from an area entirely controlled by Syrian military forces. Independent investigations by human rights groups pointed the finger at forces loyal to Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad. So did the US government.

Hersh, in his two articles, states that this is all false. In December 2013, he claimed that the Obama administration, seeking to justify its threat to strike Syria in retaliation, had willingly downplayed or ignored evidence that the chemical weapons had in fact been launched by the al-Qaeda franchise Jabhat al-Nusra. He cited a handful of anonymous (and, strangely, often retired) "officials" who warned of a "deliberate manipulation of intelligence" and compared Ghouta to the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident used to justify the US escalation in Vietnam.

Then, in April 2014, Hersh came out with a different story: the government of Turkey, he stated, had orchestrated the Ghouta chemical weapons attack with Jabhat al-Nusra as a false flag operation. Assad was innocent. Turkey and the al-Qaeda branch had cooked up the plan, intending that the attack would be blamed on the Syrian government, thus leading the United States to attack Syria. (You will notice, again, Hersh's preoccupation with false flag operations.)

The accusation of a Turkish-jihadist conspiracy to lure the US into war with Syria seemed stunning — and, to many, outlandish. Could it be true? No independent investigation has yet confirmed it, and the story has been exhaustively and repeatedly debunked, including by Eliot Higgins and Dan Kaszeta, two respected analysts who focus on small arms and chemical weapons in Syria.

As time goes on, Hersh's stories seem to become more spectacular, more thinly sourced, and more difficult to square with reality as we know it. Perhaps one day they will all be vindicated: the Opus Dei special forces cabal, the terrorist training in Nevada, the American plan to nuke Iran, the Turkish false flag in Syria, even the American-Pakistani bin Laden ruse.

Maybe there really is a vast shadow world of complex and diabolical conspiracies, executed brilliantly by international networks of government masterminds. And maybe Hersh and his handful of anonymous former senior officials really are alone in glimpsing this world and its terrifying secrets. Or maybe there's a simpler explanation.

Correction: Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this article at one point referenced the My Lai massacre and Ghouta chemical weapons attack as occurring in 1969 and 2014, respectively, when in fact those were the years when Hersh's stories on the incidents were published. Other references to those events in the story described their timing accurately. The article has been corrected.
The many problems with Seymour Hersh's Osama bin Laden conspiracy theory
by Max Fisher, vox.com

Source: http://www.vox.com/2015/5/11/8584473/seymour-hersh-osama-bin-laden

Manhunt: The Search for Bin Laden 2013 HD (HBO Full Documentary)

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Sep 28, 2013

No free Chinese lunch by Irfan Husain

:THAT loud slurping you have been hearing this last fortnight is the sound of politicians, pundits and punters drooling over the prospect of $46 billion in Chinese investment coming to Pakistan.

Obviously, an impoverished country like ours can’t afford to look a gift horse in the mouth, especially if the horse in question is Chinese, and happens to be the only ride in town. ‘Game-changer’ is the expression most commonly being bandied about to describe the windfall. If we were to believe the TV anchors and their chat show guests, it’s as though we had hit the jackpot, and could all retire to Dubai.

For a dose of reality, just look what has happened in (and to) Sri Lanka with its spate of Chinese deals. The new government of Presi­dent Sirisena is struggling to cope with the Chinese-financed and built projects it has inherited from the Rajapaksa administration.

The most contentious of these is the Colombo Port City with an investment of $1.35bn coming from the China Communi­cations Construction Company, a huge government-controlled entity. This ambitious project — halted since the new government came to power earlier this year — is spread over 575 acres, part of which is to be reclaimed from the sea off Colombo’s shore.

Aimed at developing residential, entertainment and business spaces and facilities, the venture was designed to make Colombo a popular destination for tourists as well as a vehicle for investment in real estate. The problem is that the sponsors took many short cuts, ignoring important environmental requirements. Now if Sri Lanka cancels the deal, it stands to lose millions of dollars in penalties.

Several other public-sector projects funded and built by the Chinese are now lying virtually abandoned. Hambontota Port in the south is a case study in how to invest in useless infrastructure projects. When the new port was declared open about four years ago, a huge boulder was discovered in the channel that made navigation impossible. This obstruction was dynamited over months, but even now, it took a government directive to force car-carrying ships to dock there. Cars then have to be transported 250km to Colombo by road.

Who said China has got to where it is by handing out freebies?
Other Chinese-financed projects in the area include an international airport and a cricket stadium. Both are unused. A huge conference centre, financed by South Korea, is virtually derelict. The major users of the motorway around Hambantota are water buffaloes. One reason for all this ill-considered construction activity is that it happens to be in the ex-president’s constituency.

But to his credit, Rajapaksa focused on road-building, and there is now an excellent network in place. However, the huge difference in construction cost has raised many questions about transparency, especially about roads built with Chinese funding and by Chinese contractors.

For instance, the Southern Expressway connecting Colombo to Galle, financed by the Asian Development Bank and Japan, cost $7 million per kilometre. By contrast, the Outer Circular Highway connecting the airport to the Galle Expressway, financed by a Chinese loan and awarded without competition to a Chinese firm, is going to cost $72m per kilometre.

Of course, no two highways are identical and construction costs will vary depending on the soil conditions as well as the quality. But in an article in Colombo’s Sunday Times, Professor Kumarage, an experienced civil engineer, writing about these projects, informs us that:

“The common denominator of all these projects is that they were funded with Chinese borrowings and contracts have all been awarded in 2014 without calling for competitive bids. The loss arising from these four projects is estimated at 200 billion rupees [around $1.5bn].”

Fortunately, the $30bn dollar Chinese investment in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor is not in the shape of loans as the project is designed for China’s benefit. By connecting Gwadar Port to western China, it will save millions every year in transport costs. It is not clear, however, if we will charge the Chinese transit fees for trucks and trains carrying their goods across our territory as we have been charging Nato.

The remaining $16bn are intended for the power sector in solar, wind and coal-fired projects whose total output will be 10,400MW, a welcome addition to our present installed capa­city. However, this investment is subject to a 20pc matching investment from the private sector in Pakistan. But given the favourable conditions written into this tranche, I can see Pakistani businessmen queuing up to invest.

Consider: there is a guaranteed internal rate of return (IRR) of 18pc, and this is pegged to the dollar. So if the greenback is trading for Rs110 a couple of years down the road, we will be paying an extra 10pc in rupees. And presumably, Chinese contractors will be appointed without competition, so much of the investment will be recovered early if the contracts are front-loaded.

But hey, who said China has got to where it is by handing out freebies?

No free Chinese lunch
by Irfan Husain, dawn.com
irfan.husain@gmail.com

چینی لنچ فری نہیں ہوگا!
گزشتہ دوہفتوںسے آپ سیاست دانوں ، سیاسی پنڈتوں اورمنصوبہ سازوں کو مزے سے چائے یا کسی اور مشروب کی چسکیاں لیتے ہوئے چینی سرمایہ کاری کی مد میں پاکستان آنے والے چھیالیس بلین ڈالر مالیت کے منصوبوں کے دل خوش کن تصور سے جی بہلاتے دیکھ رہے ہوں گے۔ پسندیدہ مشروب سامنے میز پر رکھ کر نیم وا آنکھوں سے سنہرے تصورات کی دنیا میں غوطہ لگانے میں کوئی حرج نہیں اور پھر پاکستان جیسے غریب ممالک تحفے میں ملنے والے گھوڑے کے دانت نہیں دیکھتے( انگریزی محاورے کے مطابق) اور اگر وہ مذکورہ گھوڑا چینی ہو اور اس کے سوا کوئی اور سواری بھی میسر آنے کا امکان نہ ہو تو پھر گھوڑے کے نقص کون تلاش کرسکتا ہے۔ دنیا کے ہمارے حصے میں زبانِ زدِ خاص و عام ایک ہی اصطلاح ہے۔۔۔''گیم چینجر‘‘، گویا اس سرمایہ کاری نے ہمارے لیے خوش بختی کے دروازے وا کر دیے۔ اگر ٹی وی کے پُرجوش اینکرز اور مزید پُرجوش مہمانوں کی چہکار سنیں تو لگتا ہے کہ ہم راتوں رات دولت میں کھیلنے لگے ہیں، چنانچہ ہمیں سب کام کاج چھوڑ کر دوبئی سدھارنا چاہیے تاکہ اس بے پناہ دولت کو کہیں تو خرچ کیا جاسکے۔
التباسات کی سنہری سرزمین اتنی خوشنما ہے کہ حقیقت کی سنگلاخ دنیا میں کھلنے والی کھڑکی بند ہی رہنے دیں‘ مبادا مخمل میں ٹاٹ کا پیوند لگانے کا مرتکب قرار پائوں، لیکن سری لنکا کے حالات پر ایک نگاہ ڈالنا ہمیں بہت کچھ سمجھا سکتا ہے۔صدر سری سیناکی قیادت میں اس کی نئی حکومت چینی سرمایہ کاری سے وجود میں آنے والے میگا پروجیکٹس، جو سابق صدر راجا پاکسی کے دور میں بنے، سے لگنے والے گھائو کو سہارنے کی کوشش میں ہے۔ ان منصوبوں میں سب سے متنازع 1.35 بلین ڈالر سے بننے والی کولمبو سٹی پورٹ ہے ۔اس کا ٹھیکہ ایک ایسی چینی کمپنی کے پاس ہے‘ جسے بڑی حد تک چینی حکومت ہی کنٹرول کرتی ہے۔ جب سے نئی حکومت نے اقتدار سنبھالا ہے، 575 ایکٹر پر محیط یہ عظیم منصوبہ التوا کا شکارہے۔ اس کے لیے زیادہ تر زمین سمند رسے حاصل کی جانی تھی۔رہائشی ، تفریحی اور کاروباری سہولیات رکھنے والے اس مقام کے بارے میں اندازہ لگایاگیا تھا کہ یہ دنیا بھر سے سیاحوں اورسرمایہ کاروں کو اپنی طرف کھینچے گا، لیکن مسئلہ یہ ہوا کہ سرمایہ کار نے جلد بازی کا مظاہرہ کرتے ہوئے اس کے ماحول پر اثرات کا جائزہ لینے کی زحمت نہیں کی۔ اس منصوبے کے ماحولیاتی پہلو کو اب دیکھا جارہا ہے، تاہم مسئلہ یہ ہے کہ اگر سری لنکا اس موقع پر اس ڈیل کو منسو خ کرتا ہے تو اسے کئی ملین ڈالر جرمانہ ادا کرنا پڑے گا۔
اسی طرح پبلک سیکٹر میں بننے والے کئی ایک منصوبے ، جن پر چینی کمپنیوں نے سرمایہ کاری کی اور تعمیر بھی خود ہی کی، اب بے کار پڑے ہوئے ہیں۔ ان میں جنوب میں واقع Hambontota Port کا جائزہ لینا بے حد چشم کشاہوگا کہ بے کار انفراسٹرکچر میں کس طرح بھاری سرمایہ کاری کی جاتی ہے اور کس طرح کمپنیاں فائدہ اٹھاتی ہیں جبکہ میزبان ملک کو اس کا حتمی بوجھ اٹھانا پڑتا ہے۔ جب چار سال پہلے اس نئی بندرگاہ کو کھولنے کا اعلان کیا گیا تو اچانک پتہ چلا کہ آبی گزرگاہ میں پانی کے نیچے ایک بھاری چٹان ہے جس کی وجہ سے جہازوں کی آمدورفت ممکن نہیں۔ کئی ماہ کی کوششوں کے بعد اُس چٹان کو ڈائنامائیٹس لگا کر تباہ کردیا گیا لیکن ابھی بھی کوئی جہاز ادھر کا رخ نہیں کرتا۔ اس پر حکومت نے کاریں لانے والے جہازوں کو یہاں لنگر انداز ہونے پر مجبور کیا تاکہ اس کے فعال ہونے کا تاثر مل سکے۔ تاہم کاروں کو یہاں اتارنے کے بعد بذریعہ سڑک 250 کلومیٹر دور کولمبو لے جایا جاتا ہے۔ علاقے میں موجود دیگر چینی منصوبوں میں ایک انٹر نیشنل ایئرپورٹ اور ایک کرکٹ اسٹیڈیم دکھائی دیتے ہیں، تاہم یہ دونوں تاحال استعمال میں نہیں۔ جنوبی کوریا کے تعاون سے بننے والے ایک عظیم الشان کانفرنس سنٹر میں الوبولتے ہیں۔ Hambantota کے گرد بننے والی موٹر وے البتہ ویران نہیں ، اُس پربڑی تعداد میں کیچڑ میں لت پت بھینسیں مٹر گشت کرتی دکھائی دیتی ہیں ۔ ان کے گزرنے کے نشانات وہاں تادیر ثبت رہتے ہیں یہاں تک کہ بارش اُنہیں بہا کر لے جاتی ہے۔ اتنی دیر میں ایک اور غول وہاںسے گزرتا دکھائی دیتا ہے۔ یہاں اتنی مہنگی موٹر وے بنانے کی واحد وجہ یہ تھی کہ علاقہ سابق صدر کے حلقہ ٔ انتخاب میں آتا تھا۔ اس میں کوئی شک نہیں کہ سری لنکا کے سابق صدر کو سڑکیں بنانے کا جنون تھا۔ یقینا یہاں بہت شاندار سڑکیں تعمیر کی گئیں تاہم ماہرین کا کہنا ہے کہ بعض وجوہ (ہم پاکستانیوں کے لیے ان وجوہ کی تفہیم مشکل نہیں) کی بنا پران کی تعمیراتی لاگت بہت زیادہ ہے۔ ان میں زیادہ ترسڑکیں وہ ہیں جو چینی کمپنیوں اور ٹھیکیداروںنے تعمیر کیں۔۔۔مثال کے طور پرکولمبو کو گیل سے ملانے والی سادرن ایکسپریس پر ایشین ڈویلپمنٹ بینک اور جاپان نے سرمایہ کاری کی اور اس پر سات ملین ڈالر فی کلومیٹر لاگت آئی ۔ دوسری طرف گیل ایکسپریس پر چینی کمپنی نے سرمایہ کاری کی مگر یہاں فی کلومیٹر 72 ملین ڈالر لاگت آئی ہے۔ اہم بات یہ ہے کہ چینی کمپنی کو یہ ٹھیکہ بغیر کسی مسابقت کے مل گیا تھا۔ یقیناکوئی دو سڑکیں ایک جیسی نہیں ہوتیں اور ان کی تعمیر اور اخراجات بھی یکساں نہیںہوتے‘ تاہم کولمبو کے اخبار ''Sunday Times‘‘ میں شائع ہونے والے مضمون میں ایک تجربہ کار سول انجینئر ، پروفیسر کماراج ان منصوبوں کے بارے میں لکھتے ہیں۔۔۔''ان تمام منصوبوں میں قدر ِ مشترک یہ تھی کہ ان میں سرمایہ کاری چین نے کی اور ان کے ٹھیکے بھی چینی فرموں کو دیے گئے۔ ایسا کرتے ہوئے کوئی اشتہار دیا گیا نہ کسی کو مسابقت کی دعوت دی گئی۔ ان منصوبوںسے ہونے والا نقصان 1.5 بلین ڈالر کے قریب ہے۔ ‘‘
خوش قسمتی سے پاکستان میں ہونے والی مجوزہ چینی سرمایہ کاری میں تیس بلین ڈالر سرمایہ کاری قرضہ نہ ہوگی۔ یہ سرمایہ کاری پاک چین اقتصادی راہداری پر ہوگی؛ تاہم تاثر ہے کہ اس منصوبے کا پاکستان کی نسبت چین کو زیادہ فائدہ ہوگا۔ گوادر پورٹ کو مغربی چین کے ساتھ منسلک کرتے ہوئے چین ہر سال کئی ملین ڈالر کی بچت کرلے گا۔ ابھی یہ بات واضح نہیں کہ کیا ہم بھی چین کی طرف رواں دواں ٹرکوںسے کوئی فیس، جیسے ہم نیٹو ٹرکوںسے لیا کرتے تھے، وصول کریںگے یا نہیں؟باقی 16 بلین ڈالر توانائی پیدا کرنے والے شعبے پر خرچ ہوںگے۔ ان میں سولر، ونڈ اور کول پاور پروجیکٹس شامل ہیںجن سے 10,400 میگا واٹ بجلی پیدا ہونے کی توقع کی جارہی ہے۔ ہمیں اس پیش رفت کو خوش آمدید کہنا چاہیے کیونکہ ہمیں بجلی کی شدید قلت کا سامنا ہے؛ تاہم اس سرمایہ کاری کے لیے بیس فیصد سرمایہ کاری پاکستان کے نجی شعبے نے کرنی ہے۔یقینا منافع کی بھاری شرح دیکھتے ہوئے پاکستانی سرمایہ کار قطاریں باندھے سرمایہ کاری کرتے دکھائی دیں گے۔ لیکن ٹھہریں، واپسی کی شرح (IRR) اٹھارہ فیصد ہے اور یہ واپسی ڈالروںمیںہوگی۔ اس کامطلب ہے کہ چینی سرمایہ کاربہت جلد اپنی رقم واپس لے لیں گے۔ ویسے یہ کس نے کہا تھا کہ چینی لنچ فری ہوتا ہے؟
- See more at: http://m.dunya.com.pk/index.php/author/irfan-hussain/2015-05-02