U.S. aid after the horrific quake in Pakistan (higher death toll than the Gujarat and Bam temblors) is already being spun by the politicos in Washington:

“Musharraf is a friend and hero in our eyes,” said one senior U.S. official… “There is a clear and unmistakable signal being sent that we help our friends.” [Link]

Who gets credit for eight U.S. helicopters and three field hospitals? Round and round and round it goes, where it stops, nobody knows:

A survey of 1,200 Indonesians one month after the tsunami… found that, for the first time, more Indonesians (40 percent) supported the U.S. terrorism fight than opposed it (36 percent). Sixty-five percent of those surveyed had a more favorable impression of the United States, with support strongest among those younger than 30, while support for Osama bin Laden dropped from 58 percent before the tsunami to 23 percent. Terror Free Tomorrow is a nonpartisan group that studies popular support for global terrorism. [Link]

Indonesian support for bin Laden dropped from 58% before the tsunami to 23%after U.S. aidOne expert thinks the U.S. will reap the benefits, but Musharraf will not. The Pakistani government’s quake relief has seemingly been as ineffectual as the U.S. government’s Katrina response:

Husain Haqqani, director of the Center for International Relations at Boston University and an adviser to Terror Free Tomorrow, said the experience in Indonesia could easily be replicated in Pakistan… But Haqqani said the U.S. effort to prop up Musharraf with the relief effort is unlikely to succeed. He said hard questions are already being asked about the faltering response of the Pakistani military, which Musharraf controls. Moreover, he said, much of the $1 billion in annual U.S. aid that Pakistan receives is perceived as going toward buying F-16 fighter planes and toward supporting the state, not the common people. “The man in the street has not been the beneficiary of the U.S. aid” in the past, so credit for the disaster relief will flow to the United States, not to Musharraf… [Link]

Tony Blair has introduced a new anti-terrorism bill in the UK. One section of the bill is sorely needed. Britain’s grand bargain with the jihadi mullahs, sanctuary in exchange for immunity, was as always as ill-informed as Saudi Arabia’s:

… the bill would make it illegal to publish, disseminate or sell material that incites terrorism, giving authorities power to shut down bookstores and Web sites deemed to promote extremism. It would also become an offense to attend a “terrorist training camp…” [Link]

Muslim men might be be arrested, jailed for 90 days and then released… the wrong ‘Mohammed Khan’But the rest is a bad echo of Dubya’s Fascist Act. From feudalism to democracy and back?

Blair, formally presenting his new terrorism bill to Parliament, said police had made an “absolutely compelling” case that they need to detain suspects for as long as 90 days without charge; the current limit is 14 days. [Link]

Heavy-handed measures can create backdraft. Careful policing is why people praised the British troops in Iraq — pity it’s good enough overseas but not at home:

Livingstone said the proposals brought back bad memories of the response to the start of the Irish Republican Army’s violent campaign in 1969. He said the government passed emergency measures under which innocent people were locked up for long periods. Far from making Britain safer, he told the group Wednesday, this reaction helped the IRA recruit more members.

Shami Chakrabarti, director of the civil rights group Liberty, drew sustained applause when she said she feared that the new measures would largely target young Muslim men, who would be arrested, jailed for 90 days and then released with nothing more than an explanation that police had picked up the wrong “Mohammed Khan,” a common name. [Link]

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