Hey kids

A quick update about what's going on in Pakistan right now.

Pakistan was supposed to vote for a new leader. So Musharraf declared martial law, suspended the Constitution, arrested his political opponents, while doing everything to not alienate the crazies in the tribal areas (think Taliban).

In the words of the great professor Juan Cole:
"In fact, the Muslim extremists are in the tribal areas, and in the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) and the hardscrabble towns and villages of northern Punjab. If you were worried about the extremists, you'd declare martial law in the NWFP and the tribal areas. Instead, Musharraf is said to be planning to give in to the demand in these northern areas that sharia or Islamic canon law be implemented! This is a defender of secularism?"

http://juancole.com/
Read also:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/11/06/musharraf/


So please, don't believe the spin that Musharraf is doing this to combat Islamic extremism. He is staging a coup to remain in power, and is basically giving the tribal areas to the crazies, effectively losing control of those areas by the government.

Meanwhile, the US media and political establishment will lie to us that this martial law is somehow related to the "War on terror".