There is so much discussion going on in regard to Bailing out the Big 3 Automakers, which really makes no sense when we just got through laying out 700 Billion Dollars for the Housing sector and of those funds that have been released, no one knows where they went, how they are being spent, and what benifits are coming from those dollars.
The fact is that the oversight that was alledgedly put into place, would appear to have been fraudulant or another slight of have by our Corrupt Government under the Leadership of a lieing, murdering, Dictator who has yet to be brought to answer to the crimes he has commited against the Citizens of this Country and of the World.
In this post I wish to address the affairs of the middle east. Ths is direct, truthful. It is open to suggestions, insight, and carefull planning. I think we as Americans have ignored the hope for a brighter and peaceful middle east. Placing all our bets on a single Allie of Israel has lead this nation and many other nations to hate the USA. That's right. Even this nation hates itself. I remember a time when I use to travel to so many countries, and when people knew you were american, they always wanted to greet you and wish they could live where you live. We were the envy of the world. In the past couple of decades a shift, and a rift has formed over this. Now as americans we travel to these places and we are looked at as the scum of the earth. Mind my words so direct please. But now we have a hope. A new leader. Fresh. And anew. Now the world has us again in thier eyes as the center of attention. Questions arise. So people talk in these over seas cafes and house holds. I've seen it personaly as I mingle with both the elite and country folk of these foreign nations. So now the nation here won't hate itself and others so much. And maybe it will end permanently some day.
So now it is our time, and our chance to make the world a better place. A chance for peace amongst enemies. A chance for growth and prosperity. For rich to help a poor man. And for a peace keeper to set a pace for hope to the world. For me it is in President Obama.
I can honestly for the first time see this once in a life time chance. I am well over forty years old, and seen all the prejudices in this country and abroad. I never voted before in my life. But I registered for the first time 3 months ago. And said, this was the man. And I voted for President Obama. May god bless him and his family and children, and all of his extended family, with the grace that god could ever give. And I pray may god give guidance to president Obama, and that he too will see what I have seen. May faith not be a issue, but a seed to promote friendships with all nations.
Decade of the 1970's -
Sergio de Castro, Pinochet's 'Friedman Schooled' economics minister, said he could never have done it without Pinochet's iron fist backing him up. (Referring to the implementation of a brutal policy for 'Wiping the Slate Clean' in order to make way for the new religion of a U.S. sponsored, 'Free Market' ideology. The economists taught their students to look upon the population as a psychiatric patient, requiring 'Shock Treatment' in effort to cleanse it of its 'collective' cancer, simply because it - the population mindset - didn’t fit Friedman's free-market model.)
It was Nixon who would give the Friedman Chicago Boys and their professors something they had long dreamed of: a chance to prove that their capitalist utopia was more than a theory in a basement workshop – a shot at remaking a country from scratch. Democracy had been inhospitable to the Chicago Boys in Chile; dictatorship would prove an easier fit. – Klein
Chile’s coup, when it finally came, would feature three distinct forms of shock, a recipe that would be duplicated in neighboring countries and would reemerge, three decades later, in Iraq. The shock of the coup; financial shock; the other, Ewen Cameron’s shock, drug and sensory deprivation research, codified as torture techniques in the ‘Kubark’ manual and disseminated through extensive CIA training programs for Latin American police and military. – Klein
This is the same Free Market formula Reaganomics and Thatcherism, whole heartedly, imbued itself in. Amongst the Chicago Boy Institution’s professors included such luminaries of destruction as George Shultz, and Donald Rumsfeld; Rumsfeld describing Friedman and his colleagues “a cluster of geniuses.”
In 1985 John McCain visits Pinochet. McCain described the meeting with Pinochet “as friendly and at times warm, but noted that Pinochet does seem obsessed with the threat of communism.” Gee, I wonder who planted that bug into Pinochet’s psyche? Today, the commies have morphed into: Al Kaeda Everywhere, under the ubiquitous and pervasive - Global War on Terror. Gen. Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, the brutal dictator who repressed and reshaped Chile for nearly two decades and became a notorious symbol of human rights abuse and corruption.
In 1985 John McCain visits Pinochet. McCain described the meeting with Pinochet “as friendly and at times warm, but noted that Pinochet does seem obsessed with the threat of communism.” Gee, I wonder who planted that bug into Pinochet’s psyche? Today, the commies have morphed into: Al Kaeda Everywhere, under the ubiquitous and pervasive - Global War on Terror.
Gen. Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, the brutal dictator who repressed and reshaped Chile for nearly two decades and became a notorious symbol of human rights abuse and corruption.
Friedman's, Chicago Boys, during the decade of the 70's, had already proven their greed based markets worked in test beds such as Chile and Argentina, but only through the process of 'Cleaning the Slate' through Shock and Torture, where hundreds of thousands were 'disappeared', along with U.S. - CIA and Corporate complicity.
Friedman himself was forced to admit that his free-market ideology does not fit comfortably within democratically established Societies - which is why the 'CULTURAL SLATE MUST BE ERASED' to make way for the new free-market religion, a medicinal cleansing is required. In Friedman's world - the architect of Reaganomics - Democracy and Free-Markets are a contradiction in terms; diametrically opposed and at odds with each other. Its results: a small elite grow far wealthier while large portions of what had been the working class are discarded from the economy althgether and turned into surplus people.
What should be even more worrisome is that Friedman style, free-market ideology was sold to the Chinese. The Chicago Boys having deemed Democracies as inhospitable to their formula for quenching insatiable greed, China certainly would prove quite the opposite. Just look at the praise it received via the, so called, Olympics. Look where the free-market multi-nationals tend to find attraction and tend to gravitate towards - China and Dubai.
'Operation Iraqi Freedom' should be seen in its true light, for what it really is, a Neoconic cleansing, or 'clearing of the slate' in preparation for Iraqi Friedman!!
See: Negorponte - The Death Squad Ambassador
A lot of folks have criticized, questioning Obama's character for having rubbed shoulders with folks from the same institution from which Freidman launched his bloody counter-revolution against New Deal policies. But what people don't bother to check is that Obama is completely anti-Friedmanism. Having infiltrated the den of vipers, having discovered the enemy’s strategy, Barack of all peoples is the only one poised to expose them, or at least use their own tools against them for the greater good. I can still hear Barack's words, ringing in my ears, calling for transparency. Although Barack may have brushed shoulders with Friedman's school of financial thugs, does not make him one.
Friedman, along with, Nixon’s Secretary of State, Kissinger should be pointed out for what they are: Criminals wanted for murder! In fact, if Kissinger were to set foot in certain areas of South America, he would immediately be arrested as such and he knows it, thereby forcing him to utilize his 'Free Market Miles' frugally.
**STOP** and get a copy of Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine - The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, read and re-read it while we await election day to arrive. Because, what Naomi brings to light within the pages of her expose, is precisely what WE are voting against in this election; decades of ruthless, predatory abuse of power, with greedy Corporatarch bottom-lines that are soaked with innocent blood, everywhere. Now, the chickens are coming home to roost.
Naomi does an excellent job in removing the haystack, exposing the piercing needle hidden within and explains everything.
Video of Naomi Klein speaking at the University of Chicago, invited by anti-Freidman group against erecting monument to Freidman. Naomi says each time Obama criticizes the current failed economic policies, his ratings shoot up.
Naomi Klein: Wall St. Crisis Should Be for Neoliberalism What Fall of Berlin Wall Was for Communism
Have we met our enemy yet? Or, are we still unable to see the forest for the trees?
Proper education and sunlight are the BEST disinfectants!
Peace, Best Wishes and Hope
I have watched bush for over 7 years with ever growing alarm as he systematically dismanteled the Constitution and all but turned America into a Dictatorial Police State with his enacting of such draconian laws as the U.S. Patriot Act and the Real ID Act as well as the creation of the Department Of Homeland Security.
His total disdain for the Constitution and all it stands for has been made abundantly clear with every law he has passed from Warrantless Searches to Use Of Torture in Interrogations.
He has destroyed our reputation with the rest of the world and embroiled us in an illegal war against another Soverign Nation that was encapable of doing us harm for the sole purpose of stealing the oil of Iraq.
http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/index.php?sid=376292
The U.S. Patriot Act has removed the protection of Habeas Corpus as well as our right to a trial in an open court of law. It also allows for the first time a natural born citizen to be stripped of his/her citizenship and deported to a country of the Government's choosing based solely on the word of the Executive Branch that that person is a 'threat' to America. The Act also allows for the Government to 'Disappear' a person and to hold that person indefinitely without a trial or access to any person or court.
The Real ID Act does nothing but create an Internal Passport System within the borders of the United States by making it a crime to travel without the Government issued ID card or to enter any Federal building, National Park or Courthouse or to vote in any election. Under the Mandate of the DHS a person can be denied the ability to travel on any public roadway or utilize any public form of transportation.
These laws do nothing to ensure or engender a Secure Country but rather creates a Police State run by a Dictatorial Government.
The 'Wall' being built between Mexico, Canada and America will do more to keep Americans in than to keep immigrants out.
We, The People, must demand that our next President be LEGALLY Elected by Us instead of being appointed by a 'Rubber-Stamp' Supreme Court or a compromised Electorial Process.
bush has learned much from his Grandfather Presscott Bush and his endorsement of the NAZI Party during its rise to power. He has tried quite successfully to encorporate everything that was cruel, illegal and wrong about the NAZI's into his idea of the perfect America.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar
http://www.rense.com/general40/bushfamilyfundedhitler.htm
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,100474,00.html
The people of America must try to at least learn from our past mistakes and not let the bush Regime or any other entity destroy what we have held so dear for so long, Freedom and Democracy in America.
I do truly hope that if/when Senator Obama is elected to the presidency he will accept the office with the intentions of turnig America back over to The People and restoring ALL of the rights that bush has stolen from us and reversing our quickening slide into Fascism.
May the Lord open our Eyes and our ears to the truth about the friendship between McCain and Clinton:
After watching many days of the situation at hand I began to get supspicious about the Hillary verses Obama debate. What Hillary did was stand up and say JOHN MARK CAIN was here friend. That instant in time was something I had been waiting for her to do and she did it. Not to mention she did it in the red colored suit just as I had felt she would do. The 2 things I was waiting for and I stated this to a friend in an email was for the candidate to stand up in red and see what what was said.
When I saw that it shocked me because it came to pass. What she said was , "John McCain is my friend" and you know the rest.
If that is not a sign that her and the JOHN MARK CAIN campaign was not the trigger to the media against Obama over the last couple of weeks then we are blind. We must come together to get rid of those that have been in the White House that last 20 years are tied together to a secret society to stop any other man or woman from entering the WHITE HOUSE.
Keep your eyes on more to come. They are out to destroy Obama and we must stand up as Children of THE LIVING GOD to stop this corrupt Government from continuing its terror of American Citizens that is nothing less of DICTATORSHIP.
I fought a spiritual warfare and have finally contact the right people that can help us. It took some battle wounds but I am battle wound ready. Those same people in office are the direct descendents of those that enslaved the black man and killed my Native Brothers and sisters.
GET OUT AND HELP US CLEAN UP THE WHITE HOUSE AMERICA. AFTER ALL IT IS OURS NOT THE CLINTONS OR THE BUSHS
GOD BLESS OBAMA AND HIS WIFE,
GOD BLESS US ALL,
Manny
I just posted this to a Fox Discussion:
http://embeds.blogs.foxnews.com/2008/01/21/obama-asked-do-you-think-bill-clinton-was-our-first-black-president/#comment-8029
If you don't click to that thread, then here is the gist of it. And Barack, I know you can't answer the posts I send to http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/contact/ . Never mind. Just get your act together, I'll do mine wherever and whenever I can from Melbourne Australia.
So here are my thoughts about the subject, see what are yours.
Duplicitous people are a natural in the face of adversity. Why? Because that is their natural environment. If they don’t create division they can’t function. That’s the kind of person Hillary is coming across to me in this election.
I don’t know her personally, and I have an open mind. I am also a Republican (Nature's Republican anyway) who closely follows the election and positively dislikes the Bush leading your country.
This is HOW Hillary comes across so far.
She simply can’t live in peace. You give her a task of a new health bill, and what she will do? Create walls first, so she can be seen bravely breaking them down. She needs to break at every step. No walls, no Hillary. Break furniture, rules, people - even his husband. (Look at him, he is holding up well, but he is a broken man.) Break her own conviction as Republican.
Unfortunately, it is the worst dictators who strive in the face of adversity WITHOUT being balanced out by a loving and nurturing household. The worst leaders in history turned dictators precisely because of that lack of balance.
Bush clearly lacks that balance. He is ever so remorseful for the lack of love from his parents. And so does Hillary it seems. No love at home, no balance against the overarching urge of wanting to break adversity.
That is when you just feel the need to create adversity first, where there is none. That WILL NOT MAKE HER A GOOD PRESIDENT in any country. Least of all the most powerful country.
GOD forbid!
Hillary Clinton, Enemy of Press Freedom.
the Clinton machine, say reporters and pro-Hillary Democrats, is emulating nothing less than the model of the Bush White House, which has treated the press with thinly veiled contempt and minimal cooperation.
In January 1993, Hillary Clinton granted her first newspaper interview as First Lady. But, rather than agreeing to sit down with a national reporter to discuss issues of substance, Hillary would only meet with a food reporter from The New York Times--and then only to discuss her hostess duties. Later, other reporters who wanted to question her about policy were told to submit written questions. "Her ground-zero assumption is that [a reporter is] an asshole," a senior Hillary aide told her biographer, Carl Bernstein.
Clinton's wariness was forged by her husband's nightmarish experience on the 1992 campaign trail. Battered by stories about Bill's mistresses and financial dealings, Hillary seethed at the press and resolved to control their coverage. Bill disliked the press, too--but not with the loathing of his wife, who even tried to throw the press out of the White House itself. In January 1993, she and her friend Susan Thomases proposed to move the White House press room next door, to the sleepy Old Executive Office Building. When that scheme was deemed untenable, aides closed off a hallway connecting the press room to the West Wing. Outraged reporters pounced on press secretary George Stephanopoulos, who later recalled thinking, "I'm not your problem; Hillary is. ... [Bill] Clinton seems to be on my side. He asked me again this morning why we were closing the door. Um, have you talked to your wife about this, Mr. President?"
Hillary's first instinct was usually to stonewall the press. When New York Times reporter Jeff Gerth was first reporting on Whitewater in early 1992, rather than work with Gerth, Hillary insisted on giving him the figurative finger. Likewise, Hillary balked when The Washington Post asked to see private Whitewater documents in 1993. Bill Clinton favored compliance with the Post--but was overruled by Hillary, who implied she would rather "throw them all in the Potomac." Former Clinton White House adviser David Gergen has called the decision "the decisive turning point" that convinced Washington the Clintons had something to hide.
To be fair, when Hillary did engage the press, she often got burned. When she ruminated to the The New York Times Magazine's Michael Kelly about spirituality, he produced a mocking cover story titled "Saint Hillary." Hillary later wrote that she had been "raw with grief" over her dying father, implying that Kelly had exploited her emotional vulnerability. In 1994, with questions swirling about a big profit she turned selling cattle futures, she agreed to meet with a clamoring media. Donning a memorable pink suit, she endured an hour of harsh questioning. Afterward, according to Gerth and Don Van Natta's recent book Her Way, Hillary told her aides the exercise had been futile. "They're not going to let up. They're just going to keep coming at us, no matter what we do." The sordid Monica Lewinsky scandal only affirmed Hillary's firm belief that the "vast right-wing conspiracy" had immense power over mainstream media coverage.
When Hillary embarked on her 2000 run for Senate in New York, she brought her antipathy toward the press with her and set new standards for media control. After the campaign, AP reporter Beth Harpaz wrote a book about her experience in which she described feeling at various times "humiliated," "paranoid," and "so worn down and so exasperated by the lack of access and the lack of news in this campaign that I'd given up fighting." Once, when Hillary sent a candy basket to the press van, the downtrodden reporters were incredulous, Harpaz wrote: "[N]one of us could believe that Hillary was being so nice to us."
In July, Hillary's communications director, Howard Wolfson, appeared on MSNBC's "Hardball" with Barack Obama's chief strategist David Axelrod. Obama had said he would be willing to meet with Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Wolfson pointedly noted that this would place Obama in the company of a "Holocaust denier," which compelled a flummoxed Axelrod to clarify that Obama does not, in fact, condone Holocaust denial. The show's host, Chris Matthews, declared Wolfson's tactic "brilliant politics" before later rebranding it "dirtball."
Many political reporters feel similarly conflicted about Wolfson, the public face of Hillary's press operation. But everyone agrees he is a fearsome operator. As communications director for the 1998 Senate campaign of New York Democrat Charles Schumer, Wolfson would fire up his aides by riffing on a famous line from The Untouchables: "If he uses a fist, you use a bat. If he uses a knife, you use a gun." During Hillary's 2006 reelection campaign, he constantly taunted her GOP opponent, John Spencer, for once joking that he'd like to kill a federal judge and a governor with whom he'd feuded.
Those flashes of sadism don't reflect the unexpectedly likeable character within, however. "Wooffie," as Hillary has been known to call him, is colorfully eccentric--afraid of flying, highly allergic, prone to weird accidents, and a proud indie-rock connoisseur. And, unlike many hard-assed Republican operatives, Wolfson socializes with some top D.C. political reporters.
A former reporter himself, Wolfson may actually feel some kinship with the reporters he spins. Not so other senior members of Hillary's team, including her chief pollster and guru, Mark Penn, whose recent book Microtrends derides media "elites" as out of touch and superficial. (Penn even name-checks The New York Times's Mark Leibovich for "filling front pages with personal impressions about candidates' personalities.") Moreover, working under Wolfson is a press team drawn from the killing fields of New York political media, where relentless tabloids drive the news and slow reaction equals death. Ironically, their godfather is Schumer, one of the most press-hungry politicians in history. The Clinton campaign's pugnacious press secretary, Phil Singer, spent several years as Schumer's spokesman. Clinton press aides Jay Carson and Blake Zeff are also ex-Schumer hands.
The defining quality of that machine is, simply, impenetrability. Reporting any story the Clintonites haven't specifically encouraged can be like wading through mud. "Their rule is never to volunteer information--ever," says one reporter who has experienced this. (Process stories are particularly verboten.) Another is a willingness to offer access to Clinton only under strictly controlled circumstances--as when she agreed to appear on the major TV networks the day her candidacy launched on the condition that the interviews be short and unedited, allowing precious little time for unrelated queries. In a testament to the enormous power of Hillary's celebrity, her single greatest point of leverage with the media, no one refused.
The Clintonites are also defined by their obsessive determination never to be caught off-guard by bad news. Whenever possible, they seek to release it on their own terms. In May, the campaign spoiled the summer rollout of two Clinton biographies, Gerth and Van Natta's Her Way and Bernstein's A Woman In Charge, by obtaining advance copies and leaking them to The Washington Post on the Friday before Memorial Day weekend. Employing another signature technique--the dismissive put-down--Philippe Reines, Hillary's Senate spokesman, asked the Post, "Is it possible to be quoted yawning?" And long-time Clinton associate Taylor Branch, a key source for Her Way's newsiest anecdote--that the Clintons had a "20-year project" for Hillary to become president--came forward to deny the story. Scoring embargoed galleys is a Clinton specialty. Sally Bedell Smith, author of the recent Clinton biography For Love of Politics, says she was "thunderstruck" to learn from Clinton friend Terry McAuliffe, weeks before the book's release, that Bill Clinton had already read it. "It was unnerving that he could have gotten a copy at that stage," she says. (McAuliffe denies making this statement to Bedell Smith. A source close to him says he refutes the alleged comments from the "brief social conversation.")
Adding to the Clinton camp's reputation for fearsome omnipotence is its treatment of media figures who cross them. Wolfson first refined this technique in response to Sheehy's dishy 1999 book, Hillary's Choice, when his intense counteroffensive--Wolfson trashed her factual errors and even showed up at Sheehy's book events to spin reporters--made the author, and not Hillary, the story. Bedell Smith adds that, during her research, one Clintonite told her that her book was causing ulcers "because I was someone with a solid reputation who would be difficult to attack."
Many reporters also suspect the Clinton camp of employing outside proxies to attack troublemakers in the media. After Hillary's shaky debate performance late last month, the Drudge Report--whose author, Matt Drudge, the campaign has assiduously courted--quickly featured an unusual blind quote on its homepage in which an unnamed "top Hillary advisor" said debate moderator Tim Russert "bordered on the unprofessional." Joining in the attack on Russert was Media Matters, the liberal press-watching website founded by former Clinton-hater turned Clinton ally David Brock. Many in Washington believe the campaign feeds material to Brock's site, as when Media Matters went after New York Times reporter Anne Kornblut last July after Kornblut misrendered a quote that led to an erroneous story claiming Hillary had criticized fellow Democrats. Not only did Clinton aides fume to the paper's editors, but Media Matters pummeled Kornblut and the Times for several days. (A count of Media Matters stories from October found 39 headlines defending Clinton, compared to 15 for Obama and just one for John Edwards. A Media Matters spokesman strongly denied favoritism.)
Sometimes, Hillary even gets in the act. According to Gerth and Van Natta, Kornblut was just back from a planned vacation she took after her story appeared when she ran into Hillary in a hotel. Referring to Kornblut's casual attire, Hillary cracked, "Anne, I thought you left Barbados"--revealing an ominous awareness of the reporter's movements. "That's their imprimatur," says the Democratic strategist with presidential experience. "When there's a story they don't like, they seize on it and turn it back on the reporter, and make it about the reporter." (As First Lady, Hillary called for a public "frontal assault" against The Washington Post's lead Whitewater reporter, Susan Schmidt, according to the Post's Howard Kurtz, though the plan was never enacted.)
Several sources report hearing that the Clinton campaign has bragged about forcing one reporter at a major news organization from the Hillary beat. The boast, which one source heard from a senior Hillary aide, is incorrect. But the claim has become a part of insider Washington lore. Like the tale of the killed GQ story, it has only enhanced the dark mythology of the Hillary machine--a mythology the Clintonites don't dispel. "They brag about scalps that they take, " says a Democratic operative who has heard such tales.
Most Democrats in Washington agree that, had John Kerry responded more effectively to conservative "Swift Boat" attacks about his war record in the summer of 2004, he would be president today. And, if the Clinton campaign is overzealous, some say, it's because they are determined to avoid the alternative. "There's a Swift Boat around every corner," says one Democratic operative close to the campaign. "We'll be damned if we're going to let that happen again." Almost as important--in the Democratic primaries, at least--it is determined to show that it won't let that happen again. "They've cultivated this attack-machine image because they think that Democrats want that," says one political reporter. "They're pandering to the bloggers." This approach isn't without risks, however. Some people say a central problem for Al Gore in 2000 was the way the reporters covering him resented the lack of access and information they were afforded and (allegedly) punished him with negative coverage. Among Hillary's supporters, there are already fears of a repeat. According to one person who was present, the subject arose in a recent conversation among a group of former Clinton hands and loyalists, who fretted that the campaign's short-term press management success isn't sustainable--that its brute propaganda mentality will eventually taint Hillary's coverage. Some Clinton supporters describe a gradually harder edge, as evidenced by her post- debate coverage. One veteran Democratic strategist agrees: "Don't you think they're on the brink [of a backlash]?"
Source: http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=6e01fdce-ad97-4dab-a07d-bf98dc52f681
President Gen. Pervez Musharraf yielded to pressure from the United States on Thursday and said Pakistan will hold elections by mid-February. But he showed no sign of ending a political crack down, placing opposition leader Benazir Bhutto under house arrest and detaining thousands ahead of a major protest.
The move against Bhutto Friday came amid a broader crackdown on her supporters, who were planning to rally near Islamabad against Musharraf's emergency rule. Bhutto's party said some 5,000 of its supporters have been rounded up in the last three days, and riot police were out in force in nearby Rawalpindi, the city where Friday's rally was to take place.
A security official, who spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to talk to the media, said Bhutto had been place under house arrest. He offered no other details.
On Thursday, the White House hailed Musharraf's pledge to hold the parliamentary vote, which will come just a month later than originally planned. But Bhutto denounced his announcement as "vague" and demanded Musharraf give up his second post as army chief within a week.
She said the anti-government rally set for Friday would go ahead despite warnings it could be targeted by suicide bombers. She heads Pakistan's biggest party and her decision to join in protests was another blow for Musharraf, who has seen his popularity slide this year amid growing resentment of military rule and increasing violence by Islamic militants.
Raja Javed Ashraf, a lawmaker for Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party, said Friday that authorities had arrested 5,000 of its supporters to head off the major demonstration called against emergency rule.
The arrests across the eastern province of Punjab began Wednesday and continued through Friday morning as police took up positions around Rawalpindi, a garrison city near the capital where Bhutto had planned to address a rally later in the day.
"It is a massive crackdown on our party," said Ashraf.
Officials publicly offered no immediate comment, but a security official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media, said only 1,000 Bhutto supporters had been detained.
On Thursday, in a fourth day of protests against the general's imposition of emergency rule over the weekend, lawyers rallied peacefully in Islamabad, while demonstrators clashed with police in the border city of Peshawar.
Musharraf has been under increasing pressure to quickly hold elections and resign as army commander since he suspended the constitution Saturday. He said emergency measures were needed to calm political instability he claims is hampering the fight with Taliban and al-Qaida-linked militants.
President Bush, who counts the Pakistani leader as a key ally in the war with extremist groups, personally got involved Wednesday, telling Musharraf in a phone conversation that "the United States wants you to have the elections as scheduled and take your uniform off."
Some Pakistani officials had said earlier the election could be delayed by up to a year, but Musharraf went on state-run TV to announce the ballot would "be held before Feb. 15." He wore a blue business suit rather than his general's uniform.
"We think it is a good thing that President Musharraf has clarified the election date for the Pakistani people," said a statement from the Bush administration, which has been pressing him to return the country to civilian government.
Despite that pressure, Pakistani officials denied Musharraf's election decision was made because of the American demands or the spreading anger among Pakistanis frustrated by military rule.
"The government takes decision itself and there is no internal or external pressure on it," said the ruling party's president, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain.
Critics contend Musharraf suspended the constitution, blacked out dozens of TV news channels and ousted independent-minded judges to maintain his own grip on power, which he seized with a 1999 coup.
His emergency decree came as the Supreme Court was expected to rule on the legality of his re-election as president last month in a vote by legislators. Opponents say it was unconstitutional for him to be a presidential candidate because he also holds the powerful post of army chief.
In his TV appearance, Musharraf said he would be sworn in for a new five-year presidential term and resign as army commander once the Supreme Court — now purged of his sharpest critics — validates the vote.
Analysts predicted emergency measures would be lifted very soon after that happens. They noted it would be necessary to ease security restrictions to allow election campaigning, because the emergency rules make it illegal to hold public gatherings.
In defiance of that ban, Bhutto called for a huge anti-Musharraf demonstration Friday in Rawalpindi, a garrison town on the southern outskirts of the capital, and there were fears it could turn violent.
It would be her first rally since Oct. 18, when she returned after eight years in self-imposed exile to lead her party in the parliamentary elections. Her celebratory procession was shattered by suicide bombings that killed more than 145 people. Islamic militants were widely blamed.
Bhutto, a two-time prime minister, had been talking with Musharraf about a post-election alliance of moderate, pro-Western forces, but she pulled back after he imposed emergency rule. She said his authoritarian ways have fueled extremism and further destabilized this country of 160 million people.
"We want an election date, we want a retirement date" for Musharraf to quit his military post, Bhutto told reporters after hearing the president's election statement. "This is a vague statement. We want the uniform off by Nov. 15."
Bhutto planned to address supporters Friday at a rally in Rawalpindi's Liaquat Bagh park — named for Pakistan's first prime minister, who was assassinated there in 1951.
Nearly two dozen policemen were posted at the park Thursday to keep people out as the city's police chief warned that suicide bombers were preparing another strike at Bhutto.
"We have intelligence reports that suicide bombers have entered Rawalpindi," Saud Aziz said, adding that the warning was based on specific information. "The situation is very serious," he said.
Most protests this week have been quickly and sometime violently suppressed. Thousands of people have been arrested, most of them human right workers, political activists and lawyers.
Amid the arrests, there were mixed signals from the government about its intention to maintain the restrictions imposed on television news channels under Musharraf's crackdown.
Authorities lifted a ban on foreign news channels Thursday, and BBC, CNN and other channels were again being shown in Islamabad. But police in Karachi shut down some 50 shops selling satellite TV dishes and confiscated the equipment, witnesses said.
___
