Pakistani MPs in India

The visit of the delegation of Pakistani legislators to India was prominently covered by the Indian news media. The 13-member delegation comprising both ruling party and opposition MNAs and senators crossed over to India from Wagah on May 8. Most of the Indian papers made it one of their top stories. Leading internet portals rediff.com invited readers to comment on the arrival of the Pakistani delegation, also allowing them in the process to read comments filed by others. (Websites operated by Pakistani newspapers sorely lack this very useful option and they should consider it to make their sites more interactive.) Several MNAs and senators had crossed over to India at the Wagah border and were received by peace activists.

The story was from the Press Trust of India and was pretty straightforward, giving some details of the planned itinerary of the delegation.

However, what was more interesting, and to some shocking, were the comments filed by some of rediff.com’s readers. Out of the 11 comments posted, most seemed to take a very pessimistic view of peace between India and Pakistan. In fact, it wasn’t even that the readers were feeling negative about chances of peace; they were quite convinced that peace could never work and should not be made with a country that was an “abettor of terrorism”. It seemed that the significant decline in people-to-people contact between the two countries had indeed worked wonders because one reader said that if peace with India was made the Pakistani government would not have much to distract its “barbaric citizens”. Another reader suggested that it was okay if the Pakistani lawmakers were coming at their own expense and that Indian intelligence agents should in any case keep a close watch on them (as if that wasn’t going to happen).

The only conciliatory comment was quite ironically from a Muslim reader who suggested that India and Pakistan should not let this golden chance go by. One thing should be said, though it is quite likely that the majority of rediff.com’s readers are NRIs (Non-Resident Indians) from North America, Britain and the rest of the world. Over the years, they have made major organizational and financial contributions to the BJP and the more virulent Vishwa Hindu Parishad. Some of the most loyal adherents of these parties and to their Hindutva ideology happen to be NRIs.

Here are the comments, unedited, filed by the eleven readers: Posted by Vivek: “It is OK if they are coming on there own expenses but Indian intelligence should keep a track on them.”

Posted by Ramana: “In Pakistan, all the power revolves around a few individuals. Especially in the present condition when even the Prime Minister Kasuri of Pakistan is a puppet.”

Posted by Dev: “For any relationship ‘mutual trust’ is a important factor. When both countries people do not trust each other it is futile to expect anything.

Posted by Anand: “Though these things may be some kind of gimmicks by Pakistan, India should act wisely taking into consideration the geo-political nature of the region.”

Posted by V Gopal: “Both India and Pakistan have nothing between them to discuss because both the countries have fixed views. We are wasting our time in unwanted games. Just to get some financial benefits from the US, Pakistan and India are talking to each other. I wish both the countries would never talk to each other.”

Posted by Rajan: “Pakistan will not only talk about Kashmir’s freedom from India. Irrespective of our efforts, everything will be futile and lead to a bad outcome. Pakistan is a devil, the devil will not listen to good thoughts and good deeds, hence devil is to be killed. India please understand this.”

Posted by Shiva: “The government is not very strong towards Pakistan. They are changing their policy. Shaking hands with Pakistani officials does not change anything. The mindset of Pakistan is terrorism. Nothing can change them.”

Posted by Viswam: “When our PM Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee went in a bus to Lahore with an extended hand of peace and prosperity, they gave us Kargil. One should not anymore believe in their words. At one point, they abet terrorism in Jammu Kashmir and talk of peace. What a joke? It is a sheer waste of time and energies to talk peace to them.”

Posted by Irfan: “Both sides should cash the opportunity and resolve all their pending issues. Otherwise our next generation will have to pay for this delay. Best wishes.”

Posted by Suresh: “Can the Pakistani leaders ever survive by making peace with India. What story will they then have to divert their impoverished, illiterate & barbaric citizens???”

Posted by Harish: “Why do we need to have friendship with countries abetting terrorism. The MPs who crossed over are just puppets and have no say. Why waste time on them? Pakistan should be stopped from helping Islamic jihadis, and the only way to stop is by military action —OMAR R. QURAISHI

(Email:omarq@cyber.net.pk)

Continuing obsession with JFK

AMERICANS’ obsession with the life and loves of the late President John F. Kennedy is enduring and the appetite for his extra-marital indiscretions is voracious. This continues to be so 40 years since his assassination.

Neither the faltering economy nor the worries about war on terror and Iraq has deterred Americans from their love for the Kennedy mystique. The latest in this is another Kennedy biography, this time by Robert Dallek, “An Unfinished Life.”

Dallek uncovers a fling the late president had with an intern named Marion (Mimi) Beardsley who had come to interview him in 1962 as an intern.

Now known as Marion Fahnesstock, Mimi, works as an administrator in Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church.

New York tabloids are full of excerpts from the book and the public is lapping it up. Referring to the stories Mimi says: “I was 19 years old. It was 1962, ‘63, and it’s the truth.”

Fahnesstock, who was identified only as Mimi in long-sealed White House documents, did not want to discuss the assassinated president when she was confronted by a reporter from the tabloid Daily News, “I think the world knows what he was like,” said Fahnesstock, a tall, slim woman with short blond hair. Long before Bill and Monica hit the headlines, Kennedy’s affairs were common knowledge in the White House, but reporters kept quiet about what was considered the president’s private life.

The long-forgotten affair was disclosed in a sealed portion of a 1964 interview with Barbara Gamarekian, a former White House press aide. Gamarekian recently agreed to reveal the tale to Robert Dallek.

According to the News the then Mimi Beardsley was a senior at Miss Porter’s school in Connecticut when she came to the White House in 1961, months after Kennedy became the youngest elected president in US history.

As editor of her school paper, Mimi was invited to Washington to interview Jacqueline Kennedy, who had graduated from the same exclusive girls’ boarding school. She never met the First Lady but quickly captured the attention of the world’s most powerful man. A year later, Mimi was awarded a prestigious internship in the White House, though she couldn’t even type.

“I was 19 years old, a very young, very naive, very innocent young girl,” says Fahnesstock, who now lives on Manhattan’s upper East Side.

The striking teenager was invited to White House pool parties with a handful of other young women and flown on Air Force jets to secret liaisons with Kennedy at resorts and summit meetings, one historian told Dallek. Once, presidential aides caught her hiding on the floor of a limousine in JFK’s entourage in the Bahamas moments after the president left.

Fahnesstock, the News said, declined to discuss her time in the White House but said in measured tones: “All of these things are true. Remember, I was 19 years old. It was my first job.”

Mimi worked two summers at the White House and stayed into the fall of 1963 before returning to college, just a few weeks before Kennedy was gunned down on November 22. The next year, she married. She had two daughters and later divorced.

Through it all, she did everything she could to keep her White House affair under wraps. She declined to say whether she had told her former husband, the late Anthony Fahnesstock, of her experience.

Fahnesstock, a grandmother of four, said she decided to end her long silence after JFK’s affair with the intern made news this week. “It’s a gift that my daughters know is a piece of my history”, she told the News. “They are totally supportive of me.”

Now that her secret is out, Fahnesstock said, she wants to return to a private life. “I have a wonderful job ... a close family, a lot of friends,” she said. “I have a life to live.”

ABOUT 10 days ago there was an unprecedented raid on the United Nations cafeteria by officials, diplomats, journalists and others.

Why? You may ask.

Well, it so happened that the contract of the restaurant management, supplying food to various cafeteria’s at the headquarters, expired and the new management was to take over the next day. But between the hours of handing over and taking over, with no contract, the employees of the cafeteria abandoned their posts.

As the news spread in the headquarters that there was free food and drinks available in the cafeteria with no cashiers asking for money, there was an onslaught of UN officials, workers, journalists and diplomats housed in the building. They raided the food stalls, the coolers and the drink vending outlets. Even the cutlery was stolen.

There were reports that many employees living close to the headquarters made special trips to horde stuff at home and in their offices. UN security officials stood by and watched willing plunderers carry out stuff with no orders to stop them.

Maybe, US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld got it right when, reflecting on Iraqi looters, he said this is what free people do: they loot and commit crimes because they are free. At the United Nations no one complained, and when Fred Eckhard, the UN secretary-general’s spokesman, was asked about the incident the next day at the briefing, he simply said: “there were no complaints of cutlery being stolen from the cafeteria.”

One cannot resist quoting an extract from Jonathan Schell’s new book “The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and The Will of the People”: “The larger question, facing not just the United States but any country that might be eager to establish an empire, is whether the connection between military and political power — snapped by the world revolt of the twentieth century — can be restored. Does power still flow from the barrel of a gun or a B-2 bomber? Can the world in the 21st century really be ruled from 35,000 feet? Can cruise missiles build nations? Modern peoples have the will to resist and the means to do so. Force can confer a temporary advantage, but politics is destiny.”

Mr Schell is the peace and disarmament correspondent for the weekly The Nation.