Developing Balochistan

There is absolute unanimity in the country on the imperatives of avoiding military action in Balochistan and meeting a political challenge through political means.

The Baloch nationalist sardars are united in opposing military action to resolve the Baloch problem. Sardar Ataullah Mengal, leader of the Baloch National Party, says the army action would prove to be "a decisive battle." And Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, leader of the ruling coalition at the centre and a former prime minister, has assured Nawab Akbar Bugti there would be no army action.

Mr Altaf Husain, chief of the Muttihada Qaumi Movement, says if military action took place his party would leave the coalition. He says when the army action took place against his own party in 1992 no party opposed that.

He would not to do the same now if any army action was launched in Balochistan, but quit the coalition and oppose the army action. If that happens the MQM would face serious problems in Sindh where it is the second largest party and the largest in the ruling coalition.

The military action is being talked about at a time when a record federal development allocation is proposed for Balochistan and many mega projects are on the anvil, which can give a major economic boost to the largest and the poorest province of the country and the region as well.

Indisputably, such large development expenditure and swift military action which can compel the militants to take to guerilla war tactics, do not mesh. Here is a case where carrot and stick may not mix and produce the best results.

Any military action at this stage will be ill-advised as much of the country is state of turmoil and the neighbourhood is in a worse state, with an excess of violence.

On Sunday when the troops were taking position in Sui to protect the mammoth gas purification plant, a mother and her four children were killed in Hyderabad region, while two young daughters vanished.

The two sessions judges kidnapped in Sindh remain un recovered even 40 days after they were seized. Up in north Waziristan there is unrest after south Waziristan has been "pacified."

In south Afghanistan, next door, there is violence and armed attacks by the remnants of the Taliban. A number of Afghan militants were reported to be active in the Quetta region.

Afghanistan is far from quiet despite the presidential election won by Karzai. The Gilgit region too is tense following the killing of Agha Ziauddin, a revered religious scholar. Under such circumstances, we can ill-afford crisis conditions in Balochistan.

Balochistan is the largest province of the country but has the smallest population of less than seven million. According to the 1998 census its population at that time was 6,566,000 out of the country's total population of 151 million.

To reach the people in the province, the government has to build long roads and it means huge expenditure. There is absolute shortage of water. It eases when the snow melts or there are rains. But storage facilities are scant.

Successive governments have done little for the masses and infrastructural facilities. The province is rich in natural resources, like minerals ranging from gold to copper and coarse coal, but reaching them in remote areas requires a great deal of money.

I remember late Hamid D. Habib, who was made incharge of developing the copper mines in Balochistan telling me in the 1970s: "There is eight billion dollars worth of copper there but it would take eight billion dollars to get out that cooper. And we do not have that kind of large money to invest."

So the Chinese are now getting 50 per cent of the copper they dig out and refine. And I am told that some 46 to 48 per cent of the income from copper goes to the centre.

Balochistan gets only two per cent. With that kind of profit distribution formula, it is no surprise if Balochs were little interested in federally-sponsored development. The Balochs deserve a far larger share.

When it comes to jobs, quite a number of them go to outsiders as they are of technical nature. When the Balochs see their wealth going abroad or benefiting the central government and jobs going to outsiders, they get angry and protest and tend to block large federal projects.

When it comes to the provincial assembly, the majority consists of provincial ministers or other officials or beneficiaries of the government. So the cabinet cannot be voted out; when differences arise the cabinet implodes.

Since too many sardars or other vested interests are to be pleased and their palms greased, there is a great deal of corruption in the government. And no one is clean enough to rock the boat.

So the government continues to shuffle and reshuffle the cabinet as it becomes inevitable when there are too many parties and every major sardar has his own party or a group within the party.

All that results in formation of very large cabinets, like the 38-member cabinet of Sindh, including advisers with ministerial rank. A remarkable feature of Balochistan is that it has possibly more Balochs or people of Baloch origin outside the province than within it.

In that way it is more like the Lebanon which is said to have more Lebanese outside than inside it. Sardar Balakh Sher Mazari lives in D.G. Khan in Punjab, contests elections from there and became a caretaker prime minister as well.

Younger brother Sardar Sherbaz Mazari lives in Karachi and has now become apolitical. Ex-president Farooq Leghari lives in D.G. Khan and contests elections from there.

The Balochs outside Balochistan are found mostly in Sindh and southern Punjab. Former chief minister of Sindh Ghous Ali Shah used to say that only the Syeds were original Sindhis; all other Sindhis among the Muslims are all Balochs.

Balochs' migration from Balochistan is a result of earlier movements and not any of recent times. Now one can be a Baloch living in Balochistan, and yet spending most of the time in their homes built in Lahore, Karachi or Islamabad. The quick means of transportation available readily have made old-style migration non-essential. Yet they believe strongly in their Baloch roots and language.

What is happening now is that Balochistan is being exposed not only to the country a as a whole but also to the world. And that is not necessarily because of the Gulf Sheikhs who have been visiting the province in large numbers for shooting and have cultivated friendship with the Baloch sardars.

The Omanese in particular feel close to Balochistan as their country is located closest to it. The ruler of Oman feels an affinity for the people of Balochistan and wants to help them develop the province economically.

Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz who was recently on a visit to the province says Balochistan should be allowed to be developed at any cost and the government would not allow anyone to interrupt the process.

He says the federal government is spending Rs 130 billion on various mega projects for the development of the province. That is 14 per cent of the total public sector outlay which is a record allocation.

That major projects undertaken so far include Gwadar Port, investment zones, coastal highway, Miran Dam and Kachi Canal. And the water courses are being lined at a cost of Rs. 5 billion. The government, he said, would not tolerate any hindrance in the development of Balochistan.

He said at the ground-breaking ceremony of the Sabahzai dam that it would cost Rs. one billion and will have a storage of 33,00 acre feet of water, and irrigate 12,000 acres of land.

It will be completed within a year and produce 100 tonnes of fish. To tap huge reserves of oil, gas and natural resources in Balochistan, many companies are carrying out exploration activities there.

The prime minister stressed that the standard of living of the people of Balochistan would be raised once the mega projects were completed. He said unprecedented investment was being made in Balochistan which would provide job opportunities to the people and bring prosperity to them.

Since the people take him literally on his word, he has to ensure that the benefits of the mega projects do reach the people and that jobs are not seized by outsiders.

Until recently for over 10 years, no oil and gas exploration licence was being issued to foreign companies because of violence in the province. That policy has been reversed now and the experts are looking for oil and gas and partly meeting with success.

The people of Balochistan should not feel that their rich resources are being taken away by outsiders and foreigners. Every government says it is much better and far different from its predecessors. But the people don't believe it. Will Shaukat Aziz be able to show the difference and truly deliver what he has been promising to the people. The federal cabinet which met on Monday resolved against military action in Balochistan.

President Pervez Musharraf told the Muslim League and other MNAs that he did not propose any military action. That is the right thing to do after his tough talk as the tougher action he had hinted at to take had upset the people. Having chosen the path of development and political negotiations he should stay by that course and produce results.

Tribes are a problem in every country which has them. But they have to be handled sympathetically instead of being provoked or confronted. The method of ample development and bringing its fruits to the poor tribal people has never been tried before in a substantial manner.

Now that the government is committing Rs. 130 billion for that purpose, it must make sure the funds were well spent and that the masses get the full benefit.

Ending discrimination

There is a vigorous debate going on about gender and development. The reason is simple: There is a glaring discrimination in society which keeps up surging by leaps and bounds much to the dismay of those who have been struggling to make it a better society.

Public policies to reduce discrimination and inequalities are indeed crucial for improving the life of the people particularly of our women and their families.

Discrimination against women at home and in the public sector carries not only private costs for the woman, but also social and economic burden for the community. Is it then not in the interest of society to promote and ensure women's participation in a more equitable sharing of the rewards of growth in the economy?

The push for increasing girls' access to quality education particularly for those living in marginalized communities should be given top priority. Women's right to health and to mainstream gender perspectives in programmes, such as early childhood care, water and sanitation, protection against HIV/Aids is crucial.

Organized groups should understand the strength of their support in salvaging the life of women experiencing violence. This then is the time to seek the help of men as partners against discrimination.

Let the youth of our communities not be engulfed in the enormous feeling of being a lost generation. To remove this sense of scepticism, it is imperative to associate them in the reconstruction of their own communities.

Gender, health issues and sustainable human development are inter linked and interdependent. Good health of women results in their well being and ensures their active participation in activities, which enhance the sustainability of human resource initiatives. One can see that almost every indicator in Pakistan shows significant differences in opportunities for girls and boys, and for women and men.

There are striking gaps between male and female literacy levels - 54.8 per cent of males have achieved basic literacy compared to only 32 per cent of females (Economic Survey 2003-04). These indicators reveal that social attitudes and cultural practices discriminate against females throughout their lives.

Women in Pakistan experience similar problems as do their counterparts in other developing countries. These relate to poverty, illiteracy, malnutrition, and discrimination and, above all, lack of participation in decision-making.

The overall objective is to solve these problems so that our women may become fully contributing members. Gender focus is expected to be a milestone in the economic development strategies now on the anvil.

In search of freedom from discrimination, protective laws need to be strengthened - particularly in relation to widespread practices of violence against women.

The recognition to use resources to repeal discriminatory laws would indeed lay the foundation of true success. The government took a progressive step by reserving 33 per cent of seats in local bodies for women. As a result, 36,000 women have recently entered politics at the local level.

It is recognized that many women in Pakistan do not enjoy many of the rights laid down in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Despite the best efforts of the government, and NGOs, there is still much rigour that needs to be applied.

While we may pretend, the fact is that there continues to be incredible hostility in the workplace that needs to be countered. Gender disparity can be seen, for example, through the lens of the gender-related development index (GDI).

It can also be observed in the gender empowerment measurement (GEM), introduced in the UNDP Human Development Report. Pakistan's GDI ranking is 120th out of 146 countries whilst its GEM ranking is 64th out of 94 countries as reflected in the HDR 2004.

A more fruitful approach to understanding the situation is to examine the social indicators. These indicators for males and females taken from the integrated Household Survey, 2001-02 and Economic Survey 2003-04 reveal that:

* Literacy rate among females is 32 per cent, and among males it is 58.4 per cent (economic Survey 2003-04).

* Net primary enrolment for females is 44 per cent and for males it is 53 per cent (PIHS 2001-02).

* Child mortality rate for age 1 to 4 years is 115/1000 for females and for males it is 105/1000 -PIHS 2001-02.

Following the amendments in the Constitution and promulgation of local government ordinance, 2001, at least 33 per cent of seats in each tier of local government are for women.

In the National Assembly, women out of 332 seats hold more than 60 seats while out of 728 seats they hold over 128 seats in the provincial assemblies. Today there are 17 women in the Senate out of 100 members.

Most of them have been elected on reserved seats, however, some have also won on general seats. Representation by women is more positive than in most countries of the region. This provides an incredible opportunity to address the gender gap in the social, economic and health sectors.

In order to rectify this shortcoming, the government is taking a number of policy measures to enhance women's share in economic and social benefits. The government is making efforts to provide easy access to micro-credit especially through available windows such as Pakistan poverty alleviation fund (PPAF); rural support programmes (RSPs); First Women Bank (FWB); Agricultural Development Bank (ADB) and Khushali Bank. The question is: Are these facilities reaching women at the grassroots?

The government states that it is making efforts to ensure that female-headed households in general, and women bread-earners in particular, be given priority. While cultivating inter-dependency, steps are being taken to help women with disability to become functional. Provision of credit on soft terms from FWB and the Khushali Bank for setting up small business will be facilitated.

Tea leaves at foggy bottom

With much of the world wondering what President Bush will do in his second term, perhaps the best place to search for early clues is personnel. Nothing is more revealing, and, in the long run, nothing may be more important.

In this context, it is interesting to consider the names that have emerged so far - mostly in the form of unconfirmed but seemingly accurate leaks - as Condoleezza Rice picks a new team at the State Department.

So far, she has opted primarily for outstanding career diplomats and professionals, not ideologues or partisan political appointees, especially in the critical regional assistant secretary jobs.

Robert Zoellick, a veteran Republican foreign policy hand who is currently the US trade negotiator, has already been nominated for deputy secretary of state.

Other names that have reportedly gone to the White House for final approval include several senior career diplomats: Nicholas Burns, currently ambassador to Nato, as under secretary of state, the department's third-ranking position; Daniel Fried, now a senior National Security Council official, or Eric Edelman, now ambassador to Turkey and previously a staffer for Vice-President Cheney, as assistant secretary of state for European affairs; David Welch, ambassador to Egypt, as assistant secretary for Near Eastern affairs; and Chris Hill, ambassador to South Korea, to head the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs.

Full disclosure: I have worked closely with all five of the professional diplomats on this list; Zoellick is a friend. All have served presidents of both parties loyally, and they are among the very best professionals of the current generation.

Their nominations may offer an important indication of the kind of foreign policy that Rice (and George W. Bush) want to conduct: more centrist, oriented toward problem-solving, essentially non-ideological, and focused on traditional diplomacy as a way to improve America's shaky image abroad.

These men believe in American values and a strong, even assertive, foreign policy - but they are not what the right and neoconservative wings of the Republican Party wanted in a post-Colin Powell State Department; for years, Powell's critics predicted political appointees in a second term, especially for the regional assistant secretary positions.

In a second Bush term, they said, they would not only get rid of Powell but would purge disloyal career foreign service officers from the building. Richard Perle even gave a certain ersatz specificity to the problem; only 15 per cent of the Foreign Service, he said publicly, was loyal to President Bush. -Dawn/Washington Post Service

The writer was US ambassador to the United Nations during the Clinton administration.

Still meandering in some areas

Midway through the financial year 2004-05 the state of the economy is exceeding general expectations after the disappointing monsoon season and the poor wheat crop.

Other than the compensation to farmers that has come in the shape of a good cotton crop, despite the uncertainty in the availability of water, the foreign exchange reserves look comfortable, if not healthy, and the industrial sector has been trotting along at over 14 per cent, pushing up domestic growth beyond 6.6 per cent.

This is a commendable achievement since it follows a year in which overall growth and industrial output expansion touched six per cent and 15 per cent, respectively.

This period has also coincided with a robust increase, above the target in government tax revenues. The short-term prospects for the economy, therefore, are bright.

There are two areas of concern (other than the persistent issues of law and order, political uncertainty, country's image and high levels of unemployment and poverty) that demand the government's continuing attention and which have also been highlighted in the recent State Bank review of the economy.

The first is the simmering rate of inflation. There has been a slight deceleration from the surge in the annual inflation rate from nine per cent in the early part of the year to just over eight per cent.

However, the pressure on account of higher prices of food - until recently wheat and now sugar - and petroleum and other commodities is not going to abate easily, since the government is finding it increasingly difficult to absorb the impact of the rising global price of oil, which has resulted in a loss of revenue of more than Rs. 25 billion to date.

The other is the huge and widening deficit in external trade. Imports are hurtling along at 47 per cent while growth in exports is barely able to meet 21 per cent of the increased import bill.

This year, therefore, we will be lucky if additional demand for foreign currency represented by the gap between imports and exports can be fully met from remittances of overseas Pakistanis (at a time when interest rates are firming up and the gap between domestic and foreign interest rates are narrowing and which could keep some of this money abroad).

Otherwise, the pressure to depreciate the rupee could grow unless there is an inflow of foreign funds either as foreign investment or on account of government borrowings.

In a future article this writer also proposes to examine the puzzle of why, despite the massive increase in credit availability to the private sector the overall growth in the economy is at around six per cent, although inflation is still below double digit rates, and how this increased lending and the so-called structural upward shift in household consumption through consumer finance is increasing the exposure of banks to risky loans and the impact that this consumerism could have on Pakistan's already abysmally low domestic rate of savings.

However, in the opinion of this writer, there are three areas in which progress continues to be slow and sketchy acting, resultantly, as a drag on growth, by preventing the private sector from exploiting the full potential offered by higher domestic and international demand.

The first and foremost is the failure of the government to tackle factors well within its control. These relate to further deregulation of the economy, elimination of multiple taxes and getting the government off the backs of people through a reduction/removal of discretionary powers by repealing or amending many of the outdated regulatory laws and rules that unduly burden the private sector's cost of doing business and provide opportunities for corruption to government functionaries.

The government has managed to introduce some reforms, particularly in the CBR and, through the State Bank, in the financial sector. These have been widely welcomed and have had some success. But the pace continues to be sluggish, like the speed of government decision-making in most areas, compared with the challenge and the breadth and scope of changes being made by our international competitors in maintaining, if not enhancing, their competitiveness.

As usual, in a rapidly changing world, we are doing too little too late to address the growing gap between ourselves and our competitors on the environment for investment. While we move at a leisurely pace, the competitor economies are surging ahead with their reforms, further widening the gulf between us and them.

The debate on the contribution to the turnaround in Pakistan's economic fortunes in recent years of better government, macro-economic and financial management, of the faithful implementation of IMF conditionalities, of the debt rescheduling and generosity of donors following the events of 9/11, and of the large capital inflows through official channels following the greater scrutiny of funds invested or held abroad by persons bearing Muslim sounding names, cannot provide clear-cut conclusions.

However, there can be little dispute that there were several key areas totally within the control of the government that could have been addressed in the previous five years, and for which it could have taken exclusive credit, on which achievements have been negligible.

Other than the less than impressive movement on deregulation and better governance, there was little by way of improvement in the performance of Wapda and the KESC in providing energy efficiently to reduce the cost of a critical production input.

The third key constraint for the acceleration of economic growth in general, and of the industrial variety in particular, is the lack, and poor quality, of human capital required to support and sustain development.

Future expansion of industrial output, enhancement in the productivity of businesses and greater diversification of exports into more value-added products requires a good mix of technically qualified and skilled labour in adequate quantities.

Whereas production of better quality skills through higher education will take its own time, it is the shortage of labour with some basic technical and vocational skills where government failing has been rather stark, considering that it is easier to address this weakness over a relatively short time.

Despite the official sound and fury over the importance attached to strengthening and upgrading the capacities, of institutions of technical and vocational training, practically no headway has been made on this front.

Lack of even basic technical skills has become a serious obstacle to a shift to higher value-added exports. While the government's own efforts have led nowhere, it has also not been forthcoming in providing aid to similar private sector initiatives through the simplest forms of support, financial assistance, even in modest proportions.

It is in such areas, all within the control and functional domain of government that progress has been both lackadaisical and patchy, although it was widely recognized that by continuing to keep the cost of business high, these factors were holding back, if not shackling, the growth of the private sector, and thereby of the economy.

The writer is a former finance minister of Punjab.

Deja vu: Mark Twain and the Iraq war

George W. BUSH's mystifying election in November gave the go-ahead for 'teach-them-a-lesson' unbridled military power in fiercely resistant Iraq. (How, critics increasingly wonder, did a reckless leader, whose policies most Americans in every poll disapprove of, manage to obtain another term?)

In the ruins of Fallujah and elsewhere US forces gorily replay an agonizing age-old imperial game that, as always, is called by a sweeter name. The White House strives to portray this unspeakably ugly campaign as a noble and selfless fight for the freedom of all Iraqis. Yet, if any independent observers still believe Bush is more interested in democracy than oil in Iraq, they are very difficult to find these days.

In early December, the Pentagon's Defence Science Board admitted that "coalition" forces not only were losing the battle for Iraqi "hearts and minds" but "may also have achieved the opposite of what they intended". This frank appraisal heroically assumes, of course, that US leaders cared at all what any Iraqi thought who deviated one bit from their own cherished schemes.

In fact, a new poll finds 56 per cent of Americans say the war is not worth fighting, a figure which includes those who swallowed all the officially blessed lies about WMD and Saddam's link to Al Qaeda.

This public scepticism is bad news for Bush especially because the American mainstream media still behaves as if it were Pravda in the old Soviet Union, dispensing little but White House-approved versions of seamy events.

Not all the bleating of the corporate media, whose owners benefit considerably from Bush's tax breaks, regulatory rollbacks and anti-labour legislation, is going to protect this president forever from the dire consequences of his policies. Though it's not for lack of trying.

Why else do Americans (and the rest of the planet) vastly overestimate fellow citizens who are international hard-liners? Scholars in a recent Policy Review article ("Power, War and Public Opinion"-February/March 2004) find that the 22 per cent of Yanks who fit all the criteria of belligerent Bush unilateralists righteously imagined that 54 per cent of Americans shared their simple views.

On the other hand, the 71 per cent of Americans who said 'the US should do its fair share' in a multi-lateralist world assumed that only 49 per cent shared their views.

The minority, astonishingly, viewed itself as a majority, and vice versa. One now gets an inkling into what a crazy and confused country the US is today and how it got to be that way.

So have a little sympathy. As the astute authors point out, this cultivated media misperception affects the majority's activities in a discouraging way because "people are willing to accept outcomes and policies that do not favour them to the extent that they perceive these outcomes and policies as legitimate".

It turns out that US "hawks" as a proportion of their nation (22 per cent) outnumber European hawks three to one while British hawks (13 per cent) outpace continental European hawks two to one, which just happens to accord exactly with the magnitude of their respective defence establishments.

Very interesting. Anyway, how a manic minority came to hijack foreign policy in its favour by creating an impression of majority support, is a question well worth exploring. But don't hold your breath waiting even for the haughty New York Times to do so.

Still, in spite of this skewed media "reality", the future is not bright for any major figure mixed up in the Iraq invasion decision. Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld is taking most of the heat, even from angry soldiers in the field, although there is plenty of richly deserved blame to go around this blindly bellicose administration.

The spectre of a Vietnam-like quagmire is not easily dismissed when the Pentagon itself sees no chance of a pull-out before 2009. But you don't have to mention only Vietnam for dismaying evidence that America is repeating sordid history.

Mark Twain, world renowned for authoring classics like Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, is less celebrated for training a bitterly sharp eye on imperial American lusts, their pious rationalizations, and cringing media alibis.

In 1901, Twain addressed with sardonic contempt the USA's toddling imperialist steps across the Pacific after its trumped-up war with Spain. Twain composed a satiric letter "to the person sitting in darkness"; that is, to the Third World peoples who were the target of acquisitive Western elites.

At the time the British, old hands at overseas grabs, were hunting Boer irregulars in South Africa, and herding their women and children into disease-ridden concentration camps, so as to plunder the place safely. (No thought on either side, of course, was spared for the fate of blacks.)

The perfect fit is startling if we substitute Bush or Blair's names for Twain's dim view of the British prime minister during the Boer War: "Mr Chamberlain manufactures a war out of materials so inadequate and so fanciful that they make the boxes grieve and the gallery laugh and he tries hard to persuade himself that it isn't a private raid for cash but has a dim vague respectability about it somewhere, if he could only find the spot; and that by and by he can scour the flag clean again after he has finished dragging it through the mud and making it shine and flash in the vault of heaven once more." Indeed.

After Twain recounts British soldiers bay onetting surrendering Boers without mercy, he quotes a letter by a young American boy who excitedly did the same to Filipino insurgents.

Recall the notorious US soldier filmed in Fallujah "finishing off" a wounded Iraqi insurgent. That ruthless act is not nearly so unusual as many Yanks like to believe; in fact, as Twain implies, it may be downright traditional.

The US seized the Philippines from Spain with the indispensable aid of local nationalists. "What we wanted," Twain saw, "was the archipelago, unencumbered by patriots struggling for independence, and war was what was needed" which meant "forcing a war with (popular Filipino leader) Aguinaldo.

After mentioning the order by General MacArthur (father of Douglas) to kill all Filipino rebels, including many former allies, Twain, tongue-in-cheek, wrote witheringly about the whole colonial enterprise, "There have been lies; yes; but they were told in a good cause. We have been treacherous; but that was only in order that real good might come out of apparent evil.

"True, we have crushed a deceived and confiding people who have trusted us... we have stabbed an ally in the back and slapped the face of a guest; we have bought a shadow from an enemy that hadn't it to sell; we have robbed a trusting friend of his land and liberty; we have invited our clean young men to shoulder a discredited musket and do bandit's work under a flag which bandits have been accustomed to fear:, not to follow; we have debauched America's honour and blackened her face before the world, but each detail was for the best. We know this."

The great American writer reserved his greatest scorn for the sanctimonious lies that camouflage pure greed: "The head of every state and sovereignty in Christendom and 90 per cent of every legislative body in Christendom, including our Congress and our 50 legislatures are members not only of the Church but of the blessings of civilization trust.

This world-girdling accumulation of trained morals, high principles, and justice, cannot do an un right thing, an unfair thing, an ungenerous thing, and unclean thing. It knows what it is about. Give yourself no uneasiness; it is all right."

In the triumphant aftermath: "We can have just our usual flag with the white stripes painted black and the stars replaced by the skull and cross-bones." A sampling of toadying headlines that Twain recites about the Filipino insurrection matches those we behold today in top rank newspapers.

The very notion that Filipinos somehow were "rebels" in their own land struck Twain as much an absurdity as is the case with the Iraqi resistance. Yet American journalists who admired Twain in their youth wouldn't dare emulate his unflinching truthfulness. Or, at least they won't without a prior turn in public opinion, which is slowly but surely happening.

Most Americans, unlike the current leadership, are not pirates. So the good news is that we can look for more critical US press coverage in the new year. Though the US media will pretend to have been courageous all along, it's better late than never.