Reboot Alberta

Friday, December 28, 2007

Bhutto Assassination and Shades of JFK's Death

Watching CNN this morning on the Bhutto assassination I get an eerie déjà vu from the JFK assassination. Is Rawalpindi the new Dallas in the Global Village? Is there a metaphorical grassy knoll in the park where she was speaking? Will conspiracy theories dominate the cultural interpretation of this tragedy?

The official Pakistan government information from the Interior Ministry is Bhutto dies by hitting her head on the vehicle she was travelling in. It was not the bullet(s) that we were originally told entered her neck and exiting on the other side of her skull. Nor did the suicide bomber’s shrapnel cause or contribute to her death even though it killed about 20 bystanders. “Nothing entered her head” according to government security officials and we are expected to take that “fact” at face value.

The security people are seen as immediately hosing down the site of the disaster and destroying valuable evidence in the process. She is taken to the local hospital and doctors who apparently attended to her give us sound bite diagnoses of her demise and are talking about cardiac arrest as a cause of death. There is no autopsy and Bhutto is buried in less than 24 hours. Hmmm!

We get accusations of the Pakistan intelligence agency being behind the death as well as al-Qaeda and other Islamic fundamentalists’ cells and even agents of Musharraf himself are under suspicion as being behind the assassination.

The conspiracy theories have already started and the facts are becoming irrelevant to the interpretation of the implications of this assassination. The 24 hour worldwide news cycle will show pictures and video tht will be repeated interminably. MSM will be offering little by way of insight or any commitment to confirm the accuracy of the information or analysis on implication and interpretation. Maybe the key and notworthy exception to the MSM circus will by the BBC.

Constant vigilance and striving for the truth is the responsibility of citizenship and a price of freedom in democracies. We all must cast a critical and jaundiced eye at what we are being shown and told about what happened, who did it and who is responsible.

4 comments:

  1. She had to be buried within 24 hours - she is a Muslim.

    I imagine as such also it would be more tasteful for people to believe that she is intact - i.e. her head not damaged - and an autopsy would likely also not be preferable...

    However, cultural and religious understandings aside, this whole thing really does stink.

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  2. Thx Allie for the clarification of the religious context on the reason for her swift burial.

    We still have a controversy swirling around her assassination that is going to breed conspiracies. It would be nice to have verifiable facts and not just self-serving narratives from various discreditable sources that create more heat than light.

    ON top of all that NOW we have a real nuclear power (not one of Dubya's WMD imaginings) that is so politically unstable and strategically important that it really threatens global security.

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  3. Anonymous8:23 am

    You really must see the correlations between the JFK assassination by ____ and the recent death of PM Bhutto caused by ______. However you fill in the blanks, there are a vast number of ways to justify that Bhutto was killed b/c she supported peace and did not support terrorists... "terrorists" that war-lords could have profited greatly off of.

    http://existentialistcowboy.blogspot.com/2007/12/benazir-bhutto-us-policy-causes-world.html

    Of course, this is no different from MLK either..

    Now we must decide, align yourself with 'them' and their money and power, thereby keeping you and your family safe from harm? Or, align yourself with 'the opposition' who continually fights for justice, meanwhile spinning their wheels and gettig no where b/c we will ALWAYS live in an unjust world.

    The question is on the table... As for me an my house, we will serve ______ (fill in the blank for yourself).

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  4. Anon @ 8:23 - what a great comment. The question is begged - do we live in fear and defensively and respond aggressively and build walls around our assets like the Bush White House? Or do we engage in a caring and careful way toward expanding the resources, resiliency and capacities of those who suffering?

    To presume a war on terror will save the day and deliver western democracy to the rest of the world is shallow, costly in terms of resources and lives.

    To pull back and concentrate on an isolationist protection of ones way of life and assets is like deeming the problems to go away. They will not go away.

    You are so right. The question is on the table. "As for me and my house, we will serve ____."

    It's New Years. A time of resolution! You pose a question that individual Canadians might want to take some time to define and deploy their own personal resolution as to where they stand and what they will do in that regard.

    Thanks again for the provocative and evocative comment.

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