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Pakistan’s relations with the US can be compared to a boy befriending a baby python. They played with each other and enjoyed scaring other villagers. Over the years, while still playing with the boy curling all around him, the snake grew bigger and stronger, as pythons do,  with his curls and squeezes becoming tighter.

Cynthia McKinney is a former member of the US Congress from Georgia and was the Green Party presidential candidate in 2008. At the invitation of Crescent International she spoke at the Conference, Peace and Justice in the Age of Imperialism, held in Toronto last February. Cynthia McKinney is currently on a fact-finding mission to Libya from where she dispatched this report.

Returning from the northwestern Black Sea city of Kastamonu, Prime Minister Recep Erdogan’s convoy was attacked on May 4. As part of his election campaign Erdogan had visited the city to address its residents urging them to vote for his Justice and Development Party (AKP). He then flew by helicopter to a nearby city to continue his campaign, while his election convoy, including his campaign bus from which he usually delivers speeches and greets the people, was returning to the AKP headquarters in Ankara. When Erdogan’s campaign bus was 25 km from the city centre, around the Ilgaz Mountains, a sudden burst of machinegun fire targeted the police car escorting the convoy. After the initial shots, the attackers came closer to the police car and threw a grenade which set the car on fire, injuring one police officer and killing another in the vehicle. After a brief exchange of gunfire with the prime minister’s bodyguards, the attackers fled the scene without suffering any casualties.

The slogan on Facebook and Twitter for rallies accurately captured the mood in Egypt: “I have not felt the change, I am going back to Tahrir,” as protesters called for renewed protests on Friday May 27. Gradually the Egyptian youth and people are finding out that they have been cheated out of the rights they fought so hard for and that their struggle is far from over.

The Tunisian people who triggered the mass protests that have swept much of the Muslim East may be denied their basic rights after all. The interim Prime Minster Beji Caid Sebsi said in a televised address last month that elections scheduled for July 24 may be postponed. He cited “technical” reasons for the possible delay raising fears that the Tunisian establishment was beginning to back peddle on promises made to the people following the ouster of the long-ruling dictator General Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali on January 14, 2011.

Talk about desperation; the Americans are falling over themselves to talk to the Taliban but the Afghans are in no hurry to meet, even if offered lamb kebab and rice as inducement. Carefully planted rumors in the media by American officials have been circulating for years. “Taliban representatives have secretly met US officials in Saudi Arabia;” according to one of such report. Others have claimed meetings have taken place in Turkey, Qatar or even Germany. The Taliban have vehemently denied all such reports. One is inclined to accept the Taliban version because past US claims have come to naught.

The negative fallout from the Osama bin Laden episode is only slowly trickling out into the public domain but Pakistani officials are already scurrying to find support elsewhere as they desperately try to present a brave face over the whole affair. The Pakistani public is shell-shocked, unable to fathom how the Americans could mount an operation deep inside Pakistani territory, in a supposedly secure military base, that lasted 40 minutes without being challenged by the military. It should now be clear even to the most dim-witted that Pakistan’s relations with the US, strained at the best of times, have undergone a sea change. Further, the US is no friend of Pakistan — never has been and never will be.

This month, as in every June since 1989, Muslims around the world will hold prayer meetings, lectures and other events to mark the anniversary of the death of Imam Khomeini, who died in Tehran on June 4, 1989, a decade after the Islamic Revolution in Iran with which he will always be associated. The usual speakers will give the usual speeches, focusing on the usual aspects of his life and character.

Caution! This article is not written for the rationally disabled or for those who are reproach-free.

Expectations for rapid change in the Muslim East have not materialized despite two long-entrenched dictators in Tunisia and Egypt respectively being driven from power in quick succession.