Pakistan’s Karachi airport under attack: officials

Karachi (AFP) – Heavily armed militants attacked Pakistan’s busiest airport in the southern city of Karachi Sunday night, forcing the suspension of all flights, officials said.

Senior police official Rao Muhammad Anwar said the militants were armed with automatic weapons and grenades and were exchanging gunfire with security officials.

“Exchange of fire is continuing. We don’t know the exact number of the attackers but suspect four to six terrorists have attacked the airport,” he said.

Read more » Yahoo News
http://news.yahoo.com/pakistans-karachi-airport-under-attack-officials-191503030.html

Rocket attack on peshawar airport.

Peshawar struck by rocket attacks

PESHAWAR: At least two rockets have landed in the urban Pehsawar near Bacha Khan International Airport, Geo News reported. Earlier three loud explosions were reported from different areas Khyber PakhtunKhwa’s capital, but later they turned out to be rocket fire. According to sources, two rockets fired from unknown location, landed in the University Town near airport.

Reportedly one of the rockets struck a residential block,while the other fell near a the airport’s boundary wall with loud bangs which shattered the windowpanes of buildings close-by. Rescue workers as well as law enforcers are on their way. More details are awaited.

Courtesy: The News

 

http://www.thenews.com.pk/article-79791-Peshawar-struck-by-rocket-attacks

 

Let’s Talk Civil-Military, NOW!

By Marvi Sirmed

Atiqa Odho needs to change her name. Not only her name but also the prefix if she wants to avoid further humiliation that she possibly could not and would not want, just because she is a woman and does not bear the right prefix before her name. Brigadier Zafar Iqbal had both — the right name and the right prefix.

The good brigadier embarked on a PIA flight from Karachi to Lahore on Saturday night, intoxicated with the ‘sherbet’. The captain of the plane handed him over to the Airport Security Force (ASF) after the brigadier publicly harassed one of the female crew members. The ASF, obviously, could not hold him for more than a few minutes when they discovered the full name of the detainee. No wonder the news item merited just a few lines in Sunday newspapers. I am still waiting for the ‘suo motu’ and media-panic that we saw in Atiqa Odho’s case. Pertinent to remind here, Ms Odho was neither drunk nor did she harass anyone on the flight.

This points to two serious maladies of this society: one, a strong gender bias that women of this country have to endure everywhere, including the courts; and two, unjust and unfair partiality that society confers on the military. It is not only about an overly powerful military but also about an extremely weak civil society. It would be naïve to believe that civil society in Pakistan is powerful enough to foil any attempt to usurp power from the civilian entities. This is mainly because the military here never departed from power. Irrespective of who occupied the buildings of the Prime Minister Secretariat and the Presidency, the military always ruled in the country through its incontrovertible influence over political decision-making and social phenomena.

The way things happen in the court, and outside of it, memo scandal is a case in point. In the memo scandal, Husain Haqqani was treated as an accused by the media and society at large because the military thought so. Everything else had to be in sync with what the military wanted or at least, was perceived to be wanting. The same ‘evidence’ (the BBM conversations claimed by Mansoor Ijaz that took place between him and Husain Haqqani) implicated the head of the ISI who was accused in the same BBM conversations to have spoken to the leaders of some Arab states and gotten their consent to sack the present government. But no one from the media, politicians (even the ones who portray themselves as most committed to civilian supremacy) and the judiciary could ever point a finger towards General Pasha, the accused. Husain Haqqani was an easy target because he was not a general. Or even a brigadier.

Later, the chief of army staff and the head of ISI submitted their affidavits in clear departure of the government’s point of view — the same government that both of them are accountable to. The prime minister was openly criticised by everyone for calling this action of the two generals as unconstitutional. So much so that the media wing of the Pakistan Army, the ISPR, attacked the prime minister — their boss — by issuing a strongly worded statement warning the government of grave consequences and serious ramifications. So there were two statements, one by the chief executive of a country castigating his subordinate generals for unconstitutional actions, and the other from the subordinate generals threatening their boss with grave consequences. Guess who had to retract the statement? You got it right, it was the boss. The Islamic Republic is unique in its construction.

What can be more worrying for a people whose representative is humiliated by an agency that should be subordinate to the people. The agency, it is more perturbing, does so with popular consent. The absence of popular outrage amounts to consent if one could decrypt public reactions. We can go on endlessly criticising hungry-for-power generals, selfish politicians, corporate media and an ambitious judiciary, but what remains a fact is Pakistani society’s utter failure — rather refusal — to grow from a Praetorian state to even a half decent egalitarian democracy.

The dead begin to speak up in India

– Kashmir is one of two war zones in India from which no news must come. But those in unmarked graves will not be silenced

by Arundhati Roy

At about 3am, on 23 September, within hours of his arrival at the Delhi airport, the US radio-journalist David Barsamian was deported. This dangerous man, who produces independent, free-to-air programmes for public radio, has been visiting India for 40 years, doing such dangerous things as learning Urdu and playing the sitar.

Barsamian has published book-length interviews with public intellectuals such as Edward Said, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Ejaz Ahmed and Tariq Ali (he even makes an appearance as a young, bell-bottom-wearing interviewer in Peter Wintonick’s documentary film on Chomsky and Edward Herman’s book Manufacturing Consent).

On his more recent trips to India he has done a series of radio interviews with activists, academics, film-makers, journalists and writers (including me). Barsamian’s work has taken him to Turkey, Iran, Syria, Lebanon and Pakistan. He has never been deported from any of these countries. So why does the world’s largest democracy feel so threatened by this lone, sitar-playing, Urdu-speaking, left-leaning, radio producer? Here is how Barsamian himself explains it:

“It’s all about Kashmir. I’ve done work on Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal, Narmada dams, farmer suicides, the Gujarat pogrom, and the Binayak Sen case. But it’s Kashmir that is at the heart of the Indian state’s concerns. The official narrative must not be contested.” ….

Read more → guardian.co.uk

MQM Chief caught escaping to South Africa?

Altaf Hussain with Imran Farooq's father. Photo courtesy goes to Opinion Maker.

–He was escaping to South Africa?

By Special Correspondent

London: The London Post has reported Altaf Hussain self exiled leader of MQM-A caught escaping to South Africa by the authorities. According to sources, ‘Altaf Hussain was hiding in the Wrexham area close to Slough in Berkshire for the past few days. He was stopped when was going to Heathrow Airport in a private taxi. Interestingly the taxi driver was a Pakistani whom Mr Hussain thought as an English man due to his appearance.

According to sources Altaf Hussain told the authorities that, ‘he is leaving UK and going to South Africa for security reasons and personal protection’. According to sources he was told that, ‘security can be provided to him in the UK’. It is not yet clear if Mr Hussain detained or taken in protective custody. Mr Altaf Hussain is a British Citizen and living in self imposed exile since 1992. He is never been to Pakistan since 1992, not a registered voter now and never voted in any elections ever since.

Earlier yesterday it was reported that British police raided two addresses including an office of MQM-A in London in connection with the on going murder investigation of Dr Imran Farooq. It is reported that police took the crucial evidence in custody including the carpets for forensic investigation. According to reports 35 well trained officers of the Scotland Yard took part in the operation on Thursday 24th August 2011”.

It is reported that those MQM-A terrorists arrested in Karachi were actually coming from Colombo Sri Lanka and had connections with the murder of Dr Imran Farooq. The arrests took place as result of tip off from British authorities.

According to reports both Khalid Shamim and another MQM-A terrorists who were arrested in Karachi while arriving from Colombo actually called in to be eliminated in Karachi by their own party MQM-A. They had crucial information related to Dr Imran Farooq’s murder as well as target killing cells in various countries including South Africa. They knew too much about the MQM-A illegal and terrorist activities and needed to be eliminated that is why they were called in Karachi. They are lucky to be alive in the custody of Pakistani authorities than killed by their own death squad.

Courtesy: → Opinion Maker → The L0ndon Post

http://www.opinion-maker.org/2011/08/altaf-hussain-caught/

http://www.thelondonpost.net/

Anna Yablonskaya

Anna Yablonskaya (July 20, 1981(1981-07-20) – January 24, 2011(2011-01-24)) was born Anna Grigorievna Mashutina (Russian: А́нна Григо́рьевна Машу́тина) in Odessa USSR (now Ukraine). She was a Russian-language playwright and poet, and one of the victims of 2011 Domodedovo International Airport bombing^.

Under the pseudonym Anna Yablonskaya (Russian: А́нна Ябло́нская) Yablonskaya published over a dozen playscripts. Many of them were staged at venues in Russia, in particular, in St. Petersburg — the last city she visited just a month before her death. Since 2004 Yablonskaya received several awards in different literary and dramatic events in Russia (Moscow, Yekaterinburg) and Byelorussia (Minsk)^[2]. She also wrote a series of lyrical poems.^[3]

Half an hour before the explosion Yablonskaya arrived in Moscow on a flight from Odessa to attend the presentation ceremony as one of the 2010 winners of the award established by the Cinema Art magazine.

Read more : Wikipedia – More details : BBC urdu

Capitalism’s tough reality for many Russians

By Rupert Wingfield Hayes, BBC News, Moscow

When the Soviet Union collapsed nearly 20 years ago, Russia emerged as an independent country that embraced capitalism but what has this meant for its citizens?

More than half a century ago Winston Churchill famously described Russia as a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.

It is an old cliche but not without truth. To this day, outsiders still find Russia very confusing.

I remember the day the Soviet Union began to fall apart.

By a strange twist of fate, I was sitting in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport waiting for a flight to London.

The terminal at Sheremetyevo said a lot about Russia then. It had been built for the 1980 Olympics but it was one of the most uninviting places I had ever been.

It was dark brown and smelled of industrial detergent. The officials wore granite expressions and ridiculous, oversized hats.

Of course I had no idea there had been a coup. It was a secret. Only when we touched down in London did I find out what was happening.

‘Forbidding’

It would be another 15 years before I would return to Moscow.

On a cold and wet November day, my wife and I drove through the streets of what was about to become our new home.

In those 15 years, Russia had changed enormously. …

Read more : BBC