Brown Pundits – Pakistan; the sausage factory is getting exposed

Pakistan: the sausage factory is becoming dangerously transparent

By Omar

The latest scandal in Pakistan involves the leading business tycoon of the country spending (he claims) 340 million rupees on the son of the chief justice of Pakistan. Said tycoon Riaz Malik used to be a struggling contractor who hit paydirt with high-end housing colonies named “Bahria colony” (the name means “navy”…and some admirals are said to have sold him access to that name and the authority of Pakistan’s smallest armed force). Now one of the richest men in the country, Malik Riaz has been profiled in this documentary by TV anchor Sohail Warraich.

Suggested names for this scandal include “bahriagate”, “familygate” and, more originally (from lawyer Feisal Naqvi) “liti-gate”! Conspiracy theorists are busy trying to figure out if this whole thing was orchestrated by the army (unhappy over the chief justice’s asking questions about missing persons in Balochistan) or by Zardari or by the CIA and Mossad and RAW.

But whatever the details, one thing is clear to an outside observer. The walls of the sausage factory are becoming dangerously transparent. 11 retired generals work for Malik Riaz. Many admirals and generals smoothed his path to wealth. Many journalists are being accused of being on his payroll. And its not just this scandal. The son of the prime minister is accused of smuggling controlled substances. The brother of the almighty army chief is being targeted in a whispering campaign. Secret agencies, hidden camera videos, trips to Monte Carlo with mysterious women…its all out in the open or threatening to come out. All this has happened in other countries (well, maybe some of it has). but times are tough, the economy may tank, the security establishment has got itself into a fight with its traditional American patrons. There was never a real national ideology behind the claptrap taught in 6th grade. What will hold the center? These things can get out of hand.

Pakistan – Mother of all conspiracies

Mother of all conspiracies

by Omar Ali

A narrow coterie of military officers, mullahs and bureaucrats relies on the conspiracy theories to keep their flock in line. They use them to cover up their own crimes and shortcomings and hide their own dirty deals

Conspiracy theories exist in every corner of the globe and the world being what it is, some must be true. As social animals, we naturally organize into an endlessly branching tree of groups and subgroups, all eyeing relatively scarce resources. Sometimes we cooperate with other groups in mutually beneficial arrangements, but all too frequently we fight, literally or figuratively. This competition takes all forms, from ordered and rule-bound competition to a vicious struggle without rules or limits. In this endless struggle the existence of conspiracies is not only expected, it is the norm. For after all, what is a conspiracy? It is a certain group of humans getting together in secret to plot against other humans. Looked at it this way, all nations and groups probably launch some secret cooperative efforts against their competitors.

But when we talk of conspiracy theories, we are talking about deeper and darker myths, not these run of the mill plots and plans. We are talking of paranoid fantasies that connect disparate events and usually imagine one vast conspiracy where a hundred different conspiracies may be working at cross purposes. These are the big daddies of the conspiracy world: the protocols of the elders of Zion, the trilateral commission, the black helicopter people. These theories inflate the cohesion, camaraderie and capabilities of one group of people (the Jews, the corporate barons, the “Hinjews”) well beyond the realm of the humanly possible, while demoting everyone else to helpless victim and clueless idiot. Such paranoid fantasies are not confined to any one country or people. Moronic paranoid conspiracy theories circulate at the fringes of every society. But some countries and populations do seem to have a special fondness for them. Luckily or unluckily, we are one such country, and Muslims in general seem to be one such people.

Why? The psychology and sociology literature overflows with explanations. One theory holds that conspiracy theories are the last refuge of the powerless. People who feel they have no control over their own lives look for supermen (and women) who are responsible for their predicament. Others blame modernization, or the dislocation caused by the collapse of traditional society, or sky-god religions that are already primed to see the invisible hand of one grand actor behind all events. Some of these theories are probably correct, but there is another factor that deserves consideration: a conspiracy; a conspiracy to promote conspiracy theories.

I am saying that people in Pakistan do not just believe in wild conspiracy theories because they are un-informed or illiterate (in fact, that last chestnut is clearly false, the biggest believers are all literate). Neither do they do so just because they are powerless or because their traditional worldview is collapsing in front of their eyes or because they already believe in an all-powerful deity. All those may be factors, but let us not forget one more reason they believe in wild conspiracy theories: because their leaders of public opinion tell them it is so. In other words, the widespread belief in conspiracy theories is itself a conspiracy; a small group of men (it is always men) pick up the juiciest theories from some idiot American website (usually a White supremacist or paranoid brain-dead Leftie website) and spread them far and wide in the land of the pure. They plant them as stories on their websites. Then they get their own “news” outlets to pick up these stories, quoting their own websites as sources. Then they get their opinion leaders to repeat these conspiracies, using the media and the websites as sources if needed. There is, in short, a conspiracy to spread these conspiracy theories.

So it is that we find that large sections of the Pakistani middle class believe that everything that is wrong with Pakistan is due to a Hinjew conspiracy against Pakistan. Those Hinjews, otherwise so accursed and incompetent that their Akash tablets melt when used (and are, of course, no match for our superior PacPads), are so capable in the conspiracy field that hundreds of suicide bombers blow themselves up in their service and don’t even know they are serving the Hinjews. They are so brilliant that their controllers never get caught as they go around coordinating vast legions of agents in every civilian party and media outlet. They are so tightly knit that there has never been a fissure within the Hinjew ranks. No disgruntled Hinjews have come on TV to tell us that us all about their evil plot against GHQ. While our own ambassadors, prime ministers and presidents are all foreign agents, no Hinjew traitor betrays his own country. While our own intelligence service (the finest in the world) cannot catch one of these conspirators, their incompetent intelligence service has recruited our best and brightest by the thousands.

Why make people believe such things? One answer is that a narrow coterie of military officers, mullahs and bureaucrats relies on these conspiracies to keep their flock in line. They use them to cover up their own crimes and shortcomings and hide their own dirty deals. They use them to focus public resentment on a convenient faraway (and even mythical) enemy while ignoring proximate causes of their predicament. They use them to create an atmosphere where their own demented “policies” start to appear sane by comparison.

Or it may be that they themselves believe these things. Maybe there are psychological factors that drive our elite to first believe and then sell these conspiracies; this implies that the drivers are not narrow self-interest, but widespread self-delusion amongst the elite. Maybe because of the difficulties of patching together an identity from a flawed and rather superficial foundational myth; or the cognitive dissonance between their own partly (or even mostly) Indian cultural and biological roots and their professed un-Indian ideals. One could make up socio-psychological mumbo-jumbo for days with this rich material. And it could be that both theories are true. Self-delusion and self-interest are happily married and produce endless red-hatted conspiracy theorists when they bed together. But is that all, or could there be, perhaps, a conspiracy behind this conspiracy to sell conspiracy theories to our middle class?

Here, I revert to my own Pakistani roots and present to you the mother of all conspiracies; this conspiracy that peddles incredible bullshit with unbelievable vigor on a hundred Paknationalist websites is itself a Hinjew conspiracy! Our conspiracy theorists are themselves the agents of RAW and Mossad. They have been directed to plant these conspiracy theories in order to ensure that middle class educated Pakistanis remain mired in stupid, moronic, illogical and contradictory conspiracy theories and never figure out how they are being screwed and by whom. Just think about it. If you were a Mossad officer tasked with destroying Pakistan, would you waste time recruiting dangerous fanatics in faraway mountains when you could recruit a few people in Islamabad and make monkeys of the educated middle class? Doesn’t this explain everything? As the conspiracy theorists always tell us, just think about it….connect the dots.

Courtesy: ViewPoint

Via – Brown Pundits

Role of security establishment

By Aqil Shah

WHAT is a human life worth in Pakistan? Guessing from the impunity with which the intelligence agencies engage in the alleged torture and extrajudicial murder of its own people, apparently not much.

The gruesome deaths of four terror suspects in ISI custody, and the visibly brutal treatment of seven others, has belatedly caught the attention of the Supreme Court, which otherwise seemed to many observers to be obsessed with serving instant ‘justice’ to the ruling PPP leadership.

How far the SC is willing to pursue this and other missing persons’ cases will be a litmus test for the rule of law in Pakistan which is under constant attack from a security establishment hiding behind the armour of national security.

The renowned sociologist Charles Tilly once compared modern states to organised crime rackets. For Tilly, states essentially function as protection rackets because they foment danger and then offer protection against it, usually for a high price. ….

Read more » DAWN.COM

Taliban will rule Afghanistan again, says leaked US military report – The Guardian

– Classified document is said to warn that Pakistan is plotting to help reinstall Taliban once Nato-led forces depart

By Reuters

The Taliban have secured Pakistan’s support for a return to power in Afghanistan as well as toning down their severe brand of Islamism, according to reports citing a leaked US military assessment.

The Taliban, backed by Pakistan, are set to retake control of Afghanistan after Nato-led forces withdraw from the country, according to reports citing a classifed assessment by US forces.

The Times described the report as secret and “highly classified”, saying it was put together last month by the US military at Bagram air base in Afghanistan for top Nato officers. The BBC also carried a report on the leaked document.

“Many Afghans are already bracing themselves for an eventual return of the Taliban,” the report was quoted as saying. “Once Isaf (Nato-led forces) is no longer a factor, Taliban consider their victory inevitable.”

The document stated that Pakistan’s security agency was helping the Taliban in directing attacks against foreign forces – a charge long denied by Islamabad.

The findings were based on interrogations of more than 4,000 Taliban and al-Qaida detainees, the Times said, adding the document was scarce on identifying individual insurgents.

A US state department spokesman and Britain’s Foreign Office both declined comment on the report. Nato and Pakistani officials could not be immediately reached for comment.

Despite the presence of more than 100,000 foreign troops, the UN has said violence in Afghanistan is at its worst since the Taliban were ousted by US-backed forces in 2001.

The Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) says levels of violence are falling.

Citing the same report, the BBC reported on its website that Pakistan and its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency knew the locations of senior Taliban leaders and supported the expulsion of “foreign invaders from Afghanistan”.

“Senior Taliban leaders meet regularly with ISI personnel, who advise on strategy and relay any pertinent concerns of the government of Pakistan.”

Asma Jehangir ( Lioness ) interview with Aljazeera.

Husain Haqqani’s lawyer, Aasma Jehangir, speaks to Aljazeerah

Read more: Pakistani Siasat

No evidence Zardari sent memo: Pentagon

PENTAGON: Pentagon Spokesman John Kirby has said that the memo sent by Pakistani origin US citizen Mansoor Ijaz was not credible and Mike Mullen was confident that it was not sent by President Zardari.

In a statement, Pentagon Spokesman Kirby said former US Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen neither knew Mansoor Ijaz and nor did he ever communicate with him.

Kirby said Admiral Mullen knew intermediary who brought secret memo to him, adding that the memo was not signed and was not credible.

There was nothing in the memo that indicated that it was from President Zardari, he added.

Courtesy » The News

MQM (Altaf) Importing Weapons Through Sea – says Writer, journalist, columnist, & intellectual, Najam Sethi

Courtesy: → Geo News Tv (Aapas Ki Baat with Najam Sethi, Muneeb Farooq)

via → Siasat.pk

JI “BLAMES” MQM for TERRORISM

KCCC’s alleged involvement in killings: Jamaat calls for judicial inquiry

LAHORE, Aug 10: Jamaat-i-Islami chief Syed Munawar Hasan has expressed concern over the reported involvement of the Karachi Command and Control Centre (KCCC) in terrorist activities and called for a judicial inquiry into the matter.

In a statement issued on Wednesday, he alleged that custodians of peace and civil liberties had turned into murderers.

Quoting reports published in a section of the print media, the JI chief said the criminals involved in target killings and terrorist activities were allegedly getting assistance from the Command and Control Centre.

The reports said that activities of police, Rangers and other law-enforcement agencies were being watched through secret cameras and targets identified.

Mr Hasan said the KCCC had been set up during the tenure of Karachi Nazim Mustafa Kamal and thousands of workers of a particular party had been recruited to it.

He said it was a tragedy and a matter of concern that the rulers were themselves protecting the killers of innocent citizens only to stay in power and the assassins were not being arrested despite having been identified. Mr Hasan alleged that certain parties in the ruling coalition were involved in the bloodshed and target killings, adding that some ministers and senators were on payroll of foreign agencies.

Courtesy: → DAWN.COM

↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓

– JI chief condemns MQM’s terrorism

LAHORE, July 6: The Jamaat e Islami chief, Syed Munawar Hasan, has said that the writ of the government in Karachi has been eroded because of the MQM’s terrorism. He was talking to the family members of JI member ( Rukn) Mubinul Haq, who lost his life at the hands of the MQM terrorists in Faisalabad colony, Karachi.

Syed Munawar Hasan said that the MQM’s inclusion in the government had emboldened the terrorists who were moving about freely and the law and order in the port city had been shattered. The residents of the mega city had become hostages in the hands of a few terrorists, he added.

Read more → http://www.smunawar.com/2010/07/ji-chief-condemns-mqms-terrorism.html

via → Chagataikhan

New York Times – Pakistani Army Linked, in Letter, to Nuclear Sale

By DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON — The emergence of a single-page letter supposedly written by a senior North Korean official 13 years ago has become the strongest evidence yet suggesting that Pakistan’s top military officials were involved in a secret sale of equipment to North Korea that enabled it, years later, to begin enriching uranium.

The letter is said to have been written to Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani who built the world’s largest black market in nuclear weapons technology, by Jon Byong Ho, a North Korean whom American intelligence has long put at the center of the North’s trade in missile and nuclear technologies. It reports that the chief of the Pakistani Army at the time, Gen. Jehangir Karamat, had been paid $3 million and asked that “the agreed documents, components, etc.” be placed on a North Korean plane that was returning to Pyongyang, the North’s capital, after delivering missile parts to Pakistan.

The publication of the letter comes at a particularly inopportune moment for the Pakistani military. Already discredited inside Pakistan for its failure to detect the American commando raid that killed Osama bin Laden in May, the military has veered from crisis to crisis since then.  ….

Read more → THE NEW YORK TIMES

Where are the men who fight monsters?

by Wendy Johnson

“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146

As extra-judicial killings in Balochistan start to receive international attention, words like “serial killers” are finally appearing in the coverage. In “Pakistan’s secret dirty war,” Declan Walsh writes, “The stunning lack of interest in Pakistan’s greatest murder mystery in decades becomes more understandable, however, when it emerges that the prime suspect is not some shady gang of sadistic serial killers, but the country’s powerful military and its unaccountable intelligence men.” …

Read more: → crisisbalochistan.com

Anti-American Coup in Pakistan?

By Stanley Kurtz

The Washington Post and New York Times today feature above-the-fold front-page articles about the deteriorating situation in Pakistan. Both pieces are disturbing, the Times account more so because it explicitly raises the prospect of an anti-American “colonels coup” against Pakistan’s army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. With all the bad news coming out of this part of the world, and plenty of trouble here at home, it’s easy to ignore stories like this. Yet these two reports are among the most alarming and important we’ve seen in a long string of bad news from Pakistan and the Middle East.

Both articles make plain the extraordinary depth and breadth of anti-American sentiment among the commanders and the rank-and-file of Pakistan’s army. While America’s insistence on keeping the bin Laden raid secret, as well as our ability to pull it off without Pakistani interference, are the immediate causes of the anger, it’s obvious that a deeper anti-American sentiment as well as some level of sympathy for al-Qaeda are also at work.

Even now Pakistan’s army is forcing American operations out of the country. They have blocked the supply of food and water to our drone base, and are actively “strangling the alliance” by making things difficult for Americans in-country.

Unfortunately, it’s now time to at least begin thinking about what the United States should do in case of either an overt anti-American coup within Pakistan’s army, or in case Kayani himself is forced to effectively break relations. Although liberation from Pakistan’s double-game and reversion to honest hostility might come as a welcome relief to some, I see no good scenario here.

Should anti-American elements in Pakistan’s army displace Kayani, they would presumably hold our supply lines to Afghanistan hostage to a cessation of drone attacks. The step beyond that would be to cut off our Afghanistan supply lines altogether. Our minimum response to either of these moves would likely be a suspension of aid (on which Pakistan’s military is now dependent) and moves to provide India with technology that would give them major advantages over Pakistan. Pakistan may run eagerly into the arms of China at that point.

These developments would pose many further dangers and questions. Could we find new supply lines, and at what geo-strategic price? Should we strike terrorist refuges in Pakistan, perhaps clashing with Pakistan’s own forces as we do so? Would Pakistan actively join the Taliban to fight us in Afghanistan? In short, would the outcome of a break between America and Pakistan be war–whether low-level or outright?

There is no good or easy answer here. If there is any single spot it would be hardest for America to walk away from conflict, Pakistan is it. Bin Laden was not alone. Pakistan shelters our greatest terrorist enemies. An inability to strike them there would be intolerable, both in terms of the danger posed for terrorism here in the United States, and for the safety of our troops in Afghanistan.

Yet the fundamental problem remains Pakistan’s nuclear capacity, as well as the sympathy of many of its people with our enemies. Successful clashes with Pakistan’s military may only prompt sympathizers to hand nuclear material to al-Qaeda. The army is virtually the only thing holding Pakistan together. A military defeat and splintering of the army could bring an Islamist coup, or at least the fragmentation of the country, and consequent massive expansion of its lawless regions. These gloomy prospects probably explain why our defense officials keep counseling patience, even as the insults from Pakistan grow.

An important question here is just how Islamist the anti-American elements of Pakistan’s military now are. Is the current trouble primarily a matter of nationalist resentment at America’s killing of bin Laden, or is this a case of outright sympathy for al-Qaeda and the Taliban in much of the army?

The answer is probably a bit of both. The difficulty is that the precise balance may not matter that much. We’ve seen in Egypt that a secular the military is perfectly capable of striking up a cautious alliance with newly empowered Islamist forces. The same thing could happen in Pakistan in the advent of an anti-American military coup. Pakistan may not be ethnically Arab, but it’s continued deterioration may be the unhappy harbinger of the so-called Arab Spring’s outcome, I fear.

At any rate, it’s time to begin at least gaming out worst-case scenarios in Pakistan.

Courtesy:  National Review Online

Via Wichaar

CARTE BLANCHE: Horror, of which I am dying – Mehmal Sarfraz

Excerpt:

It would not be wrong to say that the military is holding our nation hostage to its vested interests. Our country’s survival is at stake but there seems to be no visible shift in the military’s posture. ….

…. There are many reasons why most people in Pakistan continue to live in denial but the main one is our security paradigm. For decades we have been fed lies by our military. The military has overtly and covertly supported terrorist networks. A large chunk of our budget goes to defence without anyone questioning our armed forces on where it is spent. Between loan repayments and the defence budget, hardly any money is left to be spent on education, healthcare, development, etc. India is made out to be enemy number one. To counter the ‘Indian threat’, we need the vile Taliban on our side in Afghanistan since they are our “strategic assets”; we nurture terrorist organisations like the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) to carry out militant jihad in Indian Kashmir and cross-border attacks inside India; we are soon going to be “the world’s fifth largest nuclear weapons power” as per some reports. Lest we forget, we have lost all official and unofficial wars against India (most of which, by the way, were started by Pakistan). An atomic bomb and stockpiles of nuclear weapons is no guarantee that we can win in the unlikely event of another war. The only reason why our military has kept this threat perception alive is because it is hard for them to part with the moolah that keeps coming their way and the power they wield over this country. It would not be wrong to say that the military is holding our nation hostage to its vested interests. Our country’s survival is at stake but there seems to be no visible shift in the military’s posture.

The Pakistan military’s double game in the war on terror was never a secret yet the US kept pouring in billions of dollars in military aid to secure our help in the war on terror. Young soldiers continue to sacrifice their lives in combat and terrorist attacks because of the flawed policies of the military establishment.

The day Osama bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad by the US, the world’s suspicions were confirmed. Our intelligence agencies claimed incompetence, but not many buy this excuse, given how bin Laden was living in such close proximity to the Pakistan Military Academy. The world turned on our military and intelligence agencies but our government chose to give them a clean chit. Mian Nawaz Sharif, for whatever reasons, was the only one who took a principled stance as far as civil-military relations were concerned but he found no takers in the current democratic set-up who stood by him. After decades our civilian leadership had a golden opportunity to take the military to task but in order to pursue their political interests, the government and its allies let them off scot-free.

The problem is that, however much we try to hide our flaws, the world is not blind. Our security establishment cannot keep on harbouring terrorists. It is time to wake up to the reality that we cannot go on like this forever because it is a sure-shot recipe for self-destruction.

Pakistan’s name has been tarnished by those who claim to be our ‘guardians’ and ‘protectors’. As Pakistanis, we must vow not to let anyone wreak havoc in the name of ‘strategic depth’. Victor Jara, a Chilean political activist and revolutionary poet, was arrested and taken to the Chile Stadium in September 1973 following a military coup. He wrote a poem — ‘Estadio Chile’ — which spoke of the horror in front of him. His words, though written in a different context, haunt me every time a terrorist attack takes place:

“How hard it is to sing,

When I must sing of horror.

Horror which I am living,

Horror which I am dying.”

Pakistanis are living and dying a horror of which we must all sing. Let’s stop this horror now. It may take years but we must break our silence and speak the truth for once.

To read complete article: Daily Times

via Wichaar

Another Osama-type action in Pak, if required: Obama

LONDON: US President Barack Obama would approve a new incursion into Pakistan if the United States found another leading militant there, he said in a BBC interview broadcast on Sunday.

US Navy SEALs killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks on US cities in 2001, in a raid on his fortified compound in Pakistan on May 2, ending a manhunt for the world’s most-wanted militant.

Asked if Obama would do the same again if the United States discovered another “high-value target” in Pakistan or another country, such as a senior al-Qaida member or Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar, he said he would “take the shot”.

“We are very respectful of the sovereignty of Pakistan. But we cannot allow someone who is actively planning to kill our people or our allies’ people, we can’t allow those kind of active plans to come to fruition without us taking some action,” Obama told the BBC.

“I had made no secret. I had said this when I was running for the presidency, that if I had a clear shot at bin Laden, that we’d take it.”  ….

Read more : The Times of India

More details : BBC urdu

Pakistan’s ISI spy service listed as terrorist group

– Guantánamo Bay files: Pakistan’s ISI spy service listed as terrorist group

Anyone linked to Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate should be treated like al-Qaida or Taliban, interrogators told

by Jason Burke

US authorities describe the main Pakistani intelligence service as a terrorist organisation in secret files obtained by the Guardian.

Recommendations to interrogators at Guantánamo Bay rank the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) alongside al-Qaida, Hamas and Hezbollah in Lebanon as threats. Being linked to any of these groups is an indication of terrorist or insurgent activity, the documents say. …

Read more : via Siasat.pk — guardian.co.uk

More details : BBC urdu

The gains by ISI / Pakistan seem to be too much to digest. A retired Brig is all praise for Kiyani.

Admiral Mullen’s Secret Deal

How the Pentagon Supervised Raymond Davis’ Release and How the CIA Took Its Revenge

By SHAUKAT QADIR

[Please note : The writer is a retired brigadier and a former president of the Islamabad Policy Research Institute.]

On February 23, at a beach resort, Gen Ashfaq Kiyani, Pakistan army’s chief assisted by a two star officer met with Admiral Mike Mullen, US Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, assisted by Gen. David Petraeus, and three other high ranking officials, to find a military-diplomatic solution to untangle this web that CIA operatives had spun around both governments. This has been a fairly consistent tradition. On every occasion when relations between Pakistan and the United States have soured (a not infrequent occurrence) the militaries have remained in contact and, invariably, have found a way forward.

The day after this meeting, a military officer posted at the US Embassy in Islamabad travelled to Lahore and met Davis in Kot Lakpat jail. Within 48 hours of this meeting, almost 50 individuals associated with the Tehreek-eTaliban Pakistan (TTP), including Pashtuns, Punjabis, and some foreigners (nationalities unknown, though one of them is said to be an Aryan) who had been in contact with Davis were arrested. Presumably, Davis ‘sang’, though probably to only a limited degree, on instructions.

Within the same period, a large number of Americans, estimated at between 30 to 45, who had been residing in rented accommodations (like Davis and his associates who had killed a motorcyclist while unsuccessfully attempting to rescue Davis) outside the Embassy/Consulate premises in Islamabad, Peshawar, Lahore, Karachi, and Quetta left for the US. It is safe to conclude that these were either CIA, Black ops, or associated personnel from security agencies like Xe.

The intelligence business is broadly divided into two categories: human intelligence, known as HUMINT and electronic intelligence, known as ELINT. The latter has numerous subdivisions: SIGINT (Signals intelligence, also known as COMINT; communication intelligence), Imagery intelligence etc. It appears, therefore, that the deal struck between the military leadership included a shut down of CIA’s HUMINT operations in Pakistan, retaining only ELINT, Davis would ‘sing’, within limits, of course, and only then could Blood Money be negotiated for his release. And the US would be bled in that final deal also so as to ensure the safety and the future of the immediate families of both Davis’s victims.

At the height of the debate on the question of Raymond Davis’ immunity from trial for murder, this writer emphasized that Pakistan could not release him without a trial. A trial took duly place and, in accordance with prevalent law in Pakistan, the next of kin of the deceased young men, pardoned Davis in return for ‘Blood Money’. However outlandish this law might seem to those peoples whose countries have their based on Anglo-Saxon principles, such is the law in Pakistan and so there was nothing underhand in what transpired.

Amongst analysts and journalists there were basically two opposing responses to his release, though there was (and is) an occasional sane voice to be heard, throughout the saga. One category of people had been arguing since Davis’ arrest that he should be granted immunity since Pakistan, given its precarious economy, weak government, and the prevalent security situation, could not afford to fall afoul of the US. For this factionhis release through the judicial system was the next best outcome of the disastrous mistake that had been committed in arresting him!

The opposing view was that it is time and more, that Pakistan asserts its sovereignty and national pride to ensure that Davis is awarded no less than his due: the death penalty. It is ironic that the bulk of those who held this view are all supporters of the imposition of Islamic laws including those on blasphemy, Blood Money (the law that ensured Davis’ pardon), and a host of other issues and, even after Davis’ release under these laws, any attempt to get rid of such laws would be opposed by them, tooth and nail.

While the accusations leveled by the prosecution that the families of Faizan and Faheem, the two men killed by Davis, were coerced into accepting the deal offered to them in exchange for their pardoning Davis, is a pack of nonsense, since the entire family was under the active protection of the Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, there is absolutely no doubt that the ISI (and, therefore, GHQ) assisted in brokering the deal. In fact, I would be very surprised if both families had not been continuously advised by fairly senior-level representatives of the ISI as to what and how much they should ask for. ….

Read more : Counterpunch

JSMM leader picked up: wife

HYDERABAD, Feb 25: A woman has appealed to the Chief Justice of Supreme Court and the Chief Justice Sindh High Court to take notice of the disappearance of her husband and help her to know his whereabouts.

She also sought assistance of international human rights organisations, nationalist leaders, writers and intellectuals in finding out where he was being kept and urged them to protest over his detention.

Saima Bhutto – wife of Muzaffar Bhutto, General Secretary of the Jeay Sindh Mutahedda Mahaz (JSMM) – has alleged that her husband was arrested by secret agencies at the New Saeedabad Toll Plaza when he was going to Hyderabad in his car on Thursday night.

She said at a press conference on Friday that her husband struggled for liberation of Sindh under the leadership of JSMM Chairman Shafi Mohammd Burfat. ….

Read more : DAWN
More » http://www.dawn.com/2011/02/26/jsmm-leader-picked-up-wife.html

U.S. officials: Raymond Davis, accused in Pakistan shootings, worked for CIA

By Greg Miller

The American who fatally shot two men in Pakistan last month and who has been described publicly as a diplomat is a security contractor for the CIA who was part of a secret agency team operating out of a safe house in Lahore, U.S. officials said. …

Read more : Washington Post

 

Shame of Britain’s Muslim schools: Secret filming shows pupils being beaten

– Shame of Britain’s Muslim schools: Secret filming shows pupils being beaten and ‘taught Hindus drink cow p***’

By Tazeen Ahmad

-Undercover footage shows pupils being taught religious apartheid, -Muslims who adopt Western ways will be ‘tortured in afterlife’ -Unprovoked beatings captured on camera in Yorkshire madrassa, -Boy threatened with bench by senior student left in charge of class

It is an assembly hall of the sort found in any ordinary school. Boys aged 11 and upwards sit cross-legged on the floor in straight rows. They face the front of the room and listen carefully. But this is no ordinary assembly. Holding the children’s attention is a man in Islamic dress wearing a skullcap and stroking his long dark beard as he talks. …

Read more: Mail Online

Pakistan’s nukes: How many are enough?

By Pervez Hoodbhoy

The latest news from America must have thrilled many: Pakistan probably has more nuclear weapons than India. A recent Washington Post article, quoting various nuclear experts, suggests that Pakistan is primed to “surge ahead in the production of nuclear-weapons material, putting it on a path to overtake Britain as the world’s fifth largest nuclear weapons power”.

Some may shrug off this report as alarmist anti-Pakistan propaganda, while others will question the accuracy of such claims. Indeed, given the highly secret nature of nuclear programmes everywhere, at best one can only make educated guesses on weapons and their materials. For Pakistan, it is well known that the Kahuta complex has been producing highly enriched uranium for a quarter century, and that there are two operational un-safeguarded plutonium-producing reactors at Khushab (with a third one under construction). Still, the exact amounts of bomb-grade material and weapons are closely held secrets.

But for argument’s sake, let’s assume that the claims made are correct. Indeed, let us suppose that Pakistan surpasses India in numbers – say by 50 per cent or even 100 per cent. Will that really make Pakistan more secure? Make it more capable of facing current existential challenges?

The answer is, no. Pakistan’s basic security problems lie within its borders: growing internal discord and militancy, a collapsing economy, and a belief among most citizens that the state cannot govern effectively. These are deep and serious problems that cannot be solved by more or better weapons. Therefore the way forward lies in building a sustainable and active democracy, an economy for peace rather than war, a federation in which provincial grievances can be effectively resolved, elimination of the feudal order and creating a tolerant society that respects the rule of law. …

Read more : THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE

Open secrets – Homosexuality in Pakistan!

In Pakistan, sex between men is strictly forbidden by law and religion. But even in the most conservative regions, it’s also embedded in the society.

By Miranda Kennedy

LAHORE — The first time Aziz, a lean, dark-haired 20-year-old in this bustling cultural capital, had sex with a man, he was a pretty, illiterate boy of 16. A family friend took him to his house, put on a Pakistani-made soft-porn video, and raped him. Now, says Aziz (who gives only his first name), he is “addicted” to sex with men, so he hangs around Lahore’s red-light districts, getting paid a few rupees for sex. At night, he goes home to his parents and prays to Allah to forgive him. …

Read more : The Boston Globe

Speech of Dr. Zafar Baloch (BHRC) to the conference on South Asia

The conference on South Asia was organized by International Center for Peace & Democracy (ICFPD) in collaboration with Baloch Human Rights Council (Canada). The conference took place at Hotel Radisson Toronto, Canada on December 11, 2010.

SOUTH ASIAN PERSPETIVE ON REGIONAL STABILITY THE ROLE OF THE STATE: DEMOCRACY, DICTATORSHIP, AND EXTREMISM

– ICFPD

Following is the speech delivered by Dr. Zafar Baloch, president of Baloch Human Rights council (Canada) in the conference.

HAARP!

Case of bogus science – By Pervez Hoodbhoy

COMSTECH is the Organisation of Islamic Countries’ highest scientific body. It has received millions of dollars from OIC countries, including Pakistan.

Comstech’s magnificent headquarters are located on Constitution Avenue in Islamabad. It has been headed by Dr Atta-ur-Rahman since 1996. Although its performance has been consistently mediocre, the organisation has now descended to an all-time low.

Recently Dr Rahman published an eye-popping article entitled HAARP (Dawn, Oct 17). The article claims that a physics research project, based in Alaska, may have been used by the US to trigger earthquakes globally, and could also have caused the catastrophic floods in Pakistan. Dr Rahman concludes with a chilling question: “Is the HAARP then, a harmless research tool — or a weapon of mass destruction far more lethal than nuclear weapons? We may never know.”

Given Dr Rahman’s prominent place in Pakistani science, and that he is fellow of the Royal Society, one must consider seriously his claim that HAARP can cause earthquakes and floods. But even the briefest examination makes clear his claims make no scientific sense.

HAARP stands for High Frequency Active Auroral Research Programme. Its website states it is a research programme run by the University of Alaska in collaboration with various US colleges and universities. If HAARP is a secret military project conceived by evil and diabolical minds, it is hard to see why visitors, including foreign nationals, are said to be allowed on site. The website says that the last open house was on July 17, 2010.

At least on the face of things, HAARP does not have the trappings of an American secret weapons facility. (Google Earth, which I used, blacks these out.) Readers will see a field of antennas, as well as some cars and two ordinary looking buildings.

No security barriers are visible. This does not appear to be a classified project.

But, of course, appearances can be deceptive. So let us simply use common sense and physics. Assume therefore that the power of the transmitters is many times that declared on the website (3.6MW). This may mean HAARP could potentially disrupt radio communications during war, or blind incoming missiles. But science cannot accept Dr Rahman’s claim that “It (HAARP) may also affect plate tectonics causing earthquakes, floods through torrential rains and trigger tsunamis.”

Does the good doctor believe in magic and demons? How else can massive tectonic plates be moved by radio waves? Will HAARP tickle a sleeping subterranean monster that awakes and sets off earthquakes? This kind of thinking was what irate and ignorant village mullahs used after the 2005 Pakistani earthquake. They blamed cable television, after which followers smashed thousands of television sets.

Weather change simply cannot be caused by HAARP’s radio waves. …

Read more : DAWN

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

London Review of Books – Can you give my son a job?

– Slavoj Žižek

The Party: The Secret World of China’s Communist Rulers by Richard McGregor ….
Khrushchev’s speech in 1956 denouncing Stalin’s crimes was a political act from which, as his biographer William Taubman put it, ‘the Soviet regime never fully recovered, and neither did he.’ Although it was plainly opportunistic, there was just as plainly more to it than that, a kind of reckless excess that cannot be accounted for in terms of political strategy. The speech so undermined the dogma of infallible leadership that the entire nomenklatura sank into temporary paralysis. A dozen or so delegates collapsed during the speech, and had to be carried out and given medical help; one of them, Boleslaw Bierut, the hardline general secretary of the Polish Communist Party, died of a heart attack. The model Stalinist writer Alexander Fadeyev actually shot himself a few days later. The point is not that they were ‘honest Communists’: most of them were brutal manipulators without any illusions about the Soviet regime. What broke down was their ‘objective’ illusion, the figure of the ‘big Other’ as a background against which they could exert their ruthlessness and drive for power. They had displaced their belief onto this Other, which, as it were, believed on their behalf. Now their proxy had disintegrated. ….
Read more : London Review of Books

Pakistan’s ugly secret – Pervez Hoodbhoy

There is a complete blackout on the effects of uranium mining in Dera Ismail Khan in south Punjab. Researchers too were defeated by the powerful nuclear establishment that keeps even health information as a national secret.

Sadly, absolutely nothing is known about disposal of nuclear waste in Pakistan. Are the authorities dumping low-level wastes in the sea or river? Where and how do they plan to bury the high-level wastes that will be lethal for thousands of years to come? Also, there is a complete blackout on the effects of uranium mining in Dera Ismail Khan in south Punjab. About 10 years ago, mine workers and other affected villagers had banded together after large numbers fell sick from lung disease and cancer. To the dismay of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, they managed to produce a petition for the Lahore High Court. But,as invariably happens, the powers that be forced them to withdraw their case and some token compensation was given. Researchers too were defeated by the powerful nuclear establishment that keeps even health information as a national secret.

There are, however, other aspects of Pakistan’s nuclear programme that I have focused upon earlier and bring up yet again:

Pakistan got nothing from The Bomb

About twelve years ago a million Pakistanis danced in the streets after six nuclear weapons had been successfully tested. They had been told that making nuclear bombs was the biggest thing a country could do. Burma is said to be trying to make a bomb and may succeed too, but surely the North Korean nuclear test gave rock-solid proof that we Pakistanis have been fed a diet of lies.

North Korea is a country that no one admires. It is unknown for scientific achievement, has little electricity or fuel, food and medicine are scarce, corruption is ubiquitous, and its people live in terribly humiliating conditions under a vicious, dynastic dictatorship. In a famine some years ago, North Korea lost nearly 800,000 people. And it has an enormous prison population of 200,000 that is subjected to systematic torture and abuse.

Why does a miserable, starving country continue spending its last penny on the Bomb? On developing and testing a fleet of missiles whose range increases from time to time? The answer is clear: North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missiles are instruments of blackmail rather than means of defence. Brandished threateningly, and manipulated from time to time, these bombs are designed to keep the flow of international aid going.

Surely the people of North Korea gained nothing from their country’s nuclearisation. But they cannot challenge their oppressors. But, Pakistanis — who are far freer — must ask: what have we gained from the bomb? …

Read more >> ViewPoint

Pakistan Aids Insurgency in Afghanistan, Reports Assert

By MARK MAZZETTI, JANE PERLEZ, ERIC SCHMITT and ANDREW W. LEHREN

Americans fighting the war in Afghanistan have long harbored strong suspicions that Pakistan’s military spy service has guided the Afghan insurgency with a hidden hand, even as Pakistan receives more than $1 billion a year from Washington for its help combating the militants, according to a trove of secret military field reports made public Sunday.

The documents, made available by an organization called WikiLeaks, suggest that Pakistan, an ostensible ally of the United States, allows representatives of its spy service to meet directly with the Taliban in secret strategy sessions to organize networks of militant groups that fight against American soldiers in Afghanistan, and even hatch plots to assassinate Afghan leaders. …

Read more >> The New York Times

Who is David Headley? —Naeem Tahir

– Daily Times

[Excerpt] …He was in contact with jihadi networks as well. He was booked for his involvement in the Denmark terror plan but escaped the death sentence, once again by the ‘plea bargain’ strategy. By then, he was totally in the hands of the secret agencies.

He was the major facilitator in the Mumbai attack. He provided maps, photographs, even GPS systems to the attackers. He visited Pakistan, Afghanistan and India several times. How were his trips funded? Did he use his half brother Danyal Gilani, the PRO to the prime minister, in any way? Was the CIA, FBI, IB or some other agency involved in planning the Mumbai carnage? Did they suppress the information for covert motives and let the attack happen? Such questions need answers.

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Courtesy:- http://dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20106\19\story_19-6-2010_pg3_3