Political Islam Fails Egypt’s Test

By ROGER COHEN

LONDON — Heba Morayef voted for Mohamed Morsi last year. The Muslim Brotherhood candidate was an unlikely choice for a liberal Egyptian woman, the director of the Human Rights Watch office in Cairo, but she loathed Hosni Mubarak’s old guard, wanted change and believed Morsi could be inclusive.

“I have been extremely conflicted this past week,” Morayef told me. “I don’t support the military or coups. But for me as a voter, Morsi betrayed the trust that pro-reform Egyptians placed in him. That is what brought 14 million people into the streets on June 30. It was not so much the incompetence as the familiar authoritarian agenda, the Brotherhood trying to solidify their control by all means.”

Morsi misread the Arab Spring. The uprising that ended decades of dictatorship and led to Egypt’s first free and fair presidential election last year was about the right to that vote. But at a deeper level it was about personal empowerment, a demand to join the modern world, and live in an open society under the rule of law rather than the rule of despotic whim.

In a Muslim nation, where close to 25 percent of Arabs live, it also demanded of political Islam that it reject religious authoritarianism, respect differences and uphold citizenship based on equal rights for all.

Instead, Morsi placed himself above judicial review last November, railroaded through a flawed Constitution, allowed Brotherhood thugs to beat up liberal opponents, installed cronies at the Information Ministry, increased blasphemy prosecutions, surrendered to a siege mentality, lost control of a crumbling economy and presided over growing sectarian violence. For the Brotherhood, the pre-eminent Islamist movement in the region, the sudden shift from hounded outlaw to power in the pivotal nation of the Arab world proved a bridge too far.

Read more » The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/05/opinion/global/political-islam-fails-egypts-test.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0

Pentagon successfully tests hypersonic flying bomb

By AFP

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon on Thursday held a successful test flight of a flying bomb that travels faster than the speed of sound and will give military planners the ability to strike targets anywhere in the world in less than a hour.

Launched by rocket from Hawaii at 1130 GMT, the “Advanced Hypersonic Weapon,” or AHW, glided through the upper atmosphere over the Pacific “at hypersonic speed” before hitting its target on the Kwajalein atoll in the Marshall Islands, a Pentagon statement said.

Kwajalein is about 2,500 miles (4,000 kilometers) southwest of Hawaii. The Pentagon did not say what top speeds were reached by the vehicle, which unlike a ballistic missile is maneuverable.

Scientists classify hypersonic speeds as those that exceed Mach 5 — or five times the speed of sound — 3,728 miles (6,000 kilometers) an hour. …

Read more » Google

Clinton: U.S. must put economics at center of foreign policy

By CNN Foreign Affairs Correspondent Jill Dougherty

(CNN) — The United States must position itself to lead in a world “where security is shaped in boardrooms and on trading floors — as well as on battlefields,” U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will say Friday in a major economics and foreign policy speech in New York.

Economic forces, Clinton will say, are transforming foreign policy realities around the globe.

“We have seen governments toppled by economic crisis,” a text of the Secretary’s remarks released by the State Department on the eve of the speech reads. “Revolutions born in a Tunisian marketplace have swept across an entire region. Europe faces its strongest test in a generation, thanks to recession and debt. And everywhere I travel, I see countries gaining influence not because of the size of their armies, but because of the growth of their economies.”

Clinton will say she is updating U.S. foreign policy priorities to include economics “every step of the way,” suggesting the United States should take a cue from the leaders of emerging powers like India and Brazil who put economics at the center of their foreign policies.

“When their leaders approach a foreign policy challenge — just as when they approach a domestic challenge — one of the first questions they ask is, ‘how will this affect our economic growth?'” the text of the speech says. “We need to be asking the same question — not because the answer will dictate our foreign policy choices, but because it must be a significant part of the equation.”

In the address before the Economic Club of New York, the fourth in a series of speeches Secretary Clinton is giving on economics and foreign policy, she will say the world’s “strategic and economic center of gravity is shifting east” and the United States is focusing more on the Asia-Pacific region.

“One of America’s great successes of the past century was to build a strong network of relationships and institutions across the Atlantic,” she says. “One of our great projects in this century will be to do the same across the Pacific.”

The United States should help other countries find economic solutions to strategic challenges, especially in the Middle East and North Africa, she says. “We need a sophisticated effort to integrate the region’s economies, promote investment and assist in economic modernization. The Arab political Awakening must also be an economic awakening.”

Clinton takes aim at Americans who would turn inward, arguing “you can’t call ‘time out’ in the global economy. Our competitors aren’t taking a time out, and neither can we.”

Increasingly, the United States is focusing on “tracking and thwarting” the financiers of terrorism, using sanctions and other economic tools to cut repressive regimes off from insurance, banking and shipping, Clinton says.

Finally, Clinton says, the United States is “modernizing (its) agenda on trade, investment and commercial diplomacy to deliver jobs and growth for the American people.”

But the United States cannot compete, she says, if it is frozen in domestic political fights.

“Washington has to end the culture of political brinksmanship — which, I can tell you, is raising questions around the world about our leadership.”

Courtesy: CNN

Meat of Dog & Donkey is being sold in Faisalabad, 2 arrested

Dog & Donkey’s Meat Sellers Arrested in Faisalabad

Health department arrested two butchers who were selling the meat of Donkey in Faisalabad.
DCO Naseem Sadiq launched a campaign against unhygienic meat in district due to gastric diseases in Chat 35-RB last week. Doctors told the diseases are increasing due to the sale of donkey and dog meat in district.
15 butchers were arrested in a raids of Health Depart who were selling unhygienic meat or water-fed meat. Two of them are behind the bars who admitted selling donkey meat. They were selling the meat much cheaper then the market rates.
More than 30 people admitted in different hospitals of area for vomiting and gastric symptoms after eating the meat. Lab attendant Mubashar told that people suffered because they were not used to such meat and when the samples of meat tested in lab, results came as the meat of dog or donkeys.
Two suppliers arrested who were supplying the meat of dog and donkey to meat sellers. Raid officers took more than 100 kilograms meat in the custody and destroyed the entire stock.
Livestock district officer Dr. Abdur Rehman told that the patients in Allied hospitals pointed two butchers who had been selling the donkey meat. When we started asking from patients we realized that most of the patients bought the meat from the two meat sellers. Upon investigation it was discovered that they were selling dog and donkey meat.

Courtesy: via → SIASAT.COM : → PakistaniScandals

The establishment’s twelfth man – Dr Mohammad Taqi

Excerpt:

The fact remains that Imran Khan has always been the establishment’s twelfth man — called upon to field as needed. He claims that the establishment cannot buy him, but do they need to? He has always volunteered for them and it is no different this time.

The citizens of Hayatabad, Peshawar, have finally breathed a sigh of relief after the two-day long sit-in organised by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) has ended. Whether NATO supplies were halted because of this so-called protest remains moot, but life in one of Peshawar’s largest residential districts was certainly brought to a grinding halt by the chapli kabab-fed 5,000 people herded from outside the city by the PTI and various sectarian and religio-political parties allied with it. The idea, ostensibly, was to block one of the delivery routes through which the NATO forces in Afghanistan are supplied, thus forcing the US to halt its drone attacks. ….

…. To this end the deep state is trying to stir up hysteria against the US, through Imran Khan and his ilk and, in the process, build pressure on the PPP and ANP et al to fall in line as well. By letting the twelfth man warm up now, the establishment wants to elbow out Mian Nawaz Sharif — whom they mistrust deeply — as potentially the next premier. They know that a savvy politician like Mian sahib may actually play ball with the US, against their diktat.

While milking the Saudis for funds, and allowing mercenaries to be recruited for the Gulf, the establishment is getting its domestic ducks in a row, in preparation for a showdown with the US over its Af-Pak endgame. What can serve them better in this than a conglomerate of the martial law’s perennial B team like the Jamaat-e-Islami, pro-jihadists like Sami-ul-Haq and assorted opportunists? The twelfth man has always hoped that the establishment will grant him the political test cap one day. His hypocrisy may actually earn him the captaincy of the junta’s ‘B’ team this time.

To read complete article : DailyTimes.com.pk

Interesting and true comments of Najam Sethi on Imran Khan’s politics

The language of the program is urdu (Hindi).

Courtesy: GEO TV (Apas ki baat with Najam Sethi and Muneeb Farooq – 26th April 2011)

via ZemTV, You Tube

A Test For Independent Judiciary

Government Judiciary Row-II, Reopening of Bhutto Case, a Test For Independent Judiciary; Presidential Reference May Become a Source of Political Re-alignments

By Aijaz Ahmed

The president’s move to submit a reference for reopening of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto case at Supreme Court under Article 186 of the Constitution of Pakistan has sparked a new debate and certain questions have been raised including a million dollar question that where will Punjab stand? Undoubtedly, the move is a clever one, and will serve the government and the Peoples Party in many ways. One aspect of the reference is seen as an effort to mend fences with the higher judiciary as in the reference, president has shown his full confidence in the Supreme Court. Secondly it will on one hand give the higher court an opportunity to correct a historic mistake and on the other hand it will force the judiciary to admit blunders committed by judiciary itself exposing the nature and extent of injustice even at the highest judicial level. The favorable decision will also help in bringing the pro dictatorship elements in the establishment under scrutiny that have been in connivance with judiciary and civil bureaucracy against democratic leadership.

In case the present judiciary fails to correct a historic injustice to Bhutto family and the PPP, the onus will be shifted to the judiciary and the anti judiciary elements in smaller provinces particularly in Sindh will justify their sentiments, said a PPP insider, adding that: ‘we always remain victim of the establishment-judiciary nexus and this is the time for both to taste some hot waters. If the historic mistake was not corrected now, the reputation of the present independent judiciary will wither away and that will be more dangerous to the already fragile federation’. …

Read more : Indus Herald

The “real” reason behind India’s victory : Model Poonam Panday had promised that “she bare-all if India wins”

Model Poonam Pandey to bare all if India wins WC

After Paraguay model Larissa Riquelme, who promised to run naked through the streets if Paraguay won the football World Cup, an Indian model plans to do something alike if India beats Pakistan and goes on to win cricket’s showpiece event.

Cricket-crazy model Poonam Pandey says she will bare-all if the Indian team wins Wednesday’s semi-final against the neighbours at Mohali.

According to reports, the city-based model, has decided to go nude in front of the entire stadium if India ends up winning the World Cup.

Claiming she is just trying to motivate the Men in Blue, Pandey said she even won’t mind giving the team a private show in the dressing room if they win. …

Read more : Rediff.com

Virginity test for Meera

Meera opposes medical examination move

LAHORE: Counsel for Meera on Wednesday told a court hearing in her suit for jactication of alleged marriage with Attiqur Rehman that his application for her medical examination was meant to humiliate her and should be rejected.

Rehman in his application had asked the court to order her medical examination, in order to determine whether she was a virgin. Meera has said that the nikahnama presented by Rehman is a …

Read more : The Express Tribune