[Dawn] AS the security situation worsens, the law-enforcement agencies have come under tremendous pressure to not just bring matters under control but also to make arrests. The triumph displayed by the Balochistan police on Wednesday, therefore, was understandable. The pride with which 11 individuals, who, the police say, confessed that they had been involved in planting bombs and triggering blasts, were paraded before news crews and cameras was obvious. According to the Quetta police chief, the enforcers of the law received a tip-off about a militant outfit, the United Baloch Army. Resultantly, a raid was conducted and when the bullets stopped flying, it was found that the militants had escaped, leaving these individuals behind. The police arrested them, and obtained from them accounts of being used to plant and trigger explosives at various locations.
What's missing from this stellar tale is what the police already know, but that has been given no consideration by either them or the media: these are children, aged between 10 and 17 years and come from poor backgrounds. They are "used by members of the outlawed organisation for their nefarious designs". And, this being so, they deserved to be treated as children. In these circumstances, they should be seen as having been recovered by the police from the militants' clutches. It seems these minors have been treated as cannon fodder by militants and law enforcers alike. Where one lured them towards a life of crime, the other clapped them in chains to stand in the media spotlight.
It is a measure of how state and society have themselves been brutalised in the face of brutality. Branded as murderers before a trial has been conducted, the hanging heads of these 11 children constitute a reminder of how callous a place Pakistan has become.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/16/2013 00:00 ||
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[Dawn] THE brutal slaying of Orangi Pilot Project director Perween Rahman in Karachi on Wednesday comes as a shock, despite the fact that as a nation we have become inured to violence. She was a brave, committed woman who worked for the uplift of the poor and marginalised. For three decades, Ms Rahman worked in a challenging environment in a part of Karachi that suffers from frequent breakdowns of law and order. She worked for the benefit of those the state was unable -- or unwilling -- to help. The OPP has developed sewage and sanitation systems for the vast settlement as well as undertaken health, education and economic uplift projects for the community on a self-help basis. The brainchild of the late Akhtar Hameed Khan, the OPP has won national and global acclaim.
Those close to Ms Rahman say she had been receiving death threats from the land mafia, while police claimed a Taliban 'commander' had been involved in her slaying. The OPP director had been documenting cases of land grabbing on Karachi's fringes, and anti-encroachment activists have been targeted in the past. All angles must be probed and the police cannot simply wash their hands of the investigation by blaming the killing on religious extremists. In Karachi, crime, land grabbing and dirty politics complement each other while religious militancy adds further potency to this toxic mix. Hence it is difficult to pinpoint a motive in such cases.
Ms Rahman's killing represents a disturbing trend where those who attempt to bring positive change to society are targeted. Last month Dr Ali Haider, a leading eye specialist of Lahore, was killed in a sectarian attack along with his son. The doctor also regularly provided free medical care to needy patients. Across Pakistan aid workers have been attacked, polio teams have been hunted down and teachers have been killed due to a variety of reasons, including religious and nationalist militancy.
What is equally disturbing is that women -- and children -- who were previously not targeted by militants are now considered fair game. The state and society have both failed to unequivocally condemn these deadly trends and work towards uprooting the forces responsible for spreading such violence. Meanwhile political parties are too busy politicking to raise their voices against the targeting of socially active individuals. Hence the question for us all to ponder is: what will become of a society that, for the most part, sits quietly as its messiahs are systematically wiped out?
Posted by: Fred ||
03/16/2013 00:00 ||
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#1
I expect St. Pete cuts all kinda slack for Social Workers from Karachi. No snark included.
When President Obama gets to Jerusalem next week, one of the signals to listen for is an indication of what country he thinks hes in. Normally this is clear when the President any president goes to the capital of a foreign country. Hes in whatever country the capital is capital of. But Mr. Obama has been refusing to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Not only that, but he has been refusing to admit that Jerusalem is even in Israel.
Mr. Obama feels so strongly about the matter that even as he travels to a Jerusalem his lawyers will be preparing to argue in court against a law that would require his state department to acknowledge that Jerusalem is in Israel. The case is in court because of a lawsuit brought by an American infant, Binyamin Zivotofsky, who was born in Jerusalem in 2002. Shortly before he was born, Congress passed a law giving any American born at Jerusalem the right to request and be issued a passport and other documents listing his birthplace as Israel.
Master Zivotofsky made just such a request. It was filed by his parents. The law under which it was filed had passed the Congress by a huge, bipartisan vote (the Senate was unanimous). But President Obama is refusing to obey the law. He is not alone in this. President George W. Bush before him had issued, when he signed the measure, a statement saying that it encroached on his powers. At first the courts ruled that it was a political matter. But eventually the Supreme Court stepped in and ordered a lower court to resolve the matter. The hearing there is about to begin.
The question before the court is not whether Jerusalem is or is not within Israel. It is rather whether the Congress of the United States has the authority under the Constitution to set the wording of American passports. The Supreme Court ruled that the courts had to decide after Justice Sotomoyar, in a canny question, asked what would happen if a number of countries threatened war over the wording of the passport. It turns out to be to the Congress and not to the president that the Constitution delegates the power to declare war in the first place.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
03/16/2013 16:52 Comments ||
Top||
#4
After the unexpectedly heavy rainstorm breached the waste burm at the feedlot, the newly carpeted and rennovated office was left in a complete state of palestine.
The world's a BIG place and humans simply Don't have the power, all the whining about OIL'S CAUSING THE CHANGE, can now piss off.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
03/16/2013 9:28 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Between that bright ball in the sky, tectonics, and the occasional belches of mother earth [Krakatoa, Toba, Yellowstone, etc], man is indeed very insignificant in climate change. However, man has proven himself to be very adaptable since the last ice age, now occupying terrain and environments that stretch from the arctic circle to the equator, from high mountains to deserts, from lush broad savannah to isolated islands in the vast Pacific. Whether cognizant or not, man has practiced 'adapt or perish' long before Darwin's observation. The only environments we should be concerned with manipulating are those on other planets to avoid being stuck on only one when the next KT event strikes.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Dawn] AS the security situation worsens, the law-enforcement agencies have come under tremendous pressure to not just bring matters under control but also to make arrests. The triumph displayed by the Balochistan police on Wednesday, therefore, was understandable. The pride with which 11 individuals, who, the police say, confessed that they had been involved in planting bombs and triggering blasts, were paraded before news crews and cameras was obvious. According to the Quetta police chief, the enforcers of the law received a tip-off about a militant outfit, the United Baloch Army. Resultantly, a raid was conducted and when the bullets stopped flying, it was found that the militants had escaped, leaving these individuals behind. The police arrested them, and obtained from them accounts of being used to plant and trigger explosives at various locations.
[Dawn] THE brutal slaying of Orangi Pilot Project director Perween Rahman in Karachi on Wednesday comes as a shock, despite the fact that as a nation we have become inured to violence. She was a brave, committed woman who worked for the uplift of the poor and marginalised. For three decades, Ms Rahman worked in a challenging environment in a part of Karachi that suffers from frequent breakdowns of law and order. She worked for the benefit of those the state was unable -- or unwilling -- to help. The OPP has developed sewage and sanitation systems for the vast settlement as well as undertaken health, education and economic uplift projects for the community on a self-help basis. The brainchild of the late Akhtar Hameed Khan, the OPP has won national and global acclaim.
