[DAWN] A STRONGLY worded letter leaked to the media from Afghanistan's Caped PresidentAshraf Ghani ...former chancellor of Kabul University, now president of Afghanistan. Before returning to Afghanistan in 2002 he was a scholar of political science and anthropology. He worked at the World Bank working on international development assistance. As Finance Minister of Afghanistan between July 2002 and December 2004, he led Afghanistan's attempted economic recovery until the Karzais stole all the money. .. to Pak civil and military authorities suggests that all is far from well in Pak-Afghan ties -- just when there had been public indications that the long-fraught relationship was veering towards pragmatic improvement. From the contents of the letter reported in the media so far, it appears that Mr Ghani has wilted under twin pressures: from the Afghan Taliban's so-called spring offensive, the intensity of which has been unprecedented this year, and from domestic political opposition, which has stridently criticised Mr Ghani's attempted outreach towards Pakistain. But the fresh tension is not one-sided. In a meeting at the ISI headquarters late last week, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif ... served two non-consecutive terms as prime minister, heads the Pakistain Moslem League (Nawaz). Noted for his spectacular corruption, the 1998 Pak nuclear test, border war with India, and for being tossed by General Musharraf... and army chief Gen Raheel Sharif are reported to have discussed the role that the National Directorate of Security ...the Afghan national intel agency... , the Afghan intelligence agency, may be playing inside Pakistain, and there have been suggestions since that some of the violence inside the country in recent times may be linked to an India-Afghan combine against Pakistain.
It certainly appears to be a rapid decline from what was a high point just weeks earlier with Prime Minister Sharif condemning the Afghan Taliban's spring offensive while in Kabul ...the capital of Afghanistan. Home to continuous fighting from 1992 to 1996 between the forces of would-be strongman and Pak ISI/Jamaat-e-Islami sock puppet Gulbuddin Hekmayar and the Northern Alliance, a period which won Hek the title Most Evil Man in the World and didn't do much for the reputations of the Northern Alliance guys either.... and the ISI and NDS reportedly having inked a historic agreement to improve cooperation and intelligence-sharing. But perhaps it is a part of the multi-tiered signalling that both sides have long used, cooperating in some areas and falling out in others. Consider that the principal longer-term goal -- reconciliation between the Afghan government and the Afghan Taliban -- has not been disrupted, with a meeting between the two sides believed to have been held recently in China, a meeting facilitated and attended by Pak military officials, again according to news reports. The key, then, as ever, appears to be the careful management of tensions and to keep the various strands of the relationship as separate from each other as possible.
The Afghan government's anger at Pakistain over the Taliban spring offensive is hyperbolic -- the Afghan National Security Forces have had years to prepare for this first summer of fighting where they are front and centre, and not foreign troops, while it is more than improbable that a great majority of the recent attacks originate in Pakistain itself. Similarly, Pak authorities are far too quick to blame some sanctuaries and intrusion from the Afghan side of the border for inadequacies in the counterterrorism and counter-insurgency strategy here. The truth is, for all Pakistain's and Afghanistan's squabbling, the fate of the countries and their people remains intertwined. Both states know that, even as they struggle to overcome decades-old suspicions and, in some case, hostilities. But try they must -- and the immediate goal should be to put an end to public bickering and, instead, return to quieter, less public channels of communication.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/02/2015 00:00 ||
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h/t Instapundit
Germany's economy dominates the EU, but if demography is destiny--and it is--then, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard argues in the Telegraph, Germany is doomed. I had not realized that the numbers are so grim:
Germany's birth rate has collapsed to the lowest level in the world and its workforce will start plunging at a faster rate than Japan's by the early 2020s, seriously threatening the long-term viability of Europe's leading economy. ...
The German government expects the population to shrink from 81m to 67m by 2060... And that despite the Turks ....and Russian immigrants.
#3
The demographic projections of Paul Ehrlich in his '68 book said we'd all be starving now.
In The Population Bomb's opening lines the authors state that nothing can prevent famines in which hundreds of millions of people will die during the 1970s (amended to 1970s and 80s in later editions), and that there would be "a substantial increase in the world death rate." Although many lives could be saved through dramatic action, it was already too late to prevent a substantial increase in the global death rate. However, in reality the global death rate has continued to decline substantially since then, from 13/1000 in 1965–74 to 10/1000 from 1985–1990. Meanwhile the population of the world has more than doubled, while calories consumed/person have increased 24%.
Posted by: Matt ||
06/02/2015 10:59 Comments ||
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#6
The demographic projections of Paul Ehrlich
I forget the year, but didn't Paul Ehrlich win the Nobel Prize for Being Wrong About Everything?
The Club of Rome report came out about the time of The Population Bomb. Not just gloom and doom, but actual computer models 'proving' we were totally boned.
[DAWN] In spite of an increase in the education budget, there are more than 7,000 multi-grade (from class 1 to 5), single room schools with just a single teacher in Balochistan ...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it... . These schools have no boundary walls and no such thing as individual attention or security.
The coalition government had allocated 24 per cent of the budget during the financial year 2014-15.
However, some people are alive only because it's illegal to kill them... adviser to the Balochistan chief minister on education, Sardar Raza Muhammad Bareech, says more than 75 per cent of the budget was spent on salaries etc., whereas, only 25 per cent budget was spent on development of the education sector.
The number of government-run primary, middle and high schools has reached around 13,000 with 1.3 million female and male students across the province, lagging behind other provinces in terms of key social indicators.
"Despite the government's recent movement against out of school children, there are still 1.7 million children who are out of school at the moment," Sardar Bareech informed an all parties conferences organised by Institute of Social and Policy Sciences in Quetta.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/02/2015 00:00 ||
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[DAWN] THE ugly episode in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa ... formerly NWFP, still Terrorism Central... town of Pabbi on Sunday -- and its aftermath -- illustrates that despite the claims by some quarters that a new political culture is being forged in Pakistain, in many respects the vindictive ways of old refuse to go away.
Though there are claims and counter-claims about what exactly transpired, this much is clear: Habibullah, a teenaged PTI supporter, was rubbed out as hundreds of the party's activists staged a victory march after Saturday's LG polls, and headed towards the local ANP office in Pabbi.
Eyewitnesses say some of the marchers were indulging in celebratory gunfire. The victim's father at first alleged that ANP secretary general Mian Iftikhar Hussain -- who was inside the party office when the PTI crowd arrived -- ordered his guard to open fire on the marchers.
The senior ANP leader has denied this, saying the mob was baying for his blood and that he had to be whisked away to safety by army officers.
Mr Hussain was locked away You have the right to remain silent... and produced in court on Monday. While Imran Khan ... aka Taliban Khan, who who convinced himself that playing cricket qualified him to lead a nuclear-armed nation with severe personality problems... says the PTI has nothing to do with the arrest and that this is purely a police matter, a further twist emerged yesterday when the victim's father told the court that he had been "pressured" to register a case against Mian Iftikhar Hussain.
No doubt, due process has to be followed and the killers of the teenager must face the law.
Yet there is a strong perception that Mr Hussain is being victimised on political grounds. While the political stature of the accused must not colour the investigation, it is a fact that the ANP leader is a politician of repute and has openly spoken out against violence and extremism.
His own son was killed by myrmidons. It must be revealed who put pressure on the victim's father to implicate the ANP leader. The possibility that Habibullah fell victim to celebratory gunfire must also be considered by the law enforcers.
Above all, the investigation must be free from political pressure. Political parties have condemned the arrest of Mr Hussain and the way in which he was led away. If it is proved that the big shot was implicated in the case to settle political scores, it would be an unhealthy precedent.
The PTI has itself complained of being a target of political victimisation in other provinces. It would be a shame if it is itself now resorting to such tactics in the province it rules.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/02/2015 00:00 ||
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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] THE ugly episode in the 
