[AsiaTimes] The risk is that the unproductive, unskilled and unemployable portions of the industrial world's people will decide to vote themselves rich. Their leaders encourage this by focusing on income inequality.
#1
Iff isolationist Brazil per se is intended to be the leader or principal of BRIC + any future OWG SAU = South American Union + related, looks like high-profile happy Christina + Argentina want to steal Brasilia's globalist thunder???
Unlike VLAD-VS-OBAMA, however, I don't think it will proper for Christina to take off her top like Vlad + try to impose her Jedi will over wily Siberian cranes.
[DAWN] ONCE upon a time, four wise men met with recalcitrant TTP leaders. Impressed by the merit of their arguments, convincing mannerisms and generosity of the state to let bygones be bygones, the cruel resolve of hardened forces of Evil melted away and they suddenly saw the light.
They returned to the fold of civilised society, swore allegiance to the Constitution and the state's writ, surrendered their weapons, released hostages, repented of the killing of innocent civilians and agreed to work with community leaders and state officials to rebuild war-tattered Fata.
In response the state announced an amnesty scheme for everyone who admitted past wrongdoing and repented. It amended Article 247 of the Constitution to mainstream Fata and extended rights enjoyed by ordinary Paks to rustics as well. Its team of leaders, legal experts and scholars devised indigenous local government and criminal justice systems for Fata within the framework of the Constitution, Sharia and tribal riwaaj. Fata emerged as the Switzerland
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02/04/2014 00:00 ||
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[DAWN] SOMETIMES, everything is exposed in a single choice. The outlawed TTP's nominees for the team that will negotiate with the government four-member committee on behalf of the Pak Taliban is terribly revealing -- about the nominees and how they are viewed, and not necessarily by the TTP itself. Here, in short terms, are the five nominees: PTI, JI, JUI-F, Lal Masjid, Father of the Taliban. That the religious right in Pakistain has more in common with turban ideologies than the democratic and constitutional values that Pakistain is meant to be rooted in is an old open secret. Abdul Aziz of Lal Masjid notoriety and Samiul Haq ...the Godfather of the Taliban, leader of his own faction of the JUI. Known as Mullah Sandwich for his habit of having two young boys at a time... , long dubbed the 'father of the Taliban', do not even attempt to hide with which side their sympathies lie. But Imran Khan ... aka Taliban Khan, who who convinced himself that playing cricket qualified him to lead a nuclear-armed nation with severe personality problems... ?
When dubbed Taliban Khan by sections of the media and public, the PTI and Mr Khan hit back claiming that they were thoroughly misunderstood and that they are very much committed to being part of mainstream Pakistain. But if the TTP themselves see Imran Khan as a negotiator on their behalf? At least, the PTI chief has acted quickly to turn down the Taliban nomination and in doing so has deliberately tried to put some -- though perhaps not enough -- distance between his party and the TTP. Yet, that still leaves a fundamental question about the direction the negotiations will take once they begin in earnest. If on the government side, there is already a PTI negotiator and the TTP want to include the PTI chief on their team, then just how much will the state bargain away in some desperate notion of a limited and perhaps only temporary peace?
The problem of course is not limited to the PTI. The PML-N federal government has at virtually every step so far seemingly played into the hands of the TTP. Even now, there are no explicit red lines or timelines laid down by the government. When key government representatives like the interior minister argue that there are some demands of the TTP that can be considered, which demands precisely is he referring to? The TTP's list of ultimate demands is very clear and straightforward: no democracy, no constitutionally guaranteed rights, just a particular, extremely intolerant version of religion that has to be implemented in totality. While an elected government has the right to pursue its own vision and policy, does that mean it can also bargain away the very foundations of the state? And whatever confusion there is in the politicianship and the public on the lam about what the Taliban ultimately stand for, the history of electoral politics has indicated that Paks always choose moderate and centrist politics when they are allowed to vote relatively freely. Can this government really reject the collective weight of history and the voice of the people?
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02/04/2014 00:00 ||
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[DAWN] SINCE the killing of Chaudhry Aslam, there's been growing alarm about the onslaught against Bloody Karachi ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... 's coppers. The number of officers killed on the job has been steadily increasing each year, from 41 in 2009 to more than 160 in 2013.
The renewed interest in this trend is primarily a manifestation of fears about the outlawed Talibanisation of Pakistain, with each cop killing being viewed as a step further in the Pak Taliban's encroachment of Karachi. But the violence against coppers, and the official and public response to it, has far greater implications for Pakistain's future than in the context of the fight against the Taliban.
The killing of police is hardly a new issue in Karachi, a city in which officers who do their duty, and those who don't, are equally under threat of violence. When the police stay within their jurisdiction and perform their role as law-enforcers, they become the target of reprisal attacks by the groups they pursue. For example, Aslam made it to the Taliban's hit list for capturing and killing numerous hard boys. Similarly, dozens of coppers involved in Operation Clean-Up in the early 1990s have been kidnapped or killed over the years.
Ironically, the police's failure to enforce the law also leads to the targeting of officers. Karachi is a savage city, the battleground of various violent actors, including political parties, criminal gangs, hard boy groups and extortionists. The police are yet another violent actor in this embattled landscape: they too are armed, and they too compete for the same resources that criminal elements do -- the proceeds from smuggling, prostitution, extortion, and land grabs.
The competition for these resources is brutal, and coppers can be killed alongside gangsters and smugglers for taking too much of their share or trespassing on a rival's turf or takings.
Much has been written about how the police need to be made less corrupt and apolitical, not only to improve law-enforcement but also, it increasingly seems, for the sake of their own safety. But the security of coppers also has broader relevance for law and order in the city, and Pakistain.
It is troubling that the government has failed to respond to this violence by providing the police with more recruits, training, better equipment and support from paramilitary and military forces, when needed. Rather than reinvigorate the police, the state's response is often to replace them: think of the Rangers carrying out special operations in Karachi or the Frontier Corps reigning 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...
Even in Swat, where the army was meant to hand over security to local police, it's instead establishing a cantonment to make its presence permanent and pervasive.
The police force's growing inability to protect itself, and the state's instinct to replace rather than reform, risk making the institution redundant. As it is, many officers in Karachi are refusing to show up for duty, while others stay sequestered in thanas, scared of what might befall them if they play an active role.
The gradual withdrawal of the police from the urban landscape will only exacerbate existing problems, not least, it will allow violent groups to proliferate and operate unchecked. Even more than it is today, Karachi will become a city of enclaves, each guarded by a private militia, each primed to fight its neighbours. And in a fast urbanising Pakistain, other cities may start to face similar challenges in the absence of strong policing.
The retreat of the police from its traditional law-enforcing role will also result in the expansion of the military's role in domestic law-enforcement. We have already seen this cycle play out in Balochistan, and also witnessed its grave consequences.
Militaries, even when they operate in a domestic context, continue to tout the mantra of national security to avoid transparency and accountability. They also impose security from the top down as a self-serving entitlement, rather than a service to the public. But the domestic need for policing has little to do with securing the nation -- it's about maintaining order from the bottom up, community by community.
The difference between the army and the police is the difference between orders and negotiations, protocol and understanding, big picture and hyper local, absolute means and arbitration. Communities need policing, not securing, to function and endure.
Moreover, a growing military role in domestic law and order would enable the army to hold on to power and large budgets at a time when the institution should be scaling back to create more space for civilian governments. Ensuring that the police feel safe enough to do their jobs is essential for Pakistain's democratic trajectory.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/04/2014 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.
