[DAWN] WHEN the Pakistain Tehrik-e-Insaf ...a political party in Pakistan. PTI was founded by former Pakistani cricket captain and philanthropist Imran Khan. The party's slogan is Justice, Humanity and Self Esteem, each of which is open to widely divergent interpretations.... (PTI) wrested away power from the Awami National Party (ANP) in KP in general elections last year, it had been hoped that the politics of expediency would give way to good governance and clear policies in the province. However, it's easy to be generous with someone else's money... at least with regard to the menace of terrorism, the hopes of the citizens seem to have been misplaced.
The PTI, for all its rhetoric, has remained slow in tackling the issue of terrorism, or in even devising a coherent policy to effectively neutralise internal threats. Conversely, the Pak Taliban have increased their attacks on coppers, the military, successfully carried out a brazen jail-break, and increased activities that entail extortion, threats and intimidation in order to frighten the populace into submission.
In fact, the law and order situation is perhaps worse than what it was under previous governments, with forces of Evil turning their sights on settled areas, violence returning to parts of Swat, and attacks on political workers and officials continuing unabated.
Despite this, it appears the PTI believes that peace can only be restored through the process of dialogue, by which the 'non-threatening' Death Eater groups can be separated and isolated from those hell-bent on destroying the Pak state. Once separated, the remaining Death Eater groups can be engaged through military force, if need be.
However, the difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits... this policy in and of itself appears flawed. For example, although separating certain non-threatening Death Eater groups from the rest may be strategically wise, once the other groups are dealt with, what shall be the fate of those pardoned outfits who also seek enforcement of the Sharia in one form or the other?
The said process of negotiating and separating certain groups from others appears more of an act of appeasement than an actual counterterrorism strategy.
Ironically, the PTI strategy appears to be eerily in consonance with the much criticised perceived policy of the PML-N to isolate groups that it deems are not presently posing a threat to Punjab from those that it feels cannot be 'controlled'.
Although the PTI has censured the PML-N for such actions in Punjab, it seems to want to emulate the same policy at a national level in relation to the Taliban.
Even if we were to take the PTI stance at face value, it doesn't cater for a situation in which no single group is willing to engage in any dialogue with the government. Despite its recent talks 'offer' after the Bannu incident, the TTP has made it clear that they do not wish to engage in any unconditional talks with the Pakistain government. In fact, the very selection of Mullah Fazlullah ...son-in-law of holy man Sufi Mohammad. Known as Mullah FM, Fazlullah had the habit of grabbing his FM mike when the mood struck him and bellowing forth sermons. Sufi suckered the Pak govt into imposing Shariah on the Swat Valley and then stepped aside whilst Fazlullah and his Talibs imposed a reign of terror on the populace like they hadn't seen before, at least not for a thousand years or so. For some reason the Pak intel services were never able to locate his transmitter, much less bomb it. After ruling the place like a conquered province for a year or so, Fazlullah's Talibs began gobbling up more territory as they pushed toward Islamabad, at which point as a matter of self-preservation the Mighty Pak Army threw them out and chased them into Afghanistan... as its head should have been seen as an alarming indicator of this.
When confronted with such a situation where there appears to be only one party sitting at the negotiating table, the PTI appears dumbfounded. With no solution in sight, the party, rather than offering a way forward, resorts to blasting the US for sabotaging the grinding of the peace processor by killing Hakeemullah Mehsud. Interestingly enough, there is little or scarce evidence that Hakeemullah Mehsud was in fact serious about any negotiations with the Pakistain government.
Although certain initial statements of his did indicate a willingness to engage in dialogue, what the PTI seems to forget is that such dialogue had been subjected to various alarming preconditions, such as the withdrawal of forces from Fata, the cessation of hostilities vis-à-vis the Taliban, the ending of drone attacks, and the release of all Taliban prisoners.
In fact, the logical derivative of the argument of the PTI would be that in a situation where it is next to impossible to identify and separate those Death Eater groups amenable to peace, the practical alternative would be to take on those identifiable groups that are clearly and openly fighting against the state.
However, there's no worse danger than telling a mother her baby is ugly... the PTI does not seem to have the stomach to actually declare war on elements that have literally spurned those who offered peace and attacked them in return. In fact, they can barely even name them, perhaps in part due to the fear of reprisals by the Taliban against the PTI's workers.
All in all, the PTI seems unable to chart a course of action in the face of a foreseeable dead-end on the road to peace. It is this inability in relation to the issue of terrorism that appears to render the PTI a rudderless ship unable to show even a glimmer of hope to a nation desperately seeking a leader of credibility.
Although many in the PTI would severely disagree with this assessment, it is undeniable that a party which cannot even name its enemy is an unlikely candidate to deliver peace to a nation that is unable at the moment to differentiate between friend and foe.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/22/2014 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
#1
Tongue firmly in-cheek, says both(All) sides in every matter, and thus says nothing.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
01/22/2014 22:08 Comments ||
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#1
It could be in the middle of eating all of our young, crashing the economy and causing global warming and still the socialist-progressive dhimocrats won't stop fighting for it.
#3
Meg is one of the most adroitly astute observers of the Obama Care March of Folly. She is spot on with every business and economic failing of this train wreck; however she misleads the politics. The Epic Fail Express will continue to roll down the tracks because no sane engineer is here to seize the throttle.
Posted by: regular joe ||
01/22/2014 16:25 Comments ||
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#4
Obamacare will be there on his last day, but will you ? If you have Obamacare, you are subject to the "Death Panels"....too sick to be cured, Adios.
Pretty devastating indictment of the supporters of the Affordable care Act, unless you're a leftist, then it's business as usual. Read the whole thing, by John Fund:
Not surprisingly, Cover Oregon went bust after it launched on October 1.
Rocky King, its executive director, has been on leave since November and is set to retire from state service in March.
Since Cover Oregon's launch, the website has seen 23,000 people select a private health plan. But state officials admitted last week they didn't know how many have paid their premium, which is required before they're officially covered. The decision on whether to pull the plug on the website will be made by April 1. An apt cutoff date.
#2
Democratic governor John Kitzhaber, himself a physician, admits he was entirely outside the loop on development of the $160 million website.
Did he ask for a detailed budget for this project? I mean, exactly where did all that money go? I'd like to look at every single line on that budget because I just can't see how they could spend that much on a software development project.
Say you hire 160 programmers, which is a helluva lot of programmers. You could pay them each a million dollars a year with that kind of money. But then, of course, you need computers, offices, infrastructure. How much does it cost to lease an office building, or even buy an office building that could accommodate that many workers with all of their computers? Ten million? Twenty million? Thirty million? Here, check this out...
Rental Rate: $19.50 /SF/Year
So then you're down to 130 workers at $1 million each. That's still an awful lot of programmers and they still couldn't produce a website that works? But then remember that the real cost of a programmer is more likely less that $200,000 a year including benefits and I'm thinking 16 programmers should be able to do the job. How big of a job is it? How complex, how sophisticated is this software? What are the specs? Where are the specs? What was required to make this thing work for a state no bigger than Oregon? I know these are rough estimates. Tell me how far off I am and I bet it's still nowhere near $160 million.
This isn't rocket science. We're not sending a man to the moon. There is no way in hell it could cost that much money.
How much did it cost to buy the Rantburg server? You don't need to answer. I'm thinking $20,000 max. Am I high or low? How many programmers work on it and how much do they get paid? Don't answer. It's a labor of love and I know it was less that $160 million. But it works!
You blew it, governor. What I really want to know is how much the vendor contributed to your election campaign and how much he put directly into your pocket.
Does Oregon have an attorney general? Does Eric Holder have his arm twisted behind his back? If not he should be looking into this, er, that is if the vendor didn't grease him too.
#3
Carolyn Lawson, the embattled state technology executive... decided the state could manage the complex exchange project itself, rather than hire a private-sector systems integrator, a decision since criticized by her superiors.
As The Oregonian reported [December 15, 2013], the exchange has been plagued by poor work by Oracle. Miscues by state managers have also figured prominently in the exchange's issues. An August 2012 report from the project's quality assurance contractor found the exchange project was disorganized, lacked basic management and budget controls to ensure contractor performance. The exchange's fate was further endangered by distrust and lack of communication between Lawson's Oregon Health Authority and Cover Oregon, the public corporation that took over responsibility for the exchange's contracts in May 2013.
As recently as [mid December 2013], Lawson defended the choice of Oracle and the decision not to hire a systems integrator. The exchange was built with Oracle software and hardware, so who better than Oracle to manage the process, she said. Lawson worked closely with Oracle when she worked for two California state agencies before her hiring by Oregon.
Tina Edlund, acting OHA director, sent out an email shortly after 2 p.m. [December 19, 2013] announcing Lawson's departure. In an email to her bosses, Lawson said the recent death of her mother-in-law convinced her to make the move. She'd been commuting to Oregon weekly from her home in the Sacramento area.
#4
Did somebody say Oracle? They do a lot of good stuff but I think we all know Mr. Ellison can be a bit on the sharp side at times. Maybe Gray Davis could tell us a story or two about Oracle.
#5
Isn't Oracle supposed to know something about databases? Also excellent analysis EU. I mean sheeesh..... Hell with that kinda money I would have at least had the worlds largest Rick Roller in place.
#6
Cover Oregon was to be the vaunted "national model" for Obama Care; and so it is.
Posted by: regular joe ||
01/22/2014 15:35 Comments ||
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#7
Theres a lot more to software engineering than 'a bunch of programmers' especially for a project this size and complex.
It looks here like the management didn't have a clue about what they were doing and actively ignored and suppressed any sort of criticism. I imagine they also made basic changes late in the project causing a lot of re-design and re-work. And of course they didn't even *TEST* it (where have we heard that before?).
Things got so bad that Ying Kwong, a technology analyst working for the state, talked about going to Oregons Department of Justice to block the exchange from going live. How can the state conduct business like this? he asked in an e-mail.
Kwong compared the relentless advance of the exchange website to the monster in the sci-fi movie classic The Blob. The Oregonian reported that Cover Oregon seemingly couldnt be stopped due to its amorphous shape and political momentum. Kwong wrote that you simply dont know how to shoot this beast, because it does not have a known anatomy with the normal vital organs that make it tick.
And it hasn't even been TESTED before opening.
Kwong, the IT specialist, couldnt believe the self-delusion.
"After all, there is no testable software release, no technical environment, and the paper forms are not even ready to go to the printer.
#8
They didn't follow the usual business model. Usually, the route is to wait until after launch to gut QA. Looks like they gutted QA right after drawing up requirements. Somebody was going to try it at some point.
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
01/22/2014 16:27 Comments ||
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#9
I imagine they also made basic changes late in the project causing a lot of re-design and re-work.
Yes. That's always a killer, especially when the managers don't know the first frickin' thing about what they're doing. Been there. Done that. But that's what I'm asking: How big? How complex? How many lines of code? Where's the spec? And, finally, was anybody watching the budget or did they just get a blank check? If I can ask these questions why couldn't the governor or the legislators? What about the reporters?
And, yes, Oracle has been known to contribute to election campaigns.
#12
I am just glad it rolled of the assembly line and sunk to the bottom of the ocean like a brick. We don't need socialist medicine.
Microsoft server farms, with either SQL Server or Oracle as the backend database with a .NET web portal written in C# would have worked and is scalable and easily integrates with other platforms used by the government, insurance companies, etc.. Load/Stress testing of both the server farm and network as well as blackbox testing of the web pages would have perfected the system.
BUT the ultimate goal was reached, politicians who couldn't get a job flipping hamburgers got rich while the general public got a sack of you know what in return. Guess who is laughing all the way to the bank.
#13
It looks here like the management didn't have a clue about what they were doing
Remember the feds held back on particulars in, rightful, fear that if they leaked out before the election, O and the bunch would get hosed in November. A little hard to program something when big (decision tree and options) boxes litter the design up till a couple of months before launch.
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.
