[DAWN] Could dialogue have saved the lives of the 21 people killed in the Islamabad blast today?
Apparently the government thought so -- or perhaps still does. But then again, one may ask why should peace talks with the Taliban come under fire when the Tehrik-e-Taliban themselves have condemned today's attack claiming, "such attacks targeting innocent people are forbidden in Sharia and they are un-Islamic."
This statement by the TTP, if true, brings us back to the mysterious hidden hands then -- the entity supposedly responsible for the recent attacks.
These hidden hands do not want peace. They never have. Apparently, it is always the hidden hands, which launch such attacks when the government and the Taliban initiate dialogue. It would seem thus, the bigger and perhaps scarier enemy then, are these hidden hands -- the hidden hands with no name, no face but a clear agenda -- derail peace talks and keep terror alive.
The common man is reading in the newspapers and watching on television the progress, or lack of, on the peace talks. He doesn't care when the next round of talks will be and what terms proposed by either side are -- all he cares about is security, and if these talks aren't providing that, what is the point of going ahead with them?
The government is interested in reducing the level of violence in the short term and the TTP seems to be the obvious enemy at hand and hence, the bending over backwards to accommodate their terms continues. However, it's easy to be generous with someone else's money... not to be the eternal pessimist and critic here, but it doesn't take a lot of deep analysis to see this effort going nowhere.
We are perhaps talking to the wrong people. We are releasing their prisoners and pondering over their intolerant ideology while the real enemy is bombing innocent people at the sabzi mandi.
Any effort to create peace will go wasted if there is a more powerful enemy out there who seems to have a free reign, as its identity remains concealed. If anything, perhaps the first point on the government and TTP's agenda should be to identify and take action against the group committing these crimes. Not only would it bring about some security for the common man, but it may also clarify TTP's position.
Once the hidden hands are dealt with, dialogue between the government and TTP can continue on balanced, fair terms as opposed to having the latter dictate them. There is absolutely no point in investing energy and effort on a process that is futile to begin with.
Too many times have we seen Rehman Malik Pak politician, Interior Minister under the Gilani government. Malik is a former Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) intelligence officer who rose to head the FIA during Benazir Bhutto's second tenure. Malik was tossed from his FIA job in 1998 after documenting the breath-taking corruption of the Sharif family. By unhappy coincidence Nawaz Sharif became PM at just that moment and Malik moved to London one step ahead of the button men. He had to give up the interior ministry job because he held dual Brit citizenship. and Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan stare at the cameras wearing a mask of sincerity, telling us how the "hidden hands" and "third element" are coming in the way of peace and progress. Too many times failure has stared us in the face and taken far too many innocent lives.
All effort should now be channeled towards unveiling and capturing this hidden enemy instead and if the government or military lacks the capability to do so, it should clearly be stated so that there remains no doubt in their incompetency.
Currently, it seems that peace talks and ceasefires with the TTP may be able to save the lives of our government leaders and military men but they won't be able to save the lives of the common man out on the street.
Who does the government plan to hold talks with about those lives?
Posted by: Fred ||
04/10/2014 00:00 ||
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[DAWN] ONCE more the country finds itself in a situation where an army chief is pushing back publicly against unnecessary and theatrical political attacks by senior government ministers. Once some of these politicians had decided, for apparently ill-thought-out reasons, to resort to politicising in public the trial of Pervez Perv Musharraf ... former dictator of Pakistain, who was less dictatorial and corrupt than any Pak civilian government to date ... , the risk was that the army leadership would pounce on the ministers' and sundry other politicians' comments to question the validity of a trial the army as an institution is reportedly uncomfortable with. The "it could be me" syndrome.
But it was an explicit decision by the army leadership to push back publicly. Hence, the army leadership must share the blame for either moving in the direction of a political crisis or indulging in needless theatre at a time when the country should be focused on other challenges. Inadvisable as it was for ministers and sundry politicians to pre-judge the trial of Mr Musharraf, it was for the special court or the senior judiciary to set the record straight and send a firm signal that a trial would be a sombre legal process and would not descend into political theatre. They could very well hang Perv. Nawaz would love it, and I'm sure he's pushing it behind the scenes. He'll regard it as different from the Bhutto hanging under Zia ul-Haq. It's fascinating, watching a failed state self-destruct.
That the army chief himself has chosen to wade into the issue -- and in typical military style, without explicitly mentioning Mr Musharraf, the trial or even the allegedly offensive comments -- is truly extraordinary. The Pakistain in which Gen Raheel Sharif became army chief last year was supposed to be very different to the one his predecessor had become chief in. The transition to democracy is supposed to be well on track, with a national consensus that elected governments with uninterrupted terms are the only way ahead, as manifested in the historic voter turnout last May. Surely, there is nothing in Gen Sharif's comments on Monday that buttresses the democratic project or the constitutional order of things. In fact, there should be no reason for an army chief to be seen to put institutional self-interest and self-preservation ahead of the national consensus that elected politicians must lead and that their decisions will be judged at election time.
If Gen Sharif's comments and the ISPR's decision to publicise them were inadvisable, that still leaves unexplained the intentions behind the comments. In a polity where perceptions seem to matter more than outcomes, it is possible that the comments were intended only to placate the wider army leadership and the rank and file that the institution's image of itself and its standing with the public would be protected. Perhaps Monday's unhappy episode will have no effect on whether Mr Musharraf's trial will go ahead or if he'll be allowed to leave Pakistain. But the warning shots have been fired and this could cause civil-military tensions.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/10/2014 00:00 ||
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[DAWN] The most religiously diverse countries in Asia are also those with the better functioning economies. Among Moslem countries, Malaysia with its mix of Moslems, Christians and Hindus, is one story of a Moslem majority that enjoys economic prosperity based not on the random luck of oil wealth, but on its ability to attract foreign business, to accommodate difference such that newcomers are eager to invest.
Pakistain's death march to homogeneity, for all its fury and fervour, is a dead-end road. The extermination of one, then others, and then some more, has revealed reasons to kill, not to get along. Droves of Paks now populate the asylum and refugee lists of any country that shows the barest possibility of taking them. At home, the beast of bloodletting demands more and more, and smaller and smaller differences become the basis of fatalities. There is no end, just an endless circle of annihilation, based on a faulty premise that the elimination of difference is the foundation of a better future, even a peaceful one.
The golden epoch of Islamic history is a dear favourite. In this too is a betrayal, for the most proximate of these halcyon times, the Ottoman Empire, was a time of much balancing of difference, a learning from exchange, an acknowledgment of the good things that can be born of encountering something other than exact copies of the self.
Those perhaps were the indulgences of a secure people, unafraid of losing themselves when confronted with those who believed differently, ate other things, wore other clothes. In exchange, they saw opportunity, and in opportunity they saw improvement.
Ultimately, the exclusion of others is the exclusion of self. The two other countries with similar rates of religious homogeneity are Afghanistan and Iran, one a war-wrecked skeleton of a nation and the other a global pariah. The cost of excluding others, of an inability to manage difference with justice, is reflected then in borders becoming walls and homelands traps. The same may be familiar, even comforting, but it is also an evasion of challenge without which there can never be triumph.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/10/2014 00:00 ||
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[Ynet] Indescribable violence in this Arab country, which includes decapitation and hanging bodies in squares, is not only perpetrated by Assad regime and its mercenaries, but also by radical rebels seeking to establish an Islamic caliphate.
Syria is still ignoring the Arab League ...an organization of Arabic-speaking states with 22 member countries and four observers. The League tries to achieve Arab consensus on issues, which usually leaves them doing nothing but a bit of grimacing and mustache cursing... , the United Nations
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: trailing wife ||
04/10/2014 00:00 ||
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#1
All these are descriptions that can be found mainly in writings from the Middle Ages,
The truth of all Islam. It is a medievil death cult founded by a psychotic, perverted madman. There is no way out, no reformation possible.
KATY, TEXAS--A lawsuit filed by a Houston area doctor against the Affordable Care Act is moving forward to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. The lawsuit filed by Dr. Steven Hotze, founder of Hotze Health and Wellness Center in Katy, challenges the Obamacare law based upon the origination clause of the Constitution.
In referring to what is known as The Origination Clause, "Article 1, section 7 of the U.S. Constitution every tax bill, revenue bill has to start in the House of Representatives," Hotze explained. "It can't start in the Senate."
In this exclusive interview below with Breitbart Texas, Dr. Hotze explains how the Senate took a Veterans Tax Credit bill that started in the House and stripped everything out of the bill, including the title, and substituted the Affordable Care Act legislation. "If the Senate can do that, then there is no origination clause, because, the Senate can turn any bill that came from the House into a tax raising bill, and that's wrong."
Dr. Hotze's attorney, Andy Schlaffly told the Washington Times, "What's nice about this case, Hotze v. Sebelius, is the trial court resolved all the procedural issues in favor of Dr. Hotze, so they got to the substance at the trial level," said Mr. Schlafly. "That makes this case a stronger case than most of the other ones." Keep kicking Obamacare in the n*ts, sooner or later it will fall over.
#3
Let me get this straight. Obama has this "Bill" called ( what was it..the Adorable Care Act? ) and he wants me to take out my wallet and buy something from him and I can't buy it anywhere else...EXCEPT from him ? And it costs more than what I had but I MIGHT get a discount if I vote Democrat ( Yeah? ) and if I DON'T buy it right now only ( ONLY ) from him...something bad is going to happen to my dog?
And if I don't do as I am told the IRS is going to check me out and ask me about 300 questions about my mother.?
Well, if you put it that way? Makes you want to salute, doesn't it?
Posted by: Big Thromoth3646 ||
04/10/2014 7:18 Comments ||
Top||
#4
You're depending upon a group of people, who say discriminating against whites because of the color of their skin is not a violation of the 'equal protection' clause of the Constitution, to say that the wording on the paper regarding origination is what it really means?
#5
So the question is will the federal courts and ultimately the US Supreme Court rule for the plain, unambiguous and undisputed meaning of the words in the US Constitution.
#7
The Supreme Court may have a chance to get it right this time. They went for the gameship position that the penalty-not-a-tax was actually a tax-not-a-penalty, and therefore within Congress' power to tax. Maybe they have felt a little guilty about that and will not shy away from holding the Senate's creating a new bill out of a House originated dummy makes it truly a Senate originated bill. Then nothing Congress has said about the bill will have been true.
#11
The Senate, in their finite wisdom, failed to include a separability clause in the Affordable Care Act. If one piece is found to be unconstitutional the hole thing is invalid.
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.
Pervez 
KATY, TEXAS--A lawsuit filed by a Houston area doctor against the Affordable Care Act is moving forward to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. The lawsuit filed by Dr. Steven Hotze, founder of Hotze Health and Wellness Center in Katy, challenges the Obamacare law based upon the origination clause of the Constitution.
