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Posts Tagged ‘Pakistan’

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Pakistan: Slow Motion Train Wreck

Posted by M. C. on December 4, 2024

By Eric S. Margolis

Pakistan is the world’s most important Muslim nation. It has 251 million people, nuclear weapons, the world’s sixth largest armed forces, intelligent, capable people, vast lands and major sources of water.

What Washington really wants around the globe is totalobedience, not real democracy. Pakistan is a sad example. President Pervez Musharraf told me that a senior State Department official warned him that if Pakistan did not allow US troops to use his nation to attack Taliban-ruled Afghanistan ‘we will bomb you back to the Stone Age.’

Pakistan: Slow Motion Train Wreck

Pakistan is the world’s most important Muslim nation.  It has 251 million people, nuclear weapons, the world’s sixth largest armed forces, intelligent, capable people, vast lands and major sources of water.

Yet Pakistan is a giant mess.  Its current politics are a form of tribal warfare.  Corruption engulfs almost everything. Disease, particularly diabetes, afflicts its long-suffering people.  Polio is making return.

In recent years, Pakistan has suffered vast floods that have ravaged this nation.  Equally menacing, next-door India remains an ever-present danger.  Far-right Hindu extremists who are heavily represented in the current Modi government, keep talking about ‘reabsorbing’ Pakistan into ‘Mother India.’  This would have happened long ago except for Pakistan’s important nuclear arsenal and delivery systems.

India has also built an extensive nuclear arsenal, including three new submarines armed with intermediate-range nuclear missiles. This while people in India and Pakistan starve in the streets. And 60% of homes in India lack indoor plumbing.

The only institution in Pakistan that really works well is the armed forces.  I have met many of its generals: most of them are intelligent, combat-ready officers. I knew Gen. Akhtar Abdur Rahman Khan, the ferocious chief of ISI intelligence service who led the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan. He was murdered with the tough tank general Zia ul Haq who ruled Pakistan until his aircraft was sabotaged in 1988.  Zia was a great Islamic warrior and man of steel.  Many Pakistanis still believe he was assassinated by the US though there is no direct evidence.

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Washington, Pro-Democracy? Depends on the Country

Posted by M. C. on February 20, 2024

Yet again following a foreign policy guided by a rules-based order that only applies the law when it benefits the United States and its allies, instead of a foreign policy guided by international law that applies the same universal standard impartially, the U.S. has confirmed the worst suspicions of a global majority that is losing faith in American leadership.

by Ted Snider

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/washington-pro-democracy-depends-on-the-country

Pakistan just held an election; Venezuela is about to. Both incumbent governments have banned the leading opposition figure from competing. The United States sanctioned one and was silent on the other. What was the difference? Not international law or responsible leadership, both of which require a consistent application of laws and a consistent response. The important difference was that the United States supported the incumbent coup government in one case and opposed the incumbent coup survivor in the other.

On January 30, the United States reversed the small and rare diplomatic progress it had made with Venezuela by revoking the sanction relief on gold mining and by promising to revoke the sanction relief on Venezuela’s oil and gas sector at the first opportunity. The State Department cited “Actions by Nicolas Maduro and his representatives in Venezuela, including the arrest of members of the democratic opposition and the barring of candidates from competing in this year’s presidential election” as the reason.

Of central concern to the United States was its choice of an opposition leader to run against Nicolás Maduro, Maria Corina Machado, who recently appeared before a roundtable organized by the U.S. House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs subcommittee. On January 26, Venezuela’s highest court upheld the decision to bar Machado from running for president in the upcoming election.

But Machado was banned for reasons that might be considered reasonable in some democracies. She has a long history of being involved in coups against the democratically elected government of Venezuela. During the failed 2002 coup against Hugo Chavez, Machado was a signatory to the Carmona Decree, which suspended democracy, revoked the constitution, and installed a coup president.

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Petition to Release Secret Govt Report on Grooming Gangs Smashes 80,000 in Days

Posted by M. C. on March 9, 2020

…the context of grooming gang abuse having been ignored by police and local government officials for decades — for fear taking action would cause tension with the Muslim community or lead to accusations of racism.

No price, including your daughter’s life, is too high to maintain political correctness in the UK.

Mayor Sadiq Khan of Londonistan says terror attacks are ...

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/03/09/petition-release-suppressed-govt-report-grooming-gangs-smashes-80000/

by Jack Montgomery

More than 80,000 people signed an official petition demanding the release of a suppressed report on the ethnic background of grooming gangs over the weekend.

“The Government is refusing to release official research on the characteristics of grooming gangs, claiming it is not in the ‘public interest’,” the petition begins.

“We, the British public, demand the release of the official research on grooming gangs undertaken by the Government in full.”

Official petitions which break 10,000 signatures require an official response from the government — which has not yet been given — and petitions which break 100,000 signatures much be considered for a full parliamentary debate.

Former Home Secretary Sajid Javid, as the petition reminds viewers, “promised the review as Home Secretary in July 2018, pledging that there would be ‘no no-go areas of inquiry’” and that he would “not let cultural or political sensitivities get in the way of understanding the problem and doing something about it”.

Shortly afterwards, however, the Home Office announced that it would be keeping the report “internal”, and has now officially refused a Freedom of Information request attempting to force its release — on grounds that this would not be “in the public interest” and undermine “the ‘safe space’ necessary for ministers and officials to consider policy options in private”.

Previous probes and independent reports have indicated that grooming gangs are comprised overwhelmingly of Muslim men, usually with roots in Pakistan, and their victims are overwhelmingly white working-class girls — although Sikhs and Hindus have also been targetted.

The decision to suppress the review was reportedly a source of friction between Priti Patel, the current Home Secretary, and Sir Philip Rutnam, the former Permanent Secretary who served as the Home Office’s top bureaucrat until his dramatic resignation.

The decision was also met with outrage from many campaigners and members of the public, especially given the context of grooming gang abuse having been ignored by police and local government officials for decades — for fear taking action would cause tension with the Muslim community or lead to accusations of racism.

To the surprise of many, even Diane Abbott, the Labour party’s far-left Shadow Home Secretary, has called for the report to be released.

“There must be no more cover-ups around these horrific crimes and no more inaction from the government,” she said in comments reported by the Independent.

“Many of the girls will never recover from the abuse they suffered and they and their families deserve all the facts. This report should be published.”

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Khan

That’s MAYOR Khaaaaaaaan

 

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Pakistan in the Crosshairs of New US Aggression

Posted by M. C. on March 4, 2019

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/03/01/pakistan-in-crosshairs-of-new-us-aggression.html

Tom LUONGO

With events escalating quickly in Kashmir it’s incumbent to ask the most pertinent questions in geopolitics.

Why there?

And, Why Now?

Why Kashmir?

India and Pakistan are both making serious moves to slip out from underneath the US’s external control. India has openly defied the US on buying S-400 missile defense systems, keeping up its oil trade with Iran and developing the important Iranian port at Chabahar to help complete an almost private spur of the North South Transport Corridor.

Pakistan, under new Prime Minister Imran Khan is trying to square accounts with China over its massive investment for its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) known as the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). It has also been at the forefront of multiple rounds of talks spurred by the Russians and Iranians to forge some kind of peace in Afghanistan.

And the Trump administration cut off US aid to Pakistan for not being sufficiently helpful in the fight against terrorism. This opened up a war of words between Trump and Khan who reminded Trump that the little bit of money the US sent Pakistan nothing compared to the losses both economic and personal.

If there was ever the possibility of peace breaking out between India and Pakistan it would be in the context of stitching the two countries together through China’s regional plans as well as solving the thorny problem of continued US and NATO occupation of Afghanistan.

Anything that can be done to flare up tensions between these two adversaries then serves the US’s goals of sowing chaos and division to keep the things from progressing smoothly. Khan was elected to, in effect, drain the Pakistani Swamp. His, like Trump’s, is a tall order.

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Israel is playing a big role in India’s escalating conflict with Pakistan | The Independent

Posted by M. C. on March 2, 2019

Israel itself is trying to explain away its continued sales of tanks, weapons and boats to the Myanmar military dictatorship – while western nations impose sanctions on the government which has attempted to destroy its minority and largely Muslim Rohingya people.

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/israel-india-pakistan-conflict-balakot-arms-trade-jaish-e-mohammed-a8800076.html

Robert Fisk

When I heard the first news report, I assumed it was an Israeli air raid on Gaza. Or Syria. Airstrikes on a “terrorist camp” were the first words. A “command and control centre” destroyed, many “terrorists” killed. The military was retaliating for a “terrorist attack” on its troops, we were told.

An Islamist “jihadi” base had been eliminated. Then I heard the name Balakot and realised that it was neither in Gaza, nor in Syria – not even in Lebanon – but in Pakistan. Strange thing, that. How could anyone mix up Israel and India?

Well, don’t let the idea fade away. Two thousand five hundred miles separate the Israeli ministry of defence in Tel Aviv from the Indian ministry of defence in New Delhi, but there’s a reason why the usual cliche-stricken agency dispatches sound so similar.

For months, Israel has been assiduously lining itself up alongside India’s nationalist BJP government in an unspoken – and politically dangerous – “anti-Islamist” coalition, an unofficial, unacknowledged alliance, while India itself has now become the largest weapons market for the Israeli arms trade.

Not by chance, therefore, has the Indian press just trumpeted the fact that Israeli-made Rafael Spice-2000 “smart bombs” were used by the Indian air force in its strike against Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) “terrorists” inside Pakistan.

Like many Israeli boasts of hitting similar targets, the Indian adventure into Pakistan might owe more to the imagination than military success. The “300-400 terrorists” supposedly eliminated by the Israeli-manufactured and Israeli-supplied GPS-guided bombs may turn out to be little more than rocks and trees.

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MoA – Tit-For-Tat Bombing By India And Pakistan Could Escalate Towards A Nuclear War

Posted by M. C. on February 28, 2019

We spend our time in Pakistan doing Israel and Saudi Arabia’s dirty work. Taliban has been turned from a local faction into a national power. Yet we ignore possible nuclear holocaust.

Pakistan and India have gotten to the point in the past where nuclear weapons have been brought to the battle field.

Pentagram/neocon/warparty foreign policy…or lack of.

A possible bright side is we could be selling both sides weapons.

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/02/tit-for-tat-bombing-by-india-and-pakistan-could-escalate-towards-a-nuclear-war.html#more

Two nuclear powers are currently engaged in a tit for tat military exchange that could easily escalate into a nuclear war.

On February 14 a suicide car bomb hit a police convoy in Pulwama in the Indian controlled part of Kashmir. The suicide bomber was a local man. The Pakistan based terrorist group Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) claimed responsibility and uploaded a video of the attacker.

General elections in India are due in May and the Hindu-fascist Indian government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi is under pressure. The incident in Kashmir led to violence of Modi followers against Kashmiri people. Pakistan denied any involvement in the incident and called for a joint investigation.

After the suicide attack Modi immediately threatened to retaliate against Pakistan. He did so yesterday. In an elaborate operation Indian fighter jets released stand-off weapons, purchased from Israel, against an alleged JeM training camp near Balakot. India made explicit that it hit a “non-military” target.

…

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America's sport

Government’s favorite sport-War

 

 

 

 

 

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India strikes inside Pakistan after deadly Kashmir attack

Posted by M. C. on February 26, 2019

These are both nuclear powers that have in the past brought nuclear weapons onto the battlefield.

AP reporters are apparently unaware, or did not think this was important.

https://www.apnews.com/e64d72f76c4f475493e4d41501ebab06

By RIAZ KHAN and AIJAZ HUSSAIN

BALAKOT, Pakistan (AP) — A pre-dawn airstrike inside Pakistan that India said targeted a terrorist training camp and killed a “very large number” of militants ratcheted up tensions on Tuesday between the two nuclear-armed rivals at odds over the disputed territory of Kashmir.

Islamabad said there were no casualties in the strike near the town of Balakot, close to the border with Pakistan’s section of Kashmir, where residents said loud explosions woke them up, rattling their homes.

“It was the middle of the night, we were very scared,” one resident, 20-year old Mohammad Abbas to The Associated Press. “We didn’t think for a moment that it was from planes but the explosions were very powerful.”…

Kashmir is split between the two countries but claimed by each in its entirety. The Pakistan-based militant group Jaish-e-Mohammad claimed responsibility for the bombing. The bomber, who made a video before the attack, was a resident of Indian-controlled sector of Kashmir.

Pakistan’s military spokesman, Maj. Gen Asif Ghafoor, said Indian planes crossed into the Muzafarabad sector of Pakistani-controlled Kashmir. He said Pakistan scrambled fighters and the Indian jets “released payload in haste” near Balakot.

India’s foreign secretary, Vijay Gokhale, told reporters in New Delhi that Indian fighter jets targeted Jaish-e-Mohammad camps in a pre-emptive strike after intelligence indicated another attack was being planned.

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Are We on the Brink of World War III? — Charisma News

 

 

 

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30 Years After Soviet Afghan Pull-Out – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on February 18, 2019

The famous Tora Bora underground fortification, located 35 miles southwest of the city of Jalalabad in Nangarhar province, had also been “a CIA-financed complex built for the mujahedeen”, as The New York Times wrote in 2005. Osama Bin Laden father’s construction company, the Saudi Binladin Group, took substantial part in the endeavour, according to the newspaper.

Where Bin Laden brought the US to its knees with VCRs and cell phones.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/02/no_author/30-years-after-soviet-afghan-pull-out-cia-funded-mujahideen-war-backfired-on-us/

Sputnik News

30 Years After Soviet Afghan Pull-Out: CIA-Funded Mujahideen War Backfired on US

CIA’s Operation Cyclone

However, the USSR was not the only party wading into the Afghan conflict as the US took an active part in the covert war on the side of the Mujahideen.

In his memoir titled From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War ex-director of the CIA, Robert Gates, revealed the details of the US intelligence agency’s covert effort, dubbed Operation Cyclone. The secret operation envisaged arming and funding Afghan guerrillas began under then US President Jimmy Carter six months before the Soviet intervention. This was confirmed by Zbigniew Brzezinski, a prominent geopolitical analyst and then national security adviser to Carter in a 15 January 1998 interview with Le Nouvel Observateur’s Vincent Jauvert.

Time Magazine recalled in 2003 that Operation Cyclone had become “one of its longest and most expensive” covert efforts: The US supplied billions of dollars in arms to the Mujahideen with Osama bin Laden, the would-be founder of al-Qaeda*, being one of the rebel recipients, according to the magazine.

How the Reagan Adm. Boosted the Mujahideen’s Military Capability Read the rest of this entry »

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Unworthy Victims: Western Wars Have Killed Four Million Muslims Since 1990   :    Information Clearing House – ICH

Posted by M. C. on August 29, 2017

Not much discussion on terrorist deaths. Apparently the number was too low to bother with.

We were told they would love us for “freeing” them. What happened?

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article41491.htm

April 08, 2015 “ICH” – “MEE” – Last month, the Washington DC-based Physicians for Social Responsibility (PRS) released a landmark study concluding that the death toll from 10 years of the “War on Terror” since the 9/11 attacks is at least 1.3 million, and could be as high as 2 million.

For instance, although 40,000 corpses had been buried in Najaf since the launch of the war, IBC recorded only 1,354 deaths in Najaf for the same period. That example shows how wide the gap is between IBC’s Najaf figure and the actual death toll – in this case, by a factor of over 30.
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Pakistan high court bans Valentine’s Day

Posted by M. C. on February 13, 2017

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/article-4219854/Pakistan-high-court-bans-Valentines-Day.html

When your “rich traditions and values” include being the world’s sexual slavery master innovator, Valentine’s Day does seem superfluous.

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