Terrorist Islamic Republic of Pakistan - May 13, 2013

[SSridhar]

TSP's new IT minister warns Google over objectionable material

Pakistan’s new IT minister has warned that Google could be blocked in the country if the company fails to remove blasphemous and objectionable material from its video-sharing website YouTube.

The Minister of State for IT and Telecommunication, Anusha Rahman Khan, {What is this 'Anusha' business ? Is she a Hindu married to a mard ?} made the remarks on her first day in office yesterday while talking about Pakistan’s efforts to end a nine-month ban on YouTube for hosting clips from the controversial film “Innocence of Muslims”.

Google, the parent company of YouTube, had rejected requests from the previous Pakistan People’s Party-led government to remove the objectionable material and Khan said she hoped the company would listen to the new PML-N government.

“It all depends on our negotiation clout. If they persist with their stance, we can block Google in Pakistan as a last resort as there are many alternative search engines available on the web,” Khan was quoted as saying by The News daily.

The PML-N government has listed as one of its priorities the restoration of YouTube with filters to screen blasphemous and ***** content.

Pakistan banned YouTube on September 17 last year.

The ban was lifted for a few hours in December before being reinstated following protests from right wing groups.

Soon after the ban, the IT Ministry issued a key policy directive to the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority to block all blasphemous and ***** materials on the internet by installing a filtration system.

[SSridhar]

German Help - DT

The German foreign minister also assured his country’s continued support for Pakistan’s efforts to get GSP Plus status in the European Union.

[Brad Goodman]

Roadside Bombs Kill 2 Soldiers in Pakistan

Two intelligence officials said three soldiers sweeping the road ahead of a military convoy on the road between the towns of Miran Shah and Razmak in North Waziristan were hit Sunday by a bomb planted near an intersection. Two died and one was wounded. They spoke anonymously because they weren't authorized to speak to media.

[Gagan]

TSP's new IT minister warns Google over objectionable material

The Minister of State for IT Anusha Rahman Khan

Huh ?
I thought that Hafiz Suar Saeed was Pakistan's IT minister. And the ISI chief was his sidekick.

or is it the other way around?

[Prem]

TSP's new IT minister warns Google over objectionable material
I thought that Hafiz Suar Saeed was Pakistan's IT minister. And the ISI chief was his sidekick.or is it the other way around?

Kaffirs Kya Janne Pakistani Naams Ka Matlab.
Anusha is the combinatioin of Anus and Hai. Read it as Anus Hai Rahman Khan.
Google is understood as G and O Ogle. Naturally very objectionable violation of Pakislamic privacy and srntiment.

[Prem]

Lucky Eleven Seventwoed in fresh spate of Peace in Karachi
Just another Mohamadan Day in Poaqadize

Kush Baat Hai Ki Qitalling
Jaati Nahi yanha Sei
Sadiyo seye Chorra Innneh
Insaaniant Kaa Kuffarra.

KARACHI: At least 11 people, including three policemen and a child, were killed in the fresh spate of violence in Karachi on Sunday.Police and rescue services said unknown snipers ambushed a police mobile van in the city’s Patel Para neighbourhood, killing three policemen. The slain cops belonged to PIB Colony police station.Separately, two bodies with bullet wounds were recovered from Bihar Colony area of Lyari town. The victims were shifted to Civil Hospital Karachi.Another bullet-riddled body was found from Garden’s Dhobi Ghat area.In Lyari also a man and an eight years old girl, identified as Dua, died and eight others injured when criminal threw a hand grenade near Gabol Park. The bodies and injured were moved to Civil Hospital Karachi.In Hangoorabad neighbourhood of Lyari, at least 3 persons were injured in a hand grenade attack. They were also shifted to the CHK.A man died and two others injured in a firing incident at Hussain Hazara Goth located in the city’s Gulshan-e-Iqbal, while dead body of a woman was found near Altaf Nagar in Korangi crossing area.

[Prem]

Security forces killed 35 Pashtun Civilians in Khyber Agency's Tirah Valley

Abbhey O Paki, Count Kariyo Aaj Kitne Qatal Qiye Hai

Security forces have killed 35 and injured 15 terrorists during operations in Khyber Agency's Tirah Valley and Kurram Agency.

According to a statement issued by ISPR Sunday‚ one soldier embraced martyrdom and five others sustained injuries during encounters.
After the clearance of Muhammadi Top in Kurram and Haider Kandao in Tirah Valley‚ security forces made significant gains on nights of the sixth‚ seventh‚ and eighth of this months‚ and cleared main areas of Maidan.
During the last two days of the operation, 35 alleged militants were killed while 15 were injured reportedly. The security forces suffered the loss of one soldier, while five were injured.The forces took full control of heights on the central Derastani Ridge that overlooks the entire Maidan and Kuki Khel Valley.
The forces also flushed the terrorists out of heights of Darwazgai Kandao.

[eklavya]

FT:

Pakistan's polio war

June 7, 2013 2:08 pm
By Willem Marx

Pakistan’s polio war

©Sam Phelps
Usman contracted polio as a child in Karachi. His son Musharaf, aged two, was Pakistan’s first case of 2013

As Rashid Ali traces the bullet entry and exit wounds that mark his chubby frame, from groin to nose, via thigh, forefinger and neck, he recalls the events of December 18. “The way I was shot and fell, I can’t get it out of my mind,” he says, his voice flat. A ceiling fan thrums overhead as he perches on a bed and sketches a map of the quiet alleyway in Ittehad Colony, Karachi where he should, by rights, have died.

Ali had been administering polio drops all morning alongside his colleague Kaneez Fatima, as part of a vaccination drive overseen by the World Health Organisation. On earlier campaigns, the vaccine had been rejected by some parents but by late morning they were progressing through the couple of hundred homes in their purview, encountering no refusals. “I was chalking a wall,” Ali recalled, a way of recording a given household’s vaccination status for later campaigns. “All of a sudden we were fired at,” he continued.

Ali had turned towards the sound of a gunshot fired at his partner when a bullet ripped through his nose, rattling between his left cheek and jaw before exiting beneath his ear. He instinctively raised his headscarf to cover his face and so never glimpsed his would-be assassin as four more bullets tore into him.

“I fell down, then after a while I got up. I saw that Kaneez had also been hit and she was just lying there.” Fatima had died instantly. “I was working with her for about two years,” said Ali sorrowfully. “She has eight children. The eldest son is my age, with seven younger siblings. She was trying so hard to support her family herself.”

Fatima was not the only vaccination worker who died that day. Madiha Bibi, just 18 years old and a mother of two, was also murdered. She had been administering the vaccine in her own neighbourhood of Landi Town with her aunt Fehmida Bibi, 46, when a motorcycle rider drew up amid the teeming maze of alleyways and killed her with his first shot. Fehmida somehow scrambled inside somebody’s home nearby, but the assassin must have followed her. Her corpse was left almost unrecognisable. The same morning, in adjacent Orangi Town, mother of five Naseem Akhtar was also gunned down. The previous afternoon, Umer Farooq, a young man who had been working across town in a largely lawless suburb called Gadap, had been shot dead. Five deaths in Karachi in two days.

The vaccinators were part of a Pakistani government initiative to eradicate polio, funded by foreign donors through the WHO. These volunteer health workers, answering to the Pakistani health authorities, receive less than £2 a day for their work.

©Sam Phelps
Rashid Ali, a health worker, survived five gunshot wounds in an attack that killed his colleague

Not long afterwards, I stood by the graves of Madiha and Fehmida Bibi, marked by two mounds of earth baked hard by the sun. Dusk was falling over the cemetery on the forgotten outskirts of Pakistan’s murder capital. Madiha’s mother – Fehmida’s sister – spoke aloud to no one in particular: “Why were they martyred and by whom?”

Intimidation of the country’s roughly 200,000 polio workers was clearly part of the answer. The Karachi attacks were the opening salvo of a brutal campaign that resulted in 20 polio-related assassinations in three months. A fortnight ago, two workers were attacked outside Peshawar, and one woman was killed, forcing the WHO to suspend their polio campaign in the city. An attack a week earlier in the tribal belt left a campaign security worker dead.

This was supposed to be the year that polio would finally be eradicated in Pakistan – a feat achieved by India in 2011. But today that looks increasingly unlikely. A viral disease that thrives in dense populations with poor sanitation, poliomyelitis passes from faeces to the mouth, often via dirty hands. In about one in 1,000 cases of infection, the virus attacks the nervous system, muscles start failing, and the victim is left with paralysed limbs or even worse disabilities.

In 1988, with about 350,000 children around the world suffering paralysis every year, a global eradication effort was launched. The WHO began its work in Pakistan in 1994, with the blessing of the then prime minister Benazir Bhutto. The previous year, about 5,000 new cases of polio had been recorded; by 2007, the year in which Bhutto returned to Pakistan to face elections – and ultimately assassination – that total was down to 32.

But by then experts had begun questioning the eradication efforts. The global campaign was sucking up $1bn each year, and international funders were experiencing “donor fatigue”.

©Sam Phelps
Rukhsana and Syed Ataullah Shah, parents of Madiha Bibi, 18, who was killed while distributing polio vaccine

“I think it’s possible that the polio campaign could have failed,” says Svea Closser, a medical anthropologist and author of the book Chasing Polio in Pakistan . Then the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation intervened. “Gates really started getting involved at a time when it looked like it would wither for a lack of funding,” says Closser, who (like many other academics in the field) has previously received funding from the Gates Foundation. Global polio cases dropped from 650 in 2011 to fewer than 250 in 2012.

But in Pakistan, polio began to rise again: by 2011, there was a sharp increase, to 198 confirmed cases. The Pakistani government instituted an emergency action plan in response. Then came last winter’s attacks. “If only one incident had happened,” Ali reasons, “then I would have said they did it out of anger. But it happened all over the country.” Many consider one event above all others to be responsible: the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

Dr Shakil Afridi was initially a nameless participant in the CIA’s campaign to find the al-Qaeda chief. The Americans recruited him to organise a fake hepatitis B vaccination drive in a sleepy garrison town called Abbottabad – as a pretext to get inside bin Laden’s suspected residence. They hoped that, by obtaining blood samples of the children in the compound, a DNA match could go some way to confirming the presence of bin Laden himself.

But it did not take long for details of the operation to leak to the press (though it has never been publicly confirmed). Pakistan’s intelligence agencies soon arrested Afridi, and he was summarily convicted in a tribal court on a trumped-up charge of colluding with a militant group. Most damagingly, his highly publicised involvement fuelled extremists’ long-held suspicions that Pakistan’s various inoculation efforts were in reality just cover for US information-gathering, and that the nation’s Pashtun population was the number one target. It did not help that Kathryn Bigelow’s Oscar-winning film Zero Dark Thirty suggested that the cover used by Dr Afridi was that of a polio campaign doctor.

The first reprisal came last June from a high-ranking Islamist commander, Hafiz Gul Bahadur. His religious decree, or fatwa, banned the polio campaign from a region of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas where he claimed influence, North Waziristan. At the time some 160,000 children there were slated for a fresh round of vaccinations. It should have come as no surprise that extremist groups like Tehreek-e-Taliban, the Pakistani Taliban, might view those administering the vaccinations as legitimate targets. But Pakistan’s authorities offered little protection for such workers until too late.

. . .

In the wake of the December attacks, the provincial authorities offered blood money to Fatima’s immediate family, and paid Ali’s hospital bill plus £3,000 for his injuries. But no charges have been brought – neighbourhoods like Ittehad Colony tend to have low expectations of law enforcement. It was only after the assassinations – and a four-week hiatus in the country’s vaccination campaign – that police forces were deployed nationwide to guard workers going door-to-door in dangerous neighbourhoods. In early March, I accompanied a group of them in one such district – Karachi’s Gadap Town.


Shameem, 32, was threatened at gunpoint weeks earlier by men on a motorbike but continues to undertake her position. She has been a polio health worker for the past 15 years. She is paid 250 rupees ($2.50) a day, which she says is inadequate for the duties she undertakes and is not enough to buy food for her family

Gadap is home to 300,000 people, a large suburb to the northwest of Karachi proper, split by a filthy canal – the “major sanctuary of the polio virus”, says a WHO doctor. According to Dr Elias Durry, an Ethiopian veteran of global eradication efforts and WHO country chief for polio, the sector has long been a focus because a national sewage sampling programme indicates the virus maintains perhaps its strongest presence here. (I visited the government laboratory in Islamabad where hundreds of effluent samples from around the country are tested for the polio virus each day by US-trained scientists using state-of-the-art technology. Although just a nondescript building on the outskirts of the capital, it allows polio experts like Durry to track the virus in almost real time.)

One of Durry’s greatest fears is that the virus could reinfect other countries, and in January his worries were nearly realised when a Pakistani strain showed up in a sewage sample from Cairo – nine years after Egypt was officially declared polio-free. Strains from Gadap have appeared repeatedly elsewhere in Pakistan, marking it out as a polio “reservoir”. Durry and his colleagues insisted to the authorities that repeated campaign drives to inoculate Gadap’s 22,000 under-fives was the only way to catch the wild poliovirus at the right moment. The vaccine only works effectively when it encounters the virus inside the stomach, and it can require a dozen doses for a child in a poorly sanitised environment to develop immunity. The equation, says Durry, is simple; the more regularly you administer the drops, the more likely you are to interrupt full transmission of the virus.

I found a group of vaccination workers in a small office with windows tinted against the sun, discussing the day’s routes and objectives. They were already well behind that month’s “micro plan”, a detailed schedule drawn up by the WHO, because local police had repeatedly failed to turn up in sufficient numbers to protect them. One exasperated WHO eradication specialist remarked in my presence that Pakistani bureaucrats and police officials had often played the “security card” after the December attacks, to mask their own failings. “There is no accountability. Security becomes the excuse for everything. Bad planning, bad worker attendances, bad follow up,” he said in exasperation. “Everything is blamed on security.”

But the volunteers seemed eager to work and filed out into the sunshine as a group before splitting into pairs, with their assigned police officers following them somewhat grudgingly. There were some final encouraging instructions from their supervisor, Abida Irfan, a woman in a black abaya and white hijab headscarf who exuded professional enthusiasm. “If someone says they won’t give the drops, you cannot force it. But we are doing this for the sake of our country.”

High breezeblock walls separated the compounds from the dusty roads, and goats rooted around in the rotting rubbish that lay piled up in the open areas. Few residents were visible and the only sounds were the occasional motorbike, a crackle of police radios and the repeated knock on metal doorframes by the vaccination workers.

“Are there three children?” Irfan asked a mother opening a door, after noting the chalk markings from a previous visit. “Write this down,” she said to a younger volunteer beside her, before turning back to the mother. “Have they been marked?” she demanded, referring to the permanent ink used to stain the fingernails of those already vaccinated, then added, “Bring the children out.”

This pattern repeated itself at dozens of homes, the polio workers corralling toddlers and infants in doorways before tilting their heads back. They filled pipettes from vaccine vials stored in bright blue cool-boxes, and released two drops into mouths that often required forcing open.

Meanwhile the police, apparently bored, stomped around impatiently outside. Their rifles slung casually on their shoulders, they appeared woefully unprepared should our small party encounter hostility. But when the vaccination teams continued to the edge of the settled area, our security contingent swelled as other officers joined us. This cluster of several dozen homesteads, known as Memon Society, had proved problematic for the vaccinators on prior campaigns, said Irfan. “We’re going to a refuser’s home,” she explained, striding purposefully onwards in the afternoon heat. “They may be al-Qaeda members,” she added, “that’s why they refuse” – employing that notorious Arabic term as shorthand for the multitude of militant groups who operate in the region.

With another woman, Irfan climbed three concrete steps to a rusting door. “Children from infants to five-year-olds for polio drops,” she intoned. “Our team has come to give the drops. Come quickly.” The door opened a crack, and the near-whispered response came from a woman inside. “We don’t take drops.”

“Why not?” demanded Irfan cheerfully.

“They say they are damaging,” the unseen woman replied.

“No they don’t damage anyone,” said Irfan impatiently. “It protects your child and you should give it to your children.”

“I’ve never given them drops.”

. . .

Conversations like this have played out in dozens of countries over the past quarter century, according to Svea Closser, who has focused her recent research on the efforts of frontline polio workers. “You see a lot of the same problems in Nigeria,” she told me, where large swaths of the country’s north have struggled with local officials who stymie WHO programmes, a population hostile to outside intervention and, more recently, militants targeting polio workers. But a singular challenge for vaccination workers in both countries is to explain why so much effort is being expended on this one disease in areas where other healthcare services are practically non-existent. “If you only care about polio, and people sense that,” she explained, “if there are no services provided but you turn up 13 times a year at their doorstep, that makes people really pissed off.”

Furthermore, pernicious rumours about the vaccine have long plagued Pakistan’s polio campaigns. The pink serum, I was told several times during interviews with the parents of young children, was either designed to render Muslim children sterile, or contained some combination of monkey blood, pork tissue and faeces. Following the raid on bin Laden’s compound and ensuing fears about American spying programmes, the vaccine refusal rate here has risen dramatically.

This is especially true among Pashtun parents like Usman. A father of four living in the Karachi slum of Bhains Colony, he contracted polio as an infant in the early 1980s. It has left him visibly disabled, his loping gait the result of an almost useless right leg that he must lock out with a rigidly tensed right hand at every step. As a polio victim himself, he insisted that his eldest children be vaccinated. But by the time workers came to inoculate his youngest child, Musharaf, reports of Dr Afridi’s activities on behalf of the CIA had reached him.

“If the incident in Abbottabad did not happen,” he admitted ruefully, speaking of his fellow Pashtuns in general, “and these rumours didn’t spread to us, we would have continued the vaccinations as we had been.” But Usman refused the vaccine drops for Musharaf, and one morning in January the two-year-old woke crying and unable to move his leg. “I was trying to get him to sit and I remember what my mother told me: ‘When you were little I was trying to get you to stand and you couldn’t stand.’” His face is pained as he recounts the episode. “With my mother’s words in my mind I tried to make him stand, but he couldn’t and it hit me hard – that, God forbid, something has happened to him.” Just weeks after the deaths of those vaccination workers, the young child with a winning smile had become Pakistan’s first confirmed polio case of 2013.

“I know if I had given him the vaccine this wouldn’t have happened,” Usman confesses, admonishing himself. “You shouldn’t have been fooled by people.” I follow him as he clambers slowly down the rough concrete stairs out of his house and stops to watch a hobbling Musharaf join a group of children playing with a pink balloon.

In places like this, the coming summer heat has traditionally proved a boon for the poliovirus, according to Durry. But he believes there is another pressing reason to get through as many vaccination drives as possible: the new government of Nawaz Sharif may not place polio eradication high on its agenda.

“Our window of opportunity is shrinking,” he admits. “We need to do as many campaigns now as we can.” And on the likelihood of further violence, an Algerian colleague of Durry’s was especially frank. “More vaccinators will die. The question is – is it worth it?”

-------------------------------------------

The global effort

Three decades after success in defeating smallpox triggered a programme to eradicate a second human scourge, the global burden of polio has fallen sharply, writes Andrew Jack. Despite sharp reductions in infections since 1988, a small tail of polio cases – 223 cases last year, almost all in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria, with a handful in Chad and Niger – has proved resistant, sparking a fresh push at an international summit in Abu Dhabi this spring to raise $5.5bn to finish the job.

One obstacle is biological. The virus is more easily transmissible and harder to detect than smallpox. It can easily spread and surge, highlighted by new cases this year in Kenya and Somalia.

Another is practical: the very success in fighting polio – in contrast to other health and social problems facing the communities where it remains endemic – means it is not perceived as a priority.

A third is ideological. International polio campaigns have often been perceived as western-imposed, and regarded with suspicion by local religious and political leaders.

There have been renewed efforts to achieve eradication within the next five years, and the Abu Dhabi summit generated $4bn in support. Aside from the money, the contributions (albeit still modest) from Muslim-dominated countries and financial institutions was a step forward towards winning over suspicion of foreign influence.

Another change is the shift towards the use of injectable polio vaccines. These are costlier, but could provide more rapid and effective protection.

A final need is to integrate polio vaccination with other health and social services. That way, even if eradication remains elusive, at least the latest push will provide broader benefits.

[Muppalla]

[Prem]

Poodle Man Greeting Poodle Minister.

http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-9 ... s-the-plan
What’s the plan Mian?

Sir, we would have to cough out $10 billion in the following 12 months; the current account gap plus our maturing debts. As of May 24, the SBP had $6.5 billion. Sir, the budget that your finance minister is about to announce will have a trillion rupee hole; that’s Rs1,000,000,000,000.your manifesto maintains that the “PML-N will focus on motorways, dams, housing projects and development of new urban centres and cities.” There is little doubt that we need new drivers of economic growth. Motorways need real money and so do housing projects, development of new urban centres and cities. Sir, where would all that money come from?Sir, your energy plan is about replacing “furnace oil boilers by coal fired boilers. This will cost around $2 billion.” Sir, where would all that money come from? Sir, you have pledged to “generate 10,000 MW of electricity....” That is going to cost $20 billion. Sir, where would all that money come from? Sir, your energy plan promises “Permanent elimination of circular debt.” Our accumulated circular debt is Rs1,000,000,000,000. Sir, where would all that money come from?Sir, you have three choices: go begging to Saudi Arabia; borrow from the likes of the IMF, the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank and the State Bank of Pakistan or generate funds through fiscal consolidation and internal austerity.
Sir, you know it better than anyone else that there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch – neither in Saudi Arabia nor in China. Saudi Arabia gives us money to get what it wants from us – influence over this region along with its agenda. Sir, project financing from China is to promote and safeguard Chinese interests in Pakistan – and the region. As a matter of fact, one of the drivers of state failure is when a state begins to allow interference by other states – be it Saudi Arabia or China. Sir, we can’t simultaneously drink free Saudi oil and go for the Iranian gas pipeline. Then there’s sectarian violence within Pakistan that almost always follows truckloads of free dates. Will the Saudi-American combine tolerate the Gwadar-Khunjerab-Kashgar rail network? China, as a matter of principle, finances neither budgetary deficit nor provides funds for balance of payment crisis.Sir, are you serious about tax reforms? Let us begin with Punjab. Sir, the tax-to-GDP ratio for the federal government is 9.1 percent. Imagine: the tax-to-GDP ratio for the Punjab government is 0.2 percent. Imagine: the Punjab Revenue Authority, with a population of 97 million, has received a total of 300 tax returns. Sir, do you commit to abide by the Fiscal Responsibility and Debt Limitation Law of 2005 (the law caps public debt at 60 percent of GDP)?

( Paki ought Replace GDP with MDP=Mush Deapth Parameter)

[RCase]

^^^ Revenge of ZAB!!!
We will eat grass!!!

Pakistan will go GREEN:
Hara bhara kebabs!
Lowered carbon footprint with load shedding
Algae and polio infested water and sewage
Zero emission cars (running on water kit)
Renewable and natural source energy transportation (camels)
Begging IMF and Unkil for the Green Backs.

[SSridhar]

From the DT editorial on drones

One cannot expect the US to sit with hands folded while the jihadis wreak havoc in Afghanistan. They will be droned unless the military establishment in Pakistan stops using the Jihadis as their proxies to consolidate Pakistan’s position in post-2014 Afghanistan and to weaken Indian influence there. Having relinquished the strategic depth theory, {What ? When did that happen ? } Pakistan should also let Afghanistan build its state without any interference. India’s soft power strategy should not be taken as a threat. Being its neighbour, Afghanistan is free to develop friendly relations with India. How that makes Pakistan vulnerable is quite a puzzling equation.

[SSridhar]

Reluctant Nawaz Sharif moves into palace - DT

When Nawaz Sharif succeeded Benazir Bhutto, he, too, battled critics over his use of the house. Abida Hussain, who served as Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States from 1991 to 1993, recalled that Nawaz Sharif relied on top designers to furnish the residence.

“He was not like India, where maintaining a modest lifestyle for top leaders flowed from the Gandhi era,” said Hussain, noting Nawaz Sharif was born into wealth and raised in lavish mansions. “We veered more and more toward the Arabs, the Gulf Arabs, whose leaders were extremely elaborate. We looked away from the Indian model of simplicity.”

[SSridhar]

Op Blue Star, the untold story - The Hindu

Almost three decades after Operation Blue Star – the army operation that cleared the Golden temple complex in Amritsar of Sikh militants in 1984 — a journalist has spoken to some of the surviving dramatis personae of the event to recreate almost hour by hour what happened during those fateful six days. The documentary Operation Blue Star - the untold story currently being aired by Chandigarh-based television station Day and Night News run by veteran Punjab journalist Kanwar Sandhu has uncovered startling new evidence about the operation and the conduct of the militants and the security agencies since then.

Perhaps the most significant disclosures are by Balwant Singh Ramoowalia, a former Union minister for Social Welfare, then with the Shiromani Akali Dal, who was present in the Guru Ram Das Sarai along with then Akali Dal president Harchand Singh Longowal and SGPC president Gurcharan Singh Tohra.

He relates how at around 6 p.m. on 5th June, Mr. Longowal and Mr. Tohra were coerced almost at gunpoint to declare the formation of Khalistan and how they wriggled out of it.

“Five Sikh youth with self-loading rifles (SLRs) and a metallic box that was possibly a transmitter came to us and placed their SLRs with their barrels pointing towards all of us. They told us that the ‘box’ is connected with Gen Zia-Ul-Haq in Pakistan. They told Jathedar Tohra and Sant Longowal to declare the formation of Khalistan, so that the Pakistani Army can launch an attack. Both Tohra and Longowal are not alive today, so I am saying this under a solemn oath of allegiance to the tenth Sikh Guru, Guru Gobind Singh, because I want to speak the truth. Sant Longowal kept completely quiet. Then Jathedar Tohra said, ‘ Dekho naujawano, eh jedi jang hai eh Hind-Punjab di jang hai . This is a battle between Sant Bhinderanwale and Mrs. Indira Gandhi and that since the former is leading the battle, it will be fair to ask him to issue the statement about the creation of Khalistan.’ He did not say that he will make the announcement for Khalistan. I don’t know how history will judge the Akali leadership but this is the truth. The youth then left the place and never came back.”

Between 1982 and 1984, even as Zia-ul-Haq was talking peace with Mrs IG, he was acquiring F-16s, opening the Khunjerab Pass, doing a cold test of his device in Lop Nor etc. In his 13-page confessions, Dr. A.Q. Khan says that by c. 1984, Pakistan “had conducted successful cold tests and had manufactured all components for 30 nuclear devices.” Pakistan was black-mailing India and was probably ready to launch a strike in 1984.

[Gagan]

^^^
Not surprising at all:

Khalis-stan means the same thing in Punjabi as Pak-istan means = Land of the Pure. (Khalis / Paak = pure, Stan = land)

The Khalistan movement was a Pakistani planned and supported movement, which used gullible and power hungry, and disgruntled sikhs to needle India.

Pakistan which had lost half its country in 1971 was itching to repay Indira and India in kind. They could not launch a frontal attack - nukes or no nukes, India's military response would have annihilated them. So they decided to use terrorism instead.

I remember back in the 80s when I first heard the term Khalistan, it took me only a few seconds to arrive at the conclusion that this is a Paki sponsored thing.

[Gagan]

Further, I don't think Indira Gandhi's assassination was as simple as a group of sikh security officials wanting to take revenge for Bluestar. I believe there were deeper tentacles, and higher powers were involved - like national level intel agencies outside of India possibly.

[CRamS]

Guys, just a quick observation. I haven't seen DocJi post of late. I sent him a personal note but didn't hear back. Whats going on, why is he MIA? . Of course, I don't visit all the BR threads, so perhaps he is active on other threads.

[arun]

Pakistani men sentenced to death for policeman son's murder

Next the victim’s family will be pressured to accept “blood money” under Pakistan’s Mohammadden Shariah law influenced Qisas & Diyat Laws and the “super-rich and landowning class” murderers will be let off enabling Pakistan to project a “soft image” of a “moderate Mohammadden state” to the Kaafir world while simultaneously maintaining the feudal structure of its polity.

[arun]

Pakistan never asked us to stop drone attacks: US Congressman

Hardly surprising when one considers that the Pakistan Military which has gorged itself on its fellow citizens money to stockpile weapons has not demonstrated a single attempt to thwart a drone strike of which there have been around 340 over a time frame stretching almost to a decade of which half was under a Military Dictatorship.

Truly the Drone is Pakistan's National Bird and cannot be interfered with

[Gagan]

Oopsie !
That statement shouldn't have been made.
Now the media in Pakistan is going to go bonkers, because everyone there is trying to prove that they are holier-than-thou, while actually doing nothing concrete.

A lot of mud slinging is going to happen at the Fauj, Nawaz Sharif is going to get pressured to do something.

If this gets worse, there might even be another round of stopping supplies in and out of Afghanistan.

(Hmm, that stopping supplies at this juncture actually suits the Pak Fauj, they can negotiate for more money, they can ask massa to donate their weaponry to the Pak Fauj, which can then pass some of their older equipment to the telibunnies)

[Gagan]

Meanwhile Nawaz Sharif says:
Dual policy on drone strikes not to continue: PM Sharif

Nawaz Sharif said in categorical terms on Monday that the dual policy of issuing public statements against drone attacks while (secretly) giving a go ahead to the US to carry on with the strikes will not be allowed to continue under his rule.

IMHO, Sharif is pushing himself (actually the Pak Fauj) against the wall here. This statement is futile. The US will continue the drone strikes no matter what. What these series of statements by NS is achieving is to shame the Pak Fauj that it can't shoot down the drones, and that the fauj did secret muhaidas with massa in the past.

The US will continue the drone strikes until the Pak Fauj gives up using these terrorists as their strategic forces. The day the Pak Fauj stops using the terrorists, actually does work on the ground to wind up the terror factories, hands over the baddies to the US / Afghanistan for justice, that day the drone strikes will stop.

Simple onlee

[Gagan]

And Zardari adresess his 6th joint parliamentary session
Confident PM Nawaz will meet expectations: President Zardari

Z is tel lagaoing NS. He expects NS to slip and fall after all the tel maalish.
The enormity of the situation facing Pakistan and NS is insurmountable. I fully expect NS to start filling his pockets sooner rather than later, and fudging figures even more sooner.
Add to this that the Pak Fauj has siphoned off about 50% of their national budget !

[Gagan]

Someone is being a PIA to PIA
Bomb threat made to PIA plane

KARACHI: Unknown miscreants have made a bomb threat to Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) plane scheduled to land in London, Geo News reported.

The threat was received by London Airport officials via email, however, British officials said that it was not a serious issue.

PIA plane will land at Heathrow Airport on its scheduled time.

[Mahendra]

I quite like the cartoon by Kureel a) he has depicted kiyanahi as short and pot-bellied b) Maino mataji has been depicted as taller than Kiyanahi

[mayo]

Guys, just a quick observation. I haven't seen DocJi post of late. I sent him a personal note but didn't hear back. Whats going on, why is he MIA? . Of course, I don't visit all the BR threads, so perhaps he is active on other threads.

CRS ji, see this

http://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/viewto ... &start=960

Shiv ji has left the forum .

[Mahendra]

Mean E Waqt

Pawki Lube Purushs aka low IQ Jihadi Sheikh Chillis get to serve the Queen

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22841573

[Peregrine]

Mean E Waqt

Pawki Lube Purushs aka low IQ Jihadi Sheikh Chillis get to serve the Queen

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22841573

Mahendra Ji :

In fact they are the guests at Her Majesty's Pleasure.

Cheers

[Agnimitra]

Pakistan summons US envoy over drone strike

Just days after taking power, Pakistan's new government summoned a top U.S. envoy Saturday to lodge a protest over a U.S. drone strike, suggesting that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's team fully intends to make good on its promise to aggressively push for an end to such strikes.

[KLNMurthy]

ISLAMABAD: Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry has taken suo motu notice on an application of a United Kingdom-based Pakistani, Barrister Amjad Malik regarding blasphemous content circulating on the internet and has sought a report from chairman Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) within a week.

Die of envy, jew kuffars!

[Nandu]

TSP's new IT minister warns Google over objectionable material

I wonder what will happen if Google bans Pakistan.

[Brad Goodman]

Unique Disease in Pakistan

ABBOTTABAD June 10 - “Diastrophic Dysplasia, a rare disease and probably the first of its kind in Pakistan,” says Dr.Jehangir Khan, a professor at Ayub Medical Complex Hospital while briefing the media at AMC in Abbotabad on Monday.

According to medical reports and surveys, this disease is found in Finland where at least 140 patients have been identified and now, the disease found its way into the home of a poor carpenter, Muhammad Urfan residing in Mogan village in Mansehra district.

According to details, Naheed Akhter (17 yr) who is short of height and only 85 CM (3 feet) was brought to AMC for multiple medical problems with heavy conjunction on her chest and after detailed study and family history, it was found that she was suffering from the diastrophic dysplasia. Her elder sister Shaheen Bibi age 24 also died few days back allegedly due to similar problems.

Four patients suffering from diastrophic dysplasia have been admitted in AMC Medical Ward B where Naheed Akhter is being treated by the doctors to save her life. Efforts are being done to save the other five members of the family who are normal, but chances of them being a “carrier” for the disease are very much there says Dr.Jehangir.

Dr.Javed, head of medicine Ward B, constituted special investigation team headed by Dr. Jehangir assisted by Dr.Nasir Ahmad, Dr.Atiq-urrehman, Dr.Moosa and Dr.Hani for detailed investigations and consultations with the experts in Finland through video chat. The results of which have confirmed the disease in which due to disorder of cartilage and bone development affected individuals have short stature with very short arms and legs, inward- and upward-turning foot (clubfoot), progressive abnormal curvature of the spine, and unusually positioned thumbs (hitchhiker thumbs).

Doctors of Ayub Medical Complex are trying to conduct a study for which they are seeking assistance from laboratories in Pakistan and abroad. Due to the heavy cost on the study and long term treatment, they are seeking medical and financial assistance from the government, research institutes and philanthropists.

[ramana]

New baksheesh scam?

[Baikul]

........
Pawki Lube Purushs aka low IQ Jihadi Sheikh Chillis get to serve the Queen

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22841573

A confederacy of dunces:

Omar Khan, Jewel Uddin, Mohammed Hasseen, Mohammed Saud, Zohaib Ahmed and Anzal Hussain had all admitted terrorism offences in April.

Jewel Uddin? Really?

But the plotters arrived two hours after the EDL event had ended.

The EDL rally finished early because of a lack of speakers

Magnificent, all round.

[Anujan]

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-d ... m-1.528993

in 2011 Israel sought to purchase British components to export radar systems to Pakistan, as well as electronic warfare systems, Head-up Cockpit Displays ‏(HUD‏), parts for fighter jets and aircraft engines, optic target acquisition systems, components of training aircraft, and military electronic systems. In 2010, Israel applied for permits to export electronic warfare systems and HUDs with components from Britain to Pakistan.

[ArmenT]

TSP's new IT minister warns Google over objectionable material

I wonder what will happen if Google bans Pakistan.

The abduls will have no way of mijjile maalishing. There's a good reason why they're called "*****" . All I can say is that those folks have some extremely strange tastes.

[kenop]

Jewel-uddin is the new jewel in the crown.

[Mahendra]

^

[RCase]

TSP's new IT minister warns Google over objectionable material

I wonder what will happen if Google bans Pakistan.
The abduls will have no way of mijjile maalishing.

This will only weaken the hands of the 'moderates'

Not being able to do favorite Google searches will make Abduls ogle at everything that moves, burn vehicles, buildings and flags. This is a ploy to defame Pakistan and Islam. Islam is a religion of peace.

[Neshant]

woah

listen to this.

is there going to be a dirty bomb attack on India or something.

can't tell if the guy in the video is talking nonsense or if he's for real.

what do you think?

[sum]

Report claims Israel exports military equipment to Pakistan

Israel has exported military equipment, including hi-tech gear used in combat jets over the past five years to Pakistan and Arab countries with which it has no diplomatic relations, according to a media report today.

The report released by Britain's Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, which deals with British government permits for arms and security equipment exports, said besides Pakistan, Israel has exported military equipment to Egypt,

Algeria, the United Arab Emirates and Morocco.

In 2011, Israel sought to purchase British components to export various systems to Pakistan, including radar systems, electronic warfare systems, head-up cockpit displays (HUDs), parts for fighter jets and aircraft engines, optic target acquisition systems, components of training aircraft, and military electronic systems.

In 2010, Israel applied for permits to export electronic warfare systems and HUDs with British components to Pakistan, the Haaretz newspaper quoted the British government report as saying.

The report did not mention what the components would be used for though experts said they believed most of them were meant for use in the JF-17 Thunder jets developed jointly by Pakistan and China.