Bharat Rakshak

harbans wrote:Weren't the Pakis saying a few days back only that the ISI tipped the Americans on Osama? So is the ISI also guilty of treason?

. . .court of Assistant Political Agent (APA), Bara, Mohammad Nasir Khan, found Dr Shakil Afridi guilty and awarded him 33 years imprisonment under Section 11 of the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) and sections 121-A (conspiracy to commit offence against the state), 123 (concealing with intent to facilitate design to wage war against state), 123-A (condemnation of the creation of the state and advocacy of abolition of its sovereignty) and 124 (assaulting president, governor, etc, with the intention to compel or restrain the exercise of any lawful power) of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC).

Afridi had been terminated under the Efficiency & Disciplinary (E&D) Rules for being involved in anti-state activities.

Rajdeep wrote:The CNN interview of Gilani is causing much heartburn in pakiland.

A Senate panel expressed its outrage over the conviction of a Pakistani doctor who helped the US get Osama bin Laden by slashing aid by $33 million - $1 million for every year of the doctor's 33-year sentence.

SSridhar wrote:124 (assaulting president, governor, etc, with the intention to compel or restrain the exercise of any lawful power) of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC).

I am unable to recall when and where Dr. Afridi assaulted Zardari or Syed Masood Kauser. There was one person who did so some time back when he prevented the Governor of the Punjab, Salman Taseer, from carrying out his lawful duties but he became a hero for that act.

There is also a provision in Pakistan Penal Code which makes it an offence for Pakistani citizens to act in a way against other countries that would invite war. Professor saheb is a prime candidate for conviction straightaway under this provision but neither the GoP nor the courts think so.

NEW DELHI – India and Pakistan Wednesday signed agreements with Turkmenistan for a project to pipe natural gas from the central Asian country through Afghanistan, marking a milestone in regional relations. The signing of the gas sales and purchase agreements by state-run GAIL (India) Ltd. and Pakistan's Inter State Gas System (Pvt) Ltd. in Turkmenistan comes after nearly two decades of negotiations and backing from the U.S. to build the pipeline, commonly referred to as the TAPI pipeline.

Altair wrote:^^
Fantastic post as usual by RD. I think there may be one more factor here. "black slaves are meant to serve islam " attitude must have been recorded on tape by surveillance of Zardari and the evidence found in Osama's pindi house plotting his assassination with ISI's hand must also have weighed in.

As last weekend's NATO summit made clear, President Barack Obama's Hamlet-like indecisiveness on Pakistan plagues his administration's relationship with the country and its president, Asif Ali Zardari. Obama remains unable to effectively manage the need to both apologize to and reengage Pakistan, while at the same time moving the country away from supporting militant groups that destabilize it and the region. For all the importance Obama claims to place on Pakistan, he has taken a back seat in directing the sinking partnership with Islamabad. In the extensively sourced Wall Street Journal report, the president is missing from the narrative. The internal administration debate on whether to apologize to Pakistan seems to be one among principals, deputies, and senior aides. But the U.S.-Pakistan relationship is too important for Obama to delegate. Contrast that with his behavior at the NATO summit: Initially, the White House told reporters the president would not meet with Zardari, a clear snub. But this clashed with the administration's strategy of enhancing and maintaining support with Pakistan's civilian democrats while taking the military to task. By summit's end, the administration backtracked -- realizing that a complete snub of Zardari could hurt Pakistan's fragile democratic transition -- and Obama held two "brief" meetings with the Pakistani president. The White House highlighted these interactions, yet emphasized that they were not especially substantive. Obama then awkwardly avoided mentioning Pakistan in his press conference at the summit's close. (He referred to NATO's commitment to bringing "peace and stability to South Asia, including Afghanistan's neighbors," but Pakistan is the only South Asian state that borders Afghanistan.) Finally, Obama gave an extensive response to the first question from the media, which was on Pakistan, giving the impression that his discussions with Zardari were wide in scope. The Obama administration's behavior was not carefully calibrated diplomatic messaging, but tactical maneuvering that was imprecise, difficult to decipher, and verging on passive aggression. It was amateur hour. The president's refusal to apologize has kept U.S.-Pakistan relations frozen at last winter's nadir, and the spring has seen no thaw. Relations could have been back on track had the president swallowed his pride and allowed his diplomatic team to bring Pakistan on board to secure a lasting peace in Afghanistan.
A strategic convergence between the United States and Pakistan is possible. Neither wants civil war in Afghanistan. Both have leverage over different sets of belligerents in Afghanistan's intensifying internal feud. (Pakistan has the most clout with the Taliban and its Afghan allies, while the United States has working, albeit increasingly troubled, ties with a broad segment of mainstream Afghan factions.) But both lack a coherent, viable Afghanistan strategy. Washington hopes to hand over security control to Afghan forces its own troops believe are compromised by drug-abuse and thievery. Meanwhile, Islamabad has succeeded only in antagonizing most of Afghanistan's power brokers; its partners, the Taliban and associated militant groups, are incapable of taking over the country. Pakistan is the most disliked country in Afghanistan. And the longer instability prevails in Afghanistan, the bigger the strain on Pakistan's economy and security. A stable Afghanistan in which all major power brokers, including the Taliban, are brought into a legitimate and reasonably effective political process is in the interest of both Washington and Islamabad.

Abhijit wrote:The sweet sound of the lone superpower's impotence - a piddly 33 m cut from aid to pakiland. Pakis are 'in your face' to the tlp (the lone superpower) by calling the doctor's imprisonment as a punishment for 'treason'. OBL kills 3000 americans, tlp rages and rants and vows revenge. for years and years OBL becomes the most sought after criminal/terrorist for tlp. then a paki doctor helps tlp find OBL. this act should warrant the highest civilian honor (the medal of 'freeeeedom' from the undisputed beacon of freeeeedom, tlp) for the paki doctor. Instead, he gets slammed into the prison for 33 years under a charge of 'treason'. and the mighty lone superpower gives a fitting reply to paki perfidy. a whopping 33 million dollars cut from the aid. if this is the 'lakshan' of a superpower, the lone superpower with a million missiles and stealth bombers and nucular weapons, then jai ho to that superpower.

Well, I think the idea is to humiliate Pakis. To be honest, if I was a Paki today, I'd jump up my own a*s and die. This $33 mn cut is a small cut, but nevertheless is strongly humiliating.

I was roaming around the Lahore Fort when I came across the Athdara. I got on top of it and started looking around. I found several features that were Mughal but some were very different – a confusing but intriguing mix of materials and motifs,” remembers Dr Nadhra Shahbaz Naeem Khan. This was the moment when her unique journey to documenting Sikh art and architecture in Pakistan began, which in her words, was “serendipity.”A visit to the Athdara at the Lahore Fort triggered her destiny and took Dr Khan to Ranjit Singh’s Samadhi to discover and learn more. “That was the day when I silently told myself that this was it – my dissertation was going to be on the Samadhi!”Dr Khan’s PhD dissertation was a study of the ornamental program of Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s Samadhi in Lahore. This led her to study other Sikh monuments in Punjab. In the process, she has built an impressive photographic archive documenting some endangered sites –an area that needs more people like her to carry out specialised research given dire need of preserving and conserving heritage sites in Pakistan.She says we have developed this habit of looking at history from very specific angles. “This is Mughal, so this is ours; this belongs to another religion, so this isn’t. It should not be like this. We are heirs of an ancient culture and we need to understand it. Starting from the Indus Valley, anything and everything in this part of the world is what makes us who we are,” she adds with conviction.
I had never noticed the narratives from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata beautifully painted in the sunken niches of the Sheesh Mahal at the Lahore Fort before I decided to write my research paper on Draupadi – a woman portrayed in the Mahabharata as the epitome of conviction and resilience. And I wonder how many of us visiting the Lahore Fort know what these frescoes mean and signify – the majority probably just takes them as imaginary male and female figures painted merely for decorative purposes.In Professor Nadhra’s opinion this is one of the major reasons so little is being done to preserve our heritage sites, “there is so little that people are aware of.” Talking about Naunehal Singh’s Haveli, which now functions as the Victoria School, she says, “This reflects our ignorance as a nation.”.

Being aware of this fact that Pakistan will remain a gateway not only to the Middle East, but also South Asia that is strengthening economically, the US may not want to lose out completely. Thus, it needs to frame a foreign policy keeping in view the geographical condition of this country because once trade and commerce become operational in the region, it will not be possible to ignore or bypass Pakistan’s national interest.Now for those who were predicting an early exit of the US-Nato forces. After the French President declared to withdraw his troops even before the 2014 deadline, Nato’s Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, shortly before the inauguration of the Nato Summit, declared: “We will stay committed to our operation in Afghanistan and see it through to a successful end.”
At the same time, some reports suggested that the weakness of the Pakistanis to negotiate with the Americans was mainly due to the military establishment. This notion, however, is not true because democratically-elected governments worldwide consult their generals in situations that demand military action. Therefore, such reports keep surfacing time and again, which seems to be the work of those who want to project Pakistan as a weak and divided nation. Against this backdrop, some religious parties have taken onto themselves the task to resolve the issues related to Pakistan’s foreign policy through street protests. They have threatened to initiate a long march against the possible restoration of Nato supplies. Such attitudes are never conducive to the betterment and growth of any state because in this age of interdependence, it is simply impossible to remain isolated.
One hopes that the Pakistani and American leadership will try to hammer out their differences, which does not create an image of a sell out on the part of Pakistan, and at the same time does not imply that the US-Nato forces have agreed on the issues that are not in their interest. The Americans could start by withdrawing the stringent conditions attached with Pakistan’s economic programmes and lift the sanctions that are affecting the sale of US weapons to it. On their part, the Pakistanis should demand a reasonable price for the trucks that pass through its territory. And for this restoration, the least the Americans can do is to tender an unconditional apology for the Salala tragedy. They should also revise terms of engagement for the drone attacks that are counterproductive. On this issue, a majority of the Pakistanis have condemned Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta, who brazenly said: “The US will not stop the drone attacks inside Pakistan.” Such statements have not helped the Pak-US relationship to move in the right direction. So, they must be avoided, if the Americans seriously acknowledge that Pakistan can play an important role to maintain peace and prosperity in Afghanistan and the South Asian region after the Nato forces leave in 2014.

Rajdeep wrote:US Senate panel cuts $33m aid to Pak for jailing man who helped CIA get Osama

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/worl ... 456250.cms

A Senate panel expressed its outrage over the conviction of a Pakistani doctor who helped the US get Osama bin Laden by slashing aid by $33 million - $1 million for every year of the doctor's 33-year sentence.

Suppiah wrote: If they are loved at all, it will be by the treacherous anti-hindu 'liberal' class in India who are in Beijings payroll.

McCain and others in the Senate Armed Services Committee doubled down later in the day, voting for a sweeping $631.4 billion defense spending bill for the coming fiscal year which freezes about $1 billion in military aid to Pakistan used to offset the costs of its support for the US-led coalition.
"Before the government of Pakistan can be reimbursed using coalition support funds... the secretary of defense is going to have to certify that Pakistan is open and maintaining lines of supply; is not supporting militant extremist groups such as the Haqqani network; and is not detaining or imprisoning citizens of Pakistan," McCain said.
He also said that Pakistan's linkage of Afridi's jailing to its demand for an apology for the US air strike in November is "beyond ludicrous."

Kakkaji wrote:I think the US will end up trading Dr. Aafia for Dr. Afridi.

My Muslim clients saw these normal Western social tools for negotiation during social conflicts as signs of weakness.They saw the lack of readiness to use threats and engage in a physical fight as a sign of fear.

Muslim clients mainly see the sources for their suffering as outer factors: An unfair society and non-Islamic authorities are the general scapegoats.

While Westerners tend to ask themselves "What did I do wrong?" when experiencing problems, Muslims tend to ask "Who did this to me?" The tendency to develop a victim mentality is therefore another natural consequence of having an outer locus of control:

Among my 150 Muslim clients, at most a handful felt they were Danish. Most of them saw themselves as Moroccans, Somalis and Pakistanis, etc. living in another country - in this case Denmark. ....This strong experience of "us" and "them" (Muslims and non-Muslims) has very concrete consequences – most of all to non-Muslims: Most of the Muslim inmates had been charged with some kind of violence – violence, robbery and attempted murder.

It seems that the Muslim group does not identify itself in terms of skin and hair colour. The group identified itself in accordance with its religion.
This surprised me, because most of the Muslim inmates were not practising their religion in daily life. Many of them enjoyed alcohol and had had premarital sex. They also did not pray five times per day, and a majority knew little or nothing about the content of the Quran.

In many cases, the suppression of women causes Muslim men to develop homosexual behaviour. Research conducted in Pakistan shows that "At least 95 percent of truck drivers in Pakistan consider indulging in sexual activities during their rest time as their main entertainment." A US military report from Afghanistan concludes that ”homosexual behaviour is unusually common among men in the large ethnic group known as Pashtuns. ... Pashtun men commonly have sex with other men, admire other men physically, have sexual relationships with boys and shun women both socially and sexually". Learning to not like women and still having a sex drive naturally drives the men to find other solutions.

When it comes to sodomy, paedophilia and rape sex, it is. According to research conducted using the internet's largest search engine, Google, "Pakistan is top dog in searches per-person for 'horse sex' since 2004, 'donkey sex' since 2007, 'rape pictures' between 2004 and 2009, 'rape sex' since 2004, 'child sex' between 2004 and 2007 and since 2009, 'animal sex' since 2004 and 'dog sex' since 2005. ... The country also tops - or has been No. 1 - in searches for 'sex', 'camel sex', 'rape video,' 'child sex video' and some other searches that can't be printed here".

These psychological insights should be used on a wider scale. One important example is that Western Indian diplomacy and foreign policy must take such cultural differences into account. There is no doubt that when we meet extreme Islamic governments and organizations with suggestions of compromise and dialogue, the average Muslim voter on their streets expect their Islamic leaders to exploit such Western weaknesses to the maximum.

Kakkaji wrote:I think the US will end up trading Dr. Aafia for Dr. Afridi.

Anujan wrote:I can bet my left testimonial that the good Hakeem did not know why he was collecting blood samples.

Jhujar wrote:http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news- ... vided-ever
Sindh cannot be divided ever

PML-N Quaid Mian Mohammad Nawaz Sharif is the only leader of a national party, who has been categorical about how the PML-N considers division of Sindh equivalent to treason and how Pakistan's territorial integrity is linked to Sindh's borders not being tampered withOf late, we have all noticed that the signage for a separate province for Mohajirs is fast spreading in Sindh's big cities. We condemn such a movement and those forces who are actively assisting such a tehreek. Breaking Sindh in pieces would lead to bloodshed because every son and daughter of the soil would resist such a move peacefully. However, knowing the terrorist and fascists supporting such a movement, it is clear that our peaceful resistance would make us sitting targets for their firepower.There can be no distinction between any of them based on how new their entry has been in Sindh. Those who entered Sindh pre-Raja Dahir, post-Mohammad bin Qasim and post-1947 cannot be divided into bands of new and old Sindhis. It’s unheard of in the world to have separate provinces for immigrants, since by their very definition immigrants migrate to make their new homeland their home and not to carve it out into a separate home.

kenop wrote:I am wiling to believe that TSP by passing a sentence against the hakeem has created a situation they imagine can be exploited to extract some moolah/gifts from Khan.

Aditya_V wrote:Now when will this Hakeem be Qadrified? thats the 33 mil $ question.

Side effect: after proper coverage in Paki Urdu papers, the faith of the Faithful in Doctors will plumment to all time low which can have health consequences.

Anujan wrote:

Kakkaji wrote:I think the US will end up trading Dr. Aafia for Dr. Afridi.

US seems to care so much about Hakeem Afridi that I think it is a tad overdone and exaggerated. Maybe they are throwing the small mouse to the wolves to protect the big mole inside ISI? I can bet my left testimonial that the good Hakeem did not know why he was collecting blood samples.

Intelligence ops are highly compartmentalized and a double agent who is willing to screw his motherland over for some greenbacks is the last person anyone would trust with information. All info flow from double agents would be one way. Maybe they said that they are screening for AIDS and made him collect samples.