Thursday, November 24, 2016

Video -Is Modi's demonetization a gamble?

Video Report -‘We are at war with Russia’

#Saudi Regime crimes against humanity :Two Saudi women are sentenced to 20 lashes

By JENNIFER NEWTON 

Two women in Saudi Arabia have been sentenced to 20 lashes after they were found to have used bad language while arguing with each other over WhatsApp.

The pair were also jailed for 10 days after the criminal court in Jeddah said they had used 'impermissable expressions' in their text messages.

And they have been warned if they use bad language again their punishment will be much more severe.

The case came to court after one of the young women was accused of using 'abusive expressions' during her WhatsApp conversation with her friend.

According to Arabic newspaper Al Watan, the court then requested the woman produce her phone so that they could examine the alleged offensive messages.

However, the defendant claimed that she was not the first one to start the argument and showed a message using bad language from her counterpart two months beforehand.

The court then decided that both women were equally as guilty and handed down the sentences.
The sentence comes as Saudi Arabia has been repeatedly condemned for violating human rights, discriminating against woman and restricting freedom of expression.


Earlier this year, the country's top clerical body banned the Pokemon Go app saying it was too similar to gambling and that is character were based on Darwin's theory of evolution.

It also said the game carried symbols of 'deviant' religions and organisations, such as 'international Zionism' and Israel, Christian crosses, Freemasonry, and symbols from Japan's native Shinto religion.

It came at the same time a teenager in the country, whose video chats with a young American woman went viral, was also arrested for 'unethical behaviour'.

Meanwhile in 2011, Saudi woman Shaima Jastaina was sentenced to 10 lashes after a court in Jeddah found she had flouted a ban that does not allow women to drive. 

Music -Happy Thanksgiving 2016

President-elect Trump’s transition - A Circus - Experience, No Problem

President-elect Donald Trump’s transition has been a circus, to say the least, with a colorful and eclectic crowd of job seekers of varying ideological hues and levels of experience ascending to the 26th floor of Trump Tower to audition for some of the most consequential jobs in the country. The man who spent years saying “you’re fired” is now saying “you’re hired” to all sorts of people, though it’s not at all clear whether his choices result from a carefully thought-out strategy or are being made on the fly.
The latest winners in the Trump job fair are Gov. Nikki Haley, Betsy DeVos and, by all accounts, Ben Carson, who is likely to be named soon. Anyone seeking a clear policy or ideological pattern here will be disappointed.
Ms. Haley, Mr. Trump’s choice to be ambassador to the United Nations, is a popular South Carolina governor with a winning manner and zero foreign policy experience. Mr. Carson, who is expected to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development, is a famed neurosurgeon who was demolished by Mr. Trump in the Republican primaries and whose only experience with housing appears to be that he is a homeowner. Ms. DeVos, the prospective education secretary, is a wealthy Republican donor who leads the advocacy group American Federation for Children, but who spent a considerable amount of time on Wednesday insisting that she does not support Common Core, which Mr. Trump bashed on the campaign trail.
There is no perfect prescription for assembling a cabinet, although most incoming presidents have aimed for geographical balance and, in recent years, gender and racial diversity. Nor is there any particular order in which cabinet members are supposed to be named, although here, again, presidents-elect have sought to nail down top foreign policy and defense jobs fairly soon. On that score, Mr. Trump is only partly there, with Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn as national security adviser and Representative Mike Pompeo as director of central intelligence, but no secretary of state or defense as yet.
If there is any ideological consistency it is in the appointments of General Flynn and Mr. Pompeo. Both are hard-liners, as is true of the hard-right Stephen Bannon, whom Mr. Trump appointed as his chief strategist. Reince Priebus, the new chief of staff, seems more of a consensus pick, since his main job over the last few years, as chairman of the Republican National Committee, has been to keep as many Republicans as possible as happy as possible.
Josh Bolten, who ran George W. Bush’s transition — acknowledged by experts to be one of the best-run in recent history — calls Mr. Trump’s wide-open approach to hiring “refreshing” and its organization “peculiar.” He has no better idea than the rest of us about where Mr. Trump is headed. After all, Mr. Trump has been tinkering with his stances on Obamacare, climate change, so-called enhanced interrogation and immigration, and often seems to express the views of the last person he’s spoken to.
But Mr. Bolten, like others, seems worried that Mr. Trump, like Groucho Marx, might be trotting out his principles, while saying, “If you don’t like them … well, I have others.”
“We had a governing agenda,” he said. “The Trump folks don’t, and so their personnel are going to have to write the book as they enter office. It can be done, but it multiplies the degree of difficulty.”
Given the unpredictable nature of the president-elect and the erratic nature of the process, we may be in for a wild ride.
https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6906155786122195046#editor/target=post;postID=2094237508129084570

Chasing Abortion Rights Across the State Line




Half slave and half free. The last time the United States split into two countries, it didn’t work out at all well.
If that sounds like a hyperbolic reaction to the yawning red state, blue state divide, so be it. It’s prompted by the picture that President-elect Donald J. Trump painted the other day of what would happen if he achieved his goal of appointing enough Supreme Court justices to overturn Roe v. Wade.
The question of abortion “would go back to the states,” Mr. Trump told Lesley Stahl of CBS News during a conversation on “60 Minutes.” Ms. Stahl asked him what would become of women seeking abortions in states that banned the procedure. “They’ll perhaps have to go — they’ll have to go to another state,” the president-elect replied.
And so they would, traveling a new underground railroad from red to blue. The image is not far-fetched. An Indiana legislator the other day announced a plan to introduce a “Protection at Conception” bill, criminalizing all abortions, when the State Legislature convenes in January. It’s wildly unconstitutional today and for the immediate future, of course — but down the road, in a world of Trump-picked Supreme Court nominees confirmed by a Republican Senate presided over by Vice President Mike Pence, who was one of the country’s leading anti-abortion governors, it’s possible to envision such a measure being upheld. (As of today, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. would overturn Roe in a heartbeat, as Justice Antonin Scalia would have done if given the chance; Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. would probably prefer a more incremental route to cutting off access to abortion, so the question would be whether he would join four solid votes for taking Roe all the way down.)
Mr. Trump spoke accurately: Overturning Roe v. Wade would not criminalize abortion, but would leave the question up to the states. There’s no doubt that some states would avail themselves of the option of banning abortion; Mississippi defended, all the way up to the Supreme Court last year, its right to impose regulations that would have concededly shut the state’s sole remaining abortion clinic. Women can find clinics in Tennessee, Louisiana or Alabama, the state argued.
It’s Mr. Trump’s evident approval of such an outcome that I want to focus on. His comments were reckless or cynical or both. They resonate with a dark period of Supreme Court history, when “separate but equal” was the law of the land. Yet even the Supreme Court of the 1930s, decades from questioning the prevailing racial ideology, was stopped short by a case from Missouri, State of Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada. (The Canada in the case title was not the country, but the name of an official at the University of Missouri.) Lloyd Gaines was a graduate of Lincoln University, Missouri’s state university for black students, who were excluded from the University of Missouri. He wanted to become a lawyer, but Lincoln University had no law school. He applied to the University of Missouri’s law school, for which his academic record qualified him, but his race did not. His application was rejected, and he was advised to apply for the scholarship that a state law made available to black students forced to leave the state in order to pursue their educational goals. In the language of the statute, university officials “shall have the authority to arrange for the attendance of negro residents of the state of Missouri at the university of any adjacent state to take any course or to study any subjects provided for at the state university of Missouri, and which are not taught at the Lincoln university, and to pay the reasonable tuition fees for such attendance.”
Mr. Gaines declined the offer. Represented by Charles Hamilton Houston, a pioneering lawyer for the N.A.A.C.P., he went to court. He lost in the Missouri Supreme Court, which noted that he could attend law school with full tuition paid and with only minor inconvenience at the state law schools of Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa or Illinois, all of which accepted black students.
“We think that these matters are beside the point,” Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes wrote for the United States Supreme Court, overturning the state court’s ruling. “The basic consideration is not as to what sort of opportunities other states provide, or whether they are as good as those in Missouri, but as to what opportunities Missouri itself furnishes to white students and denies to Negroes solely upon the ground of color.” The chief justice went on to say that each state was “responsible for its own laws establishing the rights and duties of persons within its borders,” and that “it is an obligation the burden of which cannot be cast by one state upon another, and no state can be excused from performance by what another state may do or fail to do.”
Given the option of admitting Mr. Gaines to the University of Missouri or opening a law school for black students, the state chose the latter. The N.A.A.C.P. planned to challenge the new law school as not equal to the University of Missouri’s, but Mr. Gaines, who had grown ambivalent about attending law school, left the state and disappeared. He was never found, and the new lawsuit was dropped.
The Gaines case is not well known today outside of Missouri, where the state university has a scholarship in his name and 10 years ago awarded him a posthumous honorary degree. But it has been rediscovered in the recent litigation over state restrictions on abortion. Two years ago, a federal district judge in Alabama, Myron Thompson, invoked the case in striking down the state’s requirement that doctors who perform abortions have admitting privileges at local hospitals. Because most hospitals in Alabama refused to give admitting privileges to doctors who performed abortions, the requirement would have closed three of the state’s five abortion clinics. The state argued that women could go elsewhere. But “the state could identify no precedent for a court to consider conduct outside the political boundaries of a jurisdiction in order to justify the constitutionality of actions by that jurisdiction,” Judge Thompson wrote, citing the Gaines case.
Last year, the very conservative United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit struck down Mississippi’s admitting-privileges requirement, which would have closed the Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the state’s only abortion clinic. This was the same Fifth Circuit that upheld a Texas law that would have shut down three-quarters of that state’s abortion clinics, leaving only eight or nine, had the Supreme Court not ruled in June in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt that the law was unconstitutional. Even for the Fifth Circuit, the Mississippi situation went too far. “Gaines simply and plainly holds that a state cannot lean on its sovereign neighbors to provide protection of its citizens’ federal constitutional rights, a principle that obviously has trenchant relevance here,” the court said, adding that Gaines “locks the gate for Mississippi to escape to another state’s protective umbrella.” In June, after issuing its decision in the Texas case, the Supreme Court denied Mississippi’s appeal without comment.
While President-elect Trump’s “let them go somewhere else” was at odds with the country’s deep seated constitutional culture, it also conveyed a “let them eat cake” cynicism. In the old days, women who had connections and could afford to travel could almost always get a safe abortion — if not in this country, through an underground network of liberal clergy who referred women to willing doctors, then in Puerto Rico or England, for women on the East Coast, or in Mexico or Japan, for women in the West. (When Reva B. Siegel and I were compiling documents for our book on the pre-Supreme Court years of the abortion controversy, perhaps the most chilling document we found was a typed two-page instruction sheet labeled “ ‘Rush’ Procedure for Going to Japan.” In its precise detail about flights, Tokyo taxis, how to get a passport, and how to explain the trip’s short duration to United States customs officials on returning, this document, in the Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, brought to life a vanished world — or so we assumed when we did the research back in 2009.)
Getting on a plane for a domestic flight from Jackson, Miss., or Birmingham, Ala., or Indianapolis is easier, of course. All it takes is time and money. Maybe Mr. Trump’s remark was aimed at women who have both: a way of saying, don’t worry, you’ll always be able to get your abortion. In fact, most women who get abortions today are low-income, defined as less than twice the federal poverty level, a trend that is accelerating as middle-class women avoid unplanned pregnancy by availing themselves of reliable, long-lasting (and expensive) birth control methods. If the president-elect’s vision becomes reality, for women, the border — a virtual wall? — will be internal, and those most in need will be most unable to cross it.

Video - President Obama Pardons the National Thanksgiving

President Obama's Weekly Address: Coming Together On Thanksgiving

East Pakistan would be given independence, Pak president told US in November 1971


One of the world’s most famous and reputed diplomats Henry Kissinger has revealed in his latest interview to the magazine ‘The Atlantic’ that the then Pakistan’s president and its army chief had told United States President Richard Nixon in November 1971 that Pakistan would grant independence to East Pakistan.
This is stunning revelation as in November, 1971 India had not invaded East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. India invaded East Pakistan on December 3, 1971.
Henry Kissinger was 56th US Secretary of State and served from September 22, 1973 to January 20, 1977. Kissinger also served as US National Security Adviser from January 20, 1969 to November 3, 1975. Kissinger played a key role in United States foreign policy between 1969 and 1977.
In his latest interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, the Editor-in-Chief of ‘The Atlantic’, Kissinger has discussed many issues ahead of recent US elections.
While narrating events of 1971 in context of US’ opening to China and Pakistan-India Bangladesh issue, Kissinger said, “After the opening to China via Pakistan, America engaged in increasingly urging Pakistan to grant autonomy to Bangladesh. In November, the Pakistani president agreed with Nixon to grant independence the following March.”
The interview starts with the introductory para; “What follows is an extended transcript of several conversations on foreign policy I had with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger ahead of the 2016 US presidential election, which formed the basis of a story in the December issue of The Atlantic. That story, along with an interview on Kissinger’s reaction to the surprise electoral victory of Donald Trump, can be found here. The transcript below has been condensed and edited for clarity.”
The relevant question asked by The Atlantic’s Editor-In-Chief and the Kissinger response were as follows:
Goldberg: Was the opening to China worth the sacrifices, the deaths, experienced in the India-Pakistan Bangladesh crisis?
Henry Kissinger: Human rights are an essential goal of American policy. But so is national security. In some situations, no choice between them is required, making the moral issue relatively simple. But there are situations in which a conflict arises, specifically when a country important to American security or international order engages in conduct contrary to our values, requiring the president to make a series of judgments: about the magnitude of the conflict; the resources available to remedy it; the impact of our actions on its foreseeable evolution; and finally, if the president identifies a path forward, the willingness of the American public to maintain that effort. Emphasizing human rights led us into failed nation-building in Iraq; ignoring them permitted genocide in Rwanda. Contemporary policymakers face this challenge all over the world, especially all over the Middle East.
The statesman can usually only reach his goal in stages and, by definition, imperfectly. The art of policy is to move through imperfect stages towards ever-more fulfilling goals.
Your question on Bangladesh demonstrates how this issue has been confused in our public debate. There was never the choice between suffering in Bangladesh and the opening to China. It is impossible to go into detail in one far-ranging interview. However, allow me to outline some principles:
1- The opening to China began in 1969.
2- The Bangladesh crisis began in March 1971.
3- By then, we had conducted a number of highly secret exchanges with China and were on the verge of a breakthrough.
4- These exchanges were conducted through Pakistan, which emerged as the interlocutor most acceptable to Beijing and Washington.
5- The Bangladesh crisis, in its essence, was an attempt of the Bengali part of Pakistan to achieve independence. Pakistan resisted with extreme violence and gross human-rights violations.
6- To condemn these violations publicly would have destroyed the Pakistani channel, which would be needed for months to complete the opening to China, which indeed was launched from Pakistan. The Nixon administration considered the opening to China as essential to a potential diplomatic recasting towards the Soviet Union and the pursuit of peace. The US diplomats witnessing the Bangladesh tragedy were ignorant of the opening to China. Their descriptions were heartfelt and valid, but we could not respond publicly. But we made available vast quantities of food and undertook diplomatic efforts to resolve the situation.
7- After the opening to China via Pakistan, America engaged in increasingly urging Pakistan to grant autonomy to Bangladesh. In November, the Pakistani president agreed with Nixon to grant independence the following March.
8- The following December, India, after having made a treaty including military provisions with the Soviet Union, and in order to relieve the strain of refugees, invaded East Pakistan [which is today Bangladesh].
9- The US had to navigate between Soviet pressures; Indian objectives; Chinese suspicions; and Pakistani nationalism. Adjustments had to be made—and would require a book to cover—but the results require no apology. By March 1972—within less than a year of the commencement of the crisis—Bangladesh was independent; the India-Pakistan War ended; and the opening to China completed at a summit in Beijing in February 1972. A summit in Moscow in May 1972 resulted in a major nuclear arms control agreement [SALT I]. Relations with India were restored by 1974 with the creation of a US-Indian Joint Commission [the Indo-US Joint Commission on Economic, Commercial, Scientific, Technological, Educational and Cultural Cooperation], which remains part of the basis of contemporary US-India relations. Compared with Syria, Libya, Egypt, Iraq, and Afghanistan, the sacrifices made in 1971 have had a far more clear-cut end.

Academic corruption in Pakistani varsities

By Sajid Mahmood Sajid

There is a race of rankings among universities in Pakistan. New motto of universities in Pakistan is the pursuit of quantity and not quality.

Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan recently announced that it had closed 31 PhD and 26 MPhil programs in various universities in Pakistan during last 18 months. Thank you very much, Chairman HEC for at least making an attempt to slow down the wholesale of higher education degrees in Pakistani universities. But universities are autonomous bodies in Pakistan, and HEC has too little space and authority to regulate the academic affairs of universities. There are almost 179 chartered universities and degree awarding institutions. Most universities in Pakistan do not entertain and even listen to the reservations, rules and regulations of HEC. In modern times when education has become a big enterprise in Pakistan, the dream of regulating universities is like auribus teneo lupum or mulgere hircum.
I am a full-time faculty member at a public-sector university in Pakistan. I observed many anomalies in academic affairs and research culture of universities in Pakistan during my service of 10 years. In this article, my scholarship is that fake research culture and traditions have become a working modus operandi in Pakistani universities. Universities of Pakistan are just like legal and chartered outlets of fake higher education degrees. Consequently, a lot of pseudo-scholars having PhD or MPhil degree are there in the market and sometimes are able to occupy a high position in universities in Pakistan.
Fake higher education culture has been promoted and supported in Pakistan for the last 15 years, and the standard of higher education has continued to deteriorate. Universities are no more seats of learning. In contemporary times, most PhD and MPhil dissertations in Pakistan are not earned Arte et Marte by the students. Rather, but they are fake with fake data, grafted, purchased and blindly plagiarised. No kind of genuine research is being done at most universities in Pakistan. I am sorry to say, plagiarised and copy-paste Pakistani methods are working well. Now Pakistani students even do not waste time in copy pasting and purchase ready-made fake thesis from the market. On the basis of this fake research culture, I have categorised most higher education degrees awarded and being awarded in Pakistan as fake. Academic corruption, fake higher education culture, manufacturing PhD, MPhil and MSc dissertations on a commercial basis in the market, plagiarised research traditions, and race of ranking among universities are some basic popular features and anomalies in the contemporary higher education culture in Pakistani universities.
Academic corruption and frauds have been evolved as a tradition in Pakistani universities. Media always propagate that politicians are corrupt, but I would also add the professors of universities in the list. I categorised it as academic corruption and moral corruption. This morally corrupt mafia of professors’ lack in professional integrity, and they facilitate the students in one way or the other and students are able to get higher studies degrees without doing genuine research. Today’s PhD and MPhil dissertations are not magnum opus but intellectual frauds. Most university professors are focused on quantity and not quality, and this mafia is responsible for the promotion and practice of fake higher education in Pakistan. Universities of Pakistan are replete with morally corrupt faculty members who lack in professionalism as well.
Gender-based corruption at campuses is also a part of academic corruption. For example, if you are female MPhil or PhD student at Pakistani university and your supervisor is male, then there is very strong probability that your degree will be completed within due time with 4/4 CGPA without doing genuine research.
Fake higher education culture and traditions have become popular in Pakistan. In the old times, fake degrees were prepared by tampering and forgery. Now there is no need of tempering and HEC recognised universities are issuing fake degrees with the genuine signature of the Chancellor. These fake degrees are only awarded to those students who have paid a fee of all semesters. A comedy writer Younis Butt once said, “In the modern times, university degrees in Pakistan are receipts of money paid to universities.” In Pakistani public sector universities, if an honest supervisor refuses to approve and signs the fake dissertation of the student, then that supervisor is insulted, harassed, blackmailed, and pressurised by departmental chairman and dean. By the laws of public sector universities in Pakistan, chairman and dean cannot bypass a supervisor, but usually, they violate this tradition in order to let down the research supervisor. I have personally experienced such kind of unfortunate incident and when I reported it to vice chancellor; he replied that it was a petty matter.
Fake dissertations of PhD, MPhil and MSc are manufactured in the market on order of a customer on a commercial basis. There are different rates of MSc, MPhil and PhD thesis. In Faisalabad city, rates of PhD, MPhil and MSc thesis are approximately Rs 150,000-200,000, Rs 15,000-25,000 and Rs 10000 respectively. Dissertations are provided to students on demand within a very short period.
Plagiarised research traditions have become a popular and working method in Pakistani universities. TURNITIN software is being used to check plagiarism across the globe, but fortunately or unfortunately it has failed in Pakistan. Corrupt and professionally sick faculty members and supervisors in Pakistani universities have developed Pakistani methods and techniques, and they know how to get the desired score of plagiarism using TURNITIN. Most dissertations of MSc, MPhil and PhD in Pakistan are highly plagiarised, and plagiarism report of TURNITIN shows 5 percent plagiarism only. In such a way, most research supervisors in universities are misusing TURNITIN in order to facilitate and oblige the students. The way TURNITIN is being used in Pakistan is a big slap in the face of creator and designer of this useful software.
There is a race of ranking among universities in Pakistan. Now motto of universities in Pakistan is the pursuit of quantity and not quality. Most Pakistani brand universities think that more number of enrolled students and more number of awarded degrees of MPhil and PhD will ensure them a high ranking in the country.
Here I have some conclusion and remedies for this dilemma of higher education in Pakistan. Faculty members, research supervisors, departmental chairpersons, deans, and vice chancellors of universities in Pakistan are collectively responsible for this fake research culture and fake higher studies degrees. We cannot put the blame on students only. Faculty members and research supervisors should not help students do fake dissertation, and they should refuse to approve a fake dissertation. Chairpersons, deans, and vice chancellors should support the perspective and stance of a supervisor rather than threatening or bypassing him or her. If this vicious coordination of academic corruption and fake higher education persists for a decade more, then universities in Pakistan will publish an advertisement in such a way, “Booking for MPhil and PhD degrees opened Fall semester 2026”. So, fake higher education tradition is not a brutal filmed or Felix culpa, and it is a potential threat for future of Pakistani nation as well.

Change Of Guard In Pakistan: Change Of Policy As Well? – OpEd







BY  

General Raheel Sharif, the present Pakistan Army Chief is likely to retire on 29th November this year. By all accounts, General Sharif does not seem to be seeking an extension of his term. The sitting incumbent usually has a say in the extension of tenure, which cannot be refused by the political dispensation owing the stranglehold of the military over all affairs in the country. Given that, it appears pretty surprising that the present Chief does not want one. What then does that reveal about the state of affairs in Pakistan?
General Sharif became Chief with the tacit backing of former Chief and President of Pakistan, General Musharraf. Pervez Musharraf continues to maintain his command over the way the Pakistan Army, and therefore the civilian government functions. Ostensibly, there are a number of cases being contested in courts against Musharraf but these should be taken with a handful of salt considering the record of justice disbursement in an almost ‘banana republic’. Further, what is happening behind the screens will never be available for public consumption, and it may well be wheels within wheels in the warped politics of Pakistan that are propelling these eyewashes. In either case, it remains irrefutable that Musharraf continues to be an active and assertive voice in their domestic politics and foreign policy.
Foreign policy in Pakistan has two important tenets namely its relations with the United States (for what it can extract) and its historical conflict with India (which remains its bete-noire). Both these play an important role in what decisions are taken in its domestic sphere. In the present instance, with the confusion prevalent following Trump’s victory in the US Presidential elections, it may not be entirely clear to policy makers in Pakistan what to expect in the months to come. However, with Trump announcing General Flynn as the National Security Advisor in the transition team, it is evident that he intends to follow his rhetoric about Muslims (during campaigning) even after he takes oath. That may well be a cause of worry to the Pakistani establishment, both military and civilian, as they may not be able to continue sucking the American funds that they have been so used to in the past. It may also be wise to portray normalcy to the world, with the semblance of civilian control over the military establishment. To that end, a smooth transition of the Chief of Army will serve their interests in this projection to the US government.
It may also be possible that Sharif enters politics as a former Chief of Army, rather than usurp power that most of his illustrious (?) predecessors have done. By and large, he has enjoyed a fairly popular status in the country by selective action against radical Islamic groups, providing a fair degree of publically visible action against brutality and bloodshed on the streets, and yet has maintained the hidden agenda of the ‘Deep State’. He enjoys similar popularity in the armed forces as well. To that extent he seems to be more politically astute than most former Chiefs (and some ex- dictators). If he succeeds in entering politics on this plank, he would have successfully accomplished both a smooth transition in public view, as well as retain his grip on the military- civil complex in Pakistan. It would appear perfectly normal to the outside observer that a former soldier has now decided to enter politics (as is the case in Trump’s team also), without too much of focus on behind-the-scenes machinations. In addition he would have the continued backing of Musharraf, keep exploiting his background as Army Chief, even utilize his brother’s martyrdom to his advantage. In his last months, he has even successfully nullified India’s much touted ‘surgical strikes’; much of the world believes there’s more to the story than what the Indian government released to the world.
Therefore, this change in guard would translate in to little difference in the way things are dealt with, in Pakistan, in its civilian government, and definitely in its military establishment. In fact, the new Chief would be a handpicked General, obviously allegiant to the old guard, yet pitch for the ‘rule of law’ in international perspective. For those battling Pakistan’s ‘Export of Terror’ machinery, it should be business as usual.

Pakistan - Minority Representation

The minority groups of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa are demanding the provincial government to implement a five percent quota in government jobs in order for them to actively participate in community development. Considering that KP is the only province that has allocated just three percent as quota to minorities for jobs at professional educational institutes and the government sector compared to five percent in the other provinces of Pakistan, these lamentations are more than justified.
The tragic fact that Special Assistant to Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister on Minority Affairs Sardar Soran Singh was shot dead by armed attackers – linked to the TTP – in Buner on April 22, 2016, shows that KP must do more to ensure the safety and protection of its minorities. Representation of minorities in the KP Assembly stands at less than adequate despite that there are 50,000 registered minority voters in the province.
There is no representation of minority women, which indicates the suffering of the community and the gender gap that needs to be fulfilled by providing them with better working opportunities in the government sector.
In the absence of a census, the population of minorities has been increasing and the job quota in KP has proved to be inadequate to cater to the growing population.
A proper quota in education institutes must also be determined so that a larger minorities population is catered to. Representatives have raised the issue of very limited access to medical and engineering universities and colleges of the province and this should be increased along with the provision of government jobs.
While the Fata Secretariat should be appreciated for celebrating Diwali in the area, the Hindu community wants jobs and accountability of where the funds allocated for them are being spent. All Pakistan Hindus Minority Rights Chairman Haroon Sarabdyal has alleged that there was no transparency in the funds for minorities and each department should publish its records of all expenditures to ensure accountability, a worthy recommendation that should be taken seriously.

#NEWPPP: KPK PARTY LEADERS MEET BILAWAL BHUTTO

Chairman Pakistan People’s Party Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has asked the Party workers to strengthen the hands of the new provincial party organization of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa announced by him Tuesday to mobilize the workers to meet the political challenges that lie ahead.

“I stand with this organization and ask everyone to support it unreservedly” he said while speaking with a group of senior party leaders of the province who called on him in Zardari house in Islamabad Wednesday evening.

Those who called on him included former provincial President Senator Khanzada Khan, former president and senior minister Rahimdad Khan, ex Deputy Speakere Faisal Karim Kundi, ex MPA Zamin Khan, former MNA Noor Alam Khan, new president Humayun Khan, Senator Farhatullah Babar and political secretary Jamil Soomro.

Chairman PPP also felicitated the new office bearers and asked them to undertake visit of the entire province to meet and mobilize the workers.

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said that after the events in connection with the party’s founding day celebrations in Lahore beginning on Nov 30 he will undertake visit of the pakhtunkhwa province to meet the workers.

He said that he envisioned growing political space in the province as a result of the disillusionment of the people and directed the new office bearers of the party to strive to capture that space.

The provincial leaders thanked the Chairman for the trust reposed in them and urged him to enter into electoral politics at the earliest. The year 2017 should be the year of beginning of the Chairman’s electoral politics, they said.

Bilawal Bhutto also invited them to dinner to which party parliamentarians and former prime ministers Yousuf Raza Gillani and Raja Pervez Ashraf beside other senior party leaders were also invited.

https://ppppunjab.wordpress.com/2016/11/24/newppp-kpk-party-leaders-meet-bilawal-bhutto/