Monday, September 11, 2017
China - Op-Ed: Bannon’s anti-China ideology belongs where it is – in the dustbin
By Curtis Stone
Breitbart News Executive Chairman Stephen Bannon - the former chief strategist of U.S. President Trump, is stepping up calls for the U.S. to take a firmer stance against China, but rather than promote division and conflict, Bannon should use his influence in media to build bridges between the world’s two largest economies.
On Friday, September 8, The New York Times reported that Bannon was “taking his insurgency abroad.” The report was about his plans to travel to Hong Kong to deliver a keynote address at an investor conference on Tuesday, where he will articulate his call for a much tougher American policy toward China, The Times reported. Bannon is now in China.
Bannon, who was forced out of the White House about three weeks ago, views China as one of the greatest threat, because it is the only state that could transform the almighty U.S. into a second-rate power. “A hundred years from now, this is what they’ll remember — what we did to confront China on its rise to world domination,” Bannon said in an interview, previewing the themes in his speech. In a different interview with American television program 60 Minutes on Sunday, Bannon declared China the “biggest single problem we have on the world stage,” and accused China of “cutting out the beating heart of American innovation.”
Bannon’s aggressive views on China are no secret. In March 2016, he declared that the U.S. and China will fight a shooting war within the next 10 years in the South China Sea. Last month, he told The American Prospect that the U.S. is already in an “economic war with China,” and predicted that “one of us” is going to be a hegemon in the foreseeable future.
Given his extreme views, it is little wonder why he got booted from the White House. His thinking is not only simplistic and outdated, but the core logic of his flawed thinking is that the U.S., and only the U.S., should dominate the entire system, China included.
Bannon assumes that China is seeking world domination, and that the China-U.S. trade relationship is more destructive than it is mutually beneficial. But China has made it clear that it is not seeking and never will seek world domination. Furthermore, the trade relationship has created substantial benefits for Americans. According to a study commissioned by the U.S.-China Business Council, trade with China supports roughly 2.6 million jobs in the U.S. across a range of industries. The simple truth is that China’s growth has benefited Americans and the world immensely.
Bannon’s exit shows that his ideology and view of China have been swept into the dustbin. As an influential person in media, Bannon now has the opportunity to promote peace and prosperity rather than division and conflict. Both countries would be better served if Bannon used his influence to build bridges with China and let more people understand the reality and importance of the China-U.S. relationship.
Opinion: The Muslim hypocrisy over Rohingya
Shamil Shams
The Islamic groups protesting Myanmar's Rohingya killings are shamefully silent over the persecution of minorities in their own countries. We must not let them Islamize the conflict, says DW's Shamil Shams.
Almost all Muslim-majority countries have decried the killings of the minority Rohingya people in Myanmar. From Turkey to Pakistan, leaders of Islamic nations have condemned the ongoing security operation in Myanmar's western Rakhine state that has killed hundreds of Rohingya and forced about 294,000 people to flee the area. The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is set to issue a statement against Myanmar in Astana, Kazakhstan, on Monday.
At the same time, Islamist groups in Indonesia and Pakistan are holding mass demonstrations against Myanmar's Buddhists, its government and de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi. The calls for the Nobel Committee in Sweden to rescind Suu Kyi's peace prize are getting louder by the day. What is happening in the Southeast Asian country is indeed condemnable. But what is equally reprehensible is the Muslim countries' response to the Rohingya plight.
Religious persecution
The track record of Muslim-majority countries over their treatment of religious and sectarian minorities is abysmal. On Sunday, September 10, three Hazara Shiites were killed in Pakistan's northwestern city of Quetta. The minority group has been systematically targeted by Islamists for many years, and the government has never paid heed to their plight.
The discrimination against Hindus, Christians and Ahmadis on the state level has persisted for decades. The Islamic country's blasphemy laws have forced religious minorities to live under constant fear for their lives. The Christian neighborhoods have been torched by the majority Muslims, and members of the Hindu community could be lynched for "insulting" Islam or its prophet, Muhammad. Religion-based persecutions are on the rise in other Muslim countries also. The rise of political Islam in Indonesia and Malaysia is a threat to the cultural plurality of these countries. It is ironic that hardline Islamic groups in Indonesia, Malaysia and Pakistan are protesting against the Rohingya discrimination in Myanmar.
None of this justifies the fact that the Rohingya remain one of the most persecuted communities in the world. The stateless people have been living in Myanmar for decades, yet the country's government refuses to grant them citizenship. Neighboring Bangladesh, a Muslim country, doesn't accept them either. It is a huge and indescribable human tragedy. But those who are giving a religious color to the Rohingya situation are doing harm to the plight of an oppressed community.
It is not a fight between Buddhism and Islam. The fact is that Western governments, their institutions and rights groups have been raising their voice for Rohingya since the outbreak of violence in Rakhine in 2012. Last month, Kofi Annan, former Secretary General of the United Nations, compiled a fact-finding report on the conflict in Rakhine and pressed on Suu Kyi's government to give equal citizenship rights to Rohingya. International aid agencies are helping the Rohingya more, both inside Myanmar and in Bangladeshi refugee camps, than slogan-raising jihadi groups, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi.
Sectarian perspective
The hypocrisy of Islamic groups is also evident from their selective criticism of the Muslim plight around the globe. The Muslim allies of Saudi Arabia have been silent over Riyadh's bombing of Yemen, an impoverished Middle Eastern country with a large Shiite population. Thousands of people have been killed in the Yemen war since 2015, yet there hasn't been any criticism of Riyadh by the Pakistani government or the Arab Gulf states. The Syrian and Iraqi conflicts are also interpreted by Muslim nations according to their closeness with either Saudi Arabia or Iran. The human misery, the massacre, and the atrocities committed by militant Islamists are often looked at through a sectarian lens. The Muslim condemnation of the Rohingya massacre is subjective and biased. It is hollow because it belittles the human suffering by turning it into a religious issue. The conflict in Rakhine has never been about Islam versus Buddhism. It is an economic and political issue that has plagued the region for decades. The jihadi element, however, has been injected into the conflict, and the Rohingya are already paying the price for a militant transformation of their human predicament.
Islamization of the conflict
The Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, which attacked Myanmar's security forces on August 25, has jihadi links. There are reports that Rohingya militants have links to Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Afghanistan also. Since the start of the latest conflict, jihadi groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan have started collecting funds to aid militants in Myanmar. Indonesia's Islamists are also getting increasingly involved in the conflict. Many of these groups have ties with al Qaeda and even the so-called "Islamic State" (IS). The Myanmar government says it is only responding to the jihadi threat. It is partly true but also a justification to suppress the Rohingya even more.
The victims of this Islamization of the Rakhine dispute are the Rohingya people. Instead of resolving the issue through diplomatic means and human rights interventions, Islamic countries have chosen to strengthen the jihadi narrative in Myanmar. This doesn't augur well for the stateless Rohingya, who have already suffered a lot at the hands of Myanmar authorities. The Muslim hypocrisy and the introduction of jihad in Rakhine will only make things worse for them.
How 9/11 triggered democracy’s decline
By Jeremi Suri
The attack spawned wars to export democracy abroad, while degrading it at home.
But over the past 16 years, war has imperiled rather than advanced American ideals by becoming about dominance rather than freedom. Our military actions, from Afghanistan and Iraq to Libya and Syria, have reflected increased investments in firepower, accompanied by diminished attention to political change, economic development and institution-building — the essential prerequisites for democratic freedoms. Fear of terrorism has justified excessive and habitual suspension of good governance, ultimately creating a more fertile seedbed for terrorists.
Abandoning freedom abroad has consequences at home. Dominance has emerged as the driver of domestic politics, as well. Demands for “border security” are used by the president and his core supporters to justify racism and domestic violence aimed at protecting white male dominance. Our leaders have nurtured what the Justice Department calls a crisis of “domestic terrorism” within U.S. borders, perpetrated by U.S. citizens, not foreigners. Osama bin Laden famously promised to expose America’s decadent culture and destroy the United States. Despite his death at the hands of U.S. Special Operations forces in 2011, he accomplished many of his goals.
The war on terrorism has made the U.S. presidency itself a threat to, not a defender of, democracy. Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama drastically expanded executive powers by combining secrecy with new technologies to incarcerate and kill hundreds of people, including numerous Americans, with little public oversight. They interrogated thousands of alleged terrorists without due process in military prisons, including Abu Ghraib and Camp Bucca in Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
Presidential powers increased considerably at home, as well. Bush created a gargantuan new Department of Homeland Security, expanded domestic surveillance (especially through electronic technologies) and funded the militarization of municipal police forces. Obama continued many of these programs, and he pursued new efforts to limit media freedom by aggressively prosecuting alleged government “leakers” and the reporters who wrote about them. Anti-terrorism measures necessitated fewer freedoms at home under both of these presidents. These recent wartime actions drew on strong historical precedents, but they were not accompanied, as they were in the past, by enlargements of freedom in other areas. During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln consolidated presidential control over the military, and he repeatedly violated due process protections for secessionists. But at the same time, he expanded federal land grants for citizens through the Homestead Act and public higher education through the Morrill Act. Lincoln also emancipated the slaves in Confederate territories and pushed for the final elimination of slavery in the United States.
During World War II, Roosevelt incarcerated innocent citizens — especially Japanese Americans — and limited media freedoms, but he also ended employment discrimination in defense industries and funded homeownership and higher education for millions of Americans through the GI Bill. Building on the New Deal, Roosevelt made the federal government a protector of citizen welfare. Despite serious setbacks and limitations, the Civil War and World War II left hopeful legacies for freedom in the United States.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, the opposite has been the case. The federal government has enabled increased surveillance of citizens, including phone and email usage, without a new body of law to ensure privacy. Aggressive interrogation and deportation of individuals residing within the United States have escalated during this period without necessary protections against intimidation, racial profiling and cruelty. As a whole, the federal government has pulled back from enforcing rights, allowing unequal treatment of citizens to deepen in law enforcement, housing, employment and education. The wars after the Sept. 11 attacks are also the first extended conflicts in U.S. history in which presidents have failed to call for collective sacrifice from the American people. At the start of the Civil War, Lincoln asked the governors of Union states to raise volunteers. By 1863, he turned to direct conscription by the federal government, creating a new obligation of federal military service for all male citizens between ages 20 and 45.
During World War II, Roosevelt went a step further. In addition to a military draft, he used federally enforced rations and wage and price controls to mobilize resources at home for the battlefields. The U.S. Treasury relied on war bond sales to help fund the conflict, giving individuals a financial stake in it.
After the war, during the early Cold War, the military draft remained in place while citizens paid the highest discretionary income taxes in U.S. history to fund foreign and domestic programs — including the Marshall Plan, the GI Bill and the Interstate Highway System.
A badge of honor for prior generations, the phrase “collective sacrifice” has become almost taboo in the early 21st century. Why should the most powerful and righteous country in the world have to sacrifice? We would beat the terrorists, Bush promised, by continuing to shop. We would defend our democracy, Obama thought, by replacing large armies with drones, private contractors and elite Special Operations forces.
This aversion to collective sacrifice reverberates beyond the battlefield. The historical record clearly shows that the expansion of freedom demands shared work across social and cultural divisions, rather than license to do as one pleases. A world of individual assertion allows the rich and powerful to dominate the poor and weak, as happened on the early 19th-century frontier, in Gilded Age cities and in the recent American economy.
The shared sacrifice of wartime once shaped domestic opportunity in profound ways. Redistributive tax policies and increased funding for public education — legislated during the other great wars — rebalanced differences and created more choices for more people. As Lincoln and Roosevelt recognized, freedom for Americans has always meant opportunity (to live, work and learn), not license (to control and dominate).
To raise one’s station in life has always been at the core of the American Dream. The Civil War, World War II and the Cold War created new opportunities for millions of Americans. The wars since September 11, 2001, have not. Each of the earlier conflicts opened the gates of American citizenship to formerly excluded groups. This was particularly true of the Cold War, and the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 in particular, which allowed tens of thousands of formerly restricted non-European immigrants to become American. Since Sept. 11, 2001, the United States has reversed course.
In short, how we engaged our enemies mattered enormously for how our society evolved. And now our society has grown more fragmented and unequal because that is how we have chosen to fight.
From the first days after Sept. 11, 2001, we have missed a historical opportunity to turn our gravest challenges into sources of unity, creativity and self-improvement. Rather than encouraging a collective mentality with high income taxes and war bond campaigns, our tax policies now exacerbate differences between rich and poor. Our criminal policies have stigmatized groups in the name of safety, rather than offering opportunities for rehabilitation, hope and a new beginning.
Most egregiously, our systematic underinvestment in public institutions and infrastructure has denied ambitious risers the resources they need to get started. Instead, so many Americans are stuck. And that is a policy choice we have made, again and again, since Sept. 11, 2001.
Freedom has become as empty as the concept of sacrifice in our current political rhetoric. President Trump, explaining yet another escalation of war in Afghanistan, barely mentioned freedom or democracy. Both words appeared only once in his Aug. 21 address. He used the word “attack” eight times, “win” six times and “victory” four times.
Victory for whom? Winning what? Like his predecessors, Trump did not offer much content for the purpose of American wars, other than protecting what we have. Our wars are no longer engines of freedom because our leaders fight for victory, not for a deeper purpose. Without purpose, we should not fight. Without purpose, we cannot win. Anybody notice that it has been a long time since we won a war? We are fighting wars against our own democracy — and these wars have come home, from Kabul to Charlottesville.
Saudi Arabia government ‘funded dry run' for 9/11, legal documents claim
Two Saudi nationals and government employees tested flight deck security on internal flight.
As reported by the New York Post, the embassy might have used two of its employees for the so-called dry run before a dozen hijackers flew two planes into the Twin Towers, killing nearly 3,000 people in 2001.
The complaint, filed on behalf of 1,400 family members of the victims, stated that the Saudi Government paid two nationals, posing as students in the US, to take a flight from Phoenix to Washington and test out flight deck security before 9/11. Sean Carter, lead lawyer for the plaintiffs, said, "We've long asserted that there were longstanding and close relationships between al Qaeda and the religious components of the Saudi government."
The Saudi government has long denied any links to the terrorists and lawyers representing the government have filed motions to dismiss the claims. The plaintiffs must respond to the motion by November.
The case can then go to trial thanks to the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act which was voted into law by Congress last September, despite a veto from former President Barack Obama and lobbying from the Saudi government. The law allows survivors and relatives of victims to sue foreign governments in US federal courts.
According to the documents and as reported by the New York Post, the class action lawsuit argued that “a pattern of both financial and operational support” from the Saudi government helped the hijackers in the months before the attacks.
FBI documents, submitted as evidence, claimed that the two Saudi nationals who came to the US, Mohammed al-Qudhaeein and Hamdan al-Shalawi, were in fact members of “the Kingdom's network of agents” in the country. The documents claimed the men trained in Afghanistan with a number of other al-Qaeda operatives that participated in the attacks. Qudhaeein was allegedly employed at the Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Islamic Affairs, and Shalawi was a “longtime employee of the Saudi government” in Washington DC.
In November 1999 they boarded an America West flight to Washington, and tried to access the cockpit several times, asking the flight attendants “technical questions” and making the staff “suspicious”.
Qudhaeein reportedly asked staff where the bathroom was and was pointed in the right direction; instead he tried to enter the cockpit. The pilots made an emergency landing in Ohio and the two men were released after an initial interrogation from the FBI.
Their plane tickets were reportedly paid for by the Saudi Embassy, according to Kristen Breitweiser, whose husband was killed in 9/11.
The two men also reportedly attended a symposium in Washington, organised by the Saudi embassy in association with the Institute for Islamic and Arabic Sciences in America, which employed late al-Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki as a lecturer. He later helped the hijackers to get housing and ID when they arrived in early 2000. The Post reported that the Saudi nationals lived in Arizona and had frequent communication with Saudi officials.
Mr Carter said the allegations in the class action lawsuit were based on almost 5,000 pages of evidence.
A total of 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi. Hundreds of thousands of US documents regarding Saudi Arabia remain secret.
9/11: Finding Answers in Ashes 16 Years Later
An inscription on the lobby wall greets visitors in Latin at the offices of the New York City medical examiner. It is an adage familiar to places where autopsies are performed. Reasonably translated, it says: “Let conversation cease. Let laughter flee. This is the place where death rejoices to help the living.”
Another saying, borrowed from the Book of Proverbs, Chapter 31, might also work were it to be put on that wall: “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves.” That, too, is what the medical examiner’s office is about. Rarely has it been called upon to speak up as relentlessly as it has for those whose voices were silenced at the World Trade Center 16 years ago.
For the chief medical examiner, Dr. Barbara Sampson, and her staff, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, are never past. All these years later, the team still strives to scientifically identify each of the 2,753 people who were killed in the destruction of the twin towers. “We made a commitment to the families that we would do whatever it takes, for as long as it takes,” Dr. Sampson said. “We’re the family physician to the bereaved.”
Death certificates for the victims were issued long ago. But assigning identities to the 21,905 human remains that were recovered from the wreckage is a separate matter. Only 1,641 of the 2,753 victims — 60 percent — have been positively identified, mostly through DNA analysis. The success rate is slightly better, 64 percent, in regard to the 405 firefighters, police officers and emergency medical workers who died at ground zero.
Time has not been a friend of the forensic teams. Victim No. 1,641 — a man who, at his family’s request, has not been publicly named — became known to them a month ago. This was nearly two and a half years after No. 1,640 was identified: Matthew David Yarnell, a 26-year-old technology specialist who worked on the 97th floor of the south tower. Before that, six months had gone by since No. 1,639: Patrice Braut, 31, the lone Belgian citizen among the victims. He worked on the 97th floor of the north tower.
“It’s a slow go,” Dr. Sampson said. “We’re now down to the ones that are very difficult to get useful DNA.”
The genetic material that’s available is sometimes no more than the tiniest patch of flesh. Some remains lay in the wreckage for weeks, months, even years — degraded by water, burning jet fuel and all manner of debris from the downed buildings. In addition, bacterial DNA intermingled with human matter. “It was the worst combination of events you could have for a DNA specimen,” said Dr. Sampson, who has been the city’s chief medical examiner since December 2014.
Recent scientific advances, including what she described as a bone-extraction technique, made it possible to identify the 1,641st victim. That gives her hope that the process is not stuck. “I am optimistic we will identify more people,” she said. “But do I think we will be able to identify every single person? Probably not.”
Apparently, relatives of the victims have not given up. None of them have told the medical examiner’s office that, after the passage of so much time, they no longer care about matching slivers of remains to their loved ones. “We work very closely with the families,” Dr. Sampson said. “We know every family’s wishes as for what they want us to do.”
Since 2014, unclaimed remains have rested 70 feet underground in a repository at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in Lower Manhattan. Only members of the medical examiner’s office may enter the area (though no laboratory work is done there). Next to the repository is a quiet space known as the reflection room, reserved for Sept. 11 families and their guests. Not surprisingly, the anniversary is a time of pilgrimage there. In a typical month, 20 or so people go to the room. On Sept. 11 alone last year, 65 visited.
Just about every week, a few families will call the medical examiner’s office with questions, mostly of a technical or administrative nature. Still, often enough, there’s a catch in the caller’s voice or a verbal tic that makes plain how time is an imperfect healer. “You can get a sense of despair,” Dr. Sampson said.
“And hope,” she added.
Pakistan - Educated ‘terrorists’
By Lal Khan
The involvement of highly educated youth from the middle class backgrounds in the recent terrorist attacks,particularly in Karachi,is not an extraordinary phenomenon. It has become more of a norm. There is a long list of high profile terrorists from petit bourgeois backgrounds.Sarosh Siddiqui was a postgraduate physics student who escaped last Monday’s attack and Ahsan Israr, who was killed, hada PhD degree and professor at a private engineering university.
The gang involved in the Safoora Carnage in 2015 comprised of highly qualified graduates from different varsities. Daniel Pearl’sassassin Omar Saeed Sheikh, Al Qaeda IT expert Naeem Noor Khan, Al Qaeda operative Dr Arshad Waheed, Time Square bombing planner Faisal Shehzad, Danish embassy bombing perpetrator Hamad Adil, and hijacker of a navy frigate at Karachi dockyard Owais Jakhrani also came froma middle class educated elite. Its also the relatively well-offsections of Muslim diaspora in the West from which the terrorists involved in the New York the WTC attacks to the Daesh recruits including young Muslim women in the peculiar Islamicist modernist fashion mostly come from.
In Pakistan the organised Islamic fanatical tendencies were fostered by the state at the behest of the US imperialists to launch a terrorist insurgency notoriously known as the ‘Dollar Jihad’ to overthrow the left-wing government in Afghanistan after the Saur Revolution of April 1978. Ever since then this menace has spread in the whole region and is ravaging societies as far beyond. Pakistan has been plagued for decades by this ‘home grown’ bestiality. Historically after the failure of the PPP government’sreforms to deliver in the 1970’s and ebbing of the 1968-69 revolutionary tide there was a certain increase of the reactionary tendencies that emerged from the resultant despair in society. This was more profoundly reflected in the educational institutions with violence and killings of the left student activists mainly by the IJT (Islamic Jamiat a Talaba), the student wing of the Jamaat a Islami.
The left students organisations had played the pioneering role in the revolutionary movement of the late 1960’s and had a strong basis in the campuses where these religious outfits were tiny sects in the colleges and universities. Ironically the CIA sponsored these religious outfits. But the student’s politics, elections and students unions at the time were based more on ideological basis and the role of the proxies of wealthy financers was limited. After the state power was grabbed by the reactionary Islamicist dictator Ziaul Haq the religious students’ organisations became more viler with their lethal vigilantes carrying out heinous brutalities against the left-wing students activists, unions and organisations. But such was the resistance and struggle of the left wing students against this vicious dictatorship that Zia banned the students’ elections and unions first in October 1979 and then again in 1983.
It’s only through a mass revolutionary insurrection that this cancer of educated terrorists can be excised and the system transformed Ever since, despite several democratic regimes being in power Zia’s ban on students unions has not been lifted. The democratic rulers of different parties that came to power were as terrified of students’ movements as was the dictator Zia. The judiciary quashes any parliamentary move to the relief of these democratic rulers.
However crisis amongst students has worsened. Privatisation of educational institutions has made education an economic burden for the parents and an ordeal for the students. The semester systems, relentless examinations and the cutthroat competition in education have made studyingagonising. The class system of education, disparity in the syllabi and the lavish flaunting of wealth by students from the moneyed classes creates inferiority complexes amongst less well-off students. The consequential infuriation finds no ideological and political outlets. Such strains are bound to create greater revulsions.
This psychological condition drives, these mostly lower middle class students, into fundamentalist obsessions and terrorist tendencies, an escapist shortcut from a traumatisingsystem with ambitions of heroism without much heroic deeds, abscondingthis cumbersome life.There is only a veneer of piety and religiosity to camouflage this venturing into realm of crime and terror. Religious sectarian organisations are there for the taking.Funded by the massive primitive capital of the black economy these sects have become toxic. They have penetrated the state, politics and society. The clergy has morphed into fabulously rich entrepreneur in all trades. The sectarian groupings have splintered violently into dozens of rival outfits escalating terrorist savagery in this harrowing contest for plunder.
Some are still sheltered by the powers that be for strategic interests. Other splintered groups have become Frankenstein monsters for the imperialists and the deep state. The Tehreek Taliban Pakistanis in the forefront. The al Qaeda and the so-called Punjabi Taliban emerged from Wahabi, Deobandi and Salafists fundamentalist groups.
The state’s response to these terrorist cellsfostering in the universities has been pathetic. After failing to comb the data of religious sectarian seminaries, state’s agencies are now planning to scrutinise students enrolled in the Karachi’s universities. It will only create more hardships for the ordinary and poor students who have no access to wealth and connections in state and politics. This is not an issue that can be solved through administrative means. It’s a socio economic issue of a sick society drenched in misery and cultural anguish. This fundamentalist terror is the distilled essence of a rotting system. It’s a cancer that has metastasised into every organ of thesocioeconomic system and its state.It’s only through a mass revolutionary insurrection that this cancer can be excised and the system transformed.
Pakistan - Forgotten FATA
Federally Administered Tribal Area, (FATA) has been refused political integration with the rest of the country since 1947. The population of the region got their right to vote almost 50 years after independence but to this day political parties cannot nominate their candidates from the area. It is ironic that so far, while the MPs from FATA can legislate for the rest of the country, they cannot do for themselves.
The ruling party in Islamabad realised, though after 70 years, that the people of FATA are also citizens of the country. Hence, committees were made to mainstream FATA. A proposed bill, under the title of Riwaj Act, was aimed to bring reforms in FATA. But due to reservations of the allied political parties, Pakistan Muslim League decided to delay the reforms process.
This decision, naturally, made those disappointed who thought that the first step of any such reforms would be the merger of the region with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK). The parliamentarians from FATA, on Saturday, threatened to paralyse the government machinery from working if the proposed reforms were not implemented swiftly. The frustration of the elected members from the region is reflected in a statement given by the parliamentary leader of FATA in the National Assembly Shah Gul Afridi, “We expect the government would force us to stage a sit-in in front of parliament house…”
It is important to remember that the purpose of proposed reforms is not a territorial merger of FATA with KPK. One important goal of the draft bill is to grant the people of FATA fundamental rights guaranteed to every citizen of Pakistan under the Constitution. So far, these people do not have access to the fundamental rights. A draconic law governs the people of the region, Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR). Though the Prime Minister had already directed the Minister for Law and Justice to take all the necessary steps required to mainstream FATA, the bureaucratic delays have made the parliamentarians of FATA upset.
Mainstreaming FATA is the need of the hour. The ruling party must take bold decisions in this regard without looking for securing its political interests. In case the present government fails to integrate the region with KP or to consider the demands of the people, it will make the tribesmen embittered. While hoping that the incumbent government will work on an emergency basis to mainstream FATA, all aspects need to be covered including the economic ones. The citizens of FATA deserve their right, and the political leadership of Pakistan has reneged on its promise of mainstreaming the region.
Pakistan - Nawaz should not be away on pretext of wife’s illness: Khursheed Shah
While addressing the media on Monday, Shah said they prayed for the health of Begum Kulsoom Nawaz, who was undergoing treatment for throat cancer in London, but it was not right for Nawaz to stay out of the country.
He also decried NAB for not taking action against the Sharifs, saying the bureau has added many names on the Exit Control List (ECL) but did not do so for the family members in question.
Since the NAB chairperson is due to retire soon, Shah said the prime minister has not started holding consultative meetings regarding the matter.
“I will personally hold consultative sessions with political parties,” the opposition leader said. “The consultative process should have started three months before chairperson NAB’s retirement.”
Shah added he assured the public that the new chairperson would be hired on the basis of merit.
When asked what reservations Pakistan Peoples Party’s has regarding Sindh IGP AD Khawaja, Shah said his party wants all departments to work within their ambit.
“We want the judiciary, establishment and provincial government to do their respective work.”
The opposition leader had earlier said that the courts can give directions but not dictate terms.
He had said the issue of the Sindh inspector general (IG) is a governance matter, adding that if the courts start handling administrative affairs then it can lead to trouble.
"Courts can work while staying within their jurisdiction," he argued.
Pakistan - Bilawal Bhutto flays PML-N attempts to gag media through new draconian laws
Pakistan Peoples Party Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has criticized the PML-N government’s attempts to gag the media through some new draconian laws, it is contemplating without taking into confidence the Parliament and other stake-holders.
“The draft of Pakistan Print Media Regulatory Authority (PPMRA) Ordinance is being circulated among government circles, which is a replica of draconian Press & Publication Ordination imposed by late dictator Ayub Khan in 60’s,” the PPP Chairman said in a statement issued here.
Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said that PPP has always fought alongside the journalist community since decades for freedom of Press and won’t allow any law to curb press freedoms.
He pointed out that it was Prime Minister Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto who threw away anti-press freedom laws enacted by the Zia regime and its predecessor dictators and opened new vistas for the print media in 80’s.
PPP Chairman assured the media persons that his Party will stand with them and support their resistances to any such laws. “Any law pertaining to print media regulations should be drafted in consultation with all the stake-holders and all the Parliamentary parties,” he added.
https://mediacellppp.wordpress.com/2017/09/11/bilawal-bhutto-flays-pml-n-attempts-to-gag-media-through-new-draconian-laws/
Former President Zardari pays homage to the Quaid
Former President Asif Ali Zardari has asked the people to reaffirm their commitment to making Pakistan a democratic, progressive and a welfare driven and liberal state instead of one that is guided either by theocracy or driven by paranoid. He made this call in a message on the eve of the death anniversary of father of nation, Quaid-e-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah tomorrow on Monday September 11, 2017.
Welfare of the people is the best way to ensure national integration, social cohesion and consequently the security of the country, he said in the message.
On the eve of Quaid’s death anniversary we reiterate the pledge to adhere to the principles of the state laid down by the Quaid himself, the former President said.
Today, more than ever before, we need a narrative that rejects the militant ideology and inculcates a spirit of tolerance and dissent, he said. “Fighting the militant mindset calls for freedom of expression embedded in the law to freely propagate alternate narratives. It calls for building an intellectual infrastructure resting on the foundations of free inquiry, free debate not only in academic institutions but as a way of life”.
The former President also paid homage to those who laid down their lives and rendered huge sacrifices for the achievement of Pakistan as well for preserving democracy and constitutionalism and in fighting the militancy.
https://mediacellppp.wordpress.com/2017/09/10/former-president-pays-homage-to-the-quaid-2/
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