M WAQAR.....
"A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary.Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."
--Albert Einstein !!!
NEWS,ARTICLES,EDITORIALS,MUSIC... Ze chi pe mayeen yum da agha pukhtunistan de.....(Liberal,Progressive,Secular World.)''Secularism is not against religion; it is the message of humanity.''
تل ده وی پثتونستآن
Taiwan leader Tsai Ing-wen had a telephone conversation with US president-elect Donald Trump on Friday. Trump later tweeted, “The President of Taiwan called today to wish me congratulations on winning the Presidency. Thank you!” An hour after that, he added “Interesting how the US sells Taiwan billions of dollars of military equipment but I should not accept a congratulatory call.” Since China and the US established diplomatic ties in 1979, no US president or president-elect has made calls to any Taiwan leader. And Trump called Tsai Ing-wen “Taiwan president.” This has thrilled the Green camp in Taiwan. But the fact is Taiwan made a petty gesture before Trump is sworn in, and Trump responded to it. Since 1979, Washington has upheld the One-China policy, which lays the foundation for the two sides’ efforts to develop relations in a full-fledged way and make bilateral trade the largest in the world. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) hopes the US changes its stance on the One-China policy, but this is unimaginable. The One-China policy is a widely acknowledged principle in international relations and one of the fundamental rules that shape the contemporary international order. There is no motive in the US or the world that can break the principle, and no power to ensure that adopting a different policy can bring gains. The world is clearly aware of this, including Taiwan authorities. They know the only thing that can be done to the One-China policy is some marginalized tricks to serve their short-term interests. Trump is not familiar with foreign relations and has been known for not playing by the rules since he started running for president. Before he gets sworn in, he faces some vague space to handle things. By answering Tsai’s call he may want to test how China would react and therefore prepare him for dealing with the country and gaining some advantage after he takes office. The Sino-US relationship was formed by the accumulation of interactions between the two societies over the past decades. It is closely connected with the two nation’s interests, which turned into a strong restraint to conflicts between the two sides. If Trump wants to overstep the One-China principle, he will destroy Sino-US ties. That means the current pattern between Beijing and Washington as well as international order will be overturned. We believe this is not what Trump wants. However, the DPP is fascinated by the fantasy. Over the years, the Green camp has attached too much importance to Washington’s remarks, tone and attitudes. The DPP tends to jump for joy over tiny issues. Tsai’s administration might be elated right now. But the fact is Trump's taking of the call will not provide more opportunities for independent forces in Taiwan, nor will it help the island’s economic and social development and reverse Tsai’s difficulties in office for not acknowledging the 1992 Consensus. The Chinese mainland's strength is emerging rapidly while the US is no longer a dominant force in the Taiwan Strait. The US-Taiwan relationship is important to the island, but cross-Straits ties are crucial to Taiwan’s social well-being. The Chinese mainland is capable of punishing Tsai’s administration for any moves that crosses the red line, and it should use its power without hesitation. It must be the one who defines the status quo. If the Taiwan government ever does anything to break the status quo, it must pay the price. Beijing should better communicate with Trump’s team and be prepared to respond to Trump’s moves after he assumes office. We should have enough confidence during the process. Trump will take his strong personality to the White House, but he will not face China-US relations with extra powers. It is hoped that Trump will gradually understand the reality and shape his China policy based on it.
President-elect Donald J. Trump inherited a complicated world when he won the election last month. And that was before a series of freewheeling phone calls with foreign leaders that has unnerved diplomats at home and abroad.
In the calls, he voiced admiration for one of the world’s most durable despots, the president of Kazakhstan, and said he hoped to visit a country, Pakistan, that President Obama has steered clear of during nearly eight years in office.
Mr. Trump told the British prime minister, Theresa May, “If you travel to the U.S., you should let me know,” an offhand invitation that came only after he spoke to nine other leaders. He later compounded it by saying on Twitter that Britain should name the anti-immigrant leader Nigel Farage its ambassador to Washington, a startling break with diplomatic protocol.
Mr. Trump’s unfiltered exchanges have drawn international attention since the election, most notably when he met Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan with only one other American in the room, his daughter Ivanka Trump — dispensing with the usual practice of using State Department-approved talking points.
On Thursday, the White House weighed in with an offer of professional help. The press secretary, Josh Earnest, urged the president-elect to make use of the State Department’s policy makers and diplomats in planning and conducting his encounters with foreign leaders.
“President Obama benefited enormously from the advice and expertise that’s been shared by those who serve at the State Department,” Mr. Earnest said. “I’m confident that as President-elect Trump takes office, those same State Department employees will stand ready to offer him advice as he conducts the business of the United States overseas.”
“Hopefully he’ll take it,” he added.
A spokesman for the State Department, John Kirby, said the department was “helping facilitate and support calls as requested.” But he declined to give details, and it was not clear to what extent Mr. Trump was availing himself of the nation’s diplomats.
Mr. Trump’s conversation with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan has generated the most angst, because, as Mr. Earnest put it, the relationship between Mr. Sharif’s country and the United States is “quite complicated,” with disputes over issues ranging from counterterrorism to nuclear proliferation.
In a remarkably candid readout of the phone call, the Pakistani government said Mr. Trump had told Mr. Sharif that he was “a terrific guy” who made him feel as though “I’m talking to a person I have known for long.” He described Pakistanis as “one of the most intelligent people.” When Mr. Sharif invited him to visit Pakistan, the president-elect replied that he would “love to come to a fantastic country, fantastic place of fantastic people.”
The Trump transition office, in its more circumspect readout, said only that Mr. Trump and Mr. Sharif “had a productive conversation about how the United States and Pakistan will have a strong working relationship in the future.” It did not confirm or deny the Pakistani account of Mr. Trump’s remarks.
The breezy tone of the readout left diplomats in Washington slack-jawed, with some initially assuming it was a parody. In particular, they zeroed in on Mr. Trump’s offer to Mr. Sharif “to play any role you want me to play to address and find solutions to the country’s problems.”
That was interpreted by some in India as an offer by the United States to mediate Pakistan’s border dispute with India in Kashmir, something that the Pakistanis have long sought and that India has long resisted.
“By taking such a cavalier attitude to these calls, he’s encouraging people not to take him seriously,” said Daniel F. Feldman, a former special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan. “He’s made himself not only a bull in a china shop, but a bull in a nuclear china shop.”
Husain Haqqani, a former Pakistani ambassador to Washington, said his government’s decision to release a rough transcript of Mr. Trump’s remarks was a breach of protocol that demonstrated how easily Pakistani leaders misread signals from their American counterparts.
“Pakistan is one country where knowing history and details matters most,” Mr. Haqqani said, “and where the U.S. cannot afford to give wrong signals, given the history of misunderstandings.”
At one level, Mr. Trump’s warm sentiments were surprising, given that during the campaign, he called for temporarily barring Muslims from entering the United States to avoid importing would-be terrorists.
His conversation with Mr. Sharif also came a day after an attack at Ohio State University in which a Somali-born student, Abdul Razak Ali Artan, rammed a car into a group of pedestrians and slashed several people with a knife before being shot and killed by the police. Law enforcement officials said Mr. Artan, whom the Islamic State has claimed as a “soldier,” had lived in Pakistan for seven years before coming to the United States in 2014.
Mr. Obama never visited Pakistan as president, even though he had a circle of Pakistani friends in college and spoke fondly of the country. The White House weighed a visit at various times but always decided against it, according to officials, because of security concerns or because it would be perceived as rewarding Pakistani leaders for what many American officials said was their lack of help in fighting terrorism.
“It sends a powerful message to the people of a country when the president of the United States goes to visit,” Mr. Earnest said. “That’s true whether it’s some of our closest allies, or that’s also true if it’s a country like Pakistan, with whom our relationship is somewhat more complicated.”
Mr. Trump’s call with President Nursultan A. Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan raised similar questions.
Mr. Nazarbayev has ruled his country with an iron hand since 1989, first as head of the Communist Party and later as president after Kazakhstan won its independence from the Soviet Union. In April 2015, he won a fifth term, winning 97.7 percent of the vote and raising suspicions of fraud.
The Kazakh government, in its account of Mr. Trump’s conversation, said he had lavished praise on the president for his leadership of the country over the last 25 years. “D. Trump stressed that under the leadership of Nursultan Nazarbayev, our country over the years of independence had achieved fantastic success that can be called a ‘miracle,’” it said.
The statement went on to say that Mr. Trump had shown solidarity with the Kazakh government over its decision to voluntarily surrender the nuclear arsenal it inherited from the Soviets. “There is no more important issue than the nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation, which must be addressed in a global context,” it quoted Mr. Trump as saying.
Mr. Trump’s statement said that Mr. Nazarbayev had congratulated him on his victory, and that Mr. Trump had reciprocated by congratulating him on the 25th anniversary of his country. Beyond that, it said only that the two leaders had “addressed the importance of strengthening regional partnerships.”
President Barack Obama is urging the public to help save his health care law, which is in serious danger of being repealed under President-elect Donald Trump.
In a Facebook Live appearance, Obama says the Affordable Care Act has improved millions of lives over the six years it’s been the “law of the land.” He says the country can’t go “backward.”
Obama is also encouraging viewers to tell Republicans in Congress “we want to build on the progress we’ve made, not abandon it.”
Congressional Republicans have tried for years to repeal the law. The chances of success increased with Trump’s election. He’s called the law a disaster.
Obama is also urging people who want to have health insurance on Jan. 1 to sign up at www.healthcare.gov by the Dec. 15 deadline.
Departing occupants of the White House rarely hand off an improving economy to a successor from the opposing party.
When Barack Obama was waiting in the wings after the 2008 presidential election, for example, the economy was in a severe downward spiral: Employers reported cutting 533,000 jobs that November, the biggest monthly loss in a generation.
But according to the government’s report on Friday, Donald J. Trump can expect to inherit an economy that has added private sector jobs for 80 months, put another 178,000 people on payrolls last month and pushed the unemployment rate down to 4.6 percent today from 4.9 percent the previous month. Wage growth, though slower, is still running ahead of inflation, and consumers are expressing the highest levels of confidence in nearly a decade.
The Federal Reserve is confident enough about the economy’s underlying strength that it is now set to raise the benchmark interest rate when it meets later this month.
The jobless rate for November, the lowest since August 2007, “is a testimony to how strong employment growth has been,” said Jim O’Sullivan, chief United States economist at High Frequency Economics.
Jason Furman, now chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, remembers the transition eight years ago, when he was crammed into his office with a circle of key officials as the latest jobs numbers from the Labor Department landed.
“It was an utterly terrifying time, the likes of which none of us had ever seen in our lifetimes,” Mr. Furman recalled. Fearing that “the economy was following the same trajectory that it did at the beginning of the Great Depression,” everyone was focused on how to “rapidly slow the bleeding and figure out how to get the economy growing again.”
By contrast, Mr. Furman said, “the economy today is healthy and it’s improving.”
For all the improvements, tens of millions of Americans understandably feel that the recovery has passed them by. Those without skills are relegated to low-paying positions without steady schedules, security and benefits. Breadwinners who once held well-compensated manufacturing jobs are angry about being forced to settle for lower-wage service jobs — or no jobs at all.
Profound anxiety, particularly among the white working class, about the ability to reach or comfortably remain in the middle class is one of the factors that helped propel Mr. Trump to the White House.
Pockets of weakness also surfaced in the latest jobs report, which showed that more people dropped out of the labor force last month than joined it. Manufacturing jobs declined further, and there are still plenty of part-time workers who would rather be full time. And while the official jobless rate for high school graduates fell to 4.9 percent, it is more than twice the rate for college graduates.
“There is a bifurcation of the work force,” Jonas Prising, chairman and chief executive of the ManpowerGroup, one of the largest recruiters in the United States. People who are able to take advantage of advances in technology, globalization and other shifts that favor those with the right skills for the nation’s advanced services are thriving.
Continue reading the main story
The Labor Picture in November
UNEMPLOYMENT RATE
SHARE OF
POPULATION
1-MONTH
CHANGE
1-YEAR
CHANGE
NOV.
5.0
%
Employed
59.7
%
Unch.
+
0.3
pts.
Labor force
(workers and
unemployed)
62.8
–
–
0.1
pts.
+
0.2
4.8
4.6
‘HIDDEN’
UNEMPLOYMENT
4.6%
1-MONTH
CHANGE
1-YEAR
CHANGE
4.4
In millions
NOV.
D
J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
Working part
time, but want
full-time work
5.7
–
–
3.7
%
–
6.8
%
UNEMPLOYMENT
DEMOGRAPHICS
1-MONTH
CHANGE
1-YEAR
CHANGE
NOV.
People who
currently want
a job§
5.5
†
–
1.6
%
+
3.7
pts.
White
4.2
%
–
–
0.1
pts.
–
0.2
Black
8.1
–
0.5
–
1.3
Hispanic
5.7
Unch.
–
0.7
UNEMPLOYMENT BY
EDUCATION LEVEL
1-MONTH
CHANGE
1-YEAR
CHANGE
†
†
†
Asian
3.0
–
0.3
–
0.9
NOV.
Teenagers (16-19)
15.2
–
0.4
–
0.4
Less than
High school
7.9
%
+
0.6
pts.
+
1.1
pts.
DURATION OF
UNEMPLOYMENT
High school
4.9
–
0.6
–
0.5
1-MONTH
CHANGE
1-YEAR
CHANGE
Some college
3.9
+
0.1
–
0.5
In weeks
NOV.
Bachelor’s or higher
2.3
–
0.3
–
0.2
Average
26.3
–
3.3
%
–
5.7
%
Median
10.1
–
1.0
–
5.6
TYPE OF WORK
1-MONTH
CHANGE
1-YEAR
CHANGE
In millions
NOV.
Nonfarm payroll,
12-month change
EMPLOYMENT
Nonfarm
145.1
+
0.1
%
+
2.1
%
+2
%
Goods
0.1
19.6
+
+
0.1
Services
125.5
+
0.1
+
1.8
Agriculture
2.4
+
5.0
+
0.6
+1
AVERAGE WEEKLY EARNINGS
Rank-and-file
workers
1-MONTH
CHANGE
1-YEAR
CHANGE
NOV.
0
O
D
J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
N
$890.62
–
0.1
%
%
+
2.2
%
For others, the prospects do not look good. “There used to be part of the work force that had well-paying jobs that were low or unskilled,” Mr. Prising said. “Those kinds of jobs are very difficult to find today.”
The deal that Mr. Trump made with the heating and cooling company Carrier this week to keep 1,000 manufacturing jobs from moving to Mexico from Indiana is emblematic of the kind of actions he said he would take as president to help blue-collar workers.
But there are limits to the power of persuasion.
Betsey Stevenson, an economist at the University of Michigan and a former economic adviser to Mr. Obama, said that manufacturing, while still a driving force in the economy, employed fewer and fewer people. More than 80 percent of jobs are now in the service industry, Ms. Stevenson said, and Mr. Trump should be thinking more about how to match workers with those jobs.
“The economy is in a great place, and his biggest challenge is continuing that,” she said.
Some economists worry that the Federal Reserve is too focused on fears of future inflation and that it should hold off on any increase in rates until conditions have improved further. “There’s no reason to pre-emptively slow the economy down, given that we’re starting from less than full employment,” said Elise Gould, an economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute in Washington. “Right now, the priority should be keeping the economy on track and moving it forward.”
Such pleas are unlikely to win the day. At last month’s meeting of the Federal Reserve, members concluded that the case for an increase in the benchmark rate had been “strengthened,” and that they would be ready to move “so long as incoming data provided some further evidence of continued progress.”
Many employers are having a harder time finding and retaining workers.
“Recruiting is a tough issue right now in skilled and semiskilled industries,” said Robert A. Funk, chairman and chief executive of Express Employment Professionals, a staffing agency based in Oklahoma City. He mentioned a particular need for workers in accounting, information technology, call centers, warehousing and office and professional services.
Mr. Funk said employers often complained about being unable to find employees with a strong work ethic who met the minimum requirements. “Drug screening is a real challenge in many parts of the country,” he said. “Only 30 percent can pass a drug screen in the state of Washington,” where marijuana is legal.
At the same time, employers have been reluctant to raise wages to a level that might lure back sidelined workers. The result has been that the country has 5.5 million job openings, a near-record level, but still relatively anemic labor force participation rates.
“The challenge out there now is finding workers and keeping the workers you have,” said Steve Rick, chief economist at CUNA Mutual Group. Those shortages, whatever the cause, are likely to push wages higher next year, he said.
“People are feeling good not only about their current income but their future income,” Mr. Rick said.
Whatever the economy’s current failings, Mark J. Rozell, a political scientist at George Mason University in Virginia, said it was nonetheless better than the ones most incoming presidents have faced in the last half-century.
“Trump can be thankful that his predecessor is handing him a fairly strong situation,” Mr. Rozell said, “especially when compared to many past party transfers of power.”
