By Shah Meer Baloch and Hannah Ellis-Petersen
Wednesday, January 19, 2022
Woman sentenced to death in Pakistan over ‘blasphemous’ WhatsApp activity
سانحہ مری کی تمام تر حالات کی ذمہ داری ڈی جی ریسکیو، وزیراعلی پنجاب، سمیت لوکل ایڈمینسٹریشن پر عائد ہوتی ہے، ترجمان بلاول بھٹو زرداری، زوالفقارعلی بدر
ترجمان بلاول بھٹو زرداری، زوالفقارعلی بدر کی لاہور میں مختلف نیوز چینلز ، اور قومی اخبارات کے بیورو چیف کے اعزاز میں ظہرانہ، کے موقع پر گفتگو میں پاکستان پیپلز پارٹی کے چئیرمین بلاول بھٹو زرداری کی جانب سے سی ای سی اجلاس میں ہونے والے فیصلے اور 27 فروری کے لانگ مارچ کے اعلان کے بعد تیاریوں کے سلسلہ میں پارٹی تنظیموں کی جاری ورکنگ پر تبادلہ خیال، ملک بھر میں روز بروز بڑھتی ہوئی مہنگائی لاقانونیت انتقامی کارروائیوں سے جان چھڑانے اور حقیقی جمہوریت کی بحالی جدوجہد کو مزید تیز کرنے کیلئے پارٹی تنظیموں، کارکنوں، وکلا ء تنظیموں، سول سوسائیٹی، نوجوان، طلبا، اداروں کی ٹریڈ یونینز سے وابستہ افراد، تاجر برادری کی بھر شمولیت کو یقینی بنایا جائیگا،
ایک سوال کے جواب میں زوالفقار علی بدر کا کہنا تھا کہ ملک کے اندر صدارتی نظام کی بجائے پارلیمانی نظام بہتر کیا جائے تو بہتر ہوگا، کیونکہ صدارتی نظام کا ملک متحمل نہیں ہوسکتا، اگر ایمرجنسی کی صورت میں کوئی اقدام کیا گیا تو وہ غیر آئینی ہوگا، ایمرجنسی کی آئین میں کوئی گنجائیش نہیں ہے،
ترجمان بلاول بھٹو زرداری کا مزید کہنا تھا کہ سانحہ مری کے اندر تمام تر حالات کی زمہ داری ڈی جی ریسکیو، وزیراعلی پنجاب، سمیت لوکل ایڈمینسٹریشن پر عائد ہوتی ہے جنہیں فوری طور پر استعفی دینا چاہیںے تھا۔
https://www.ppp.org.pk/pr/26123/
Tuesday, January 18, 2022
The U.S. Postal Service has begun taking orders for at-home coronavirus test kits - COVIDtests.gov
Each household order will contain four rapid tests, which the Postal Service says will be shipped for free "in late January."
Some on Twitter reported problems with orders from residents of apartment buildings with multiple units being told that someone from that household had already ordered the tests. According to the Associated Press:
The White House says it will prioritize shipments to Americans from ZIP codes that have experienced high rates of COVID-19 cases and deaths, with the first 20% of each day's orders going to those areas.
President Biden last week announced that the administration plans to buy 1 billion at-home tests for Americans and also said the White House will make high-quality masks available for free, with details coming out this week. There will also be a phone number so those without access to computers or high-speed internet can place orders.
https://www.npr.org/2022/01/18/1073817562/order-covid-tests-free-biden-white-house?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&fbclid=IwAR0J6K1eFmpz_-F5vRJi0rvGOs3c0spw6hb0_sodmLFulahiLMEUy1ekd4g
Opinion | The Al-Qaida Operative, Antisemite and Pakistani National Hero Who Inspired the Texas Synagogue Terrorist
Kunwar Khuldune Shahid
The issue was such a national priority that, in his sole White House meeting with President Donald Trump in 2019, Khan offered a prisoner exchange, swapping Aafia Siddiqui for Shakil Afridi, the doctor who helped the U.S. track down Osama bin Laden and who is serving a 33 year jail sentence in an unknown location in Pakistan. It was an exchange initially suggested by the U.S. in 2012 but, at the time, categorically rejected by Pakistan.Of course, no one in Islamabad would want to allude to the fact that Siddiqui herself was actually arrested by Pakistani security agencies as a terrorism suspect in 2003. She remained a wanted terrorist in Pakistan between 2003 and 2008, when she was arrested by the Afghanistan police over a bombing plot in Ghazni province, before shooting at U.S. army and FBI officials during their investigation of her case. Indeed, mental gymnastics is the preferred vocation of the Pakistani leadership, and Imran Khan has now taken them to new heights by. Islamabad’s bizarre duplicity on Siddiqui is both familiar and even understated when one considers that Khan loudly called Osama Bin Laden a "martyr" in parliament, and lauded the Taliban for "breaking the shackles of slavery" while leading a country that has taken over $33 billion from the U.S. to uphold that "slavery." While domestic Islamist parties have rallied for her release over the past 14 years, Siddiqui’s name doesn’t only resonate in Pakistan. Vows to avenge Siddiqui, and offers to exchange prisoners with her, have come from major global jihadist outfits, including the Taliban, Al-Qaida, and ISIS, with attacks being orchestrated as a persuasive tactic towards this aim. Indeed, 57 people have already been killed over the years by jihadis seeking Siddiqui's release.
Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, known as the Pakistani Taliban, a jihadist group responsible for years of bloodshed within the country, even formed an "Aafia Siddiqui Brigade" dedicated to her release. In addition to jihadists, radical Islamist preachers, even in the West, have rallied behind Siddiqui as a symbol of the West’s alleged victimization of Muslims. Even nominally non-Islamist Muslim representative groups, like the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), have designated advocacy days for Siddiqui and not for any of the many other Muslims, including women, being denied fundamental rights in American prisons.And once we start scratching the surface of why Aafia Siddiqui has attracted such vehement backers, from terrorist groups who celebrate suicide bombers to apparently mainstream advocacy groups, we’ll also find the reason as to why the Texas synagogue became the target of the jihadist maneuver designed to free her. It's been confirmed that 20 years ago Faisal Akram, the hostage-taker shot dead in Texas, was banned from a Blackburn court after telling staff he wished he'd been on one of the 9/11 planes attacking the USA. He was described as a "menace" and excluded from the magistrates court. Aafia Siddiqui’s vocal support for jihad was evident in her early years in the early 1990s as an undergraduate student at the University of Houston. Before being involved in the web of global jihad post 9/11, she had raised funds for al-Kifah, which was linked to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Her long-standing ideological support for jihad against infidels – and the desire to make America a ‘Muslim land’ – is well-documented and collaborated. And that’s precisely what has made her the poster girl for the Islamist cause in the West. By deeming any crackdown on jihad sympathizers or any counterterror measures in the West as ‘Islamophobic,’ no matter that they are also undertaken by Muslim states, many groups seek to shield an Islamist network that rests on jihadist ideology. In Aafia Siddiqui, they’ve found the ideal representation of their ideas and ambitions, but also an ideal poster child for what they consider systematic injustice against Muslims, someone with a sufficient buffer of ‘inconclusive evidence’ to delink her – and in turn themselves – from Islamic terrorism. And the Congregation Beth Israel terror raid, along with the reaction to it, perfectly epitomizes this. In addition to its relatively close physical proximity to the prison where Siddiqui is being held, the synagogue was chosen for the attack as hat-tip to her virulently antisemitic beliefs, which are an inevitable baggage of Islamism. In her trial, Siddiqui maintained she was actually being targeted by Israel, citing the conspiracy theories which are second nature to all jihadists, claiming the verdict came "from Israel and not from America." Seeing in reporting that Aafia Siddiqui said at her sentencing hearing that she doesn’t want violence in her name. That’s true. Also true, two minutes before that she told a federal judge “Israel masterminded 9/11”. Siddiqui wanted jury members to be "genetically tested" for signs of being "Jewish or Zionist" and if found, that they be removed. Likewise, she serially asked to fire her own lawyers because they were Jewish (despite her defense counsel being paid for to the tune of $2 million by the Pakistani government). In a letter to Barack Obama, she wrote that Jews are "cruel, ungrateful, backstabbing… [which is] why ‘holocausts’ keep happening to them repeatedly." She even cited Quranic verses asking Muslims to "not take Jews and Christians as allies," while deriding Pakistan for allying with the U.S. to capture the 1993 World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef. Almost laughably, Siddiqui’s trial lawyer claimed her client was "not antisemitic but pro-Palestinian." So how did the so-called ‘representative’ and certainly high-profile Muslim organization CAIR respond to the synagogue attack? While it condemned it, they obviously did so without calling it out as a jihadist attack. Instead, CAIR’s statement makes it appear as though a deliberate attack on a synagogue in the name of a prominent antisemitic jihad sympathizer (if not jihadist) is incomprehensible, even when synagogues, from Paris to Istanbul, Djerba to Copenhagen, have been consistent targets of Islamist terror. CAIR, hence, is also unlikely to address its own antisemitic or jihadist roots, which prompted even the UAE to list it as a terrorist group. Populist leaders in the Muslim world who push an Islamist narrative studded with antisemitic tropes, like Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Pakistan’s Imran Khan (who likes to equate caricatures of Muhammad with the Holocaust) do so in the name of "protecting" Muslims. Groups like CAIR in the West are their back-up. Meanwhile, jihadist attacks on Jews will continue to be glorified as "resistance" – to Jewish plots or Zionist imperialism – across the globe. And Islamist ideologues like Aafia Siddiqui, 'living martyr,' folk hero, al-Qaida operative and prisoner number 90279-054, will continue to boost that antisemitic jihad, whether or not they are the ones actually pulling the trigger.
https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-the-al-qaida-operative-antisemite-and-pakistani-national-hero-who-inspired-the-texa-1.10545760
Taliban Militants Claim Responsibility for Rare Attack in Pakistan’s Capital
The outlawed Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility Tuesday for a rare overnight attack in Islamabad that killed a police officer and wounded two others.
Police officials said two gunmen riding a motorcycle opened fire on a security checkpoint near one of the city’s busy markets late on Monday. They say the ensuing shootout killed both the assailants.
“The gunfire by terrorists martyred a police officer while two others were wounded,” said a police statement.
The Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan or TTP, claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement on Twitter and confirmed the killing of its two gunmen involved in it.
The TTP has increased attacks in Pakistan, particularly since early December when a 30-day ceasefire between the militants and the government expired.Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban had brokered the truce to try to pave the way for substantive peace talks between the two adversaries. But the Pakistani Taliban refused to extend the ceasefire deal, citing a lack of progress in the talks.
Over the years, the TTP has claimed responsibility for carrying out hundreds of suicide bombings and other attacks in Pakistan that killed thousands of Pakistani civilians and security forces.
Pakistan says TTP leaders and fighters have taken refuge in neighboring Afghanistan from where they are organizing cross-border terrorist attacks.
Last week the TTP confirmed the killing of one of its top commanders in the eastern Afghan border province of Nangarhar. The dead man was identified as senior leader Khalid Balti but it was not clear who killed him.
The United Nations and the United States have also designated the Pakistani Taliban as a global terrorist organization.
The Pakistani Taliban is the largest militant outfit fighting the Pakistani government. TTP and the Afghan Taliban are close allies and jointly fought the United States-led international forces that backed the Western-supported government in Afghanistan until their pullout last year.
https://www.voanews.com/a/taliban-militants-claim-responsibility-for-rare-attack-in-pakistan-s-capital-/6401515.html
#Pakistan #PPP - Bilawal offers conditional reconciliation with PDM
Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari on Tuesday said his party would rejoin the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) provided that the multi-party alliance dropped its proposal for en masse resignations and adopted his strategy of the no-confidence move.
The PPP chairman offered a counterproposal to PDM and once again broached the idea of bringing a no-confidence motion against the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf government – a bone of contention that resulted in the party’s separation from the alliance.
Bilawal’s indication towards the prospects of reconciliation constitutes his first statement since his party poured cold water on the PDM’s idea of en masse resignation, leaving the alliance struggling to salvage its plans to oust the incumbent government.
“My demand from the first day was to bring a no-confidence motion against this government,” Bilawal said during his media talk at the Parliament House on Tuesday.
“The government should be dislodged through democratic means,” the PPP chairman said, adding all parties have to play their role to oust the government.
“We have decided to March on Feb 27, and it does not matter if there is a single march or multiple ones. They will only add to the pressure on the government.”
Every democratic party will have to play its role to rid people of this government, he added.
Bilawal said that there was a high possibility of the opposition working together now that the PDM has come to the same conclusion that PPP had reached earlier.
In a PDM meeting on March 16 last year, Asif Ali Zardari had demanded that ex-PM Nawaz Sharif, who is in London for medical treatment, should return to the country, saying that the leaders should be prepared to go to jails in their struggle.
Apart from Sharif’s return, the meeting had witnessed heated exchanges on tendering resignations from assemblies and defeat of the opposition candidates in the election for Senate top slots. PPP had disagreed with the proposal of linking long march against the government with resignations from the assemblies.
During Tuesday’s talk, Bilawal said that PPP rallies will pass through the constituencies of government MNAs and allies and show them the demand of the people, which is to be liberated from the tyranny of this new Pakistan.
The chairperson said that the reservation regarding the prices of essential commodities being multiplied due to the mini-budget has been proved correct, saying Pakistan had already been facing an economic crisis before the mini-budget, which has now led to the historic price hike, unemployment and poverty.
“The people are being crushed under this burden,” he said, adding that PPP has already decided that it will take to the streets against this incapable government and will start the long march from Karachi on 27 February. “We can never resort to undemocratic practices,” he reiterated.
SBP bill
Commenting on the bill pertaining to granting autonomy to the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), he regretted that opposition’s amendments were not heard regarding the bill.
“This was the biggest economic attack on the country in its history,” he lamented, adding that after the legislation, SBP is not answerable to the government, parliament, judiciary and the people. “Rather,” he said, “it will be run on the dictation of international financial institutions.”
The account of our defence budget will be in the State Bank and the government, parliament or the judiciary will have no control over it, he said, adding the defence expenditure would be for the world to see and the nuclear programme will be threatened. “This government has attacked our economic sovereignty and democratic liberties,” he said.
Presidential system
Regarding the presidential system, he said that the constitution of the Quaid-e-Awam has given a federal, democratic and parliamentary Islamic republic to the nation, adding “there is no space for a presidential system in the constitution.” Talking about the presidential system, he said that it was an effort to distract the people from the price-hike, unemployment, poverty and agricultural crisis.
PPP has always maintained the respect of the country in the international community, he said, adding that Pakistan had discontinued the NATO supply and demanded an apology from the United States during the Salalah incident. For the first time in history, he recalled, a superpower had apologized to an elected government and its people.
The people always come first for a truly elected government of the people as was the case with Quaid-e-Awam, Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto and Asif Ali Zardari. PPP's government in the future will follow the same precedent.
LG polls
The first phase of the local body elections in K-P was the referendum against this government. All the opposition parties outperformed the PTI in those elections. Regarding extremism, Bilawal said that there is a false dichotomy in the country as Islam does not allow for women and children to be killed.
#Pakistan #PTI was funded by prohibited foreign funding accounts during general elections – Central Information Secretary of #PPPP and member of the National Assembly Shazia Atta Marri
Central Information Secretary of Pakistan Peoples Party Parliamentarians and the member of the National Assembly Shazia Atta Marri has said that the so-called transparency of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s foreign funding case has been disclosed publicly which PTI leadership tried to conceal from the Election commission of Pakistan and from the entire nation.
She said that the incumbent government of PTI was funded by prohibited foreign funding accounts during general elections and now the members of the PTI-led government are only talking lies with the nation regarding the foreign funding case. This she said in reaction to a statement of PTI’s member Farrukh Habib hereon today.
Ms. Marri alleged that Pakistan Tehreek-I- Insaf was funded by a few Indians and the cheques of funding were issued on the name of the construction of Shoukat Khanum Hospital in the USA to Imran Khan. PTI leadership committed fraud in the donation of a hospital while the money was invested during the general elections on a political party of PTI.
Ms. Marri added that Akbar S. Babar is a founding member of PTI and he knows all secrets of foreign funding accounts while Imran Khan Niazi is an expert liar and he has done specialization in concealing the facts and truths.
She said that Niazi and company are bewildered after the disclosure of facts and truth regarding the foreign funding bank accounts by the ECP while Pakistan Peoples Party and PPP-P have already provided all records and the details to the Election Commission of Pakistan. Shazia Marri said that those who voted for Imran Khan during general elections are now cursing him and now the time has come for them who made everyone cry to cry themselves.
https://www.ppp.org.pk/pr/26119/
سانحہ مری کی تمام تر حالات کی ذمہ داری ڈی جی ریسکیو، وزیراعلی پنجاب، سمیت لوکل ایڈمینسٹریشن پر عائد ہوتی ہے، ترجمان بلاول بھٹو زرداری، زوالفقارعلی بدر
لاہور: ترجمان بلاول بھٹو زرداری، زوالفقارعلی بدر کی لاہور میں مختلف نیوز چینلز ، اور قومی اخبارات کے بیورو چیف کے اعزاز میں ظہرانہ، کے موقع پر گفتگو میں پاکستان پیپلز پارٹی کے چئیرمین بلاول بھٹو زرداری کی جانب سے سی ای سی اجلاس میں ہونے والے فیصلے اور 27 فروری کے لانگ مارچ کے اعلان کے بعد تیاریوں کے سلسلہ میں پارٹی تنظیموں کی جاری ورکنگ پر تبادلہ خیال، ملک بھر میں روز بروز بڑھتی ہوئی مہنگائی لاقانونیت انتقامی کارروائیوں سے جان چھڑانے اور حقیقی جمہوریت کی بحالی جدوجہد کو مزید تیز کرنے کیلئے پارٹی تنظیموں، کارکنوں، وکلا ء تنظیموں، سول سوسائیٹی، نوجوان، طلبا، اداروں کی ٹریڈ یونینز سے وابستہ افراد، تاجر برادری کی بھر شمولیت کو یقینی بنایا جائیگا،
ایک سوال کے جواب میں زوالفقار علی بدر کا کہنا تھا کہ ملک کے اندر صدارتی نظام کی بجائے پارلیمانی نظام بہتر کیا جائے تو بہتر ہوگا، کیونکہ صدارتی نظام کا ملک متحمل نہیں ہوسکتا، اگر ایمرجنسی کی صورت میں کوئی اقدام کیا گیا تو وہ غیر آئینی ہوگا، ایمرجنسی کی آئین میں کوئی گنجائیش نہیں ہے،
ترجمان بلاول بھٹو زرداری کا مزید کہنا تھا کہ سانحہ مری کے اندر تمام تر حالات کی زمہ داری ڈی جی ریسکیو، وزیراعلی پنجاب، سمیت لوکل ایڈمینسٹریشن پر عائد ہوتی ہے جنہیں فوری طور پر استعفی دینا چاہیںے تھا۔
https://www.ppp.org.pk/pr/26123/
Monday, January 17, 2022
#MLKDay - Americans see Martin Luther King Jr. as a hero now, but that wasn't the case during his lifetime
Analysis by Harry Enten
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/01/17/politics/mlk-polling-analysis/index.html
Ayesha Malik: How this Pakistani female judge shatters the glass ceiling
- By Haroon Janjua
Justice Ayesha Malik's nomination to the Supreme Court has broken the glass ceiling and her appointment will open increased opportunities for women in the legal field, say, observers.
Pakistan's judicial commission recently confirmed the nomination of the first female Supreme Court judge in the Muslim-majority nation's history, paving the way for Justice Ayesha A. Malik to join the apex court.
The move has been widely welcomed by the government, lawyers, activists and civil society bodies, calling it a defining moment in the Islamic nation's judicial history.
Pakistan's Chief Justice Gulzar Ahmed supported Malik's nomination.
The next step is a parliamentary panel where Prime Minister Imran Khan's ruling Tehreek-e-Insaf party has more than enough members to affirm her appointment for a 10-year term.
"This is an important development for Pakistan. She is a competent judge and a role model for women in the judicial and legal field," Maleeka Bokhari, a legislator from the ruling party and parliamentary secretary for law and justice, told DW.
Many lawyers and even judges said Malik's selection was made in violation of seniority lists
Breaking the glass ceiling
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), an independent rights organization, also welcomed the appointment.
"As the first woman judge appointed to the apex court in the country's judicial history, this is an important step towards improving gender diversity in the judiciary, where women reportedly account for only 17% of judges overall and just under 4.4% in the high courts," HRCP stated.
Observers and rights activists believe the move has broken the glass ceiling and her appointment will open increased opportunities for women in the legal field.
"It has definitely broken the glass ceiling. This will have an impact on cases, not specifically those related to gender, but having a woman judge there will increase confidence among women to access justice and reach out to the courts," Nighat Dad, a digital rights lawyer and human rights activist, told DW.
Bokhari also shares a similar view. "It is the beginning of the shattering of the glass ceiling, and we hope more women will end up at the top management level in various fields."
A remarkable legal career
After completing her basic education from schools in Paris, New York and London, Malik studied law at the Pakistan College of Law in Lahore city. She then went on to pursue higher studies at Harvard University in the US, where she was named a London H. Gammon Fellow 1998-1999 for outstanding merit.
Before she was appointed as a high court judge, Malik worked in various capacities in law firms. She also authored a number of publications on trade and financial services, the issue of judicial independence and Pakistan's secular laws.
Furthermore, Malik had been a reporter for the Oxford Reports on the International Law in the Domestic Courts, a publication of the Oxford University Press.
Malik had also been appearing as pro bono counsel for NGOs working on poverty alleviation, microfinance and skills development programs.
The 55-year-old is currently serving as a judge at the Lahore High Court.
Controversial appointment?
Though historic, the judicial commission's move to elevate her to the Supreme Court has sparked controversy.
The nine-member body that was to confirm her appointment turned down her elevation to the top court last year. The recent vote was close, with five committee members opting for her while four were against.
Many lawyers and even judges said Malik's selection was made in violation of seniority lists, as she was not among the top three most senior judges of the lower court from which she was elevated.
Some lawyers' bodies have threatened to strike and boycott court proceedings, saying their calls for the drafting of fixed criteria for the nomination of Supreme Court judges were ignored.
"There is no question more representation of women is needed in the judiciary. Having a woman there is a positive development but we cannot condone the process through which arbitrary and non-transparent decisions have been made — not just in this instance but prior to this appointment as well," Imaan Mazari, an Islamabad-based lawyer and rights activist, told DW.
"I don't think the opposition of the bar should have been made controversial — it was not specific to Justice Ayesha Malik, nor did anyone question her competence as a judge. The debate was over the judicial commission's process," said Mazari.
A step towards gender equality in judiciary
Usama J Malik, a senior lawyer, said that there is a misconception that the majority of male lawyers in Pakistan have opposed Ayesha Malik's elevation to the top court because of her gender.
"Many male lawyers wholeheartedly support her elevation and feel that there should be more female, ethnic and religious minority members in the higher judiciary."
Dad, the digital rights lawyer, said that despite the latest move, more efforts should be made to ensure a greater number of female judges in the nation's high courts and the Supreme Court.
"There should be an increased focus on promoting women judges from lower courts to high courts. Malik has been promoted based on merit and there are many other female judges and lawyers capable of working in higher courts," she said.
https://www.dw.com/en/ayesha-malik-how-this-pakistani-female-judge-shatters-the-glass-ceiling/a-60450671
#Pakistan - Establishment and politics - ''Vital issue of neutrality''
Keeping in view the state of Pakistan’s political culture, one can expect a junior and less responsible political official from government or the opposition to be careless while talking about serious issues that also include civil-military relations. Statements from this category however do not attract much public attention. But when it comes to a senior politician or a federal minister, an irresponsible statement can send alarm bells ringing.
What Federal Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry said about PML-N’s top four seeking to replace Nawaz Sharif was interpreted by many as an attempt to divert attention from Defence Minister’s recent confrontation with PM Imran Khan and PTI MNA Noor Alam Khan’s harsh criticism of his own government. The idea was to convey that there were more challenges to Nawaz Sharif from his own party than to Imran Khan from the PTI. It was however quite alarming when Fawad Chaudhry claimed that the PML-N leaders had met “someone”, implying some high-up in the establishment. An earlier statement by Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid had roused similar feelings when he maintained that the hand that supported PM Khan would soon be on the Sharifs’ neck. Sheikh Rashid has long taken pride in being the establishment’s own man and hence his statement showing establishment’s leanings was widely debated in the media.
Many had welcomed when ISPR Chief warned that politicians should stop dragging the army into politics as it had nothing to do with it. What the statement by Fawad Chaudhry implies is that the establishment still meets politicians while the remarks by Sheikh Rashid indicate it is preparing to act against the PML-N leaders. PML-N Punjab President has categorised Fawad Chaudhry’s remark regarding four PML-N leaders having allegedly met “someone” as factually wrong. According to him if “someone” means establishment or more precisely the army Chief, no one can meet him without prior information and agenda.
Fawad Chaudhry and Sheikh Rashid are among the cabinet heavyweights and hold important portfolios. They have called into question the establishment’s claim of being neutral in politics. It is for those who matter to clear the doubts that are being created about their role.
https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2022/01/17/establishment-and-politics/
ملک میں آٹا چینی گندم، کھاد کے بعد ادویات کے خام مال پر ٹیکس سے اب ادویات کا ممکنہ بحران پیدا ہونے کا خدشہ ہے، پاکستان پیپلز پارٹی سیکرٹری جنرل سید نیر حسین بخاری
پاکستان پیپلز پارٹی کے سیکرٹری جنرل سید نیر حسین بخاری نے کہا ہے کہ ملک معاشی بدحالی کی بدترین سطح پر آگیا ہے ملک میں سنگین مالی اقتصادی بحران پیدا کر دیا گیا ہے آئئ ایم۔ایف ڈکٹیشن منی بجٹ کے زرعیے عوام الناس کی زندگیاں اجیرن بنانے اور بغلیں بجانے والے بے رحم بے حس اور انسانیت سے عاری ہیں انہوں نے مزید کہا ہے کہ ملک میں آٹا چینی گندم، کھاد کے بعد ادویات کے خام مال پر ٹیکس سے اب ادویات کا ممکنہ بحران پیدا ہونے کا خدشہ ہے نیر بخآری نے کہا ہے کہ زرعی ملک میں معیشت کی ریڑھ کی ہڈی کسانوں کو کھاد میسر نہیں ملک میں زرعی اجناس فراہم کرنے والے طبقہ کسانوں کو مالیاتی مافیاز کی سرپرستی حکومت نے کھاد لے جانے والی گاڑیوں پر حملے کرنے پر مجبور کردیا ہے نیر بخآری نے سوال اٹھایا ہے کہ کیا یہ ہے تبدیلی کہ کسان کیلئے مہنگی کھاد قطار میں بھی لینا محال ہوگیا ہےحکمران مہنگائی کی چکی میں پسنے والے غریبوں سے ایک وقت کی روٹی بھی چھین رہے ہیں بے حس بے رحم بیمار زہنیت حکمران عوام الناس کے مسائل سے مکمل لا تعلق ہیں نیر بخاری نے مزید کہا ہے کہ
ناقابل برداشت مہنگائی سے خوشحال طبقہ بھی غرباء کی سطح پر آگیا ہے اور حکمران طبقہ عوام الناس کیلئے خون چوس گروہ بن چکے ہیں پی ٹی آئی انتخابی مددگار اور حکومتی شراکت دار اشیاء ضروریہ کی من مانی قیمتوں میں اضافہ کے زریعے انتخابی سرمایہ کاری کی کھلے عام حصہ داری عوام کی جیبوں پر ڈاکوں سے وصول کر رہے ہیں نیر بخآری نے مزید کہا ہے کہ کہا کہ خوشحالی کے جعلی اور جھوٹےدعویداروں نے ملک کی بڑی آبادی روٹی روزگار رہائش سے محروم کر دی گئی ہے پارٹی کو چھت روزگار روٹی چھن جانے والوں کی حمایت سے کوئی نہیں روک سکتا چیرمین بلاول بھٹو کی قیادت میں کسان کاشتکار کے ساتھ روا رکھی جانے ظلم۔الغرض معاشرے کے حکومتی ستائے ہر طبقہ کے شانہ بشانہ کھڑے ہیں 27فروری اسلام آباد لانگ مارچ کے تحت عوامی طاقت سے نالائق ناائل۔حکمرانوں کا آباد بوریا بستر گول کریں گے
https://www.ppp.org.pk/pr/26100/
Sunday, January 16, 2022
If Pakistan doesn’t value work of non-Muslims like Har Gobind Khorana, science will remain dead
Ideology and science are like oil and water — they refuse to mix. Dawn article on Har Gobind Khorana (1922-2011) threw me back 50 years when I, along with 600 other students had packed 26-100 (MIT’s largest lecture hall) to hear him speak. Being clueless of the basics of molecular biology, I understood little and left halfway through. Curiosity had driven me there because this famous MIT professor had won the 1968 Nobel Prize and started a brand new field — protein synthesis via nucleotides. More interestingly, he was a Lahori with bachelor and master’s degrees from Punjab University. Alas! Lahore, to its misfortune, does not know — nor cares to know — who this man was. The same holds true for another of its sons, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910-1995), who became a Nobel Laureate in recognition of his definitive work on the death of stars. Today a Nasa satellite named Chandra scours the skies for neutron stars, black holes and other unusual astronomical objects. The story of Abdus Salam (1926-1996) is too well known to repeat here. Winner of the 1979 physics Nobel, he studied at Government College (GC) Lahore and later taught at Punjab University. However, no road or landmark in Lahore bears Salam’s name — or that of Khorana and Chandrasekhar. While a GC affiliated institution called the Abdus Salam School for Mathematical Studies nominally exists, to display his name on its signboard could be dangerous in a city often gripped by religious fervour. Less well known is the story of Chowla and Chawla. At GC there have been two mathematicians in number theory. One was Sarvadaman Chowla, an accomplished mathematician who headed the mathematics department from 1937 to 1947. Being Hindu, he left Lahore after the rioting began and went to Princeton University, then the University of Colorado at Boulder, and eventually became professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He died in 1995 and was celebrated as a famous number theorist by the American Mathematical Society with several important theorems to his name. Unless Pakistanis learn to value the works of non-Muslims, science in Pakistan shall remain dead. The other was Lal Muhammad Chawla who graduated from Oxford in 1955 and then taught at GC for many years. With rather modest professional achievements, he had only one well cited paper. As a Google search of his publications reveals, Chawla was more interested in writing religious books than advancing mathematics. However, the GC math society is named after Lal Muhammad Chawla and not the more famous and much more accomplished Sarvadaman Chowla. No Hindu scientist is celebrated in Pakistan. Rejecting non-Muslims of high professional merit has come at devastating cost to Pakistan. For one, it lost those who could have helped the newborn country establish a scientific base. For another, it became difficult to create institutional meritocracies. After Partition, many clever ones played the religious or ethnic card and undeservedly rose to positions of high authority. In time they became institutional gatekeepers with catastrophic consequences. The weakness of science education in Pakistan is too evident to belabour here. Unsurprisingly, our best and brightest young people usually go for soft stuff like medicine, law, and business. Unlike in China or India, hardly any opt for tough, demanding, scientifically oriented careers. So, how can we persuade our children towards them? What stories to tell them about science and scientists? Most importantly, who should be their role models? This brings up a civilisational problem. Over the last 300 years — which is how old modern science is — there are no Muslim subcontinental names associated with first tier (Nobel calibre) scientific accomplishments (after 1974 Salam must be excluded). Notwithstanding the valiant efforts of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan (1817-1898), Indian Muslims shunned science and the English language. Thus, even at the distant second or third tier level, one finds barely a dozen names. Since one cannot find Muslim science heroes who belong to the soil, books for Pakistani children inevitably valorise Arabs from the Golden Age such as Al-Battani, Ibn-e-Shatir, Ibn-e-Haytham, etc. While these luminaries of Muslim science were genuine path-breakers, they do not serve well as role models. For one, persons from centuries ago cannot inspire today’s children. For another, excitement is inspired by those ‘of your own kind’. Arabs, however, are visibly different from people around here. Ancient Hindu scientists could have found some place in Pakistani books. However, they are excluded on ideological grounds because ‘woh hum main say nahin hain’ (they are not us). Instead, many Pakistanis anxiously seek ancestral roots in Arabia, Afghanistan and Central Asia. But modern laboratory tools are ripping apart dearly held myths of racial origins. Now several genetic marker studies are suggesting that the subcontinent’s Muslims have descended primarily from local Hindu converts with only a few per cent admixture of Arab or Central Asian genes. Excluding Hindu scientists from our books is absurd. Ideology and science are like oil and water — they refuse to mix. Science cares only about facts and logic, not personal likes and dislikes. History is replete with examples of failed attempts to fuse science with cherished beliefs. When Stalin sought to impose his Marxist views upon Soviet biology through his chosen tout, Trofim Lysenko, he nearly destroyed agriculture and forestry. Soviet Russia’s good fortune was that it had a scientific community robust enough to counter Lysenko’s meddling. Pakistan has not been so lucky. It has an abundance of charlatans pretending to be scientists but just a few who deserve to be called such. While there is a science ministry, several scientific bodies, and hundreds of institutions that purport to teach or do research in science, no community of genuine scientists exists. High-sounding scientific bodies — such as the Pakistan Academy of Sciences — are a joke. They command no respect internationally and should be dissolved.
Every kind of intellectual endeavour, science included, needs an enabling cultural and social environment to flourish. Science suffocates when scientists are judged by their religion, race, ethnicity or any criterion other than scientific achievement. Before Pakistan can produce any science worth the name, it will need to overcome its deeply held prejudices. It must learn to value all who share the common heritage of humankind. The day we count Khorana, Salam, and Chandrasekhar as our very own, Pakistan will have begun breaking the shackles of scientific under-development.
Pakistani mercenaries tricking J&K youth into terrorism, using them as ‘terror mules’: Officials
Pakistani mercenaries operating in Jammu and Kashmir are tricking the youth into terrorism and using them as “terror mules” who can even be eliminated if they plan to shun the path of violence, senior security officials said on Sunday.Referring to an encounter in Budgam earlier this month and the call details of 24-year-old Wasim Qadir Mir, a resident of Shahzadpora, the officials said he was the latest victim of the despotic behaviour of the Pakistani terrorists who eliminated him during a gunfight with security forces in village Zoiu in the central Kashmir district on January 6.
Mir along with his two Pakistani accomplices were trapped in a cordon-and-search operation, leading to a fierce gunfight, they said, adding by dawn, it was common news that the security forces had eliminated yet another group of terrorists in an encounter but what was uncommon was the way the series of events unfolded during the encounter the preceding night.
“During the encounter Mir wanted to put down his arms probably with an aim to come out and surrender to the security forces but was forced by the two Pakistani terrorists to keep firing back.“Details that emerged later including the post-mortem report further confirmed that Mir was actually killed by members of his own group, as a result of their failed attempts to resist him from surrendering,” a senior official involved in the gunfight said.
Mir was a school dropout who initially worked as an Over Ground Worker and subsequently was recruited into the terror folds in December 2020 by JeM commander Saifulla alias “Lambu Bhai”, a Pakistani terrorist.
Even though Mir’s stint as an active terrorist was short, he had a long list of acts of terror attributed to him, including the Zewan attack in which three police personnel were killed and 11 others were injured on December 13 last year, the officials said.They said it was probably his involvement in a long list of terror-related incidents that prevented him from re-joining the mainstream and eventually when he was given an opportunity by the security forces to save his own life, he did not stand a chance at the hands of the very companions for whom he was working as the “terror mule”.He said as it would have exposed the façade of the so-called local freedom movement and also shown the great human tragedy that the valley has been subjected to for the last three decades by Pakistan-based terror groups.
“As far as Kashmir is concerned, Pakistan’s modus operandi continues to remain the same over the years — infiltrate Pakistani terrorists into the valley in numbers, sizable enough to create and operate cellular groups of 3-4 terrorists, comprising at least one local boy,” he said.
The official said Pakistan’s strategic aim remains to mislead the global community and portray terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir as the result of a local uprising and an insurgent movement led by the local youth. They do it by creation of pseudo terror groups, namely Kashmir Tigers and The Resistance Front (TRF), which are only shadow outfits of banned terror groups like Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashker-e-Taiba respectively.
The shadow groups were created by ISI coupled with the tactical aim of ensuring that these local Kashmiri recruits provide the much-needed logistical support to the foreign terrorists and act as a conduit to keep terrorism in the valley alive.
“But in reality, over the years these local recruits have been reduced to nothing but ‘terror mules’, acting as guides for the Pakistani terrorists, carrying the burden of Pakistan’s misinformation campaign and exploited to keep its terror factory up and running in the valley,” the official said.
He said the local Kashmiri recruit lies at the heart of this vicious terror cycle, carefully planned and surgically executed by ISI-backed terror groups, including JeM and LeT.
On recruitment of the local youth into terrorism, the official said it all begins with “talent” spotting, where radicalised mind and religious leaning form the virtues of a potential recruit.
“After being employed initially for logistical errands, transportation of arms and ammunition and reconnaissance of potential targets, the local Kashmiri boys are tasked to carry out random acts of terror which include grenade throwing, planting IED and stand-off attacks against security forces,” the official said.
“Once the routes back to a normal civil life are severed, the next step is to recruit them into the terror folds, followed with deliberate circulation of their photographs carrying arms, swearing allegiance to proscribed terror groups.
“If the persistence to surrender does not end there, they are intimidated by threatening the life of their loved ones by the same recruiters who forced them into terrorism,” the official said, adding “no matter how hard one tries to give up arms and go back to their home and live a normal life, they just fail to come out of this vicious quicksand of Pakistan’s terror cycle.”
https://theprint.in/india/pak-mercenaries-tricking-jk-youth-into-terrorism-using-them-as-terror-mules-officials/804896/
Imran Khan to face wrath of the people from 27 February – Chairman PPP Bilawal Bhutto Zardari
He said that increase in petroleum products’ prices after gas and electricity was a robbery on the pockets of the people. The government has mortgaged the people to the IMF. Pakistan’s decisions are being made abroad. He said that Imran Khan would have to face the wrath of the people from February 27for increasing electricity and petrol prices.
https://www.ppp.org.pk/pr/26088/
Saturday, January 15, 2022
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