Perpetual Emptiness

So how many DID attend the PTI Jalsa?

2011-12-26T12:12:00.000+05:30

To put to rest all those "media" guestimates I did my own computations. Please note that these are probable values of people ONLY IN THE BAGH-E-QUAID and does not include those standing outside. Average differs with assumption of how fat the person is.

TO PAK ARMY: RED ALERT! Aircraft Carrier Inbound

2011-12-24T01:55:00.000+05:30

Aircraft Carriers Supporting the 5th Fleet

A couple of weeks back Abe Lincoln was despatched from the home base on US towards to support operations of the 5th Fleet in the south of Pakistan. It is expected that may arrive in the region in roughly 2 months. I am not an expert on the behaviour of Aircraft carriers, but the Arrival of Abe Lincoln will mean that now 2 Carriers will be operating in the region. Dont know if this is a routine mission. However Wikipedia reports something interesting:

On 1 August 2011, the U.S. Navy announced that the Abraham Lincoln will shift its homeport from Everett, Washington, to Newport News, Virginia, for its Refueling and Complex Overhaul in August 2012.^[17]. The ship departed Everett for the deployment that would take it around the world to Newport News in December 2011.

A planned move, eh? but why does it say "Under way on a deployment to the US 5th Fleet" below.

Meanwhile...

We are happy that the Generals took some practical moves we highlighted in 2007 and blocked that damned Supply Route. A good illustration of the pain felt by Uncle Sam and his mercenaries is given below

Blood will not go to waste InshAllah: Nato Attack

2011-11-28T00:43:00.000+05:30

Should the Feudals... Politicians... Generals... Bureaucrats be worried

2011-10-31T23:03:00.000+05:30

GENERALS! You Created POVERTY, WE are not supposed to PAY

2011-06-09T20:43:00.002+05:30

Is Dominique Strauss-Kahn entitled to Diplomatic Immunity?

2011-05-19T11:09:00.000+05:30

Oh here is something familiar... DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY

Provided that the CRIME has been committed by a non-US on US soil and is a member of French Socialist Party

So is he entitled to Diplomatic Immunity

Ghost of Raymond Davis Haunts the US

The Army should prepare itself for a long hard stand... make civilian military service compulsory

2011-05-11T22:54:00.001+05:30

Look I am not an expert and I guess no one is but here are my two cents... do point out if I am wrong... as I can be just like any other human. Before we proceed this assumes that the ARMY is Well-Intentioned.

So presently we are at a point where threats have engulfed us from all sides. Economically situation is a mess. Political situation is a mess. Now Defence situation is a mess. What we need is forced "Danda" unless (somehow) population rises up, even a "revolution" of that sort that may take time to rebuild institutions (Egypt) and force the nation into unavoidable mess.

Someone has got to take charge, its a volatile situation and the first symbolic step new power should take is to HANG EACH AND EVERYONE of the present politicians LIVE on NUMAISH CHAWRANGI in KARACHI.

I have tried to document the Economic and External reasons of such a drastic measure.

Of Economy

The economy's cancer is the Power mess that has been exacerbated by the Circular debt which is due to the supposedly low power tarrifs priced at an unrealistically US$57bbl of oil as reported by analysts. Right now the price of oil is US$100-110 or so. The balance is being chipped in by the government. So when the government does not pay the difference power companies produce less since they do not have money to buy fuel.

To help the power companies produce more the government is diverting gas from Fertilizer Plants where natural gas is a RAW MATERIAL and a NECCESITY. So big projects such as those of Engro and Dawood Hercules have been deprived of natural gas and hence significantly limiting production.

Since Agriculture contributes 20% to the GDP and employs a major chunk of the labor force, this does not bode well.Since reduced fertilizer will reduce crop production by a magnitude that may require some numerical calculations. So in essence the very core of the Economy is under threat.

The government is doing everything in its power to stop development and keep running deficits.

There is a Politcal Cycle in Pakistan, it goes when military rule gets unbearable political parties rise in name of democracy. When Corruption persists interim governments take over. When Economy is under threat Army takes over and this goes on. We are at a point where Army is "supposed" to take over so I suggest it plays that role.

Of external threats

USA is running deficits and its monetary system is on the verge of collapse. Dollar is no longer a store of value. There could be an international movement towards an INTERNATIONAL CURRENCY backed by gold or whatever.

When that happens USA will have to use INTERNATIONAL CURRENCY to purchase goods and services and not printed dollars. Since its a net consumer, its situation will be just like ours. However, I remember the phrase by Warren Buffet that human potential remains a key driving force of the US. To date all I have been seeing is that Corporates have been moving to the East including Warren Buffet.

SCENARIO ONE: So the popular opinion is that the US wants to exit as it can no longer afford to fight. Hence the volatile region will yet again fall into the arms of Pakistan.

SCENARIO TWO: One of the causes of the World War II was the Great Depression as post-datedly documented by Liaquat Ahmed in his Lords of Finance where a transition from major currency system and financially indebted Germany may have led to the invasion of Poland which marked the start of WWII. It is documented that just prior to German invasion, Polish economy was doing well (Source and Source (Not Verified)).

The reason why I highlight this is that, given the INTERNATIONAL CURRENCY, sustainability of a nation will eventually come from the mineral resources it has command over. This is because DOLLARs now cannot be used in exchange for resources. Maybe I am wrong, but right now USAs power stems from the fact that it owns the GLOBAL PRINTING PRESS and nothing more. "Human Potential" was rendered useless when China stopped the shipment of Rare Earth minerals to Japan thus undermining the industry. We have yet to find a sustainable substitute for Oil. Command over resources gives disproportionate political power. (Imagine the board game Monopoly where risk of bankruptcy is lower if you own a couple of hotel laden sets)

You need predictable supply of resources to keep the level of economic activity afloat. Libya, Afghanistan and now Pakistan all may fit this description. Where a Iraq style government coupled with US based MNCs to extract natural resources to supply the MOTHER may be used. It is British IMPERIALISM 2.0. And to do that you will need to quash defenses of the HOST.

Conclusive Remarks

In sum, the Army needs to wake up. Because the Army needs the country. In either Scenario time will be tough so start preparing.

I may not be the brightest of the lot, but I think if some idiots in the media get a chance to present their two cents why shouldn't I.

Is it Time for the Army to Take Over the Country?

2011-05-08T21:21:00.000+05:30

Is it? is it?

Maybe a good strategy given the fact that:

They need to restore their credibility
"Purify" incompetent departments
Get more control and predictability on state affairs
Get a grip on the economy to finance to fight the US if needed
Get ready for the US exit

What Does Gold Backwardation Mean?

2011-05-08T01:25:00.000+05:30

Let me summarize the salient points of discussion during the last two sessions of GSUL for the benefit of those who wanted to attend but couldn’t. The gold basis is the difference between the futures and the cash price of gold. More precisely it is the price of the nearby active futures contract in the gold futures market minus the cash price of physical gold in the spot market. Historically it has been positive ever since gold futures trading started at the Winnipeg Commodity Exchange in 1972 (except for some rare hiccups at the triple-witching hour. Such deviations have been called ‘logistical’ in nature, having to do with the simultaneous expiry of gold futures and the put and call option contracts on them. In all these instances the anomaly of a negative basis resolved itself in a matter of a few hours.)

In the commodity futures markets the terminus technicus for a positive basis is contango; that for a negative one, backwardation. Contango implies the existence of a healthy supply of the commodity in the warehouses available for immediate delivery, while backwardation implies shortages and conjures up the scraping of the bottom of the barrel. The basis is limited on the upside by the carrying charges; but there is no limit on the downside as it can fall to any negative value (meaning that the cash price may exceed the futures price by any amount, however large).

Source : http://professorfekete.com/articles%5CAEFRedAlert.pdf

How the Banking Industry Works

2011-05-08T01:06:00.002+05:30

This is a bit vague but will work.

Confiscation through Inflation: Generals! Are you LISTENING

2011-05-08T00:42:00.001+05:30

Can Paper Money Bring Prosperity: A Video Lesson for The GENERALS of the ARMY

2011-05-08T00:34:00.000+05:30

More at www.Dollardaze.org

ISI, go for the Kill! : Jay Carney is floundering under pressure, say Washington insiders

2011-05-05T20:33:00.000+05:30

Last nights press conference by Jay Carney was a disaster. It CONFIRMED that there is no SINGLE story about Osama Bn Laden and Operation Invasion. Carney repeatedly ducked specific questions and excused himself from tricky ones as he did not want to disclose "operational details".

I am increasingly getting a sens that these are all lies that White House is churning and has all of a sudden lost control

There is increasing concern in Washington that Jay Carney, the new White House Press Secretary, isn’t up to the job. Even when faced with an innocuous question that requires only that he trot out the official line, he looks completely stunned, as if the questioner is Bob Woodward asking him about Deep Throat. He gathers himself, embarks on a stuttering reply, pauses for what seems like an eternity, then starts gabbling, tripping over his words, rephrasing what he’s just said, then looking plaintively back at the questioner as if to say, “How did I do? Was that okay? Or would you like me to try again?”

Source: Telegraph

PIMCO: Bill Gross - Latest Investment Excerpt

2011-05-05T12:58:00.002+05:30

Well, ahoy matey, as quick as you can shout “thar she blows,” an academic working paper by Carmen Reinhart and M. Belen Sbrancia affirmed the same thing but in much more grounded, well-ballasted research. The paper, titled “The Liquidation of Government Debt,” contains a historical analysis of how governments attempt to get out from under the crushing burden of a debt crisis. For developed countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States, the period beginning in the mid-1940s (when depression and WWII sovereign debt loads were oppressive) was used as a starting point for pocket picking, “skunking,” or what they term “financial repression.” While the ancient Romans used to shave metal coins in an attempt to monetize existing debts, our evolving financial system has used more sophisticated techniques. With inflation accelerating, due to WWII and post-war demands on commodities, the Treasury capped long-term bond yields at 2½% and in so doing ensured that its debt/GDP ratio would be reduced. If savers received an average 2% on their Treasuries while the nominally based economy was advancing at 5% or more annualized growth rates, then debt to GDP could be lowered from its peak level of 116% to 112%, to 109%…etc. every 12 months. In fact, the authors found that “for the United States and the United Kingdom, the annual liquidation of debt via negative real interest rates amounted on average to 3 or 4% percent of GDP a year…which quickly accumulated (without compounding) to a 30 to 40% of GDP debt reduction in the course of a decade.” Even after interest rate “caps” were removed in 1951 via the Fed-Treasury Accord, extremely low/negative real interest rate policies continued until the Volcker revolution in 1979. By that time, U.S. (and U.K.) debt levels had been normalized, primarily at the expense of savers who had been “repressed” (and depressed!) for over three decades. At that historical turning point, government bonds were labeled “certificates of confiscation.” Not only had savers received Treasury bill rates that were negative for over 25% of the nearly four decades, but they were holding long-term AAA rated bonds trading at 30 to 40 cents on the dollar.

What Recovery?!?! 1 MILLION applied for 50,000 jobs

2011-04-29T23:44:00.000+05:30

USA is a Goner: What you Sow so shall you reap!

McDonald’s and its franchisees hired 62,000 people in the U.S. after receiving more than one million applications, the Oak Brook, Illinois-based company said today in an e-mailed statement. Previously, it said it planned to hire 50,000.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-28/mcdonald-s-hires-62-000-during-national-event-24-more-than-planned.html

Sissies: Pakistan "urges" US to review drone policy

2011-04-23T12:30:00.000+05:30

You dont URGE... You MAKE them do it... FORCE them do it... EXPLOIT their weakness... I cant believe I have to teach these ARMY Sissies all the time

Pakistan urges US to review drone policy

WASHINGTON: The United States needed to review its drone policy as attacks by these unmanned aircraft had become counter-productive, Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir said on Friday.
Mr Bashir made this observation at a joint briefing with US Special Representative Mark Grossman who declined to comment on the issue when reminded that a new drone attack had killed 26 people in Pakistan.
The United States refuses to acknowledge the drone attacks that have killed hundreds of people in the tribal region, causing Army Chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani to issue a rare statement condemning the strikes.

http://www.dawn.com/2011/04/23/pakistan-urges-us-to-review-drone-policy.html

As you sow so shall you reap: UK Protests - DailyMail.co.uk

2011-03-27T13:47:00.000+05:30

Images: Dailymail.co.uk

Sitting silent in their classroom, the 30 children whose parents have not come to collect them after tsunami swept away their town - Daily Mail UK

2011-03-18T11:18:00.001+05:30

Even amid the carnage and despair of Japan's tsunami victims, the plight of the 30 children at Kama Elementary School is heartbreaking.

They sit quietly in the corner of a third-floor classroom where they have waited each day since the tsunami swept into the town of Ishinomaki for their parents to collect them. So far, no one has come and few at the school now believe they will.

Teachers think that some of the boys and girls, aged between eight and 12, know their fathers and mothers are among the missing and will never again turn up at the gates of the school on the eastern outskirts of the town, but they are saying nothing.

Instead, they wait patiently reading books or playing card games watched over by relatives and teachers, who prevent anyone from speaking to them.

Officials fear that even the sound of the door sliding back might raise false hope that a parent has come to collect them. Their silence is in marked contrast to other children playing in the corridors of the four-storey building, whose parents survived due to a complete fluke.

Don't Wait for a Messiah:This Democracy is not Representative of the People... Neither is the Judiciary Nor Politicians

2011-03-16T20:07:00.000+05:30

The freedom of Raymond Davis is like someone has spitted on your face.

This is unacceptable, it proves that Nawaz and Shahbaz Sharif are not worthy of calling themselves as leaders. Nor is the Judiciary neither the Army. So much for the much over-rated ISI.

They do not have the balls. Jackasses

Stand up for once and Don't wait for a Messiah if we still have the guts.

UNACCEPTABLE: Toilet Paper Money Accepted Against Agents Life - Raymond Davis

2011-03-16T17:45:00.003+05:30

LAHORE: Additional Session Judge has set free US citizen Raymond Davis, allegedly involved in killing of two Pakistani men in Lahore, sources told Geo News reported.

http://www.geo.tv/3-16-2011/79407.htm

In a very sickening turn of events, the family has chosen to accept printed money (promissory notes) as a compensation for cold-blooded murder.

Sad... very Sad

Question is why wasn't he charged for ESPIONAGE????

He was only charged for MURDER, WHY???

Government in for a ride as conspiracy theories swirl....

Apocalypse: Japanese Tsunami

2011-03-11T23:03:00.000+05:30

Source

Comment: The most Advanced Nation experiencing Natures fury. Reminder that our knowledge and ability is limited.

Bravo! Generals Bravo!: Dollar Is NOT Your Master ANYMORE - Liberation

2011-02-25T23:37:00.000+05:30

Pakistan arrests US security contractor as rift with CIA deepens

ISI tells American agency to unmask all its covert operatives after arrest of Aaron DeHaven (JEW) in Peshawar, over visa expiry

Islamabad authorities have arrested a US government security contractor amid a worsening spy agency row between the countries, with Pakistani intelligence calling on the Americans to "come clean" about its network of covert operatives in the country.

The arrest came at the start of the murder trial of another American held in Pakistan, the CIA agent Raymond Davis.

Peshawar police arrested Aaron DeHaven, a contractor who recently worked for the US embassy in Islamabad, saying that his visa had expired.

Little was known about DeHaven except that his firm, which also has offices in Afghanistan and Dubai, is staffed by retired US military and defence personnel who boast of direct experience in the "global war on terror".

It was unclear whether his arrest was linked to escalating tensions between the Inter-Services Intelligence and the CIA, triggered by the trial of Davis, who appeared in handcuffs at a brief court hearing in a Lahore jail.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/25/pakistan-arrests-security-contractor-cia

Global Revolution?

2011-02-21T22:25:00.000+05:30

Remembering the Balfour Declaration of 1917

2011-02-21T12:43:00.000+05:30

More at Wikipedia

American who sparked diplomatic crisis over Lahore shooting was CIA spy: Guardian

2011-02-21T11:55:00.000+05:30

Guardian reveals all!

• Raymond Davis employed by CIA 'beyond shadow of doubt'
• Former soldier charged with murder over deaths of two men
• Davis accused of shooting one man twice in the back as he fled

• Special report: A CIA spy and a diplomatic whirlwind

Guardian

USA is SCARED!!: Hillary Clinton: Israeli Settlements 'Illegitimate'

2011-02-19T19:19:00.000+05:30

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Israeli settlements "illegitimate" shortly before the United States vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning continued Israeli settlement expansion as illegal. - ABC News

Hey US! did you know Egypt was developing nuclear weapons? Did you know Libya has knowledge of making nuclear weapons? Too bad your pet is in a bad 'hood... coz the 'hood is just warming up.

Raymond Davis' Case Maybe the Trigger Issue for Unrest

2011-02-15T18:44:00.000+05:30

Feeling the vibe here in Karachi, I can sense that if Raymond Davis is freed then it has the potential to set off a violent chain of events. I don't know if it could be the likes of the Middle East countries or not, but, sentiment here is very uniform and that is what makes it dangerous.

As I have recorded in one of my posts, there is only a trigger issue that is required to set off a a violent outburst. The issue should have a feeling that is uniformly shared by many in an environment fraught with unemployment, price hikes, sense of injustice and worthless leaders. This is a bomb waiting for the fuse to be lit.

So there can be two outcomes of this situation

A) Raymond Davis is not freed: If that is so, the US of A will find an excuse to cut off Aid and loans. Please note that these maybe cut off anyways since the US of A is pursuing austerity measures. Obama has started pruning of Military Spending by $75bn (approx) that previously were untouched. So for countries like Pakistan, they will have to learn to live the right way. The removal of Aid will be a blessing in disguise as structural issues will eventually have be addressed, leading to right sizing of government body to probably better response to public demands (possible). Hence negative for the near term.

B) Release of Raymond Davis: will have the potential to lead to a chaos. Negative for the near term as well.

Whatever the case we are set to go on another roller coaster ride. Be prepared.

Violation of Vienna Convention by the USA

2011-02-05T04:40:00.001+05:30

Power corrupts People and its the powerful who can change the laws and its interpretation.So overall its usually a win-lose situation for contestants on different places on the power spectrum.

Well this post is inspired by Raymond Davis' and his accomplices' killings of 3 "Gentiles". So for those of you who dont know you can find the full story here.

It is interesting to note that people try to find refuge in intricacies of laws that they do not themselves uphold. So the question remains are these laws there to be enforced on 'slave' countries.

A case in point here is USA's violation of the rights of foreign nationals under sentence of death which is a direct violation of the convention of 1969 as highlighted by Amnesty International in 1998 and updated upto 2010

The case is

More than 60 foreign citizens representing 22 nationalities are under sentence of death in the United States of America (USA). In virtually every case, the arresting authorities failed to notify detained foreigners of their right to communicate with their consular representatives. As a consequence, foreign nationals confronted by an unfamiliar legal system were tried and sentenced to death without the benefit of the crucial support from the authorities of their native countries. Since 1993, the United States has executed at least 5 foreign nationals, including citizens of the Dominican Republic, Mexico and Cuba.

Article 36 ensures that all arrested foreigners have the means at their disposal to prepare an adequate defence and to receive the same treatment before the law as domestic citizens. Consuls are uniquely placed to provide a wide range of essential services to their nationals, including legal advice and assistance, translation, notification of family members, the transferring of documentation from the native country and observing court hearings.

The US Department of State considers Article 36 notification for American citizens arrested abroad to be a matter of the highest importance. However, the US federal government has taken no meaningful measures to ensure domestic compliance with the Vienna Convention or to remedy past violations which resulted in death sentences and executions of foreign nationals. Amnesty International is concerned that what appears to be a double standard applied by the US authorities may undermine the integrity of international law and endanger the fundamental human rights of foreign nationals detained worldwide.

In May 1997, 32 US law firms that represent foreigners on death row sent a joint letter to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, protesting the denial of their clients' consular rights. The letter pointed to "an alarming, widespread pattern of indisputable and indefensible violations" of Article 36 and urged the State Department to intervene. To date, there has been no substantive reply from the Secretary of State to the joint letter.

Further more alarming is the conviction process:

On 18 June 1997, Texas executed Irineo Tristan Montoya, a Mexican national sentenced to death in 1986. Following his arrest, Montoya underwent a lengthy police interrogation without the presence of an attorney or the assistance of the Mexican Consulate. He then signed a four-page confession written in English, a language that he did not read, speak or understand.

Although only eighteen years old at the time and despite his secondary involvement in the crime (Montoya was charged as an accessory to the murder), Montoya was condemned to death. The actual killer received a prison sentence. Texas authorities were fully aware of Montoya's nationality but failed to inform him of his right to consular access.

The updated facts upto 2010 tally a total 131 deaths as of July 28, 2010,

Official records produced by the plaintiff revealed that over 53,000 foreign nationals were arrested in New York City during 1997, but that the NYPD Alien Notification Log registered only 4 cases in which consulates were notified of those arrests--a failure rate well in excess of 99 per cent (even presuming that a majority of the detainees might have declined consular notification). Another example is the recent finding by the International Court of Justice in Avena and Other Mexican Nationals that the United States had violated its Article 36 obligations in 51 of 52 reviewed cases of Mexican nationals resulting in death sentences (a 98% failure rate, in the most serious of all possible circumstances).

Amnesty International continues to hold:

Amnesty International also remains deeply concerned over the reluctance of the US authorities to develop effective remedies in the cases of foreign nationals who were sentenced to death without receiving notification of their consular rights. The US Government continues to oppose efforts by death-sentenced foreign citizens (and their governments) to obtain relief through the courts.

In response to a law-suit filed by the Republic of Paraguay against Virginia officials, attorneys for the US Department of Justice argued that foreign governments are not entitled to a judicial remedy for Article 36 violations and that the proper recourse for breaches of consular rights is through diplomatic channels. However, it is not clear how diplomatic channels could correct the violation of the rights of those foreign nationals currently under sentence of death.

In light of the State Department's insufficient efforts to intervene prior to the recent execution of foreign nationals, Amnesty International finds this position completely unacceptable. Without fair and effective remedies for past violations of Article 36 in capital cases, any assurances of future domestic compliance from the US authorities can only be seen as hollow promises.

So again, Vienna Convention is it? Buzz off.

Joke of the Day:Corrupt and Self-Exiled Politicians "Dream" of Leading a Supposed Revolution in Pakistan

2011-02-01T13:11:00.000+05:30

After having seen the events of Tunisia and Egypt and surrounding Arab states, Corrupt Politicians are dreaming (and communicating the same through speeches) of leading a similar round of protests in Pakistan.

It is interesting that they deceive themselves in believing that the population will support them given the fact it is a well known fact that the bloody carnage they carried out in the name of Pashtun cleansing and on May 12 to secure their "turf" attacked the very people they now want to lead.

So here is your lesson for the day: (disclaimer: I am no expert in Revolutions and neither is any present political party here) What happened in Tunisia and Egypt was against an oppressor and was a voice against injustice. If someone is still charged with propagating injustice through land grabbing and obtaining Bhataas, I find it logically and practically impossible for such a move to happen.

So wake up from your slumber and feel what it likes to be in Pakistan.

BEWARE PAKISTAN!!

2011-01-27T12:30:00.000+05:30

While going through the various news items today regarding Egypt and Tunisia here is a generalized formula:

Formula for Social Unrest

UNICEF: 'Food Crisis in Interior Pakistan' + IMF "Budget Controls" + Corrupt Politicans and Extravagant Expenditures (20bn on Govt Cars) + High Food and Fuel Prices = HIGH PROBABILITY OF THE UNTHINKABLE

The rise of the Dragon: Is Pak Army ready to defend against a World Domination Spree

2011-01-19T21:59:00.003+05:30

I want to own a gun ... If law enforcement agencies cannot protect me

2011-01-14T22:43:00.000+05:30

I am writing this in wake of recent killings in Karachi.

Presently, the procedure for owning a licensed firearm is complicated and fraught with illicit payments.

If law enforcement agencies cannot protect me and my family, by the grace of Allah, I can.

Allow me to keep firearms, allow me to keep AKs, MP5s, Uzis. I prefer to go down fighting than to be slaughtered like a chicken

In Islam, it is allowed to keep Arms and I am prepared to fulfill legal requirements.

Let me settle my score.

Dr. Shahid Masood, Farzana Bari and Zaid Hamid - Dec 9-10, 2010

2010-12-27T00:30:00.000+05:30

F-22 Raptor: FAIL!!!!

2010-12-18T12:31:00.002+05:30

Kusurwaar Hum Hain - We are Responsible - 5 Stars

2010-11-12T23:40:00.000+05:30

Wikileaks Iraq: Every Death Mapped - Guardian.co.uk

2010-10-24T13:45:00.001+05:30

Wikileaks: Visualize Afghan Warlogs

2010-10-24T13:31:00.001+05:30

Visualisation of Activity in Afghanistan using the Wikileaks data from Mike Dewar on Vimeo.

Mumbai Attacks Drama: Evaluation of Indian Dossier by Talat Hussain

2010-10-20T16:54:00.000+05:30

Lesson for Generals and Economists: It is Resources and NOT Toilet Paper Money that Counts

2010-10-20T15:18:00.001+05:30

China Said to Widen Its Embargo of Minerals - NYTIMES.com

HONG KONG — China, which has been blocking shipments of crucial minerals to Japan for the last month, has now quietly halted shipments of those materials to the United States and Europe, three industry officials said on Tuesday.

Rare Earth Mineral

So what is a Rare Earth Mineral

A rare earth mineral is a mineral which contains one or more rare earth elements as major metal constituents. Yttrium is found in almost all rare earth minerals. Rare earth minerals are usually found in association with alkaline to per-alkaline igneous complexes, in pegmatites associated with alkaline magmas and in or associated with carbonatite intrusives. Perovskite mineral phases are common hosts to rare earth elements within the alkaline complexes. Mantle derived carbonate melts also are carriers of the rare earths. Hydrothermal deposits associated with alkaline magmatism contain a variety of rare earth minerals.

The majority of rare earth minerals are mined in Asia, with China producing 93 percent of the world's supply, and more than 99 percent of the most valuable supply. - Wikipedia

So where is it used?

Yttrium ( /ˈɪtriəm/ IT-ree-əm) is a chemical element with symbol Y and atomic number 39. It is a silvery-metallic transition metal chemically similar to the lanthanoids and has historically been classified as a rare earth element. The most important use of yttrium is in making phosphors, such as the red ones used in television cathode ray tube displays and in LEDs.^[5] Other uses include the production of electrodes, electrolytes, electronic filters, lasers and superconductors; various medical applications; and as traces in various materials to enhance their properties. Yttrium has no known biological role, but exposure to yttrium compounds can cause lung disease in humans.^[6] - Wikipedia

Of American Aid and American Supplies

2010-10-06T22:52:00.000+05:30

So there goes another round of media speculation and so called think-tanks are putting their heads together to find a answer to "Whether we should make this ban on NATO supplies permanent or not?" ... I had previously highlighted the importance of this route in 2007

So lets get to the point here. Look people American Economy is in shambles, there is a political mess there. Conservatives are gaining ground and pro-religious movement is taking place. Even the most optimistic Goldman Sachs has turned pessimistic

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said the U.S. economy is likely to be “fairly bad” or “very bad” over the next six to nine months.“We see two main scenarios,” analysts led by Jan Hatzius, the New York-based chief U.S. economist at the company, wrote in an e-mail to clients. “A fairly bad one in which the economy grows at a 1 1/2 percent to 2 percent rate through the middle of next year and the unemployment rate rises moderately to 10 percent, and a very bad one in which the economy returns to an outright recession.”- Bloomberg

If you still want some gruesome statistics here they are:

The number of Americans receiving food stamps rose to a record 41.8 million in July as the jobless rate hovered near a 27-year high, the government said.

Recipients of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program subsidies for food purchases jumped 18 percent from a year earlier and increased 1.4 percent from June, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said today in a statement on its website. Participation has set records for 20 straight months.

Unemployment in September may have reached 9.7 percent, according to a Bloomberg News survey of analysts in advance of the release of last month’s rate on Oct. 8. Unemployment was 9.6 percent in July, near levels last seen in 1983.- Bloomberg

YES PEOPLE 41.8mn PEOPLE OF 300mn POPULATION. OR 13.93% OF USA IS ON LIFE SUPPORT, and it wont be surprising to know if another big chunk is struggling.

So let me get this straight, FORGET DOLLARS. If you think you will do USA a favor by opening the route so that they may reward you with Dollars, you are doing a mistake. Would they spend on their population or YOURS.

Buy gold. Protect your resources. Develop your Human Resource. Tell your generals and politicans to GET REAL and GET SOME BALLS.

Peace.

The Future Depends on Freedom

2010-09-20T22:15:00.000+05:30

I must say we are a resilient nation, we have continuously evolved to survive the unthinkable since our independence.

We have endured natural and man-made calamities alike and lived to tell the tale. We have borne floods, earthquakes, Predator's hellfire missiles, terrorist attacks, suicide bombs, oppressive landlords, violent youth, ignorant masses, maniac dictators, looser politicians, greedy presidents, unruly ministers, cheating cricketers, desperate film-stars and above all we have survived social implosion.

The recent floods have presented us with a new daunting challenge that may change the face of Pakistan for ages to come, whether we successfully overcome this challenge or we fail to do so. This is a fork in the road we have hit and it us who will choose the path of our future journey. We can either rehabilitate the people and set them free, free from feudal lords and mental bondage that have obstructed our progress. Either that or we can choose to let them be on their own. Either option will we cause a change that may affect generations to come.

A new challenge awaits us and I believe this will be one of the hardest but it would undoubtedly open up an opportunity. This opportunity could be used to get rid of the menace that has plagued us for the past 60+ years. This opportunity could be used to get rid of the feudal lords that have suppressed the large segments of population and deprived them of education and freedom.

I quote Dr. Mehnaz Fatima here;

It would be a fantasy to assume that the country is not plagued with a feudal mindset. Some of the ills found in other sectors of the economy are actually a manifestation of this same mindset exported from the countryside to the rest of the economy. Absentee landlords, living off the wealth generated on the soil tilled by subsisting tenants, served as "role models." The societal goals got transformed to maximizing personal material gain and personal power only. These goals were sought increasingly in other sectors, be it industry or bureaucracy. The undesirable norms and attitudes caught on. These trends are now being used to justify oppression in that same agricultural sector from which they were exported in the first place. The vicious circle ought to be broken rather than justified. The importance of parallel attempts notwithstanding, first attempts should then be made in the sector from which these anti-developmental attitudes originated.- Dr Fatima

Nearly 67% of the population lives in the rural areas and it would not be surprising to know that this segment would be deprived of the basic facilities for physical and mental grooming.

Now imagine only 2.2% of the population has an IQ of 130+ which is a leading indicator of future Top Civil Servants; Professors and Research Scientists. Lets do the math here, we are missing out on approximately = 2.505mn (2.2% x 170mn x 67%) future scientists and revolutionary individuals. 2.5mn Scientists and Researchers denied.

Our nation has seen the worst. Is this as worse as it gets? What are we scared of?

Reminds me of a wall chalking "Uth bandh qamar kiya darta hai phir dekh khuda kiya karta hai"

Quran Burner Fired by Employer

2010-09-15T12:01:00.000+05:30

The protester who burned pages from the Koran outside a planned mosque near Ground Zero has been fired from NJTransit, sources and authorities said Tuesday.

Derek Fenton's 11-year career at the agency came to an abrupt halt Monday after photographs of him ripping pages from the Muslim holy book and setting them ablaze appeared in newspapers.

Fenton, 39, of Bloomingdale, N.J., burned the book during a protest on the ninth anniversary of Sept. 11 outside Park51, the controversial mosque slated to be built near Ground Zero.

Source: NY Daily News

Quran Burns and the Media Sleeps

2010-09-12T17:19:00.001+05:30

Man ignites Koran near Ground Zero, apparently prompted by Terry Jones; crowd appalled by zealot

A hate-filled fanatic ripped pages out of a Koran and lit them aflame Saturday amid the chaos outside the planned community center and mosque near Ground Zero.
"If they can burn American flags, I can burn the Koran," the unidentified zealot shouted. "[Americans] should never be afraid to give their opinion."
Witnesses said it was a ghastly display of fervor - apparently inspired by the Florida pastor who vowed to torch the holy books earlier in the week - overshadowing what should have been a somber day.
"Burning Korans is like setting up a recruitment to Al Qaeda - it does nothing for the cause and only brings problems," said Lance Corey, 61, a retired history teacher from the Bronx who opposes Park51.

Six Christians rip pages from Koran in White House stunt

WASHINGTON (AFP) – A small group of conservative Christians tore some pages from a Koran in a protest outside the White House Saturday to denounce what they called the "charade of Islam" on the anniversary of 9/11.

2 Local Men Burn Quran Despite Protest

SPRINGFIELD, Tenn. -- Despite multiple pleas to reconsider, two local religious leaders held a private Quran burning in a Springfield backyard Saturday afternoon.

Pakistan Floods: An Opportunity to End Feudalism?

2010-09-01T00:28:00.001+05:30

Any nation cannot progress with its 70% population suppressed by a handful of people. Presently, the government faces a unprecedented trust deficit even in its home-constituencies.

Is it an opportunity to end feudalism once and for all?Can the anger be directed to this cause?

ReliefWeb: Floods Update

2010-08-26T00:26:00.000+05:30

This report was issued by UNOCHA Pakistan. It covers the period from 23 to 25 August. The next report will be issued on or around 27 August.
I. HIGHLIGHTS/KEY PRIORITIES
• Significantly scaled up assistance in Sindh and Punjab continues to be required; WASH, health, shelter and food interventions remain the key priorities.
• New areas in Sindh have been inundated in recent days as floodwaters move through the south of the province.
• With a growing risk of outbreaks of waterborne disease, close coordination between health and WASH clusters is of increasing importance.
• The logistics cluster continues to scale up its capacity to support in-country movement of relief items; reaching populations cut off by floodwaters, landslides and damaged infrastructure is an overarching challenge and additional airlift capacity is required.
• The Pakistan Initial Floods Emergency Response Plan (PIFERP) is now 60% covered. A revised version of the plan, taking into account the large increase in numbers in need of assistance, is due to be launched during the third week of September.

Source: Relief Web

Extreme Iran

2010-08-22T23:38:00.001+05:30

Calm Before the Storm: Why Hungry Millions May Change Pakistan

2010-08-16T15:43:00.010+05:30

So here we are again, crisis and mismanagement.As much as I would like to honor the government with my shoes, I think it is best to use this time to highlight more important issues.

I would remind my readers to skim through Pay your Respect to BB: Kill and destroy post where I highlighted how poverty can cause discontent and is the ultimate time-bomb. I have reproduced the excerpt for your convenience.

To sum up, when people see no hope of getting out of cycle of poverty, they take on opportunities to vent their frustration. It is not fault of a person that he is born in a poor family, combine that with inadequate government support to help him get out and you find generations living in poverty.

Lack of prudent policies and deterioration of judicial system end gives way to array of injustices. Inflation, harrasment and social inequality just contribute to this outburst which often takes violent forms. Case : France riots of 2005

I would also like to bring your attention to Wikipedia's List of Riots and explore the reasons behind the deadliest riots. for example,

Watts Riots : The term Watts Riots of 1965 refers to a large-scale riot which lasted 6 days in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, in August 1965. By the time the riot subsided, 34 people had been killed, 1,032 injured, and 3,438 arrested. It would stand as the most severe riot in Los Angeles history until the Los Angeles riots of 1992. The riot is viewed by some as a reaction to the record of police brutality by the LAPD and other racial injustices suffered by black Americans in Los Angeles, including job and housing discrimination.
Chinese Riots China's Public Security Ministry reported 87,000 mass incidents in 2005, up 6.6 per cent over the number in 2004, and 50 per cent over the 2003 figure. The ministry has not released the latest figures.
French Riots The 2005 civil unrest in France of October and November (in French Les émeutes de banlieues de 2005) was a series of riots involving mainly the burning of cars and public buildings at night starting on 27 October 2005 in Clichy-sous-Bois.The vast majority of the rioters were of Algerian descent. Events spread to poor housing projects (the cités HLM) in various parts of France. A state of emergency was declared on 8 November 2005. It was extended for three months on 16 November by the Parliament

And the Effects before the landfall are visible

1. SUKKUR, Pakistan (Reuters) – Pakistani flood victims, burning straw and waving sticks, blocked a highway on Monday to demand government help as aid agencies warned relief was too slow to arrive for millions without clean water, food and homes.

Public anger has grown in the two weeks of floods, highlighting potential political troubles for an unpopular government overwhelmed by a disaster that has disrupted the lives of at least a tenth of its 170 million people. Reuters

2. MUZAFFARGARH (Pakistan): Food riots have erupted in several flood-affected areas in Pakistan's Punjab province, where starving people are attacking vehicles carrying relief goods.

The Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund (PPAF) and International Organisation for Migration (IOM) officials said that their convoy had been attacked and vehicles looted in Muzaffargarh district. Similar attacks were reported on vehicles of the Strengthening Participatory Organisation (SPO) and IOM in the province.- India Times

3. At least two people were killed in a clash Wednesday between police and a mob protesting power outages in Pakistan's Punjab province.

The protesters threw stones and blocked the Grand Trunk Road between Islamabad and Peshawar, even as hundreds of angry people clashed with police, Xinhua reported citing police officials.Police fired in the air to disperse the demonstrators. They later said that two people died during the protest.Power supplies in Pakistan have been badly affected by one of the worst floods in the country's history, which have so far left over 20 million people homeless.- Sify

4. The desperation at camps for evacuees is such that people fight over aid trucks that come in, Khan said.
If the situation is not stabilized soon, the situation could become dire, he warned.

"The consequences in three months of this -- if this is not addressed by us -- the country is going to go into chaos," Khan said. "We could implode. We could have starving people. And you're talking, again, about 20 million people in dire straits. Where are they going to go with no food, no homes, no money, no crops, no animals?" - CNN

5. Anger has been rising against the government, which has drawn a barrage of criticism over its perceived slack response to one of the worst disaster's in Pakistan's history.

So far, flood victims have turned against each other to compete for relief handouts. Food riots could erupt and that could eventually lead to social unrest, but only if food shortages become a huge issue. - Montreal Gazette

6. Muzaffargarh hospital is treating 1,000 flood victims and that number is likely to rise. People lay on the floor or were using their own rope beds because of a lack of space."I came to hospital around dawn and I'm still waiting for my number," Naseem Bibi said as her five-year-old daughter, suffering from diarrhoea, slept on the ground. Reuters - Relief Web

7. Muzamel is just five days old and sleeps peacefully under a makeshift mosquito net, blissfully unaware that her family home is now an island, still surrounded by water one month after the floods hit. Reuters - AlertNet

8. "The flooding is only the start of a bigger catastrophe that will continue to claim lives," - International Federation of Red Cross And Red Crescent Societies (IFRC)

9."Fever has gripped me since the raging waters swept away our mud house. I have never been that terrified in my life". Gamul Mai developed a high fever after escaping a three feet water wave in her village in Sindh, Pakistan. "We were sleeping when I heard screams that the embankment is breached. At first I thought that we are going to die. However, we managed to escape with charpoys and my six grand children", she said.- Caritas

10. An unemployed victim of the devastating floods in Pakistan and a father of four set himself on fire after being denied entry to Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani's private residence when he sought a job recommendation. Digital Journal and APP

SOCIAL DISINTEGRATION

Will the Leaders still wear Suits in searing heat

Given that we have a power crisis how does it make sense to wear a suit in a press conference, which in turn would require huge air conditioning to keep the surroundings cool and in turn would waste a lot of energy.

LAKEER KAY FAKEER

Decline in Effectiveness of Monetary Tools

2010-08-13T11:05:00.002+05:30

OMG! Oil Dispersant Demo - Carl Safina: The oil spill's unseen culprits, victims

2010-07-18T17:17:00.000+05:30

Eye of Horus: The Taranis - Unmanned Stealth Bomber

2010-07-13T10:23:00.000+05:30

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 5:22 PM on 12th July 2010

Looming ominously like a space ship from Star Wars, this is the future of unmanned flight. Defence firm BAE Systems today officially unveiled its first ever high-tech unmanned stealth jet. The Taranis, named after the Celtic god of thunder, is about the same size as a Hawk jet and is equipped with stealth equipment and an 'autonomous' artificial intelligence system. The plane will test the possibility of developing the first ever autonomous stealthy Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle (UCAV) that would ultimately be capable of precisely striking targets at long range, even in another continent.

The trial aircraft cost £143 million pounds to construct and spearheads BAE's drive to convince the Ministry of Defence to invest in the next generation of unmanned aircraft. Almost invisible to ground radar, it is designed to travel at high jet speeds and cover massive distances between continents.

The plane is built to carry out intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance on enemy territory using onboard sensors. And it has been designed to carry a cache of weapons - including bombs and missiles -, giving it a potential long-range strike capability. It can be controlled from anywhere in the world with satellite communications.

Experts say the cutting-edge design is at the forefront of world technology and as advanced as any US development. The plane began development in December 2006, and is intended to prove the UK's ability to produce a stealthy UAV. Taranis will be stealthy, fast, able to carry out use a number of on-board weapons systems and be able to defend itself against manned and other unmanned enemy aircraft.

Any future need hinges on the outcome of the Strategic Defence and Security Review, which will conclude around October. Speaking at the unveiling ceremony at BAE Systems in Warton, Lancashire, Minister for International Security Strategy Gerald Howarth said: 'Taranis is a truly trailblazing project.

'The first of its kind in the UK, it reflects the best of our nation’s advanced design and technology skills and is a leading programme on the global stage.'

He added: 'Taranis shows the UK's advanced engineering, research, technology and innovation sector at its world-beating best.' Taranis is an informal partnership of the UK MoD and industry British engineering firms including BAE Systems, Rolls Royce, QinetiQ and GE Aviation. Rolls-Royce will focus on the next generation propulsion system for the Taranis demonstrator.

Speaking on behalf of the industry team, Nigel Whitehead, Group managing director of BAE Systems' Programmes & Support business, said: 'Taranis has been three and a half years in the making and is the product of more than a million man-hours. 'It represents a significant step forward in this country's fast-jet capability. This technology is key to sustaining a strong industrial base and to maintain the UK's leading position as a centre for engineering excellence and innovation."

The Taranis prototype will provide the MOD with knowledge on the technical and manufacturing challenges and the potential capabilities of Unmanned Combat Air Systems. Test flights for the Taranis plane are due to start in 2011.

Dump The Dollar: Reuters

2010-07-04T19:01:00.001+05:30

TEDTalks - Teach kids to be Entrepenures

2010-06-18T23:30:00.002+05:30

TEDTalks: Success

2010-06-16T01:52:00.002+05:30

TEDTalks - Paradox of Choice

2010-06-16T01:31:00.001+05:30

TEDTalk - Wii Hack - Awesome

2010-06-16T00:31:00.003+05:30

RSA Animate - Smile or Die

2010-06-14T22:42:00.002+05:30

I Sense Blood: Afghans say US team found huge potential mineral wealth

2010-06-14T21:40:00.002+05:30

BBC

Afghanistan may have more than a trillion dollars worth of untapped mineral deposits, a spokesman for the ministry of mines has suggested.

The statement came after reports in the New York Times of the work of a team of Pentagon officials and US geologists.

They discovered large quantities of iron and copper as well as valuable deposits of lithium.

However, questions are being asked about the timing of the release of the latest information.

The BBC's Jill McGivering says that at a time of growing despair about Afghanistan and its government, the portrayal of the country as a potential goldmine could help to bolster international resolve and paint the country as a prize worth fighting for.

Lithium is an increasing vital resource, used in batteries for everything from mobile phones to laptops and key to the future of the electric car. Bolivia boasts the largest reserves.

RSA Animate - Superfreakonomics - 5 stars

2010-06-14T21:21:00.002+05:30

The Secret Powers of Time - Must See - Dr. Philip Zimbardo

2010-06-14T01:45:00.002+05:30

Why Governments Hate Gold

2010-06-10T11:29:00.001+05:30

Why Governments Hate Gold

by Ron Paul

This past week several emerging and ongoing crises took attention away from the ongoing sovereign debt problems in Greece. The bailouts are merely kicking the can down the road and making things worse for taxpaying citizens, here and abroad. Greece is unfortunately not unique in its irresponsible spending habits. Greek-style debt explosions are quickly spreading to other nations one by one, and yes, the United States is one of the dominoes on down the line.

Time and again it has been proven that the Keynesian system of big government and fiat paper money are abject failures in the long run. However, the nature of government is to ignore reality when there is an avenue that allows growth in power and control. Thus, most politicians and economists will ignore the long-term damage of Keynesianism in the early stage of a bubble when there is the illusion of prosperity, suggesting that the basic laws of economics had been repealed. In fact, one way to tell if a bubble is about to burst is if economists start talking about how the government and the Central Bank have repealed the business cycle.

The truth is the laws of economics are constant and real, no matter how inconvenient they might be to politicians and bankers. This reality is setting in and the bills are coming due. In the mean time, countries that have no money have bailed out other countries that have no money, except for the phony money created by politicians, bureaucrats, and their partners-in-crime at the central banks. This may be preventing big well-connected banks from having to take on massive losses, but it is all at the expense of the taxpaying citizen.

As governments and central banks continue the cycle of spending and inflating, the purchasing power of their currencies is constantly being degraded. These currencies are what the people are working for and saving. This inflation guts the savings and earnings of the people, who have very limited options for protecting themselves against these ravages. One option is to convert their fiat currency into something out of reach of central banks and government spending, such as gold or silver.

It is fairly typical in the midst of economic crises like these for gold to come under attack from Keynesians economists and their amen corner in the media. The arguments against gold are usually straw men, based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of buying gold. Gold is not a typical investment. It is a defense against the predictable behavior of governments to debase a fiat currency under its absolute control. The people who run the printing presses have trouble shutting them off. In order to limit one’s exposure to this reckless behavior, it is wise to exchange unsound assets for sound ones.

As the foundation of their power, their fiat currency, is rejected or avoided, government power is compromised. Fiat currencies trade the people’s freedom and security for the government’s freedom to squander the wealth of the nation on wasteful pet programs, wars, and corruption. This is why the freedom of the people is so intertwined with a sound monetary unit. This is also why the founders liked gold and silver, and supporters of big government hate them.

Israel: "Please dont pull up my skirt, I will ease the blockade"

2010-06-09T10:20:00.000+05:30

It seems Israel is on the defensive here. In a latest statement the government is planning to ease the blockade if the international community agree to a limited probe.

Obviously, there is something they are hiding and the move is just to prevent the international community from looking "under the skirt" to get the true picture.

LONDON: Israel is set to accept a plan under which it would ease its Gaza blockade in return for the international community agreeing a limited probe into a deadly flotilla raid, it was reported Wednesday.

The Daily Telegraph reported that Britain last week circulated a document outlining proposals to ease the blockade. It quoted an unnamed Western source close to the talks with Israel saying: “A quid pro quo deal is in the offing”.

Israel has outlined plans to hold probes into the legality of its naval blockade of Gaza and the raid last week on an aid flotilla which was bidding to break it which killed nine people.

It is reportedly considering setting up an investigative team made up of Israeli jurists and former diplomats as well as two foreign observers.

Dawn

Flotilla raid diary: 'A man is shot. I am seeing it happen'
Earlier the Guardian published the accounts of the raid from the diary of the prize-winning writer and creator of Wallander who was among those on board the Gaza flotilla. clearly he was not happy. Here is an excerpt

We are split up, no one is allowed to talk to anyone else. Suddenly a man from the Israeli ministry for foreign affairs appears at my side. I realise he is there to make sure I am not treated too harshly. I am, after all, known as a writer in Israel. I've been translated into Hebrew. He asks if I need anything.

'My freedom and everybody else's,' I say. He doesn't answer. I ask him to go. He takes one step back. But he stays.

I admit to nothing, of course, and am told I am to be deported. The man who says this also says he rates my books highly. That makes me consider ensuring nothing I write is ever translated into Hebrew again.

Seeds of a Conflict being sown?... Irans Flotilla - Armageddon?

2010-06-07T17:09:00.000+05:30

Iran Red Crescent plans Gaza ships- Al-Jazeera

Iran's Revolutionary Guards have expressed readiness to escort aid flotillas to Gaza [AFP]

Iran's Red Crescent has announced it will send two aid ships to Gaza later this week in the latest effort to break Israel's blockade on the territory.
The plan was approved by Iran's foreign ministry on Sunday, and will see one boat filled with aid and the other carrying relief workers to the coastal strip, Abdolrouf Adibzadeh, the Red Crescent's director for international affairs said.
He said that the ships would be sent carrying food, medicine and Iranian volunteers.

Shahid Masood on Armageddon

Dr. Israr on the Armageddon

U.S.'s $13 Trillion Debt Poised to Overtake GDP: Chart of Day

2010-06-07T12:29:00.000+05:30

Source:Bloomberg

Crowding-Out Effect Inevitable

President Barack Obama is poised to increase the U.S. debt to a level that exceeds the value of the nation’s annual economic output, a step toward what Bill Gross called a “debt super cycle.”

The CHART OF THE DAY tracks U.S. gross domestic product and the government’s total debt, which rose past $13 trillion for the first time this month. The amount owed will surpass GDP in 2012, based on forecasts by the International Monetary Fund. The lower panel shows U.S. annual GDP growth as tracked by the IMF, which projects the world’s largest economy to expand at a slower pace than the 3.2 percent average during the past five decades.

“Over the long term, interest rates on government debt will likely have to rise to attract investors,” said Hiroki Shimazu, a market economist in Tokyo at Nikko Cordial Securities Inc., a unit of Japan’s third-largest publicly traded bank. “That will be a big burden on the government and the people.”

I could have annihilated all jews but i left some of them so that you should know why i was killing them?

2010-06-01T18:00:00.004+05:30

"I could have annihilated all jews but i left some of them so that you should know why i was killing them?"

-"Sir" Adolph Hitler

Guardian: US appoints first cyber warfare general

2010-05-23T19:35:00.001+05:30

US appoints first cyber warfare general

Pentagon creates specialist online unit to counter cyber attack amid growing fears of militarisation of the internet

The Pentagon is channelling a growing volume of troops and resources into countering cyber warfare. Photograph: Mike Nelson/AFP/Getty Images

The US military has appointed its first senior general to direct cyber warfare – despite fears that the move marks another stage in the militarisation of cyberspace.
The newly promoted four-star general, Keith Alexander, takes charge of the Pentagon's ambitious and controversial new Cyber Command, designed to conduct virtual combat across the world's computer networks. He was appointed on Friday afternoon in a low-key ceremony at Fort Meade, in Maryland.
The creation of America's most senior cyber warrior comes just days after the US air force disclosed that some 30,000 of its troops had been re-assigned from technical support "to the frontlines of cyber warfare".
The creation of Cyber Command is in response to increasing anxiety over the vulnerability of the US's military and other networks to a cyber attack.
James Miller, the deputy under-secretary of defence for policy, has hinted that the US might consider a conventional military response to certain kinds of online attack.
Although Alexander pledged during his confirmation hearings before the Senate committee on armed services last month that Cyber Command would not contribute to the militarisation of cyberspace, the committee's chairman, Senator Carl Levin expressed concern that both Pentagon doctrine, and the legal framework for online operations, had failed to keep pace with rapid advances in cyber warfare.
In particular Levin voiced concern that US cyber operations to combat online threats to the US, routed through neutral third countries, "could have broad and damaging consequences" to wider American interests.
More Here

Was the Ban Helpful?

2010-05-23T18:35:00.003+05:30

After reviewing feeds from Twitter, Blogs and other sources, I have come across two points of view that I believe are worth referring to here one by Kadnan and another by Teeth Maestro . (The opinions could be read on the respective provided in the link). This is what I get from the whole ban episode:

1. The ban was imposed that is what was the main reason of contention.

2. The ban, although controversial, managed to reinforce the message "This is the Limit". Debates are not optimal solution when fanatics decide to do something. You cannot just reason with them. Given the history, I would have been surprised Facebook would have taken a Pro-Muslim step. Zuckberg is still confused as to what "Policies" to adopt.

Case in Point: Hilter Page and Facebook revealing Private Data and Deleting Profiles criticizing Zukberg

Also, I say it helped because Jews are now themselves divided as to how to counter the content offending Jews. See JIDF's proposed protest against Comedy Central.

3. We have to remember what is in our power and what our strength is. Removing the page was not one.

4. I would be a little crude here, but the ban in isolation seemed like we played ostrich. We just shut ourselves from the negative stimulus. A more civilized and ideal approach would have been to approach through a diplomatic channel, but I would have been surprised if the present government was serious enough to be trusted with that.

Despite the fact we disagree with the method of our protest, the ban accomplished what it was aimed to do, although at an expense. It publicized the issue, helped get hackers deface tens of Draw Day pages (GEO), made Molly Morris plead and scared the moderator to such an extent that he deleted the page.

One way or the other it worked.

So much for courage... Facebook Draw Page Founder on the Run

2010-05-23T02:26:00.000+05:30

Aww, did it hurt?!?!

PC WORLD

The Facebook page that led the Pakistan government to ban the entire site was back online Saturday, at least for some users, after it was inaccessible for about two days.

The page was removed Thursday after one of the moderators had his e-mail and Skype account hacked into, and his personal data revealed, according to a post on the page on Saturday. The moderator then got scared and deleted the page, a blog, and e-mails, according to the post.

"This is another scare tactic from the Islamic extremists," the post said. "We won't fall," it added. The moderator who removed the page has however backed out, according to the post.

The page had over 108,000 fans and over 11,700 photos posted on Saturday. Though the Facebook users who created the page put it back up Saturday, some users in India were able to access it for only a brief time before their access was once again blocked. Meanwhile access to Facebook as a whole continues to be blocked in Pakistan.

The page "Everybody draw Mohammed Day!" invites users to post caricatures of Prophet Mohammed, which led a court in Pakistan to order the site to be blocked.

There were also a large number of protests on the streets of Pakistan on Wednesday and Thursday, objecting to the page.

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) on Wednesday ordered operators to block Facebook on Wednesday until further orders. It also ordered YouTube to be blocked on Thursday for displaying "sacrilegious" content. It said it had also blocked over 450 links on the Internet that contained derogatory material.

"Facebook has not taken any action on this page," a spokeswoman for the company said earlier on Saturday. The company had said on Thursday that it would not rule out making the content that Pakistan objected to inaccessible to users in Pakistan.

When dealing with user-generated content on global Web sites, there are occasions where content that is illegal in one country is not, or may even be protected, in another, Facebook said on Thursday. Most companies, including Facebook, approach this issue by preventing certain content from being shown to users in the countries where it is illegal, it added.

The PTA has said it would welcome contact from Facebook and YouTube to resolve the issue.

Dear World... an Open Letter by a Rabbi

2010-05-19T01:37:00.002+05:30

War Drums: WSJ all out agaist Pakistan

2010-05-10T01:56:00.000+05:30

The Wall Street Journal recently had an article assessing Why terrorists originate from Pakistan, here is an interesting highlight (Guess What, the author is an Indian):

Pakistan's history of pan-Islamism does not mean that all Pakistanis, much less everyone of Pakistani origin, hold extremist views. But it does explain why a larger percentage of Pakistanis than, say, Indonesians or Tunisians, are likely to see the world through the narrow prism of their faith. The ISI's reluctance to dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism—training camps, a web of ultra-orthodox madrassas that preach violence, and terrorist groups such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba—ensure that Pakistan remains a magnet for any Muslim with a grudge against the world and the urge to do something violent about it.

If Pakistan is to be reformed, then the goal must be to replace its political and cultural DNA. Pan-Islamism has to give way to old-fashioned nationalism. An expansionist foreign policy needs to be canned in favor of development for the impoverished masses. The grip of the army, and by extension the ISI, over national life will have to be weakened. The encouragement of local languages and cultures such as Punjabi and Sindhi can help create a broader identity, one not in conflict with the West. School curricula ought to be overhauled to inculcate a respect for non-Muslims.

Needless to say, this will be a long haul. But it's the only way to ensure that the next time someone is accused of trying to blow up a car in a crowded place far away from home, the odds aren't that he'll somehow have a Pakistan connection.

Wall Street Journal

Wasn't the Time Square Bomber BALD!!!!!

2010-05-05T22:11:00.002+05:30

Raw Talent: Robotic arm controlled by human hand

2010-05-02T02:48:00.000+05:30

Talent: Who says we can't do it - Electric Prosthetic made in Pakistan

2010-05-02T02:28:00.002+05:30

Raw Talent: First PC Virus - by Amjad Alvi

2010-05-01T12:17:00.000+05:30

Necessity is the mother of Invention

The virus is considered to be the first virus for the PC. At the time the brothers were developing medical software and intended for virus to protect their work from piracy by supposedly targeting copyright infringers only. They were reportedly helped by Muhammad Khaleeq from Sahiwal, Irfan Shahid & Rizwan Chand from Lahore. The brothers lived in Chah Miran, Lahore, Pakistan, and are still in business as internet service providers with their company, Brain Limited.

The first PC virus in the wild was a boot sector virus dubbed (c)Brain[9], created in 1986 by the Farooq Alvi Brothers in Lahore, Pakistan, reportedly to deter piracy of the software they had written[10]

Wikipedia

Raw Talent: Robo-Mehran

2010-04-25T19:54:00.000+05:30

I have watched this a lot on Myth Busters, but you it is rare to find a robo-Mehran there

AUTO RX-8 remotely controlled by IPhone: (Not Pakistani...) Dont know if its real .. but its cool

Innovation - Getting out of Tight Spaces

2010-04-25T19:44:00.002+05:30

Raw Talent: Geniuses of Pakistan - Boltay Haath

2010-04-25T19:22:00.001+05:30

After my last post, I remembered my friend telling me about a project was done by students of Sir Syed University. The project was termed as "Boltay Haath"

The aim of the project was to develop a sign language recognition device for computers. An innovative concept indeed.

I do not have a video for this but I believe that the text and algorithms developed by the students in the above link will provide a good insight.

Video

While economy crumbled, top financial watchdogs at SEC surfed for porn on Internet: memo

2010-04-23T20:32:00.000+05:30

While economy crumbled, top financial watchdogs at SEC surfed for porn on Internet: memo

BY LEO STANDORA
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Originally Published:Friday, April 23rd 2010, 12:59 AM
Updated: Friday, April 23rd 2010, 7:31 AM

Who watches the watchmen? SEC senior staffers used government computers to browse for booty, according to a memo.

RELATED NEWS

At the SEC, all they thought about was SEX.

The country's top financial watchdogs turned out to be horndogs who spent hours gawking at porn Web sites as the economy teetered on the brink, according to a memo released Thursday night.

The shocking findings include Securities and Exchange Commission senior staffers using government computers to browse for booty and an accountant who tried to access the raunchy sites 16,000 times in one month.

Their titillating pastime was discovered during 33 probes of employees looking at explicit images in the past five years, said the memo obtained by The Associated Press.

It says 31 of those probes occurred in the 2-1/2 years since the country's financial system nearly crashed.

The report was written by SEC Inspector General David Kotz in response to a request from Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa).

Among the startling findings:

- A senior attorney at the SEC's Washington headquarters spent up to eight hours a day looking at and downloading pornography. When his government computer ran out of hard drive space, he burned the files to CDs or DVDs. He later agreed to resign.

- An accountant was blocked more than 16,000 times in a single month from visiting "sex" or "pornography" sites, but still managed to amass a collection of "very graphic" material by using Google to bypass the SEC's internal filter. He wound up with a 2-week suspension.

- Seventeen of the randy employees were "at a senior level" earning salaries of up to $222,418.

- The number of cases jumped from two in 2007 to 16 in 2008. The cracks in the financial system emerged in mid-2007 and spread into full-blown panic by the fall of 2008.

California Rep. Darrell Issa, the top Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said it was "disturbing that high-ranking officials within the SEC were spending more time looking at porn than taking action to help stave off the events that put our nation's economy on the brink of collapse." An SEC spokesman declined to comment last night.

lstandora@nydailynews.com

With News Wire Services

Raw Talent: Geniuses of Pakistan

2010-04-19T00:06:00.000+05:30

Waqar Qureshi: Inventor without MIT credentials

Dr. Israr and Jaswant Singh - Video

2010-04-18T15:05:00.000+05:30

Dr. Israr Ahmed: 1932-2010

2010-04-14T23:08:00.000+05:30

Dr. Israr Ahmed, a renowned muslim scholar of Pakistan, passed away. Dr. Israr dedicated his life to the study of Quran and to the propagation of The Message.

His supporters describe him as having spent the "last forty years" actively engaged in "reviving the Qur'an-centered Islamic perennial philosophy and world-view" with "the ultimate objective of establishing a true Islamic State, or the System of Khilafah." [2] Ahmed is skeptical of the efficacy of "parliamentary politics of give-and-take" in establishing an "Islamic politico-socio-economic system" as implementing this system is a "revolutionary process".[3] Wikipedia

Commercial Bankruptcies Rose 52 Percent in 2009 - AP

2010-04-02T00:37:00.000+05:30

Just as I feared, although a month-wise breakup is not available, this provides a good picture that the recovery is fragile

Commercial Bankruptcies Rose 52 Percent in 2009

Commercial bankruptcy protection filings rose by more than 50 percent last year, according to data filed Thursday, showing how the recession continued to cull businesses even as the economy stabilized.

Toward the end of the year, however, the pace of filings abated, according to the data released Thursday by credit reporting agency Equifax Inc.

Commercial filings hit 117,659 last year, up 52 percent from the 77,638 filed in 2008, Equifax reported.

That's nearly four times the number of filings in 2006, when such bankruptcy filings hit an all-time low near 3,000.

In the October to December period of 2009, filings were up only 12 percent and by December, filings were up only 3 percent compared with the corresponding period in 2008, according to Equifax.

The bankruptcies spread across the U.S., although California was one of the most hard hit.

In the fourth quarter alone, the Los Angeles, Sacramento and Riverside, Calif. metropolitan areas led the nation in filings, as they did in the second and third quarters. Other areas with a high number of filings in the fourth quarter included Portland, Ore., Denver, New York and Chicago.

BUSH IS BACK!!!!

2010-03-28T23:34:00.001+05:30

Wishful thinking: White House adviser: World has united against Iran

2010-03-28T23:16:00.002+05:30

So here is another of those American oddities...

WASHINGTON (AP) - A top White House adviser says the U.S. is making progress in its efforts to find allies to hold the line on Iran's nuclear ambitions.

David Axelrod tells CNN's "State of the Union" that at the start of the Obama administration, Iran was united while the world was divided on how best to deal with Iran.

Axelrod says the situation is now reversed - the world is coming together while Iran itself is divided.

He says he's pleased with the cooperation that the Russians have offered and believes Moscow will support fresh penalties against Tehran.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev (dih-MEE'-tree med-VYEH'-dyev) said Saturday that punishing Iran even more because of its nuclear program is not the best option, but added that such a step can't be excluded.

Top adviser Valerie Jarrett says on ABC's "This Week" that a "strong world coalition" is coming together that will cause Iran to back down.

Source

A "strong world coalition", is it?

Sorry to ruin the party, but this goes contrary to the a series of news earlier that...

China: Iran Sanctions 'Counterproductive' Source

PARIS — Russian President Dmitry Medvedev says his country is ready to consider new sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program. The Russian leader told reporters Monday at the start of a state visit to France that it would be "desirable" to avoid sanctions — and insisted that any should not harm the Iranian population. Source

Amid threats of an Israeli attack against Iran, Brazil's president said Friday he has planned a visit to the country to prevent a "mistake" that was the prelude to the invasion of Iraq. "I am going there because I do not want the mistake that was made in Iraq to be repeated in Iran," President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said, in comments reproduced by the state news agency ABR, DPA reported. Source

Also See

March,2008: BBC

Support for tough international action against Iran over its nuclear programme has fallen in the past 18 months, a poll carried out for the BBC suggests.

Dr. Israr distances himself from Zaid Hamid

2010-03-26T01:57:00.000+05:30

I haven't been spending a lot of time on the Internet lately...

However, I recently found that a lot of research has been done of Zaid Hamid

I haven't followed the threads actively... but was surprised to read this

http://www.tanzeem.org/announcements/zaid%20hamid2.pdf

I respect Dr. Israr's opinion... I do not have expertise or the knowledge of such matters ...

I have posted a lot of videos of Zaid Hamid lately... but that is just scare the hell out of the Indian "extremist" readers who have made my life difficult...

In the light of the statement... I will be taking off videos of Zaid Hamid unless further clarification is issued...

Spare-time Ideas: US Dollar Doom and Gloom

2010-03-23T22:12:00.001+05:30

I hate to admit, I like to dedicate my idle time to odd ideas. So here is one..

If dollar collapses will the Giants survive?

Here is the crazy thought... If the Dollar collapses they will survive because they have already exchanged these then worthless paper notes for some stock or assets in foreign countries... especially emerging markets. And given the recent news flow this could be possible... just another spare-time thought... no offense. ( You May like this too)

Here is a probable support... UNCTAD keeps track of FDI Stock. So if you pull up Country Profiles of USA, Pakistan or India you will come across an interesting statistic.

Under FDI Stock you may find...

Developing economies (Dollar Millions)
Inward 4,275,982 (24.7% of GDP 2008)
Outward 2,356,649 (14% of GDP 2008)

Developed economies (Dollar Millions)
Inward 10,212,893 (25% of GDP 2008)
Outward 13,623,626 (33.6% of GDP 2008)

So in other words there has been a $3.6 trillion outflow from Developed Economies(if I am reading it right) and roughly $2 trillion inflow in Developing Countries.

But the magnitude is 25% of the total inflow so I am still thinking could it be possible.

Well for now ... There you have it... Giants will survive or sort of.

Billionaires are usually not MBAs or CFAs or CAs

2010-03-15T01:07:00.000+05:30

Interesting...

http://www.forbes.com/lists/2010/10/billionaires-2010_The-Worlds-Billionaires_Rank.html

Above is a list of Billionaires ... I just happened to check on the top 20 ... and guess what some are DROP OUTS and some are BACHELOR OF ARTS and some didn't disclose their education...

So people who want to make money but FEEL they dont have the right education... think again ... life is dynamic everyone get an opportunity to strike the right chord.

Price Pass through - US Economy

2010-03-15T00:30:00.001+05:30

Below is the extracted data from the PPI Index reported by BLS USA. The figures are quite startling in Jan as the Crude goods were up by 9% whereas the finished goods were only up by 4%. There may be some lag effect, however the peaks highlighted have occurred the same time.

This is interesting and may require some research as to how these figures add up. For now i seem to have run some correlation tests and ended up with 30% correlation between Crude and Final goods on a t-1 lag.

What becomes interesting is when we use the actual indices which will help us in determining the pass through rates. This tells us that price pass through is declining for the economy as a whole and further increase in energy costs will aggravate the situation

	Sept. 09	Dec. 09	Jan. 10
Finished goods	173.2	176.2	178.3
Intermediate materials, supplies, and components	174.7	176.7	179.3
Crude materials for further processing	173.5	193.8	213.1

Passthrough Rate	0.998	0.909	0.837


Month	Finished goods					Intermediate goods	Crude goods
Table A. Monthly and 12-month percent changes in selected stage-of-processing price indexes, seasonally adjusted
Month	Total	Foods	Energy	Except foods and energy	Change in finished goods from 12 months ago (unadj.)	Intermediate goods	Crude goods
2009
Jan.	1.1	0.1	4.9	0.2	-0.9	0.0	-1.6
Feb.	-0.2	-1.5	0.2	0.1	-1.4	-0.8	-6.1
Mar.	-0.8	-0.8	-3.8	0.2	-3.4	-1.3	-0.6
Apr.	0.6	1.6	1.4	0.1	-3.5	0.1	2.4
May	0.0	-1.4	1.8	-0.1	-4.8	0.5	3.2
June	1.8	1.0	7.6	0.3	-4.4	1.1	4.3
July	-1.2	-1.3	-4.5	-0.1	-6.9	-0.5	-3.3
Aug.	1.5	0.3	6.2	0.3	-4.4	1.7	4.5
Sept.	-0.5	0.0	-1.8	-0.1	-4.9	0.0	-2.2
Oct.	0.4	1.5	1.9	-0.5	-1.9	0.6	6.1
Nov.	1.5	0.5	5.6	0.5	2.4	1.2	5.1
Dec.	0.4	1.3	0.7	0.0	4.4	0.6	0.8
2010
Jan.	1.4	0.4	5.1	0.3	4.6	1.7	9.6
NOTE: Some of the percent changes shown here and elsewhere in this release may differ from those previously reported because seasonal adjustment factors have been recalculated to reflect developments during 2009. In addition, indexes for September 2009 have been recalculated to incorporate late reports and corrections by respondents. All indexes are subject to revision 4 months after original publication.

Stage-of-Processing Analysis

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ppi.nr0.htm

Blackwater - Killing in coldblood - Slaying unarmed civilians - GTA IRAQ

2010-01-02T23:30:00.000+05:30

GTA IRAQ

Blackwater in Pakistan

Blackwater - Origins

2010-01-02T22:52:00.002+05:30

My friend shared old video regarding blackwater. Interesting... have a look

PS3 and XBOX 360's new market

2009-12-14T00:26:00.000+05:30

Military use of consumer technology
War games

Dec 10th 2009
From The Economist print edition
Consumer products and video-gaming technology are boosting the performance and reducing the price of military equipment

Courtesy Vcom 3D

VIDEO games have become increasingly realistic, especially those involving armed combat. America’s armed forces have even used video games as recruitment and training tools. But the desire to play games is not the reason why the United States Air Force recently issued a procurement request for 2,200 Sony PlayStation 3 (PS3) video-game consoles. It intends to link them up to build a supercomputer that will run Linux, a free, open-source operating system. It will be used for research, including the development of high-definition imaging systems for radar, and will cost around one-tenth as much as a conventional supercomputer. The air force has already built a smaller computer from a cluster of 336 PS3s.

This is merely the latest example of an unusual trend. There is a long tradition of technology developed for military use filtering through to consumer markets: satellite-navigation systems designed to guide missiles can also help hikers find their way, and head-up displays have moved from jet fighters to family cars. But technology is increasingly moving in the other direction, too, as consumer products are appropriated for military use.

Traditionally the military has preferred to develop and control its own technology, not just for tactical advantage but also to ensure that equipment was tough and reliable enough for those whose lives would depend on it. That began to change after the cold war as defence budgets became constrained and the development of sophisticated industrial and consumer products accelerated. As some of these technologies have become commoditised products which are available to everyone—friend and foe alike—there seems less reason not to buy them and use the savings for more critical equipment that needs to be built-to-order. And consumer products can often be tweaked to make them more rugged or secure when necessary.
Hands off the Xbox

A new piece of military kit can take years to specify, test and acquire using a traditional procurement process, only to arrive already outdated. So, where possible, it is quicker and cheaper to buy commercial off-the-shelf items. These range from industry-standard components, like processor chips incorporated into military equipment, to products that consumers would recognise. Sometimes these are made more rugged, like Panasonic Toughbook computers, or converted for other uses, like Xbox 360 video-game controllers adapted to operate small robotic ground vehicles used for reconnaissance.

Apple’s iPod and iPhone are among the latest additions to a soldier’s kit. American forces in Afghanistan and Iraq are using them for translation (one such device is pictured above) and to view intelligence information, such as pictures transmitted from unmanned reconnaissance drones. An iPhone app called Bullet Flight enables snipers to calculate range and trajectory for their shots, and built-in satellite-positioning allows local weather conditions to be taken into account. The basic version costs $3.99 and the full military one—which even calculates how the Coriolis effect from the rotation of the Earth will influence a bullet’s flight—costs $29.99.

In the fast-moving consumer-electronics industry, where some products are lucky to have a shelf life of more than a year, companies can spread their research-and-development costs across a global mass market. Defence contractors, however, usually supply only a limited amount of equipment designed to meet the specific requirements of a particular customer. Exports can help spread costs, but different countries demand different specifications, which pushes costs back up. Consumer-electronics companies also adopt aggressive pricing strategies to grab market share. The PS3, which now costs $300 in America, was initially sold at a loss by Sony in order to boost its popularity. (The company hopes to recoup its losses by taking a cut from the sale of each game for the console.)

In many cases it is probably now impossible for companies outside the consumer-electronics industry to match the price and performance of mass-market components. BAE Systems, a British aerospace and defence contractor, has calculated that a £300 ($500) video card from NVIDiA, a Californian company which is a leader in gaming graphics, can replace £30,000 worth of other computing equipment used for engineering simulation.

What has changed in the past two years, says David Standingford, group leader of electromagnetic modelling at BAE, is that products such as the PS3 and NVIDiA graphics cards have become immensely powerful computers in their own right. He adds that the emergence of new industry standards and a leap in power from the use of multi-core processors, which contain several number-crunching engines working in parallel, has made it easier to incorporate and link up such devices to tackle much bigger tasks.

Last year an IBM supercomputer called Roadrunner, based at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, established a new record by operating at more than one petaflop (1,000 trillion calculations a second). Roadrunner is the world’s first “hybrid” supercomputer, having been assembled in part from off-the-shelf equipment, including 12,960 Cell processor chips like those found inside the PS3. It will be used to simulate the behaviour of nuclear weapons.

In Britain, BAE Systems, Airbus, Rolls-Royce, Williams (a Formula 1 racing team) and others have set up a not-for-profit laboratory based in Bristol called CFMS to evaluate consumer products and components that could reduce the cost of engineering simulations. Jamil Appa of BAE, who is involved in the project, says one aim is to see how easily the internal architecture of video-games consoles can handle the complex algorithms used in simulations. The lab will provide feedback to consumer-product suppliers, he adds.

NVIDIA already recognises that it is not just gamers who are interested in its products. In September, when Jen-Hsun Huang, NVIDIA’s CEO, unveiled the company’s latest graphics technology, he described it as the “soul of a supercomputer” with applications beyond gaming.

Nor is it just the military that is keen to employ consumer technology in sophisticated applications. The Swedish police are already using a virtual autopsy system based on gaming technology to help solve crimes (see box). And Siemens, a German electronics and engineering giant, recently launched an ultrasound scanner which allows expectant mothers to see their unborn child in 3-D. It uses an NVIDIA graphics card and 3-D glasses devised for gaming. Soldiers have also been spotted wearing 3-D glasses, which will add another dimension to modern warfare.

Defending the Arsenal

2009-11-10T16:25:00.000+05:30

NEW YORKER
In the tumultuous days leading up to the Pakistan Army’s ground offensive in the tribal area of South Waziristan, which began on October 17th, the Pakistani Taliban attacked what should have been some of the country’s best-guarded targets. In the most brazen strike, ten gunmen penetrated the Army’s main headquarters, in Rawalpindi, instigating a twenty-two-hour standoff that left twenty-three dead and the military thoroughly embarrassed. The terrorists had been dressed in Army uniforms. There were also attacks on police installations in Peshawar and Lahore, and, once the offensive began, an Army general was shot dead by gunmen on motorcycles on the streets of Islamabad, the capital. The assassins clearly had advance knowledge of the general’s route, indicating that they had contacts and allies inside the security forces.

Pakistan has been a nuclear power for two decades, and has an estimated eighty to a hundred warheads, scattered in facilities around the country. The success of the latest attacks raised an obvious question: Are the bombs safe? Asked this question the day after the Rawalpindi raid, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, “We have confidence in the Pakistani government and the military’s control over nuclear weapons.” Clinton—whose own visit to Pakistan, two weeks later, would be disrupted by more terrorist bombs—added that, despite the attacks by the Taliban, “we see no evidence that they are going to take over the state.”

Clinton’s words sounded reassuring, and several current and former officials also said in interviews that the Pakistan Army was in full control of the nuclear arsenal. But the Taliban overrunning Islamabad is not the only, or even the greatest, concern. The principal fear is mutiny—that extremists inside the Pakistani military might stage a coup, take control of some nuclear assets, or even divert a warhead.

On April 29th, President Obama was asked at a news conference whether he could reassure the American people that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal could be kept away from terrorists. Obama’s answer remains the clearest delineation of the Administration’s public posture. He was, he said, “gravely concerned” about the fragility of the civilian government of President Asif Ali Zardari. “Their biggest threat right now comes internally,” Obama said. “We have huge . . . national-security interests in making sure that Pakistan is stable and that you don’t end up having a nuclear-armed militant state.” The United States, he said, could “make sure that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is secure—primarily, initially, because the Pakistan Army, I think, recognizes the hazards of those weapons’ falling into the wrong hands.”

The questioner, Chuck Todd, of NBC, began asking whether the American military could, if necessary, move in and secure Pakistan’s bombs. Obama did not let Todd finish. “I’m not going to engage in hypotheticals of that sort,” he said. “I feel confident that the nuclear arsenal will remain out of militant hands. O.K.?”

Obama did not say so, but current and former officials said in interviews in Washington and Pakistan that his Administration has been negotiating highly sensitive understandings with the Pakistani military. These would allow specially trained American units to provide added security for the Pakistani arsenal in case of a crisis. At the same time, the Pakistani military would be given money to equip and train Pakistani soldiers and to improve their housing and facilities—goals that General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the chief of the Pakistan Army, has long desired. In June, Congress approved a four-hundred-million-dollar request for what the Administration called the Pakistan Counterinsurgency Capability Fund, providing immediate assistance to the Pakistan Army for equipment, training, and “renovation and construction.”

* from the issue
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The secrecy surrounding the understandings was important because there is growing antipathy toward America in Pakistan, as well as a history of distrust. Many Pakistanis believe that America’s true goal is not to keep their weapons safe but to diminish or destroy the Pakistani nuclear complex. The arsenal is a source of great pride among Pakistanis, who view the weapons as symbols of their nation’s status and as an essential deterrent against an attack by India. (India’s first nuclear test took place in 1974, Pakistan’s in 1998.)

A senior Pakistani official who has close ties to Zardari exploded with anger during an interview when the subject turned to the American demands for more information about the arsenal. After the September 11th attacks, he said, there had been an understanding between the Bush Administration and then President Pervez Musharraf “over what Pakistan had and did not have.” Today, he said, “you’d like control of our day-to-day deployment. But why should we give it to you? Even if there was a military coup d’état in Pakistan, no one is going to give up total control of our nuclear weapons. Never. Why are you not afraid of India’s nuclear weapons?” the official asked. “Because India is your friend, and the longtime policies of America and India converge. Between you and the Indians, you will fuck us in every way. The truth is that our weapons are less of a problem for the Obama Administration than finding a respectable way out of Afghanistan.”

The ongoing consultation on nuclear security between Washington and Islamabad intensified after the announcement in March of President Obama’s so-called Af-Pak policy, which called upon the Pakistan Army to take more aggressive action against Taliban enclaves inside Pakistan. I was told that the understandings on nuclear coöperation benefitted from the increasingly close relationship between Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and General Kayani, his counterpart, although the C.I.A. and the Departments of Defense, State, and Energy have also been involved. (All three departments declined to comment for this article. The national-security council and the C.I.A. denied that there were any agreements in place.)

In response to a series of questions, Admiral Mullen acknowledged that he and Kayani were, in his spokesman’s words, “very close.” The spokesman said that Mullen is deeply involved in day-to-day Pakistani developments and “is almost an action officer for all things Pakistan.” But he denied that he and Kayani, or their staffs, had reached an understanding about the availability of American forces in case of mutiny or a terrorist threat to a nuclear facility. “To my knowledge, we have no military units, special forces or otherwise, involved in such an assignment,” Mullen said through his spokesman. The spokesman added that Mullen had not seen any evidence of growing fundamentalism inside the Pakistani military. In a news conference on May 4th, however, Mullen responded to a query about growing radicalism in Pakistan by saying that “what has clearly happened over the [past] twelve months is the continual decline, gradual decline, in security.” The Admiral also spoke openly about the increased coöperation on nuclear security between the United States and Pakistan: “I know what we’ve done over the last three years, specifically to both invest, assist, and I’ve watched them improve their security fairly dramatically. . . . I’ve looked at this, you know, as hard as I can, over a period of time.” Seventeen days later, he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “We have invested a significant amount of resources through the Department of Energy in the last several years” to help Pakistan improve the controls on its arsenal. “They still have to improve them,” he said.

In interviews in Pakistan, I obtained confirmation that there were continuing conversations with the United States on nuclear-security plans—as well as evidence that the Pakistani leadership put much less weight on them than the Americans did. In some cases, Pakistani officials spoke of the talks principally as a means of placating anxious American politicians. “You needed it,” a senior Pakistani official, who said that he had been briefed on the nuclear issue, told me. His tone was caustic. “We have twenty thousand people working in the nuclear-weapons industry in Pakistan, and here is this American view that Pakistan is bound to fail.” The official added, “The Americans are saying, ‘We want to help protect your weapons.’ We say, ‘Fine. Tell us what you can do for us.’ It’s part of a quid pro quo. You say, also, ‘Come clean on the nuclear program and we’ll insure that India doesn’t put pressure on it.’ So we say, ‘O.K.’ ”

But, the Pakistani official said, “both sides are lying to each other.” The information that the Pakistanis handed over was not as complete as the Americans believed. “We haven’t told you anything that you don’t know,” he said. The Americans didn’t realize that Pakistan would never cede control of its arsenal: “If you try to take the weapons away, you will fail.”

High-level coöperation between Islamabad and Washington on the Pakistani nuclear arsenal began at least eight years ago. Former President Musharraf, when I interviewed him in London recently, acknowledged that his government had held extensive discussions with the Bush Administration after the September 11th attacks, and had given State Department nonproliferation experts insight into the command and control of the Pakistani arsenal and its on-site safety and security procedures. Musharraf also confirmed that Pakistan had constructed a huge tunnel system for the transport and storage of nuclear weaponry. “The tunnels are so deep that a nuclear attack will not touch them,” Musharraf told me, with obvious pride. The tunnels would make it impossible for the American intelligence community—“Big Uncle,” as a Pakistani nuclear-weapons expert called it—to monitor the movements of nuclear components by satellite.

Safeguards have been built into the system. Pakistani nuclear doctrine calls for the warheads (containing an enriched radioactive core) and their triggers (sophisticated devices containing highly explosive lenses, detonators, and krytrons) to be stored separately from each other and from their delivery devices (missiles or aircraft). The goal is to insure that no one can launch a warhead—in the heat of a showdown with India, for example—without pausing to put it together. Final authority to order a nuclear strike requires consensus within Pakistan’s ten-member National Command Authority, with the chairman—by statute, President Zardari—casting the deciding vote.

But the safeguards meant to keep a confrontation with India from escalating too quickly could make the arsenal more vulnerable to terrorists. Nuclear-security experts have war-gamed the process and concluded that the triggers and other elements are most exposed when they are being moved and reassembled—at those moments there would be fewer barriers between an outside group and the bomb. A consultant to the intelligence community said that in one war-gamed scenario disaffected members of the Pakistani military could instigate a terrorist attack inside India, and that the ensuing crisis would give them “a chance to pick up bombs and triggers—in the name of protecting the assets from extremists.”

The triggers are a key element in American contingency plans. An American former senior intelligence official said that a team that has trained for years to remove or dismantle parts of the Pakistani arsenal has now been augmented by a unit of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), the élite counterterrorism group. He added that the unit, which had earlier focussed on the warheads’ cores, has begun to concentrate on evacuating the triggers, which have no radioactive material and are thus much easier to handle.

“The Pakistanis gave us a virtual look at the number of warheads, some of their locations, and their command-and-control system,” the former senior intelligence official told me. “We saw their target list and their mobilization plans. We got their security plans, so we could augment them in case of a breach of security,” he said. “We’re there to help the Pakistanis, but we’re also there to extend our own axis of security to their nuclear stockpile.” The detailed American planning even includes an estimate of how many nuclear triggers could be placed inside a C-17 cargo plane, the former official said, and where the triggers could be sequestered. Admiral Mullen, asked about increased American insight into the arsenal, said, through his spokesman, “I am not aware of our receipt of any such information.” (A senior military officer added that the information, if it had been conveyed, would most likely “have gone to another government agency.”)

A spokesman for the Pakistani military said, in an official denial, “Pakistan neither needs any American unit for enhancing the security for its arsenal nor would accept it.” The spokesman added that the Pakistani military “has been providing protection to U.S. troops in a situation of crisis”—a reference to Pakistan’s role in the war on terror—“and hence is quite capable to deal with any untoward situation.”

Early this summer, a consultant to the Department of Defense said, a highly classified military and civil-emergency response team was put on alert after receiving an urgent report from American intelligence officials indicating that a Pakistani nuclear component had gone astray. The team, which operates clandestinely and includes terrorism and nonproliferation experts from the intelligence community, the Pentagon, the F.B.I., and the D.O.E., is under standing orders to deploy from Andrews Air Force Base, in Maryland, within four hours of an alert. When the report turned out to be a false alarm, the mission was aborted, the consultant said. By the time the team got the message, it was already in Dubai.

In an actual crisis, would the Pakistanis give an American team direct access to their arsenal? An adviser to the Pentagon on counterinsurgency said that some analysts suspected that the Pakistani military had taken steps to move elements of the nuclear arsenal “out of the count”—to shift them to a storage facility known only to a very few—as a hedge against mutiny or an American or Indian effort to seize them. “If you thought your American ally was telling your enemy where the weapons were, you’d do the same thing,” the adviser said.

“Let me say this about our nuclear deterrent,” President Zardari told me, when asked about any recent understandings between Pakistan and the United States. “We give comfort to each other, and the comfort level is good, because everybody respects everybody’s integrity. We’re all big boys.”

Zardari and I met twice, first in his office, in the grand but isolated Presidential compound in Islamabad, and then, a few days later, alone over dinner in his personal quarters. Zardari, who became President after the assassination, in December, 2007, of his charismatic wife, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, spent nearly eleven years in jail on corruption charges. He is widely known in Pakistan as Mr. Ten Per Cent, a reference to the commissions he allegedly took on government contracts when Bhutto was in power, and is seen by many Pakistanis as little more than a crook who has grown too close to America; his approval ratings are in the teens. He is chatty but guarded, proud but defensive, and, like many Pakistanis, convinced that the United States will always favor India. Over dinner, he spoke of his suspicions regarding his wife’s death. He said that, despite rumors to the contrary, he would complete his five-year term.

Zardari spoke with derision about what he depicted as America’s obsession with the vulnerability of his nation’s nuclear arsenal. “In your country, you feel that you have to hold the fort for us,” he said. “The American people want a lot of answers for the errors of the past, and it’s very easy to spread fear. Our Army officers are not crazy, like the Taliban. They’re British-trained. Why would they slip up on nuclear security? A mutiny would never happen in Pakistan. It’s a fear being spread by the few who seek to scare the many.”

Zardari offered some advice to Barack Obama: instead of fretting about nuclear security in Pakistan, his Administration should deal with the military disparity between Pakistan and India, which has a much larger army. “You should help us get conventional weapons,” he said. “It’s a balance-of-power issue.”

In May, Zardari, at the urging of the United States, approved a major offensive against the Taliban, sending thirty thousand troops into the Swat Valley, which lies a hundred miles northwest of Islamabad. “The enemy that we were fighting in Swat was made up of twenty per cent thieves and thugs and eighty per cent with the same mind-set as the Taliban,” Zardari said. He depicted the operation as a complete success, but added that his government was not “ready” to kill all the Taliban. His long-term solution, Zardari said, was to provide new business opportunities in Swat and turn the Taliban into entrepreneurs. “Money is the best incentive,” he said. “They can be rented.”

Zardari’s view of the Swat offensive was striking, given that many Pakistanis had been angered by the excessive use of force and the ensuing refugee crisis. The lives of about two million people were torn apart, and, during a summer in which temperatures soared to a hundred and twenty degrees, hundreds of thousands of civilians were crowded into government-run tent cities. Idris Khattak, a former student radical who now works with Amnesty International, said in Peshawar that residents had described nights of heavy, indiscriminate bombing and shelling, followed in the morning by Army sweeps. The villagers, and not the Taliban, had been hit the hardest. “People told us that the bombing the night before was a signal for the Taliban to get out,” he said.

Zardari did not dispute that there were difficulties in the refugee camps—the heat, the lack of facilities. But he insisted that the fault lay with the civilians, who, he said, had been far too tolerant of the Taliban. The suffering could serve a useful purpose: after a summer in the tents, the citizens of Swat might have learned a lesson and would not “let the Taliban back into their cities.”

Rahimullah Yusufzai, an eminent Pakistani journalist, who has twice interviewed Osama bin Laden, had a different explanation for the conditions that led to the offensive. “The Taliban were initially trying to win public support in Swat by delivering justice and peace,” Yusufzai said. “But when they got into power they went crazy and became brutal. Many are from the lowest ranks of society, and they began killing and terrorizing their opponents. The people were afraid.”

The turmoil did not end with the Army’s invasion. “Most of the people who were in the refugee camps told us that the Army was equally bad. There was so much killing,” Yusufzai said. The government had placed limits on reporters who tried to enter the Swat Valley during the attack, but afterward Yusufzai and his colleagues were able to interview officers. “They told us they hated what they were doing—‘We were trained to fight Indians.’ ” But that changed when they sustained heavy losses, especially of junior officers. “They were killing everybody after their colleagues were killed—just like the Americans with their Predator missiles,” Yusufzai said. “What the Army did not understand, and what the Americans don’t understand, is that by demolishing the house of a suspected Taliban or their supporters you are making an enemy of the whole family.” What looked like a tactical victory could turn out to be a strategic failure.

The Obama Administration has had difficulty coming to terms with how unhappy many Pakistanis are with the United States. Secretary of State Clinton, during her three-day “good-will visit” to Pakistan, late last month, seemed taken aback by the angry and, at times, provocative criticism of American policies that dominated many of her public appearances, and responded defensively.

Last year, the Washington Times ran an article about the Pressler Amendment, a 1985 law cutting off most military aid to Pakistan as long as it continued its nuclear program. The measure didn’t stop Pakistan from getting the bomb, or from buying certain weapons, but it did reduce the number of Pakistani officers who were permitted to train with American units. The article quoted Major General John Custer as saying, “The older military leaders love us. They understand American culture and they know we are not the enemy.” The General’s assessment provoked a barrage of e-mail among American officers with experience in Pakistan, and a former member of a Special Forces unit provided me with copies. “The fact that a two-star would make a statement [like] that . . . is at best naïve and actually pure bullshit,” a senior Special Forces officer on duty in Pakistan wrote. He went on:

I have met and interacted with the entire military staff from General Kayani on down and all the general officers on their joint staff and in all the services, and I haven’t spoken to one that “loves us”—whatever that means. In fact, I have read most of the TS [top secret] assessments of all their General Officers and I haven’t read one that comes close to their “loving” us. They play us for everything they can get, and we trip over ourselves trying to give them everything they ask for, and cannot pay for.

Some military men who know Pakistan well believe that, whatever the officer corps’s personal views, the Pakistan Army remains reliable. “They cannot be described as pro-American, but this doesn’t mean they don’t know which side their bread is buttered on,” Brian Cloughley, who served six years as Australia’s defense attaché to Pakistan and is now a contributor to Jane’s Sentinel, told me. “The chance of mutiny is slim. Were this to happen, there would be the most severe reaction” by special security units in the Pakistani military, Cloughley said. “But worry feeds irrationality, and the international consequences could be dire.”

The recollections of Bush Administration officials who dealt with Pakistan in the first round of nuclear consultations after September 11th do not inspire confidence. The Americans’ main contact was Lieutenant General Khalid Kidwai, the head of Pakistan’s Strategic Plans Division, the agency that is responsible for nuclear strategy and operations and for the physical security of the weapons complex. At first, a former high-level Bush Administration official told me, Kidwai was reassuring; his professionalism increased their faith in the soundness of Pakistan’s nuclear doctrine and its fail-safe procedures. The Army was controlled by Punjabis who, the Americans thought, “did not put up with Pashtuns,” as the former Bush Administration official put it. (The Taliban are mostly Pashtun.) But by the time the official left, at the beginning of George W. Bush’s second term, he had a much darker assessment: “They don’t trust us and they will not tell you the truth.”

No American, for example, was permitted access to A. Q. Khan, the metallurgist and so-called father of the Pakistani atomic bomb, who traded crucial nuclear-weapons components on the international black market. Musharraf placed him under house arrest in early 2004, claiming to have been shocked to learn of Khan’s dealings. At the time, it was widely understood that those activities had been sanctioned by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (I.S.I.). Khan was freed in February, although there are restrictions on his travel. (In an interview last year, Kidwai told David Sanger, for his book “The Inheritance,” that “our security systems are foolproof,” thanks to technical controls; Sanger noted that Bush Administration officials were “not as confident in private as they sound in public.”)

A former State Department official who worked on nuclear issues with Pakistan after September 11th said that he’d come to understand that the Pakistanis “believe that any information we get from them would be shared with others—perhaps even the Indians. To know the command-and-control processes of their nuclear weapons is one thing. To know where the weapons actually are is another thing.”

The former State Department official cited the large Pakistan Air Force base outside Sargodha, west of Lahore, where many of Pakistan’s nuclear-capable F-16s are thought to be stationed. “Is there a nuke ready to go at Sargodha?” the former official asked. “If there is, and Sargodha is the size of Andrews Air Force Base, would we know where to go? Are the warheads stored in Bunker X?” Ignorance could be dangerous. “If our people don’t know where to go and we suddenly show up at a base, there will be a lot of people shooting at them,” he said. “And even if the Pakistanis may have told us that the triggers will be at Bunker X, is it true?”

In the July/August issue of Arms Control Today, Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, who recently retired after three years as the Department of Energy’s director of intelligence and counter-intelligence, preceded by two decades at the C.I.A., wrote vividly about the “lethal proximity between terrorists, extremists, and nuclear weapons insiders” in Pakistan. “Insiders have facilitated terrorist attacks. Suicide bombings have occurred at air force bases that reportedly serve as nuclear weapons storage sites. It is difficult to ignore such trends,” Mowatt-Larssen wrote. “Purely in actuarial terms, there is a strong possibility that bad apples in the nuclear establishment are willing to cooperate with outsiders for personal gain or out of sympathy for their cause. Nowhere in the world is this threat greater than in Pakistan. . . . Anything that helps upgrade Pakistan’s nuclear security is an investment” in America’s security.

Leslie H. Gelb, a president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, said, “I don’t think there’s any kind of an agreement we can count on. The Pakistanis have learned how to deal with us, and they understand that if they don’t tell us what we want to hear we’ll cut off their goodies.” Gelb added, “In all these years, the C.I.A. never built up assets, but it talks as if there were ‘access.’ I don’t know if Obama understands that the Agency doesn’t know what it’s talking about.”

The former high-level Bush Administration official was just as blunt. “If a Pakistani general is talking to you about nuclear issues, and his lips are moving, he’s lying,” he said. “The Pakistanis wouldn’t share their secrets with anybody, and certainly not with a country that, from their point of view, used them like a Dixie cup and then threw them away.”

Sultan Amir Tarar, known to many as Colonel Imam, is the archetype of the disillusioned Pakistani officer. Tarar spent eighteen years with the I.S.I. in Afghanistan, most of them as an undercover operative. In the mujahideen war against the Soviet Union, in the eighties, he worked closely with C.I.A. agents, and liked the experience. “They were honest and thoughtful and provided the finest equipment,” Tarar said during an interview in Rawalpindi. He spoke with pride of shaking hands with Robert Gates in Afghanistan in 1985. Gates, now the Secretary of Defense, was then a senior C.I.A. official. “I’ve heard all about you,” Gates said, according to Tarar. “Good or bad?” “Oh, my. All good,” Gates replied. Tarar’s view changed after the Russians withdrew and, in his opinion, “the Americans abandoned us.” When I asked if he’d seen “Charlie Wilson’s War,” the movie depicting that abandonment and a Texas congressman’s futile efforts to change the policy, Tarar laughed and said, “I’ve seen Charlie Wilson. I didn’t need to see the movie.”

Tarar, who retired in 1995 and has a son in the Army, believed—as did many Pakistani military men—that the American campaign to draw Pakistan deeper into the war against the Taliban would backfire. “The Americans are trying to rent out their war to us,” he said. If the Obama Administration persists, “there will be an uprising here, and this corrupt government will collapse. Every Pakistani will then be his own nuclear bomb—a suicide bomber,” Tarar said. “The longer the war goes on, the longer it will spill over in the tribal territories, and it will lead to a revolutionary stage. People there will flee to the big cities like Lahore and Islamabad.”

Tarar believed that the Obama Administration had to negotiate with the Afghan Taliban, even if that meant direct talks with Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader. Tarar knew Mullah Omar well. “Omar trained as a young man in my camp in 1985,” he told me. “He was physically fit and mission-oriented—a very honest man who was a practicing Muslim. Nothing beyond that. He was a Talib—a student, and not a mullah. But people respected him. Today, among all the Afghan leaders, Omar has the biggest audience, and this is the right time for you to talk to him.”

Speaking to Tarar and other officers gave a glimpse of the acrimony at the top of the Pakistani government, which has complicated the nuclear equation. Tarar spoke bitterly about the position that General Kayani found himself in, carrying out the “corrupt” policies of the Americans and of Zardari, while Pakistan’s soldiers “were fighting gallantly in Swat against their own people.”

A $7.5-billion American aid package, approved by Congress in September, was, to the surprise of many in Washington, controversial in Pakistan, because it contained provisions seen as strengthening Zardari at the expense of the military. Shaheen Sehbai, a senior editor of the newspaper International, said that Zardari’s “problem is that he’s besieged domestically on all sides, and he thinks only the Americans can save him,” and, as a result, “he’ll open his pants for them.” Sehbai noted that Kayani’s term as Army chief ends in the fall of 2010. If Zardari tried to replace him before then, Kayani’s colleagues would not accept his choice, and there could be “a generals’ coup,” Sehbai said. “America should worry more about the structure and organization of the Army—and keep it intact.”

Lieutenant General Hamid Gul was the director general of the I.S.I. in the late eighties and worked with the C.I.A. in Afghanistan. Gul, who is retired, is a devout Muslim and had been accused by the Bush Administration of having ties to the Taliban and Al Qaeda—allegations he has denied. “What would happen if, in a crisis, you tried to get—or did not get—our nuclear triggers? What happens then?” Gul asked when we met. “You will have us as an enemy, with the Chinese and Russians behind us.”

If Pakistani officers had given any assurances about the nuclear arsenal, Gul said, “they are cheating you and they would be right to do so. We should not be aiding and abetting Americans.”

Persuading the Pakistan Army to concentrate on fighting the Taliban, and not India, is crucial to the Obama Administration’s plans for the region. There has been enmity between India and Pakistan since 1947, when Britain’s withdrawal led to the partition of the subcontinent. The state of Kashmir, which was three-quarters Muslim but acceded to Hindu-majority India, has been in dispute ever since, and India and Pakistan have twice gone to war over the territory. Through the years, the Pakistan Army and the I.S.I. have relied on Pakistan-based jihadist groups, most notably Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, to carry out a guerrilla war against the Indians in Kashmir. Many in the Pakistani military consider the groups to be an important strategic reserve.

A retired senior Pakistani intelligence officer, who worked with his C.I.A. counterparts to track down Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, said that he was deeply troubled by the prospect of Pakistan ceding any control over its nuclear deterrent. “Suppose the jihadis strike at India again—another attack on the parliament. India will tell the United States to stay out of it, and ‘We’ll sort it out on our own,’ ” he said. “Then there would be a ground attack into Pakistan. As we begin to react, the Americans will be interested in protecting our nuclear assets, and urge us not to go nuclear—‘Let the Indians attack and do not respond!’ They would urge us instead to find those responsible for the attack on India. Our nuclear arsenal was supposed to be our savior, but we would end up protecting it. It doesn’t protect us,” he said.

“My belief today is that it’s better to have the Americans as an enemy rather than as a friend, because you cannot be trusted,” the former officer concluded. “The only good thing the United States did for us was to look the other way about an atomic bomb when it suited the United States to do so.”

Pakistan’s fears about the United States coöperating with India are not irrational. Last year, Congress approved a controversial agreement that enabled India to purchase nuclear fuel and technology from the United States without joining the Non-Proliferation Treaty, making India the only non-signatory to the N.P.T. permitted to do so. Concern about the Pakistani arsenal has since led to greater coöperation between the United States and India in missile defense; the training of the Indian Air Force to use bunker-busting bombs; and “the collection of intelligence on the Pakistani nuclear arsenal,” according to the consultant to the intelligence community. (The Pentagon declined to comment.)

I flew to New Delhi after my stay in Pakistan and met with two senior officials from the Research and Analysis Wing, India’s national intelligence agency. (Of course, as in Pakistan, no allegation about the other side should be taken at face value.) “Our worries are about the nuclear weapons in Pakistan,” one of the officials said. “Not because we are worried about the mullahs taking over the country; we’re worried about those senior officers in the Pakistan Army who are Caliphates”—believers in a fundamentalist pan-Islamic state. “We know some of them and we have names,” he said. “We’ve been watching colonels who are now brigadiers. These are the guys who could blackmail the whole world”—that is, by seizing a nuclear weapon.

The Indian intelligence official went on, “Do we know if the Americans have that intelligence? This is not in the scheme of the way you Americans look at things—‘Kayani is a great guy! Let’s have a drink and smoke a cigar with him and his buddies.’ Some of the men we are watching have notions of leading an Islamic army.”

In an interview the next afternoon, an Indian official who has dealt diplomatically with Pakistan for years said, “Pakistan is in trouble, and it’s worrisome to us because an unstable Pakistan is the worst thing we can have.” But he wasn’t sure what America could do. “They like us better in Pakistan than you Americans,” he said. “I can tell you that in a public-opinion poll we, India, will beat you.”

India and Pakistan, he added, have had back-channel talks for years in an effort to resolve the dispute over Kashmir, but “Pakistan wants talks for the sake of talks, and it does not carry out the agreements already reached.” (In late October, Manmohan Singh, the Indian Prime Minister, publicly renewed an offer of talks, but tied it to a request that Pakistan crack down on terrorism; Pakistan’s official response was to welcome the overture.)

The Indian official, like his counterparts in Pakistan, believed that Americans did not appreciate what his government had done for them. “Why did the Pakistanis remove two divisions from the border with us?” He was referring to the shifting of Pakistani forces, at the request of the United States, to better engage the Taliban. “It means they have confidence that we will not take advantage of the situation. We deserve a pat on the back for this.” Instead, the official said, with a shrug, “you are too concerned with your relationship with Pakistan.”

Pervez Musharraf lives in unpretentious exile with his wife in an apartment in London, near Hyde Park. Officials who had dealt with him cautioned that, along with his many faults, he had a disarmingly open manner. At the beginning of our talk, I asked him why, on a visit to Washington in late January, he had not met with any senior Obama Administration officials. “I did not ask for a meeting because I was afraid of being told no,” he said. At another point, Musharraf, dressed casually in slacks and a sports shirt, said that he had been troubled by the American-controlled Predator drone attacks on targets inside Pakistan, which began in 2005. “I said to the Americans, ‘Give us the Predators.’ It was refused. I told the Americans, ‘Then just say publicly that you’re giving them to us. You keep on firing them but put Pakistan Air Force markings on them.’ That, too, was denied.”

Musharraf, who was forced out of office in August, 2008, under threat of impeachment, did not spare his successor. “Asif Zardari is a criminal and a fraud,” Musharraf told me. “He’ll do anything to save himself. He’s not a patriot and he’s got no love for Pakistan. He’s a third-rater.”

Musharraf said that he and General Kayani, who had been his nominee for Chief of Army Staff, were still in telephone contact. Musharraf came to power in a military coup in 1999, and remained in uniform until near the end of his Presidency. He said that he didn’t think the Army was capable of mutiny—not the Army he knew. “There are people with fundamentalist ideas in the Army, but I don’t think there is any possibility of these people getting organized and doing an uprising. These ‘fundos’ were disliked and not popular.”

He added, “Muslims think highly of Obama, and he should use his acceptability—even with the Taliban—and try to deal with them politically.”

Musharraf spoke of two prior attempts to create a fundamentalist uprising in the Army. In both cases, he said, the officers involved were arrested and prosecuted. “I created the strategic force that controls all the strategic assets—eighteen to twenty thousand strong. They are monitored for character and for potential fundamentalism,” he said. He acknowledged, however, that things had changed since he’d left office. “People have become alarmed because of the Taliban and what they have done,” he said. “Everyone is now alarmed.”

The rise in militancy is a sensitive subject, and many inside Pakistan insist that American fears, and the implied threat to the nuclear arsenal, are overwrought. Amélie Blom, a political sociologist at Lahore University of Management Sciences, noted that the Army continues to support an unpopular President. “The survival of the coalition government shows that the present Army leadership has an interest in making it work,” she said in an e-mail.

Others are less sure. “Nuclear weapons are only as safe as the people who handle them,” Pervez Hoodbhoy, an eminent nuclear physicist in Pakistan, said in a talk last summer at a Nation and Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy forum in New York. For more than two decades, Hoodbhoy said, “the Pakistan Army has been recruiting on the basis of faithfulness to Islam. As a consequence, there is now a different character present among Army officers and ordinary soldiers. There are half a dozen scenarios that one can imagine.” There was no proof either that the most dire scenarios would be realized or that the arsenal was safe, he said.

The current offensive in South Waziristan marked a significant success for the Obama Administration, which had urged Zardari to take greater control of the tribal areas. There was a risk, too—that the fighting would further radicalize Pakistan. Last week, another Pakistan Army general was the victim of a drive-by assassination attempt, as he was leaving his home in Islamabad. Since the Waziristan operation was announced, more than three hundred people have been killed in a dozen terrorist attacks. “If we push too hard there, we could trigger a social revolution,” the Special Forces adviser said. “We are playing into Al Qaeda’s deep game here. If we blow it, Al Qaeda could come in and scoop up a nuke or two.” He added, “The Pakistani military knows that if there’s any kind of instability there will be a traffic jam to seize their nukes.” More escalation in Pakistan, he said, “will take us to the brink.”

During my stay in Pakistan—my first in five years—there were undeniable signs that militancy and the influence of fundamentalist Islam had grown. In the past, military officers, politicians, and journalists routinely served Johnnie Walker Black during our talks, and drank it themselves. This time, even the most senior retired Army generals offered only juice or tea, even in their own homes. Officials and journalists said that soldiers and middle-level officers were increasingly attracted to the preaching of Zaid Hamid, who joined the mujahideen and fought for nine years in Afghanistan. On CDs and on television, Hamid exhorts soldiers to think of themselves as Muslims first and Pakistanis second. He claims that terrorist attacks in Mumbai last year were staged by India and Western Zionists, aided by the Mossad. Another proselytizer, Dr. Israr Ahmed, writes a column in the Urdu press in which he depicts the Holocaust as “divine punishment,” and advocates the extermination of the Jews. He, too, is said to be popular with the officer corps.

A senior Obama Administration official brought up Hizb ut-Tahrir, a Sunni organization whose goal is to establish the Caliphate. “They’ve penetrated the Pakistani military and now have cells in the Army,” he said. (The Pakistan Army denies this.) In one case, according to the official, Hizb ut-Tahrir had recruited members of a junior officer group, from the most élite Pakistani military academy, who had been sent to England for additional training.

“Where do these guys get socialized and exposed to Islamic evangelism and the fundamentalism narrative?” the Obama Administration official asked. “In services every Friday for Army officers, and at corps and unit meetings where they are addressed by senior commanders and clerics.” ♦

Price of someones haircut = Someones School Fees

2009-10-30T22:08:00.000+05:30

13-year old girl and impotency - Yet another anti-pakistan rant by BJP

2009-10-11T15:08:00.000+05:30

And this makes me think why in the world someone would go to such an extent just to spread hate. Beats me.

Overconfidence and Media Bias - Pre-match Commentary Star Tv - Post Match Zee Tv

2009-09-28T20:34:00.003+05:30

What goes UP

Always Comes DOWN

LIFE: 17-year old bowls out the Master Blaster with over 17 years of experience

2009-09-27T15:23:00.000+05:30

Moral: You are still learning the game despite the loads of experience you have.

Police State? US - MILITARY AT G-20 PROTEST

2009-09-25T23:06:00.000+05:30

Associated Press

PITTSBURGH (AP) — Businesses vandalized during Group of 20 protests were cleaning up broken glass and getting back to work Friday while demonstrators pledging nonviolence planned an afternoon march to protest environmental, health care and other policies.

...

The march had a city permit and organizers pledged to keep it nonviolent.

That was not the case with a Thursday afternoon march that ended with clashes between police and anarchists.

Police, in an overwhelming show of force, declared the march illegal almost as soon as it began. Small bands of anarchists responded to officers' overwhelming show of force by rolling huge metal trash bins, throwing rocks and breaking windows. Police fired rubber bullets and canisters of pepper spray and smoke.

On Friday, local businesses were trying to send messages to potential vandals, declaring themselves family- or locally owned.

Timesonline

Anti-G20 protesters rampaged through the city centre of Pittsburgh tonight, smashing up shops and throwing rocks at police, as officers used tear gas and baton-charges in an attempt to bring them under control.

In riots which continued through evening rush hour, about 300 protesters were reported to have remained from an initial crowd of 2,000 in Bloomfield, Pittsburgh’s Little Italy.

Frustrated in their attempts to reach the venue where world leaders are meeting the crowd, many of whom wore face-masks and armed themselves with rocks, broke windows at fast-food restaurants, a BMW dealership and a bank in the area, about a mile from the fenced-off convention centre.

Police in body armour and armed with plastic shields threw pepper gas canisters to disperse the protesters, charging in to make some arrests.

Some reports also suggested that rubber bullets had been used, but police tonight confirmed that they had fired pellet-filled “beanbags” to combat the rioters.

Shahid Masood's Analysis of Zardari’s call for $100b aid and Friends of Pakistan (FOP)

2009-09-22T01:30:00.003+05:30

Of Economy and The Poor - Time to Wakeup

2009-09-20T16:46:00.012+05:30

"Experience, however, shows that neither a state nor a bank ever have [sic] had the unrestricted power of issuing paper money without abusing that power; in all states, therefore, the issue of paper money ought to be under some check and control; and none seems so proper for that purpose as that of subjecting the issuers of paper money to the obligation of paying their notes either in gold coin or bullion." --David Ricardo

"He who tampers with the currency robs labor of its bread." --Daniel Webster, 15 Mar 1837

"All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income." --Samuel Butler

I am not an expert on economics or any other area of study, I am just another skeptic who likes to make up stories. I am amazed by the fact that the "legal tender" (a.k.a the currency note) is given so much importance despite the fact there are no valuable reserves backing it but only government's "guarantee". This is something we keep close to our hearts that the government recklessly prints.

I have long asked myself why is it that people continue to devote enormous time of their day in pursuit of money even when what wealth they have is far beyond what they need and why is there a perpetual struggle for the poor to keep up with the rising cost of living. I think I am crazy to even consider such an unintellectual proposition. After all money is the epicenter of the present economic system and the endless pursuit of which is the ultimate objective of life (enlightened moderation).

So how much money there is for everyone to chase?

Well that is interesting, lets take US as an example and turn to Fed for answer. It appears that that currency in circulation is presently just under a trillion dollars and growing since it is convenient to print money to makeup for excess spending.

Let's forget theory for a moment here, lets not talk about M2 M3 and M-infinity and just focus on what we have, after all I am a regular average-Joe, I cannot understand all the fancy words.

Below is the graph that shows how the currency in circulation has increased over time.

Interesting? Well there is more.

So why is it increasing? Well one theory is that to keep people employed and counter recessions central bank has to print money and keep interest rates low so that economy could grow again and remain growing to remain ahead of others. Since dollar is a reserve currency, additional printing will discourage nations hoarding dollars and reduce their purchasing power hence the reduced wealth of these nations means that US remains a dominant force. Well this seems a pretty good conspiracy theory.

Why hasn't it decreased? Well I don't know. Perhaps any sudden mop up of money will cause a slump in the economy. I guess it is a one way thing. Perhaps government has to regularly pay interest. If you have only $100 in a system and some one borrows it for 10%, where will you get that 10% if you don't print?

So what happens to the regular average-Joe? How does it affect his life? Well for starters influx of money causes price of commodities to rise. Below is the CPI index (not growth as commonly discussed) since 1913.

Note that it increases with the rise in currency in circulation.

Oh boy! Alright so my income will increase with the supply of money too, right? Well seems so, if you have made the right career moves or in the right industry.

So why should I bother if my income increases counter CPI increases? Well here is the problem.

Even though you have a regular income stream, there are people who save up for a rainy day and there are those who don't.

The black-hole of poverty.

The present system appears to benefit those who have incomes par with currency increases. So people who remain unemployed or cannot get employed will remain at a disadvantage since every day (metaphor) means increases in costs of living without ample income.

It also is a disadvantage to those who store their money under their pillows, in current accounts, and to some extent savings accounts. Increases in currency reduce the purchasing power of that money. Means that yesterday you saved $1 under your pillow and you could afford $1 loaf of bread. Since the price of a loaf of bread today is $1.03, now you no longer afford it any more. Tomorrow it will be $1.061 and you will remain hungry since you cannot purchase it. Next day, you are really hungry and punch yourself for not investing it in a "inflation protected security" (huh?) but now you are really hungry so you get hold of a bat and cover your face and head to a local grocery to exchange bread for a little violence. Either that or you chose to head for the streets for alms.

Asset Prices and Currency

For those of you who invest (in your brains or some other commodity) they remain protected from the devaluation in their purchasing power however the unfortunate who don't will suffer and continue to suffer. It comes as no surprise that rich poor gap has widened.

Well, those of you who have invested in the right commodities will remain protected. Since the supply of these commodities is not in the hands of humans. Hence any rise in currency from the printing press will lead to higher commodity prices. Following is the graph of gold do compare it with the currency in circulation.

Last word before I run off for Iftari

The continuous quest for this worthless paper money is perpetual if right decisions are not taken. The government will print money because if it spends more than it earns. You cannot make ends meet if you don't have sufficient income cover unless you make money out of thin air. More printing means the money you have worked hard to save loses value.

Rich and risk takers will remain protected as their wealth generates enough interest to save their rears. So their wealth keeps growing or remains at the same purchasing power level.

The average, risk averse will ultimately lose out, since supply of similar skilled labor at the bottom is greater and hence chances for salary increases remain slim. That is why you see people who seem otherwise well-to-do outside the gates of mosques. Each day brings lots of unemployed people under the poverty line.

That is the beauty of this system, this system of cut-throat competition and excessive greed.

Iblees Kee Majlis-E-Shura 2of2

2009-09-20T02:25:00.000+05:30

Iblees Kee Majlis-E-Shura

2009-09-20T02:04:00.000+05:30