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My Name is Khan latest stills
Check out the stills from My Name is Khan starring Shahrukh Khan and Kajol. Folks eager to see SRK and Kajol back on big screen?
Kareena Kapoor promotes 3 Idiots
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Big B, Abhi-Ash at Avatar premiere
Amitabh Bachchan and his son Abhishek along with his wife Aishwarya attended the premiere of James Cameron’s Avatar at IMAX. While Abhishek wore a velvet suit, Aishwarya Rai for the first time was spotted in a Manish Malhotra anarkali. Abhi-Ash also attended at a fashion tribute for Kaifi Azmi earlier in the evening. Like Aishwarya in pink anarkali ?
SRK-Kajol My Name is Khan poster
Check out the latest poster of SRK-Kajol starrer My Name Is Khan. The theatrical trailer of My Name Is Khan releases tonight at 10.00 pm. Like the poster?
SRK-Kajol My Name is Khan trailer
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Zaid Hamid: Iqbal Ka Pakistan | Episode 2
Zaid Hamid: Iqbal Ka Pakistan | Episode 2
With Ali Azmat on Aag TV
Zaid Hamid and Ali Azmat (formerly of Junoon) take live calls and discuss ideology, vision and mission of Allama Iqbal and its relevance with the current times, and answer questions from the youth of Pakistan.
Part 1
More parts below:
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Zaid Hamid: Iqbal Ka Pakistan | Episode 1
With Ali Azmat on Aag TV
Zaid Hamid and Ali Azmat (formerly of Junoon) take live calls and discuss ideology, vision and mission of Allama Iqbal and its relevance with the current times, and answer questions from the youth of Pakistan.
Part 1 of 6
Part 2 of 6
Part 3 of 6
Part 4 of 6
Part 5 of 6
Part 6 of 6
The Blackwater chronicles
Irfan Hussain
In an age of globalisation where everything from manufacturing to accounting is outsourced, it should come as no surprise that governments now contract out many security functions that were once considered an inherent part of military duties.
Leading the charge to grab as many of these lucrative contracts was, until recently, the Blackwater empire. Now, embroiled in a string of legal actions and embarrassing headlines, it is struggling to survive.
Blackwater first came to public attention when four of its employees were killed by Iraqi insurgents, and their bodies burned and dragged around the streets of Fallujah. However, the company really hit the headlines on September 16, 2007, when its gunmen killed 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad’s Nisour Square. In the following outcry, the firm allegedly paid a million dollars in bribes to Iraqi officials, a charge it has denied.
Its recent re-branding as Xe Services last February has not helped much in drawing a line under its controversial activities. Its contract with the State Department to protect American diplomats has been terminated, as has been the agreement with CIA to assist the agency arm its drones in secret bases in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Nevertheless, Xe’s subsidiary, Presidential Airlines, continues to drop supplies to US Special Forces bases in remote parts of Afghanistan.
In Pakistan’s context, the firm has become synonymous with public perception about American interference in the country. Despite repeated denials, Blackwater/Xe is widely viewed as yet another symbol of Washington’s intrusive policies. This impression was recently reinforced by a New York Times story alleging that the firm’s operatives worked hand in glove with the CIA in covert anti-terrorist operations.
In the wake of President Obama’s recent announcement of the surge that will add 30,000 soldiers to the present strength of 68,000 in Afghanistan, few realise how deeply the concept of defence outsourcing has become entrenched. For instance, there are already 104,000 American private security contractors in Afghanistan.
Mostly ex-servicemen, these people perform a variety of tasks that, in earlier conflicts, were almost entirely carried out by government personnel. Ranging from perimeter security to mobile protection, these functions include logistics and intelligence. Paradoxically, the US administration is barred by law from outsourcing ‘inherently governmental functions.’ Departments stretch this to include all sorts of tasks because nobody has actually defined exactly what these functions are.
One reason to reach outside the ranks of officialdom is that many of these tasks are temporary, and can be performed by short-term contractors. In conflict zones, it is difficult to hire trained people for security services without relying on ex-servicemen. The biggest attraction, of course, is that the size of the military presence can be kept small, and casualties among contractors do not attract the same attention that dead and wounded soldiers do. As P.W. Singer of the Brookings Institution wryly put it: ‘What we created was not a coalition of the willing. We’re relying on the coalitions of the billing.’
I first became interested in the Blackwater story when Sheila, my daughter-in-law, asked me what the firm was doing in Pakistan. This was when many people were insisting that it was playing a nefarious role, and I had dismissed the charge as yet another conspiracy theory.
However, when I began researching the story, I came across some very curious facts and allegations. In an investigative report in the latest Vanity Fair, Adam Ciralsky quotes Erik Prince, the founder and CEO of Blackwater/Xe, as claiming that he was not just a CIA contractor, but also an agency ‘asset.’ Cynical observers suggest that Prince has made this claim to pre-empt court proceedings.
Prince became such an integral part of the army’s and the CIA’s campaign against militants that according to Ciralsky, he was known as ‘Mr Fix-it on the war on terror.’ Such were the ties between Prince and the Bush administration that Blackwater won $1.5 billion in contracts between 2001 and 2009, and raked in $600 million in 2008 alone.
One American journalist who has researched deeply into the subject is Jeremy Scahill, a reporter with The Nation, and author of Blackwater. He has written about the firm’s birth in 1997, and its phenomenal growth after 9/11.
Among other allegations about Prince, perhaps the most bizarre relate to his connection to the Knights of Malta, an extreme-right Roman Catholic organisation that traces its roots back to the Crusades. Some ex-employees have accused Prince of being a Christian supremacist sanctioning the killings of Muslims because he believes he has been charged by God to ‘rid the world of Muslims and Islam.’
Others point to the fact that he supports an orphanage in Afghanistan. Whatever the truth, Prince does seem to think he has been chosen for a mission to defend America. He cites a recent near-death experience in his interview with Ciralsky in the Vanity Fair article. Apparently, he was in Islamabad when he received word that his son had nearly drowned in the family swimming pool in the United States. Changing his itinerary, he caught the next flight back, checking out of the Marriott hours before it was nearly flattened in a huge suicide blast a couple of years ago.
Even as Blackwater/Xe struggles to survive in a suddenly hostile environment, military contracting is expected to grow in the United States. With the coming surge, more security firms will be awarded lucrative contracts. At the height of the US presence in Iraq, as many as 190,000 contractors were on the government payroll.
While they have been likened to mercenaries, they have not yet been openly inducted into the frontline. However, as the New York Times article shows, some of them at least are involved in covert operations. It is a matter of time before they begin participating in the fighting unless governments agree on rules of engagement that would bar hired guns from joining regular troops.
One problem is that these contractors are outside the official chain of command, and do not have to conduct themselves in accordance with the Geneva Convention.
Soldiers and spies, on the other hand, have careers and pensions to protect. As we saw, the Blackwater employees accused of using lethal force in Iraq were simply fired without undergoing the rigours of imprisonment. However, some of them have now been brought before a court, and may yet pay the price for their actions. But so far, at least, Erik Prince has yet to face judgment.
Failed state? Try Pakistan’s M2 motorway
For sheer spotlessness, efficiency and emptiness there is nothing like the M2 in the rest of South Asia. –File Photo
If you want a slice of peace and stability in a country with a reputation for violence and chaos, try Pakistan’s M2 motorway. At times foreign reporters need to a give a nation a rest from their instinctive cynicism. I feel like that with Pakistan each time I whizz along the M2 between Islamabad and Lahore, the only motorway I know that inspires me to write.
Now, if the M2 conjures images of bland, spotless tarmac interspersed with gas stations and fast food outlets, you would be right. But this is South Asia, land of potholes, reckless driving and the occasional invasion of livestock.
And this is Pakistan, for many a ‘failed state.’ Here, blandness can inspire almost heady optimism.
Built in the 1990s at a cost of around $1 billion, the 228-mile motorway — which continues to Peshawar as the M1 — is like a six-lane highway to paradise in a country that usually makes headlines for suicide bombers, army offensives and political mayhem.
Indeed, for sheer spotlessness, efficiency and emptiness there is nothing like the M2 in the rest of South Asia.
It puts paid to what’s on offer in Pakistan’s traditional foe and emerging economic giant India, where village culture stubbornly refuses to cede to even the most modern motorways, making them battlegrounds of rickshaws, lorries and cows.
There are many things in Pakistan that don’t get into the news. Daily life, for one. Pakistani hospitality to strangers, foreigners like myself included, is another. The M2 is another sign that all is not what it appears in Pakistan, that much lies hidden behind the bad news.
On a recent M2 trip, my driver whizzed along but kept his speedometer firmly placed on the speed limit. Here in this South Asian Alice’s Wonderland, the special highway police are considered incorruptible. The motorway is so empty one wonders if it really cuts through one of the region’s most populated regions.
‘130, OK, but 131 is a fine,’ said the driver, Noshad Khan.
‘The police have cameras,’ he added, almost proudly. His hand waved around in the car, clenched in the form of a gun.
On one of my first trips to Pakistan. I arrived at the border having just negotiated a one-lane country road in India with cows, rickshaws and donkey-driven carts.
I toted my luggage over to the Pakistan side, and within a short time my Pakistani taxi purred along the tarmac. The driver proudly showed off his English and played US rock on FM radio. The announcer even had an American accent. Pakistan, for a moment, receded, and my M2 trip began.
Built in the 1990s by then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, it was part of his dream of a motorway that would unite Pakistan with Afghanistan and central Asia.
For supporters it shows the potential of Pakistan. Its detractors say it was a waste of money, a white elephant that was a grandiose plaything for Sharif.
But while his dreams for the motorway foundered along with many of Pakistan, somehow the Islamabad-Lahore stretch has survived assassinations, coups and bombs.
A relatively expensive toll means it is a motorway for the privileged. Poorer Pakistanis use the older trunk road nearby tracing an ancient route that once ran thousands of miles to eastern India. The road is shorter, busier and takes nearly an hour longer.
On my latest trip, I passed the lonely occasional worker in an orange suit sweeping the edge of the motorway in a seemingly Sisyphean task. A fence keeps out the donkeys and horse-driven carts.
Service centres are almost indistinguishable from any service station in the West, aside perhaps from the spotless mosques.
The real Pakistan can be seen from the car window, but in the distance. Colourful painted lorries still ply those roads. Dirt poor villagers toil in brick factories, farmers on donkey carts go about their business.
Of course, four hours of mundane travel is quite enough.
Arriving in Lahore, the road suddenly turns into South Asia once again. Dust seeps through the open car window, endless honks sound, beggars knock on car windows. The driver begins again his daily, dangerous battle for road supremacy.
As Pakistan unveils itself in all its vibrancy, it is exciting to be back. But you can’t help feel a tinge of regret at having experienced, briefly, a lost dream.
‘Motorway good — but Pakistan,’ Noshad said at the last petrol station before we entered Lahore.
‘Terrorism, Rawalpindi,’ he added, referring to the latest militant attack on a mosque in the garrison town which killed dozens. —Reuters
Tags: Motorway,M2 motorway,Pakistan motorway
Brasstacks Special: 1971 War – The Untold Story
Mr Zaid Hamid exposes the lies and propaganda of India against Pakistan and Pakistan Army regarding the 1971 war and exposes RAW’s role in the 1971 conspiracy to break Pakistan.
The Supreme Court of Pakistan has struck down the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO)
The Supreme Court of Pakistan has struck down the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO), saying it is unconstitutional.
A 17-member bench, headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, in his short order, declared the ordinance as unconstitutional and illegal.
According to the judgment, the NRO is contrary to the equality guaranteed by the 1973 Constitution of Pakistan. Similarly, all the cases, disposed off because of the controversial ordinance, now stand revived as of Oct 5, 2007 position, said the judgment.
In addition, the court has ordered the government that it should immediately reopen the Swiss cases concerning President Asif Ali Zardari.
Earlier, during hearing of petitions against the NRO, the chief justice said even parliament has no right to change the basic structure of the constitution.
“In accordance to oath, we are committed to safeguard the constitution,” he remarked.
Earlier, the chief justice has warned the NAB Chairman Naveed Ahsan about a stern action if something false detected in the list. He ordered the NAB Chairman to sign the list if it was correct. On the court’s order, he signed the list.
The court summoned the summary file of directives issued for the elimination Swiss cases when the hearing resumed on Wednesday. On the excuse of acting attorney general, the court summoned principal secretary and secretary law. Secretary law while presenting the file in the court said attorney general wrote the letter for withdrawal of cases on the directives of Asif Zardari’s lawyer Farooq H Naek that was opposed by the than law minister Zahid Hamid.
The court has expressed displeasure on acting attorney general and said he hide the truth. The principal secretary of president Salman Farooqi informed the court that cases files are not present in presidency. The files were in president’ camp office in Rawalpindi.
The court advisor Mian Allah Nawaz in his arguments termed the NRO as filthy law and said any, which is beneficial for some individuals, is illegal. Another court advisor Shaiq Usmani said there is no legal ground of giving amenity under NRO. President could only issue the ordinance, which will convert into law by the assembly.
In his remarks, chief justice said how assembly could declare corruption as legal. The judges in their remarks said NRO is against Quranic teachings and amenity could only be given to political cases.
The judges said that if it were an ordinance for national reconciliation, then Baloch leaders and Altaf Hussain should also have been called to the country. During the final stages of the hearing, Salman Raja, Akram Chaudhry, Dr Farooq Hussain, Shahid Orakzai and Abdul Hafiz Pirzada completed their arguments.
Via The News and Jang
