OBL was dead in 2006

Osama Bin Laden cheated the gallows and died five years before US security forces officially announced he was killed,says a former CIA agent,currently living in Turkey.

I knew Bin Laden’s Chechen guards very well,Berkan Yashar,himself an ethnic Chechen,told the Russian TV station,Channel One. Samy,Ayub and Mahmud were with him right to the end. I remember well this date as there were three sixes in it – June 26,2006. Those three men,as well as two Muslims from London and two from the US saw Bin Laden dead.He was seriously ill before his death. He faded away to skin and bone. The three Chechens washed his body before burying it.

Continue reading OBL was dead in 2006

PTI Tsunami stands tall against status quo: Hashmi

Senior politician and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leader Makhdoom Javed Hashmi said on Thursday that even though he had respect for Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) chief Mian Nawaz Sharif, he detested the way his former party had been used as the chief’s personal property.

Addressing a gathering in Multan, he welcomed former deputy mayor Multan Nadeem Qureshi into PTI ranks while unleashing scathing attacks on his former party’s leaders. The former PML-N stalwart asserted that the party was not subservient to an individual family, adding that even though Nawaz had visited London at least 40 times in the past three years, he failed to visit Multan more than a couple of times, and  continued to ignore his requests.

Read more... 

A cynical electoral game at Indian Muslims' expense

Why India's largest minority should treat Congress overtures with reservations

The more things change for India's Muslims, the more they remain the same. Come elections and political parties invent ever new ways of wooing, using and exploiting them to reap their periodic harvest while the condition of Muslims worsens by the day.

Read more...

Birth of Sectarian Conflict and Extremism in Pakistan

In post partition Pakistan, apart from a few clashes during Muharram ceremonies, Shias and Sunnis remained on mutually indifferent terms, under a state that posed no threat to their individual religious identities.

In 1979 however religious differences in the region assumed a political garb; with Zia’s fundamentalist approach towards political affairs and attempt to implement Sunni Hanafi Fiqh, and secondly the Iranian Revolution under Ayatollah Khomeini that tried to export its influence into Pakistan. The Iranian influence triggered proxy wars that were then sustained by stakeholders of Iran-Iraq war and the Mujahedeen who fought to drive the red army out of Afghanistan. Therefore Pakistan’s sectarian conflict was fueled by ‘Islamizing’ the state of Pakistan the Sunni way, in a region that had just been exposed to Shia nationalism.

Read more...

THE IGNORED REALITY

If there is democracy and people are the most important factor in a democracy then there is something seriously wrong.

There is a news story in Pakistan Today (11.1.12) about the travails of an ex soldier. This unfortunate man made the mistake of helping the police in thwarting a bomb attack on a shrine. In retaliation his son was kidnapped and delivered dead in a gunny bag when no one helped him. Then his other son was kidnapped and given such strong drugs that he died of blood cancer. No one helped him. Now his teenage daughter has been kidnapped since May 2011 and once again no law enforcing or investigative agency is willing to help him. The kidnappers have demanded a huge ransom. The family has hit rock bottom and dead end. 

Read more...

What man wants

A day that starts with beeps of communication devices even before the dawn has officially broken and ends with tears of tired and over worked eyes and a brain with overload of mostly useless information. Between the start and end is a blur,a bombardment of electronic communication based on texts,images,voice,videos,data and God knows what else.

Not to mention waking your kids in cold winter mornings to go to school,where they will eat crap and get “educated” from teachers who are least interested in their jobs and over tired from the private tuition’s they give after school till late at night (because that’s where the real money is!). In the school children will socialize and interact with all kinds of kids with some strange family structures and with financially constrained and depressed teachers who have been given total control of children belonging to much higher economic class or  maybe our children will get bullied or get influenced / pressurized to take part in some less desirable activities.

Continue reading What man wants

Pakistanis smoke away Rs200bn

Despite no promotional campaign, attraction for cigarettes remained stable as Pakistanis burned Rs200 billion on smoking in fiscal 2011.

The startling cigarette production figures, provided by the State Bank of Pakistan in its latest statistical bulletin, show the number of cigarettes produced in the fiscal 2011 increased over last year.

The official figures do not show complete production figures because a number of unregistered factories across the country produce low-grade cigarettes with cheaper selling prices.

Read more...

TTP will continue to attack Pak Security forces, but avoid killing innocent people

The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan has said it will continue carrying out suicide attacks and targeting Pakistani security forces despite joining other militant groups in a pledge not to kill innocent people or to resort to kidnappings for ransom.

“Yes, we signed an accord with three other major Taliban groups of Maulvi Nazeer, Hafiz Gul Bahadur and an Afghan Taliban faction to avoid killing of innocent people and kidnapping for ransom, but we did not agree with them to stop suicide attacks and our fight against Pakistani security forces,” TTP spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan said.

Read more...

Zardari calls for designing of a revamp plan for Sindhs irrigation and drainage problem

Taking up the issue of Sindh’s ailing drainage system, President Asif Ali Zardari reiterated his call for fashioning a workable and comprehensive ‘master plan’ to systematically deal with the drainage of stagnated water following two consecutive years of flooding.

The master plan — which envisages 20 years of irrigation revamping of the province — is to include the restoring, remodelling and enhancing of the discharge capacity of the existing drainage system.

Read more...

Indian Army to supply its ‘glacier toilets’ to poor tropical areas

Developed for troops serving on glaciers high in the Himalayas,the non-flushing “bio-digester” toilet made by India’s top defence research body is now being offered to companies and poorer states.

It is one of 200 technologies produced by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) identified as for sale via the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI).

Continue reading Indian Army to supply its ‘glacier toilets’ to poor tropical areas