According to the 2011 Military Times Poll of active-duty subscribers, confidence in the overall job performance of the Commander-in-Chief has plummeted from 70% to 25%.
#2
The game is getting interesting.
There appears to be 3 options left. China and the other Masters of The Universe appear to have folded, which leaves only the Squid and Germany in the game. The Squid is not only all in but b*lls to the wall as well. So
Scenario 1, Merkle goes nein, nein not this Frauline and refuses to print as per this article.
In this case GS goes belly up worldwide.
Scenario 2. GS pulls their ace from their sleeve and gets the Bernank to do a Marshall plan to save Europe. The One wont object as his re-election will depend on it. The Squid will have already worked that out. All they need then do is line up their armoured vans and collect their winnings.
Scenario 3. A combination of Germany and the US printing. The Squid wont make as much, but will do OK.
By disclaiming the desire to take power, Feingold is able to present himself as a statesman, appearing at numerous anti-Walker events to bolster the morale of the protesters and, seemingly selflessly, to criticize Walker. Here he was at Saturday's recall rally. Here he was at the Walkerville protest in June. And here he was embodying the Wisconsin protests for Netroots Nation people. That was back in March, before he'd done much at Wisconsin protests (oddly enough!), but when folks outside of Wisconsin, like FireDogLake, were straining to connect Feingold to the protests. FireDogLake noted that "practically every rally in Madison has included some variant of a 'Feingold for Governor' sign."
[Dawn] In the early 1990s when the then ameer of the Jamat-i-Islami (JI), Qazi Hussain Ahmed, ...the absolutely humorless, xenophobic former head of the Pak Jamaat-e-Islami. He was also head of the MMA, a coalition of religious parties formed after 2001 that eventually collapsed under the weight of the holy egos involved. Qazi was the patron of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar during the Afghan mujaheddin's war against the Soviets. His sermons are described as fiery, which means they rely heavily on gospel and not at all on logic. Qazi once recommended drinking camel pee for good health, but that was before his kidneys went... decided to add a more populist dimension to the otherwise exclusivist Jamat, the old guard of the party balked. Some Jamat members felt that Qazi's attempt to make JI a more populist party was done to counter the image of JI being an establishment-backed party that had been used by various figures to meet their own ends.
There is enough evidence to maintain that the above is correct. Though JI was a staunch opponent of Jinnah, ironically it burst on to the mainstream with the help of one of Jinnah's associates, the then chief minister of Punjab, Mumtaz Daultana. In spite of being a secularist, Daultana used the JI and another fundamentalist party, the Ahrar, to instigate a violent religious movement in Punjab in 1953 to divert the attention of the people from the grave economic failings of his ministry.
Hassan Abbas in 'Pakistain's Drift into Extremism' writes that Daultana unleashed JI and Ahrar to turn food riots against his ministry into a full blown movement against the Ahmadiya community. But JI's rise was thwarted by the arrival of the Ayub Khan dictatorship in 1958 that was secular in orientation. The JI did return to its new-found politics of agitation against many of the Ayub regime's policies, but since the party was unable to find any worthwhile patronage from the military-bureaucratic elite, it was largely overshadowed by various leftist political groups, especially the National Awami Party (NAP), the Pakistain People's Party (PPP) and the National Students Federation (NSF).
The three triggered the fall of Ayub in 1969, and the JI suddenly came back into reckoning, this time tacitly supported by yet another secularist opportunist, General Yahya Khan. Faced with the rising tide of leftist agitation, Yahya, a heavy drinker, decided to patronise the JI as a counterforce. Hussain Haqqani in his book, 'Pakistain: Between Mosque & Military' suggests that it was during the Yahya dictatorship (1969-71) that the JI was given leeway to penetrate both state and privately-owned Urdu media. Militant JI groups were also tolerated as long as they were attacking leftist parties.
But state patronage failed to transform the JI into an electoral success. It was trounced by secular parties in the 1970 elections. However, a good lie finds more believers than a bad truth... this didn't stop the Yahya regime to use the JI to formulate fanatical pro-military 'hit-squads' in the former East Pakistain against Bengali nationalists. Ironically, when the military lost the 1971 war against Bengali separatists and their Indian backers, the JI turned around and accused its own patrons, Yahya's military, of 'drunkenness and debauchery'.
This is also when JI began finding sympathetic ears in the military, especially in the shape of junior officers. The new 'socialist' PPP regime led by Z A Bhutto allowed the spreading of JI's influence in the military, believing that this would keep the military's 'Bonapartist' tendencies in check. By the mid-1970s, JI had penetrated a large section of the media and the military.
Added to this was the growing influence of JI's student-wing, the IJT, on major campuses -- a happening one of Bhutto's youngest ministers, Meraj Muhammad Khan, claims was facilitated by Bhutto himself.
According to Meraj, after following the example of certain other secular regimes in Mohammedan countries of the time (Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia), Bhutto too over-exaggerated the threat of Soviet-backed leftist radicals, and consequently encouraged the fragmentation of leftist student groups and tactically allowed the flowering of right-wing groups on campuses. After creating various openings for the JI, Bhutto thought he was neutralising the party, whereas all the while the JI was cultivating relations with military men and the industrialists who'd been bitten by Bhutto's nationalisation policies.
All these links came to fruition when in 1977, JI embraced other religious outfits to successfully lead a protest movement against Bhutto, eventually paving the way for the country's third (and harshest) military dictatorship overseen by General Ziaul Haq ( a disciple of JI's chief and scholar, Abul Aala Maududi).
Between 1977 and 1984, JI experienced its most active moments. It first became part of Zia's cabinet and then supplied the ideological engine and manpower that Zia needed to impose his version of 'Islamic laws' and peruse his pro-Jihad policies in Afghanistan.
After Zia's death, JI automatically joined the ISI-backed anti-PPP electoral alliance, the IJI. Former Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, accused the ISI for mobilising the JI into holding a violent 'long march' against her first government in 1989.
Then, in 1999, when JI's former partner in the IJI, Nawaz Sharif ... served two non-consecutive terms as prime minister, heads the Pakistain Moslem League (Nawaz). Noted for his spectacular corruption, the 1998 Pak nuclear test, border war with India, and for being tossed by General Musharraf... , began peace talks with India (during his second government), JI became the most vocal opponent of the talks. In his book, 'Frontline Pakistain,' Zahid Hussain suggests the JI street protest was instigated by the military chief, General Pervez Perv Musharraf ... former dictator of Pakistain, who was less dictatorial and corrupt than any Pak civilian government to date ... , who was against Nawaz's new Indian policy.
Some analysts believe that it was again Musharraf who 'facilitated' the electoral victory of the right-wing MMA (of which the JI was a part) in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa ... formerly NWFP, still Terrorism Central... in the 2002 elections. Today, led by Munawar Hassan, JI stands burdened by a past dented by episodes of being (willingly) used by manipulative secularists and Islamists alike; of being the 'B team of the agencies' and (according to Tariq Fathah's 'Chasing a Mirage'), of being a tool of western powers and Soddy Arabia against the left (during the Cold War).
It will take a lot more from JI than holding passionate anti-US rallies and collecting money to bring Aafia Siddiqui back from the US jail for it to ever again be reconsidered an important political player in the country's changing political landscape--unless, of course, people like Imran Khan ... aka Taliban Khan, who ain't the sharpest bulb on the national tree... have other plans for this party.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/21/2011 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Jamaat-e-Islami
[Dawn] "IT takes two to tango," Hina Rabbani Khar said on Friday. "One day [the Afghans] require Pakistain's assistance; the next day it is Pakistain which is working against them. Then how can Pakistain help them?" Just last week, the Foreign Office had denied reports from the sidelines of the Saarc summit that Prime Minister Gilani found President Karzai's attitude in a bilateral meeting to be aggressive and accusatory. But in this latest presser, the foreign minister did not hold back, expressing in remarkably direct language that Kabul's recent statements have not been helpful. Earlier in the year the relationship seemed to be making progress, with Mr Gilani visiting Kabul in April with a high-level diplomatic and military team, and Mr Karzai in Islamabad in June to discuss reconciliation with the Taliban. But since a number of high-profile terrorist attacks in the Afghan capital and the liquidation of former High Peace Council chief Burhanuddin Rabbani ... the gentlemanly murdered legitimate president of Afghanistan... in September, public suggestions of Pak support for the Afghan Taliban have been emerging from Kabul. The trilateral summit in Turkey had the potential to ease relations, especially given discussion of a joint investigation into the liquidation, but doesn't seem to have improved matters.
So where do things go from here? The state of the relationship will not do much to help the revival of peace talks with the Taliban, which now seem to be in disarray. And as the region prepares for America`s withdrawal from Afghanistan, what role will Pakistain be able to play in this atmosphere of mistrust? There are a couple of things both sides can do. Afghanistan must not accuse Pakistain of involvement in incidents without concrete proof. Both countries need to make sincere efforts to stop cross-border raids. Pakistain should act on its offer of any possible cooperation with the liquidation investigation. And the burden of history means that Pakistain will have to keep proving, through words and actions, that it is not interested in destablising Afghanistan. In the absence of such moves, this crucial relationship, at this crucial juncture, is unlikely to improve.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/21/2011 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
...the absolutely humorless, xenophobic former head of the Pak Jamaat-e-Islami. He was also head of the MMA, a coalition of religious parties formed after 2001 that eventually collapsed under the weight of the holy egos involved. Qazi was the patron of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar during the Afghan mujaheddin's war against the Soviets. His sermons are described as 
Punjab
Pervez 
"IT takes two to tango," Hina Rabbani Khar said on Friday. "One day [the Afghans] require Pakistain's assistance; the next day it is Pakistain which is working against them. Then how can Pakistain help them?" Just last week, the Foreign Office had denied reports from the sidelines of the Saarc summit that Prime Minister Gilani found President Karzai's attitude in a bilateral meeting to be aggressive and accusatory. But in this latest 
