[DAWN] PESHAWAR: "A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is only a statistic," said former Soviet Union leader Joseph Stalin when a senior officer briefed him about famine in Ukraine.
Stalin’s words are correct in the context of prevailing scenario in Pakistain. Our society is currently passing through the same situation. The reason is that multitude of deaths by militancy in the decade has left us so senseless that we have lost the count and more deaths in terrorist acts only add up to the figure.
Bodies are buried; the government immediately comes up with announcements of compensation for the victims’ heirs, and the people heave a sigh of relief until another mishap occurs.
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Posted by: Fred ||
02/27/2017 00:00 ||
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[DAWN] A VERY valid question is circulating inside the National Assembly, thanks to the efforts of Asad Umar of the PTI: can the government tell us how much money has been sent abroad from Pakistain for the purpose of buying property in Dubai or in the rest of the United Arab Emirates in the recent past? Unfortunately, in this country, the whole scheme of sending and receiving foreign exchange is rigged in such a way as to make it impossible to find an answer. There is a good reason why this is important. For a number of years now, we have been hearing about billions of dollars worth of investment in Dubai real estate by Paks. The latest release of data may show a large decline, but the amount is still just below $1bn in the year 2016, down from $2.1bn in the preceding year. In total, the data from the Dubai Land Department indicates that $7.73bn have been invested by Paks in Dubai real estate since 2013.
There are grounds to be careful with this data though. First of all, it includes investments by those non-resident Paks who are living and earning abroad. Second, it includes perfectly legitimate investments, not necessarily made from so-called black money or other ill-gotten proceeds. It would be a mistake to assume that the full reported amount of $7.73bn necessarily presents a problem. But in order to know the extent of the challenge these investments may pose, we need a simple reporting template that can tell us how much has been sent from here.
And that is where the problem comes in. The State Bank governor recently told a National Assembly standing committee that his institution has not granted any permission for outward remittances for investment in Dubai real estate. According to the Foreign Exchange Manual, any investment made abroad that exceeds $5m requires cabinet approval, and any investment made abroad in amounts less than that, through the interbank market, requires State Bank approval. But the way the system is set up, one can simply send an outward remittance without declaring that it is for investment purposes, and under the prevailing law no questions can be asked. The only way this could come to the attention of the state is if the person involved decides to declare the assets acquired in his or her wealth declaration at home, in order to keep the money white. For those who have no intention of ever declaring their assets, the hawala system provides an easy route to send the money with no questions asked. It is a marvel to note that our foreign exchange scheme is set up in a way that we can never even know the amount that is going from the country into real-estate investments abroad, let alone do anything to regulate or tax the enterprise.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/27/2017 00:00 ||
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[DAWN] Firstly, military courts for terrorists are not the norm, but necessary for survival. In the two years they were in existence, 274 cases were referred to them by the federal government, out of which capital punishment was awarded in 161. However, in only 12 has the sentence been carried out. The rest are in various stages of appeal in civilian courts. So where is the advantage of these courts? The appellate process for civilians whose cases are referred to the military courts should also be the same as for accused in uniform. If the army can be trusted to do justice to its own ranks, it should be trusted to do justice with alleged terrorists also.
Secondly, madressahs seem to be increasing faster in our rural areas than regular schools, as exemplified by the situation in traditionally moderate Sindh, in particular the recent attack on Lal Shahbaz Qalandar’s shrine in Sehwan. Boarding house education, the hallmark of our madressahs, is far more effective in impacting a child’s personality and brainwashing him, than day schools. The child is deprived of his family’s values and ethos while interacting with those of the management overseeing his madressah. He leaves his home at a tender age, sometimes as young as four years. Why do you think a sophisticated society like England bases its elite education on boarding house schools like Harrow and Eton?
A law should, therefore, be introduced where an NOC is required to operate any form of boarding school. This would obviously not be madressah specific but apply to ordinary schools like ‘cadet colleges’ too. There would be no restriction on day madressahs where children of the locality study.
Thirdly, unless the ownership of this war against terrorism is taken to the basic policing unit, ie the police station, it will be no more than rhetoric. The police station is the level that has effective command. It also used to have intimate knowledge of all those living within its jurisdiction, but this institution has become ineffective because of population growth and increased crime. Not only must the number of police stations be increased but more training for upgrading manpower and resources provided to them everywhere.
Currently, the interior ministry specifically, and the centre generally, are blamed for their inability to control terrorism. The fact is that they have no say in actual operations. They are dependent on the political priorities of the respective provincial governments. Also, the local station house officer is not interested in confronting terrorists/facilitators in his jurisdiction as long as they do not indulge in local crime, which they usually do not.
There may be a number of long-term solutions but one step that could be taken is to have a representative of the ministry of interior/Nacta, perhaps of inspector level, in uniform, placed in every police station, specifically assigned the task of keeping a watch on terrorists and their facilitators (counterterrorism) and ensuring that local police implements the interior ministry’s policy on terrorism in letter and spirit. Implementation of this proposal would entail problems of coordination, cadre rivalry and resources but a solution will have to be found to contain this hydra-headed monster.
We will have to think out of the box to prevent being overwhelmed by the extremists.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/27/2017 00:00 ||
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#1
pakistan needs to have its nukes removed
then it needs to be cut off from the modern world along with afghanistan and saudi arabia
buy nothing from them, take no migrants, sell them no technology, deny entry to their students
let them regress back to the bronze age with their korans until they socially evolve
and kick islam out of politics
then they can do business with us
and meanwhile support india.
that's the only road left
there are no secular solutions possible now for pakistan although brave people are trying
you just have to let them sort it out themselves which means they want to immerse themselves in religitard? let them until they get sick of it
h/t Instapundit
As anyone who pays attention to the Social Media parts of the Intertubes is aware, Milo Yiannopoulos is in hot water for allegedly being in favor of Man Boy luurve. This is almost certainly a deliberate hit since the video that has caused the controversy has been out in public for a year or so now without anyone getting worked up about it. Milo has a couple of FB posts up that provide, IMHO, a pretty good defense.
I’m not going to defend him further. He’s a grown up and has a bigger pulpit than I do so that would be silly. However the whole affair has led me to ponder some issues that merit further discussion. These are
1. the decline in reading/listening comprehension
2. the value of a professional troll
3. the relationship of pedophilia to (male) homosexuality
4. the age of consent, maturity and the law
#1
I wish Rantburg readers would listen to what Milo has to say instead of dismissing him as a Podesta-style pedo. Come on, the MSM wouldn't do a hit piece on him unless he was a threat to them.
Posted by: Herb McCoy7309 ||
02/27/2017 9:52 Comments ||
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#2
Yep, he's a gay man that refused to stay on the plantation with the rest of the gays...that's why he had to go.
Can't have a gay Republican can we?
I wonder what happens when Thiel runs for the Senate.
#3
The arbitrary age of consent argument, in general, is specious. If you notice, the author provides no solutions other than to say he believes there ought to be "some sort of flexibility". BTW, Senator Boxer made a simmilar argument in a failed attempt to pass legislation that would allow an adult to bring a minor across state lines to an abortion provider without parental consent. An officially ajudicated "maturity test" would be required. And that would be impracticable -at best.
Thank you Wikileaks! Just 18 minutes after a new DNC chair was chosen, Wikileaks tweeted out a link to emails exposing Tom Perez for sabotaging Bernie Sanders during the 2016 campaign. Bernie Sanders supporters took to twitter to protest with the hashtag: #Demexit :
Perez is a total scumbag! We have so much information on this La Raza pro-illegal former Obama Labor Secretary.
Here are the Wikileaks tweets and a link to the emails busting Perez for being in the clinton grifter camp during the election:
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.
