President Obama graciously offered to take questions submitted via Twitter today, courtesy the #AskObama hashtag. Being an inquisitive sort, I decided to submit a few that have been nagging me (I am on Twitter, by the way). Although he declined to answer any, I thought I'd warehouse them here in case he ever gets around to them:
An $8 billion high speed train leaves Chicago for Iowa City at 8:15am at 40mph. Why?
If shovel-ready projects create jobs, wouldn't spoon-ready projects create even more jobs?
How come you haven't made unemployment illegal? #duh
Instead of making cars get 62 mpg, why not 62 million mpg? Also, do something about the gravitational constant.
Don't you just hate going through those TSA lines? And hey, what about that airline food?
Serious question: what's the biggest hardship you've ever dealt with in your life?
Have you ever had a menial job, changed your own oil, or fixed a toilet?
Subtract Malia's age from the number of states. Multiply the result by the number of jobs saved or created.
Math wasn't your strong suit, was it?
I let my Mexican drug lord license expire. Am I still eligible for the free machine gun program?
When you're visiting his volcano lair, does George Soros let you feed the laser sharks?
The staffer who suggested this Twitter Town Hall is fired, isn't he?
Are you smart enough to create a problem so big that even you could not solve it?
Why isn't your cabinet unionized?
If Joe Biden has a massive stroke, (a) do you have a replacement in mind, and (b) how would you tell?
Is there any job you'd be better at than president?
If you ever had a yard sale, how much would you ask for those styrofoam Greek columns?
When you said "days not weeks" did you mean Venusian days?
I understand you finally quit smoking. Do they make a patch for spending addicts too?
Is this question racist?
Why do you need permission to be clear, and not need permission to bomb Libya?
Are you in favor of gay marriage for Libyan bombing crews on Boeing planes made in South Carolina?
Would you get tougher with Iran if you knew they were working with Scott Walker?
On behalf of the entire US population: dude, WTF?
Let's say instead of winning the future, we end up in a tie. Do we then go to sudden death overtime?
When your economic advisors hold policy meetings, do they stuff a towel at the bottom of the door?
If we reneg on the debt, where's the best place to hide our stuff from the repo men?
I just voted to increase my sobriety ceiling. Why won't the bartender give me another drink?
I really need to start living within my means. Do you recommend I start holding up banks or convenience stores?
If ATMs are so bad, why do you keep treating me like one?
Whose spending created your job?
When you create jobs, why do always create them for Texas?
Are strawmen cheaper when you buy them by the gross?
How much CO2 is created by a burning straw man?
Who are these "those who say"?
This whole Twitter Town Hall thing is turning out to be another amateur disaster, isn't it?
Is this a Town Hall or a Potemkin Village Hall?
If Eric Holder gets indicted in Operation Fast & Furious, should he get a civilian trial?
If we eat the rich, what do we get for dessert?
if punishing employers results in more employment, can you also punish beer makers?
Psst... got any spare tix for the 2016 Chicago Olympics?
Since you've doubled the number of wars, shouldn't you be getting another Nobel Peace Prize?
How much do I owe you for all the material?
Does it bother you that your Twitter stunt worked out better for me than you?
Will you be my 10,000th follower?
Okay, end of the 140-character tomfoolery. More of the old school Iowahawk stuff coming soon.
[Dawn] On the American drone attacks and possible military incursions into Pakistain, like the operation to get bin Laden, I am reminded of an incident narrated to me by a very dear elder, Sayeed Hasan Khan. He recalls it was during the freedom movement around 1946-47 when he ran into a woman sweeper in a street of Lahore.
On the one side there was a freedom rally going on and on the other the woman (a Christian lady) was carrying on with her work unperturbed, rather disinterested in the goings on. Khan Sahab asked her: 'So aren't you for freedom? Aren't you going to join them?' She replied in chaste Punjabi: 'Saade kolon azaadi mangde ne. Assi vi nahin deni' (they are demanding freedom from us; we ain't going to give it). She controlled the freedom from or subservience to the British as much as we do today the American military raids on our territory, as we tell them: 'We won't allow you to raid us again' and that 'Drone strikes are unacceptable'.
We've come to this pass because of our disconnect with reality as the world knows it. It is as follows: 'There are faceless myrmidons on our soil who are of grave danger to us, to the state of Pakistain, as well as our neighbours and the West. The faceless myrmidons are of many nationalities but they also include a large number of Paks -- from the tribal belt to the jihadi boys raised by Pak sectarian and terrorist organizations in Punjab and elsewhere. Their mentors and the criminal masterminds behind terrorist tactics were patronised by the CIA and the Pakistain Army back in the Afghan Jihad days as an instrument of foreign policy to force the Soviet Union to end its occupation of Afghanistan.
'After the Soviets' withdrawal, however, these guys indulged in mutual warfare to start the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, to which end the Americans offered little support, but Pakistain, Soddy Arabia and the UAE continued to help them. Once the Taliban established their writ in Afghanistan, Arabs, Chechens, Afghan and Pak jihadis vowed to liberate other occupied Mohammedan lands, including Kashmire, Paleostine, Chechnya and Bosnia. While one superpower was defeated, the other remained as the backer of Israel's occupation of Paleostinian lands; India was seen to play a similar role in Kashmire as did Russia in Chechnya, and the Serbs in Bosnia, so together the US, Russia, India, Israel and the Serbs became the target of their wrath.
'The aim also was to establish a Taliban-style dispensation in Pakistain, which they later tried to do in Swat. They've attacked the Indian parliament and Bombay with a view to scuttling efforts to better India-Pakistain relations -- a growing worry to the world as the region remains a nuclear flashpoint. There are people in Pakistain today who still run jihadi training and brainwashing camps and sympathise with al Qaeda. They will try to work their way into Pakistain's security apparatus to possibly lay their hands on nuclear weapons. Therefore, they're of much graver and immediate threat to Pakistain, first and foremost, and must to be neutralised. Pakistain should help the US do it.'
And now the perspective of those who run Pakistain: 'The Americans used us to bleed the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan and then abandoned us. The global and Pak terrorists, now pushed into Pakistain by the American and NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Originally it was a mutual defense pact directed against an expansionist Soviet Union. In later years it evolved into a mechanism for picking the American pocket while criticizing the style of the American pants... forces in Afghanistan in the post-9/11 world, are a threat to Pakistain only because the US is pushing us to fight its war. Once the Americans withdraw from Afghanistan, and Pakistain stops playing in the hand of the Americans, the people of the West and India call faceless myrmidons will be of no threat to us anymore; therefore, we should just wait for the American withdrawal from Afghanistan.
'These same people will go back to being a friendly presence in Afghanistan which will help contain Indian influence there. We're deeply hurt because fighting America's war, we've borne the brunt of totally avoidable acts of terror unleashed on our cities and which have resulted in the killing of many, including a leader like Benazir Bhuttto. We do not want to antagonise them any further and our policy towards them should be to live and let live so that they stop targeting us.'
And this is where the disconnect lies. If we as a state are tolerant of faceless myrmidons who will spare us for extending that favour to them but who will be free to plan and attack targets in other countries, then other countries will have to do something about them directly. India may not be able to do this, but the US can and we have little defence against it. This is where US drone strikes come in, and diplomatic rows with India intensify dogging the prospects of any détente and peace in South Asia.
We have yet to learn what we should and should not tolerate in our midst. I hope we don't learn the hard way like Saddam Hussein's Iraq did. Rousing nationalist sentiments against the US hardly serves the purpose at a time we should be fighting the battle of our own survival against those who kill and maim in the name of Allah and bring both Islam and Pakistain into disrepute.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/06/2011 19:19 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
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Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
Debka, large pinch of salt.
administrations are working together on a plan to convene an Israel-Palestinian peace summit in Paris on Sept. 2 shortly after the Libyan war is brought to a close, debkafile's Washington and Paris exclusive sources disclose. If they can pull it off, Presidents Barack Obama and Nicolas Sarkozy will join Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas at a summit in the French capital to announce the restart of Israel-Palestinian peace talks, thereby calling off the unilateral Palestinian request for UN recognition of an independent state.
President Obama's Special Adviser Dennis Ross and senior French diplomat Jean-David Levitte are leading the effort to get this summit off the ground. According to the US-French plan, it will take place shortly after the Libyan war is brought to a close ideally by a four-way accord between the US, France, Muammar Qaddafi and the Libyan rebels or, failing agreement, by a crushing NATO military blow in which the United States will also take part. The proposed accord would be based on Muammar Qaddafi's departure and the establishment of a power-sharing transitional administration in Tripoli between the incumbent government and rebel leaders.
#1
Yokay, I'll bite, whatzabout Osama's missing "Crown Prince" HAMZA BIN LADEN, as both MUSLIM, WORLD HISTORY suggest it is wise not to underestimate a Son's desire for revenge.
Iff one presumes that Ayman or Anwar will work to improve + strenghen the post-Jasmine, inter-Muslim/Islamic bonds as per the budding or proto OWG NUCLEAR CALIPHATE, then IMO it may fall on HAMZA + HIS GENERATION TO BEGIN + FIGHT THE "NEXT JIHAD" AGZ THE US-ALLIES, i.e. Jihad agz CONUS + Europe, certainly agz post-PA State Israel, perhaps even to begin Jihad in the Americas or Asia.
* ARAB-MUSLIM MIL HISTORY > WAR OF DECADES + GENERATIONS = THE TIME TO BEGIN THINKING ABOUT AQ'S + RADICAL ISLAM"S FUTURE WAS YESTERDAY, I.E. LONG LONG L-O-N-G BEFORE THE RAID AGZ OSAMA, + LONG LONG L-O-N-G AFTER AYMAN + ANWAR, ETAL.
The MilTerrs said it themselves, + still are - THE JIHAD WON'T END JUST BECUZ THE US FINALLY WHACKED OSAMA, MUSLIMS FIGHT FOR GOD + GOD'S BLESSINGS, NOT A MAN OR MEN.
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.
Punjab
