[Bangla Daily Star] Pakistain police have placed in durance vile a man who spent three years posing as a general to grab land and solicit favours from the government in a country where the military holds formidable power, police said Friday.
Maqsood Shah, 52, was jugged Thursday near an army area in eastern Bloody Karachi ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It may be the largest city in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... as he strolled in uniform to meet a government official in order to clinch approval for an illegal land transfer, officials said.
Shah was jugged after allegedly threatening the official in question, who subsequently tipped off police.
"We checked him out to confirm that he was a fake and placed in durance vile him outside the cantonment," Subhani said.
Police accused Shah of ringing up several provincial cabinet ministers and pretending to be a general in order to solicit "undue favours".
Posted by: Fred ||
01/21/2012 00:00 ||
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#1
The gravest punishments are reserved for those who try to steal from a well ordered system of graft.
"Bust a deal, face the wheel." -- Mad Max Beyond Pakistan
#4
"Pakistain police have arrested a man who spent three years posing as a general to grab land and solicit favours from the government in a country where the military holds formidable power"
How could they tell he was fake? Sounds normal to me. (For there; in D.C., the politicians do it instead.)
Posted by: Barbara ||
01/21/2012 16:01 Comments ||
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A huge sunspot unleashed a blob of charged plasma Thursday that space weather watchers predict will blast past the Earth on Sunday. Satellite operators and power companies are keeping a close eye on the incoming cloud, which could distort the Earth's magnetic field and disrupt radio communications, especially at higher latitudes.
Posted by: Bobby ||
01/21/2012 10:12 ||
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#1
The cause of warming and cooling cycles on earth but there is no money in it for the hucksters and snake oil salesmen. They've got to sell the man-man jive to reap the money, fame and control of the population. Where's the tar and feathers? Rope?
#3
I know the Van Allen belts protect the ISS in its low earth orbit... but I still would not want to be an astronaut on ISS getting zapped by this Blob.
Posted by: Water Modem ||
01/21/2012 15:52 Comments ||
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#7
Wowie-Zowie!! We've probably come through one of these events 3 times in the last year...I'm OK provided the AFC/NFC Contests air as advertised tomorrow.
If not, I'll "need" to revert to my normal TV viewing genre, Apache Dancing (at the link below...)
For citizens going into battle against Afghanistan's officialdom, the warren-like building across the road from the headquarters of Kabul's police chief is a one-stop shop for every document they could need.
From their tiny cubbyhole offices, an army of typists can run up everything from marriage certificates to CVs and job application letters. Also available, for several hundred dollars more: Taliban death threats, the special chits also known as "night letters" that can be a passport to a new life in the west.
"We can write whatever you need; it depends," said one young clerk. "For example, we will mention you work in a government department, your job title and salary. It will say, 'If you don't leave your job by this date, we will come and kill you or put a bomb in your house'.
"Or we can say you are working with US forces," he added.
For a large number of Afghans such a purchase is just the first of many expensive outlays on the high-risk road to a new life in the west. Buyers hope the document will persuade immigration officers many thousands of miles away to give them asylum in Europe or Australia. The document is one part of a growing and lucrative business in smuggling a tide of mostly young, unaccompanied Afghan males overseas.
Vigilante gangs of ultra-conservative Salafi men have been harassing shop owners and female customers in rural towns around Egypt for indecent behavior, according to reports in the Egyptian news media. But when they burst into a beauty salon in the Nile delta town of Benha this week and ordered the women inside to stop what they were doing or face physical punishment, the women struck back, whipping them with their own canes before kicking them out to the street in front of an astonished crowd of onlookers.
Modeling themselves after Saudi Arabias morality police as a Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, the young men raided clothing and other retail shops around the Qalubiya province over New Years weekend declaring they were there to enforce Islamic law, according to the Tahrir News.
Shop owners were told they could no longer sell indecent clothing, barbers could no longer shave mens beards, and that all retail businesses should expect regular and surprise inspections to check for compliance. Frightened customers were ordered to cover up and threatened with severe punishment if they did not abide by Gods law on earth.
But when the women in a Benha beauty salon stood up to the young Salafi enforcers, they found support on the streets as well as online, with one amused reader suggesting that women should be deputized to protect the revolutions democratic values.
Last month thousands of women marched in Tahrir Square in outrage over the clubbing and sexual humiliation of female demonstrators, like the notorious beating and stripping of the blue bra girl in December, whose videoed assault made headlines around the world.
In one of the first pubic apologies ever issued by the military, generals from the ruling council acknowledged the incident and apologized even before the Dec. 17 march had ended. The military faced a second rebuke a week later when a civilian court banned the militarys use of virginity tests to shame and humiliate female demonstrators.
In addition to invading shops, the morality police also smashed Christmas trees and decorations in front of stores and malls, declaring the celebration of Christmas haram or forbidden. Salafi sheiks have also banned the sending of Christmas greetings, prompting the more moderate Muslim Brotherhood to broadcast messages of Christmas cheer to their Christian brethren.
The conservative Salafi sect promotes the strict segregation of the sexes, with many Salafi women wearing the all-enveloping black nikkab gown with eye slits. The group has worried the tourist industry with their pledge to ban alcohol and mixed-gender beaches. Coptic Christians who saw two of their churches torched by Salafis last spring fear further persecution.
Sunni sheiks from Cairos respected Al Azhar mosque and university called an emergency meeting January 4 to discuss the problem, and declared that the Salafi morality police had no legitimate or legal authority on the street, according to Ahramonline.
Two days later, Egyptian former mufti Nasr Farid who was once responsible for issuing religious edicts or fatwas based on Sharia law agreed, stating that the young vigilantes were usurping state authority and did not have the jurisdiction to impose their concept of religious law.
In response, the group pointed to the al Nour partys recent election triumph in which they won nearly 30 percent of parliament seats, as giving them a mandate to enforce Sharia law. They claimed they not only had the backing of members of Al Nours leadership council, but that al Nour leadership had in fact provided the funding to mobilize young volunteers.
The Al Nour partys Facebook page however denied financing the group.
In a desperate effort to gain control of their public message, Al Nour party officials have tried to control the actions of their followers and silence individual Salafi sheiks, like Abdel Moneim el Shahat in conservative Alexandria, who has suggested covering the obscene figures on Egypts ancient monuments with wax.
The young members of the morality police held their first meeting this week, according to a report in the Al Masry Al Youm newspaper, to determine the tasks and geographical jurisdictions of the first volunteers, who would monitor peoples behavior in the street and assess whether they contradicted Gods laws. Volunteers would wear white cloaks and hold bamboo canes to beat violators and later would be provided with electric tasers.
Posted yesterday, this was on the front page of today's WaPo, below the fold, titled "All the News that Fits Your Views". Oh, the irony!
Once upon a time -- oh, about two presidential elections ago -- Dianne Belsom would get up in the morning and read the paper, taking in news stories about candidates and campaigns. Some stuff she agreed with, some she didn't.
This morning, Belsom wakes, makes coffee and settles in at her desktop to fire up Facebook. There on her news feed are more than 100 stories that some of her 460 of her closest friends have posted since Belsom went to bed eight hours ago.
Over the next three hours, Belsom bops around the Web checking out the latest campaign news. Her sources are big and small, from nearby Greenville to faraway California, but they have one thing in common: With rare exceptions, the news and commentary sites Belsom visits share her worldview, which she describes as "conservative, tea party, Christian." Just like lefties reading the Washington Post.
She reads about why Ron Paul is out of step with conservatism at Commentary magazine's site and Breitbart.tv. She takes in arguments about why Mitt Romney is too moderate at newsmax.com and Vision to America. And she nods firmly as she looks at comments from fellow Newt Gingrich supporters at teapartynation.com and the Washington Times site. Crumbum reads the other D.C. paper!
With just hours remaining before South Carolina's Republican primary, it's clear to campaign strategists and voters alike that the revolution in how Americans get their news has dramatically altered the political process. There's more campaign news and commentary out there than ever before, but more and more citizens are tucking themselves inside information silos where they see mainly what they already agree with. Which is contrary to the master plan of indoctrinating everyone that the Washington Post is right-wing and the New York Times is middle of the road.
The result, according to voters, campaign strategists and a raft of studies that track users' news choices, is an electorate in which conservatives and liberals often have not only their own opinions but also their own sets of facts, making it harder than ever to approach common ground.
The audience is so polarized that even when consumers look for more entertaining sorts of news, such as travel or sports stories, they tend to choose sources that match their political leanings -- conservatives to Fox News and liberals to National Public Radio, for example -- according to a study by professors at Stanford and UCLA that dubbed this phenomenon "selective exposure". Which never happened before. Everybody read everything in the good old dead-tree media, never skipped over anything they didn't agree with. No?
One of several folks featured -
Akers is also a news junkie, but his constant screening of the latest bulletins takes place in a narrower space. On his Tweet Deck, a program that presents Akers with a rolling stream of messages and links from friends, colleagues, and reporters and pundits he likes, he sees an America that leans left, a place where same-sex marriage is a natural right and the government is not necessarily a force for evil.
"I'll occasionally look at Fox, but I get so irritated, the way even in their news they make conservative comments," he says. I wonder if he can imagine why I will not watch MSNBC?
But Akers was never so deep in his information bubble as to block out alternative ideas. Although he was a Hillary Clinton delegate at the last Democratic convention, he has been disappointed enough by Obama -- "He's become such a divisive figure" -- to have fallen for Jon Huntsman, the Republican who Akers thought would be tough on spending but moderate on social issues.
Now that Huntsman has dropped out, Akers is weighing whether to risk expulsion from the county Democratic hierarchy if he votes in the GOP primary -- in South Carolina, all voters may take part in any party's primary -- or stick with his own party. A former Clinton delegate thinking of going Pub?
He has been surprised to find himself interested in Romney as a moderate who might not be that different from Obama and might be more competent. And as his Democratic friends send him links to YouTube videos in which Ron Paul calls for steep cuts in military spending and supports legalizing same-sex marriage, Akers is intrigued.
By Thursday afternoon, he's wavering between Romney and reluctantly sticking with Obama. Good Lord! They're so close! How can anyone choose?
Akers hurries home to his snazzy condo, a fourth floor walk-up in a renovated building that was once a college dorm. He feeds the dogs and checks the latest tweets. He loves how the new world of social media keeps every day feeling urgent and alive, yet he sometimes wonders when he will just stop and breathe.
"The whole breaking news thing is so exciting, the chance to be right on the edge of everything," he says. "But everything's subjective, and you kind of have to figure out for yourself who's right and what's true. It can be hard."
Posted by: Bobby ||
01/21/2012 14:43 ||
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#1
I do much the same thing. But when I go to Hot Air I get a collection of stories from all sides - I think they publish the liberal stuff just to illustrate how stupid they are, but they publish them.
#2
"Queer and Balanced", Oh, Really? FOX News recently hired Sally Kohl, a tall butch dyke who never blinks. Yesterday, in a Megyn Kelly interview segment, Sal was positioned between Megyn and Monica Crowley (yow-zuh!). Kohl was trying to appear professional, but was obviously swooning. Kohl has been on George Soros' payroll for years.
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.
A huge sunspot unleashed a blob of charged plasma Thursday that space weather watchers predict will blast past the Earth on Sunday. Satellite operators and power companies are keeping a close eye on the incoming cloud, which could distort the Earth's magnetic field and disrupt radio communications, especially at higher latitudes.
