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Yemen's president signs power transfer deal
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Page 3: Non-WoT
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Page 6: Politix
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Afghanistan
Afghan jirga
[Dawn] WHAT has Afghanistan`s recently concluded loya jirga really achieved? By bringing together over 2,000 delegates who agreed the American military should maintain some presence in the country for 10 years beyond the transfer of authority to Afghan forces in 2014, President Hamid Maybe I'll join the Taliban Karzai
... A former Baltimore restaurateur, now 12th and current President of Afghanistan, displacing the legitimate president Rabbani in December 2004. He was installed as the dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001 in a vain attempt to put a Pashtun face on the successor state to the Taliban. After the 2004 presidential election, he was declared president regardless of what the actual vote count was. He won a second, even more dubious, five-year-term after the 2009 presidential election. His grip on reality has been slipping steadily since around 2007, probably from heavy drug use...
appears to have convened it to demonstrate political backing for this position. At the same time, he attempted to bolster his nationalist credentials with rhetoric about Afghan illusory sovereignty and the inclusion of preconditions, including an end to American night raids, an end to immunity for Americans committing crimes in Afghanistan and complete Afghan control over detainees. But objections from within Afghanistan raise questions about the legitimacy and practicality of the jirga`s conclusions, and it remains unclear whether the gathering will in fact strengthen Mr Karzai`s hand in negotiations with the Americans. Unsurprisingly, the Taliban have rejected the jirga as an extension of foreign occupation. On Sunday, hundreds of students protested in Jalalabad against what they saw as kowtowing to the Americans. Political rivals had claimed that most of the attendees were handpicked by Mr Karzai and many opposition politicians opted not to join. Their cynicism is only bolstered by the fact that the jirga sidestepped an ongoing session of the Afghan parliament.

The fact does remain that without continued outside support, including funding and training, Afghan cops seem woefully inadequate to take over from the US in 2014. At the same time, Afghans resent some of the behaviour of US troops in the country. And any long-term American presence, including military bases, should be used to help ensure Afghanistan`s stability and prevent the strengthening of terror networks rather than to keep a foothold in the region for reasons having to do with Afghanistan`s neighbours. Any long-term US presence negotiated without taking into account the views of these neighbours and the Afghan opposition has the potential to prevent a unified national and regional effort to ensure stability in Afghanistan. Mr Karzai`s jirga may have achieved some degree of political support for a long-term US presence, but the usefulness of that support remains questionable.
Posted by: Fred || 11/23/2011 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan


The Grand Turk
Egypt and Turkey: Middle East Basket Cases
The mainstream media has finally picked up the story I’ve been telling since February about Egypt’s impending economic collapse. The country is nearly out of money.

...Egypt’s spendable foreign exchange reserves are down to just $13 billion and falling daily as the central bank buys its own unwanted currency from the market in order to postpone the inevitable collapse in the change rate. Why not just devalue? The probable answer is that the generals and their civilian front men are moving as much money as they can out of the country before Egypt goes bankrupt....Not only the country’s capacity to buy food in the future, but its existing stocks of food are disappearing. And Egypt imports half its caloric consumption.

...Turkey is in no danger of starvation, to be sure, but it faces a severe economic setback: Tayyip Erdogan, the country’s Islamist prime minister, spurred the country’s banks to lend huge amounts to consumers in advance of last June’s national elections. Bank lending rose by 40% in 2010 and by another 40% in 2011, and Turks bought consumer goods from abroad, running up a balance of payments deficit exceeding 10% of GDP (the same level as Greece). Most of that is financed by short-term debt. Turkey won’t go bankrupt — it’s overall debt levels are manageable — but its economy will have to shrink by a good 5% to staunch the bleeding. That will deflate the neo-Ottoman balloon that Erdogan has been floating, and make it much harder to suppress Turkish grievances in the impoverished Eastern corner of the country.

There is no center of power, no reorientation, no neo-Ottoman empire, no Shi’ite crescent, no Arab Spring, no coherent description of what is occurring in the Middle East. There is only catastrophic social breakdown, civil unrest, despair and violence. If Iran gets nuclear weapons, they will be used. We cannot fix the Middle East. We can only protect ourselves from the fallout, starting with acquisition of WMD by a terrorist state. The last sentence of my book How Civilizations Die (and why Islam is Dying, Too) quotes Virgil’s warning to Dante in Canto III of the Inferno: Non ragionam da lor, ma guarda e pasa. Nothing to see here, folks. Keep moving.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 11/23/2011 16:28 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


India-Pakistan
The return of Nawaz Sharif
[Dawn] Nov 20 marked a resumption of sorts for the PML-N. The speech at the big rally nicely summed up the foursome task 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...
has at hand.

He is fighting a corrupt government and against the corrupting influence of the agencies and is pitted against an emerging clean alternative. Sharif`s fourth battle is against himself, his own recent image. He has to re-establish the lost tone for his party and the people on the lam.

The rally was billed as a show of intent on his part, aimed at convincing the people that he does want to take the Zardari government to the cleaners. There was greater urgency, since, in the traditional pro-Sharif circles, the rise of Imran Khan
... aka Taliban Khan, who is the lightweight's lightweight...
as a possible alternative is so often explained in the PML-N`s own inability to go after Zardari hammer and tongs.

At the meeting Nawaz Sharif reposed his trust in the two courts he is publicly seen to be relying on: one held by the judges in whose restoration he played a huge role, the other that of the people. He asked the Zardari government to order, and allow, an inquiry into `memogate` within two days and gave it another nine to clear its name.

This nine-plus-two-equals-good-riddance formula fulfilled but a formality. The people hardly need an investigation of a memo to reconfirm their views about a government from which they are seeking urgent relief.

Consequently, a believer in the process of justice and the law as he may be, for the best part of his Sunday address the PML-N leader had to make sure he appeared to be already convinced about the origins of the memo that has landed the Zardari-Gilani set-up in trouble. Sharif could not be expected to not exploit in true spirit a letter that had the potential of setting the security establishment and the elected government apart, besides compromising Pakistain`s illusory sovereignty.

The second-most important moment in his address was when he took great pains to explain that he was never in cohorts with this PPP government.

Discarded was the argument where Sharif would proudly boast of his restraint against the government in the name of democracy. Instead, he found it prudent to refresh public memory with a list of occurrences that distinguished him from the government: the long march for justice and the imposition of governor`s rule in Punjab.

Certainly now was not the time to claim credit for the reconciliatory exchanges between him and the Zardari camp over the last few years.

Three weeks earlier, the PML-N head was away as Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif fought the stern Imran Khan challenge to the Sharif monopoly over Punjab by himself. Now it was Shahbaz Sharif`s turn to be absent from the stage.

It was in the fitness of things that he did not attend the Faisalabad rally: it allowed Nawaz Sharif space to redeem himself in the public eye unhindered by a comparison with his more impatient, tough-talking and -- as one view suggests -- more farsighted younger brother.

The Punjab chief minister`s repeated angry utterances can be used as a guide to Sharif`s own defiance of the Shahbaz Sharif school within the PML-N that had been edging for a frontal assault on the Zardari-Gilani set-up.

Whatever the reasons behind the PML-N policies over the last few years, Khan used the breach between the chief minister`s express desires and his brother`s inaction to woo a large number of potential PML-N supporters in an onslaught on the Zardari camp.

It was only fair that it was Nawaz Sharif who spearheaded his party when new realities born out of his own policies were intermingling with old suppressed needs to make up a formidable challenge that the PML-N must overcome.

Less than a month after Khan was hailed as a coup leader in Lahore the feeling in the city is that the Sharifs still have the time and resources to recapture some lost ground. And surprisingly for the ever-groping progressive democrats who have rediscovered Nawaz Sharif on the basis of his recent pro-peace and anti-agencies remarks, it is the dirty work the politicians are liable to undertake in the realm of practical politics that could help the PML-N regain territory.

The PML-N`s current thinking is reflected in how it responds to whom. Khan is right that the PML-N has tried to answer him action for action -- just as it has been matching a lost and self-destructively rhetorical PPP word for word. In the latest phase the PML-N leadership has been found wooing back politicians who it had dropped from the list of loyalists after the great betrayal of October 1999.

The scepticism built on the hurt the Sharifs felt after being ditched by their own cadres and the arrogance derived from the estimates of their personal charisma and clout to see non-entities through an election are luxuries they can ill afford right now.

The proverbial khambas (novices) as Sharif`s polls candidates might not be sufficient the next time around. The PML-N needs to quickly resort to old tactics. It must build new alliances and repair the old ones to attract solid candidates. It is not that its friendly overtures are going unreciprocated. Some have already joined the party in Punjab, others may be preparing to do so as Khan`s principled PTI opens up to its own little compromise over men with the potential to win an electoral contest.

A typically straight-forward Imran pokes gentle fun at the Sharifs when he finds the veterans reacting to him in their equally typical, direct manner.

Khan`s problems start when he is found to be copying the Sharifs and the PPP and PML-Q in his inclusion in the PTI of people who may in time emerge as his election candidates. It is here that the fight between the worthless incumbents and their reformist challenger degenerates into a tussle between `equals`. To the benefit of the still very resourceful Nawaz Sharif and his party.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred || 11/23/2011 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan

#1  He is fighting a corrupt government

to impose his OWN corrupt government
Posted by: Frank G || 11/23/2011 7:57 Comments || Top||

#2  Nawaz Sharif was prime minister for much of the 1990s. His slogan was to make Pakistan an ideal Islamic welfare state (combining the tolerance of Islam with the efficiency of socialism). His family is wealthy and ran the steel industry for many years.

Possible campaign slogans:

Sharif: he's already stolen enough to run the country

Sharif: He might steal less than some other guy

Vote PML-N: Maybe they will bribe you too.
Posted by: Lord Garth || 11/23/2011 8:28 Comments || Top||


Home Front: Culture Wars
Remember how Obama et al claimed to be the ones who cared?
Posted by: Korora || 11/23/2011 08:42 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Would not surprise me if Obamacare referred to people as "units" who could be left to die if they didn't pass muster (being over 70 with traumatic brain injury or stroke) by the ethics panel. After all the bill had to be passed to read it. I doubt that it would have been read before being passed anyway. It was ramrodded through. If we are fortunate SCOTUS will shoot it down. Otherwise we are left with some kind of Nazi-like system where bureaucrats decide who lives and who dies.
Posted by: JohnQC || 11/23/2011 12:39 Comments || Top||



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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.
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In no particular order...
Steve White
Seafarious
tu3031
badanov
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GolfBravoUSMC
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Two weeks of WOT
Wed 2011-11-23
  Yemen's president signs power transfer deal
Tue 2011-11-22
  Yemen Opposition: Saleh Agrees to Sign Peace Plan. Really.
Mon 2011-11-21
  Colombia Farc rebel radio station 'shut down' by army
Sun 2011-11-20
  Libya: 'the executioner' Abdullah al-Senussi captured
Sat 2011-11-19
  Saif al-Islam Gaddafi captured in Libya
Fri 2011-11-18
  Sufi Mohammad's sons acquitted by Swat ATC
Thu 2011-11-17
  Saleh again refuses to sign power transfer
Wed 2011-11-16
  Missile raid targeted top Shabaab leaders
Tue 2011-11-15
  Suspected suicide bomber killed near Afghan loya jirga site
Mon 2011-11-14
  Syria Calls for Urgent Arab Summit
Sun 2011-11-13
  Syrian brownshirts storm Saudi embassy
Sat 2011-11-12
  Iranian Terror Plot Against Bahrain Uncovered
Fri 2011-11-11
  Mexican minister who fought drug cartels killed in crash
Thu 2011-11-10
  Cash shortage threatens Pakistan flood aid
Wed 2011-11-09
  Kim Jong-il Death Rumors Rattle Markets

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