Wire: BLOOMBERG News
Peter Robison and Gopal Ratnam
Sept. 30 (Bloomberg) — A senior manager at a company that churns out metals routinely used in U.S. smart bombs pauses in mid-sentence when his phone rings: a Wall Street stockbroker looking for information. He makes a note to have an assistant call back — someone who is fluent in English, not just Chinese. Read more »
The Wall Street Journal is reputed for its coverage of markets, business, and economy. But it is also a conservative paper and in terms of political orientation, not much more than a mouthpiece of the Washington establishment. Mr. Bret Stephens is the deputy editor of its editorial page (International) and its foreign affairs columnist. On June 8, 2010, he wrote a column ‘Israel and its Liberal Friends”. While referring to the Flotilla mission to Gaza and to cover up for Israel’s criminal and murderous attack on the peace mission, he had used the now familiar tactic of raising the bogey of Al Qaeda. Read more »
The following article by Bob Woodward was published today in the Washington Post. It is a combination of insights into Obama administration’s thinking, carefully- fed selected information and spin by the top U.S. officials. Read more »
By JANE PERLEZ
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The Pakistani military, angered by the inept handling of the country’s devastating floods and alarmed by a collapse of the economy, is pushing for a shake-up of the elected government, and in the longer term, even the removal of President Asif Ali Zardari and his top lieutenants. Read more »
The country lost 2.39 million metric tons of rice and 10.4 million tons of standing sugar cane, the minister said in an interview today in Islamabad. The nation may also import 2.8 million bales of cotton, he said. Read more »
No politician ever uttered more honest words than Guido Mantega, Brazil’s finance minister, when he argued central banks were engaged in an “international currency war.”
Every country is trying to export its way out of trouble. And the chosen road to net exports is–largely–through devaluation. Read more »
The Express Tribune published an edited version on Sept. 29, 2010
Dr. Aafia Siddiqui may or may not have lost her sanity due to torture but is there an end to the madness of American military misadventures that have destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes of innocent civilians?
Think about this….
More than one trillion dollars and nine years later the alleged and self-confessed master mind of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has not been convicted.Osama bin Laden, Ayman Al-Zahwari, and Mullah Omar have not been caught, dead or alive; Read more »
From the Wall Street Journal
By WILL CONNORS
Ghana and China signed project loans and another deal together totaling $15 billion, the latest in a string of Chinese investments on the continent.
The loans, coinciding with a six-day Beijing visit by the West African nation’s president, John Atta Mills, highlight China’s strong interest in resource-rich African countries such as Ghana. Ghana is preparing to tap massive oil fields that are expected to turn it into one of Africa’s biggest energy producers. Read more »
That Pakistan faces huge issues is an understatement. It is a failing state, probably. Corruption and bad governance are chronic issues, yes. But does it all justify the demonization of Pakistanis as people? Absolutely not.I have never been a “patriot” in the chauvinistic way. As a student activist, I opposed that demented hypocrite Ziaul Haq and have always believed Army’s rule to be Pakistan’s no. 1 problem. I do not believe becoming a nuclear power has done us any good or it was right. Read more »
Police at the scene in Green Lane, Edgware, north London, where Dr Imran Farooq – a leading member of the MQM – was found with head injuries and stab wounds. Photograph: Fiona Hanson/PA
Scotland Yard has launched a murder inquiry after a senior Pakistani politician was found dead outside his London home. Imran Farooq was a co-founder of the Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) party. Read more »
The War on Terror – America’s ‘Great Game’, and Pakistan’s ‘Extremists’ Card
October 25, 2006, revised October 30, 2007
6 Million Pakistani Children Face Starvation or Death As the Nation Observes Eid
Reproduced by Business Recorder Sep. 14, 2010
An email from a friend back home says: Read more »
Srinagar, Sep 10, 2010: Violence flared up in the old city after Friday prayers today when government forces targeted a separatist procession with tear gas, while the southern township of Tral shut down after the police and the paramilitary personnel came down violently upon marchers, even as hectic Eid-eve activity was witnessed in Kashmir elsewhere. Read more »
KABUL—Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s recent attempts to placate the Taliban haven’t made him many new friends among the insurgents. But they have definitely alienated some crucial old friends: the country’s ethnic minorities, who have been a linchpin of Mr. Karzai’s American-backed government. Read more »
The sugar industry produces food, fuel and environmental benefits.
How fast it grows may depend on an argument about how it should be regulated?
From the Economist
IT IS what passes for a winter’s day in upstate São Paulo. The sun is blazing from a blue sky feathered lightly with cirrus cloud. In a large, sloping field overlooking the city of Piracicaba, a mechanical harvester chomps through a stand of three-metre-high sugar cane, fat and juicy from months of sunshine. Read more »
BUYING a mobile phone was the wisest $20 Ranvir Singh ever spent. Mr Singh, a farmer in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, used to make appointments in person, in advance, to deliver fresh buffalo milk to his 40-odd neighbours. Now his customers just call when they want some. Mr Singh’s income has risen by 25%, to 7,000 rupees ($149) a month. And he hears rumours of an even more bountiful technology. He has heard that “something on mobile phones” can tell him the current market price of his wheat. Mr Singh does not know that that “something” is the internet, because, like most Indians, he has never seen or used it. But the phone in his calloused hand hints at how hundreds of millions of people in emerging markets—perhaps even billions—will one day log on. Read more »
What America Has Lost, By Fareed Zakaria
Nine years after 9/11, can anyone doubt that Al Qaeda is simply not that deadly a threat? Since that gruesome day in 2001, once governments everywhere began serious countermeasures, Osama bin Laden’s terror network has been unable to launch a single major attack on high-value targets in the United States and Europe. While it has inspired a few much smaller attacks by local jihadis, it has been unable to execute a single one itself. Today, Al Qaeda’s best hope is to find a troubled young man who has been radicalized over the Internet, and teach him to stuff his underwear with explosives. Read more »
If there is one case which the Supreme Court (SC) of Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry does not consider important or fit enough for a suo-moto action is the yet unresolved investigation of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. It is ironic that it was also the Supreme Court which was guilty of the judicial murder of her father. Some things never change in Pakistan. But did Iftikhar Chaudhry challenge Musharraf? Yes, but did he challenge the status-quo or the establishment? Let me define establishment. The core of the establishment is the Army GHQ and the intelligence services. Top civil bureaucrats and selected members of feudal and business families are members of the establishment. Due to Pakistan’s unique demographics, socio-economic conditions, and inter-marriages in the families of these elites, the establishment’s policies have been and continue to be greatly influenced and dominated by the interests of northern and central Punjab. Read more »
