Blowing Up People and Property is Not Islam Re: # 53
some time back someone shared the following purely made in america docu link.

It is a 1 hr frame by frame analysis of the attacks of 911. You need broad band internet to watch it. May try with slower one though.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7137996953057764203

Rise of Rogue Radio Re: # 7
I guess both; to me, it is like handing over a live grenade to a mentally retarded or rather emotionally unbalanced person.

Rise of Rogue Radio Re: # 2
nhk;
yes, debate and more media choices is good to filter religious rages, at the same time media monopoly of seminaries, that too through illegal means, may further complicate matters with regard to (mis) leading people and accentuating miseries of the common folks.

Musharraf and Manmohan’s Monologues Re: # 85
yes, let`s try keep it simple...

1. i am free soul, never been to IPRI etc
2. we too have election to the northern areas legislative council
3. Baltis are too docile, poor, peaceful and pragmatic people to seek such luxuries..!

Musharraf and Manmohan’s Monologues Re: # 81
the part ceded to China by agreement will return to Pakistan once kashmir issue is resolved, but am not sure about the part of ladakh (J&K) territory lost by India to China as a consequence of war...

Musharraf and Manmohan’s Monologues Re: # 78
1. i consider both parts of Kashmir as Indian and Pakistan administered Kashmir. Techincally, J&K is a constitutional part of India, and Azad Kashmir has a constitutional government of its own. It is only Gilgit Baltistan which is practically the disputed territory, accepted by both the countires as such. We do not have a constitutional status - but then thankfully we are not dubbed as POK either.

2. As for Bhudhist population, there were not many Bhudhists living in Gilgit and Baltistan prior to the partition, the few Kashmiri Pandits and Bhudhist there in buseiness or employed in the Dogra government migrated to Leh in 1947-8. Similarly many muslim Baltis living in Leh moved down to muslim Kargil and Baltistan, which was understandable givin the situation arising out of partition. Btw, today`s generation cannot be held responsible for things happened five decades ago..

Musharraf and Manmohan’s Monologues Re: # 58

well actually i have got no problem with your thoughts about reunifcation of J&K state, I have no problem with making the division permenent either... once India and Pakistan agree on something China will have to renegotiate - that is part of the Pak- China deal unless they too decides to take a u-turn, which i have hope they won`t becouse they are more business minded these days then hindu banias and musli mullahs...

Musharraf and Manmohan’s Monologues Re: # 46

for the famous picture, you can log on to;
http://www.jang.com.pk/thenews/aug2005-weekly/nos-28-08-2005/pol1.htm#3

Musharraf and Manmohan’s Monologues Re: # 41

Unfortunately, terms like ‘occupied’, ‘held’, ‘administered’ etc have become editorial discretion due to long standing hawkish policies and environment in South Asia…

Musharraf and Manmohan’s Monologues Re: # 23

well, ideally it should have been otherway round. Musharraf being an army men not budging an inch and Manmohan as leaders of worlds biggest democracy showing some democratic traits and flexibilty for the good of Indians and others in South Asia..

As for Musharraf being commondo speaker, now if you calculate airtime that Musharraf has got on BBC and CNN in the last 5 years and compare that with the data of Indian PMs speaking to a global audiance in the last 20 years, you will see that Musharraf has scored more...!!,

Musharraf and Manmohan’s Monologues Re: # 4

btw, Azad Jammu & Kashmir is the official name of 5,300 sq km adminstered by Pakistan, which you guys lovingly remember as POK. You could have named your part as Azad too. It has nothing to do with 72,490 sq miles Pakistan administered Gilgit Baltistan or offically known as Northern Areas, which borders China, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, India (Ladakh) and Pakistan.

Righting the Wrongs in Ladakh-Baltistan Re: # 29

Btw mr. hamidm2,
who taught you to dress in pants and use forks, knives and spoons to eat daal and rice? Arabs?

Righting the Wrongs in Ladakh-Baltistan Re: # 19

Mr. Gul need to get his fact right.

1. Hunza is predominangitly ismaili, and not sunni
2. I have visited about 40 Balti resteurant in London alone which have been selling Balti food. Many of their printed manues carries a brief histroy and intro about Baltistan and influence of recipe and spice from Tibet, Sichuan, Tajik, Persia and Kashmir on Balti foos. part of it is fact part fiction. The fact is that Balti do have special food, cooked in special utinsil (kwat - a kind of cooker curved out of granite) which makes the cooking and food special.
3. Chilas has majority Sheena (sunni) population, many of them will have to be relocated once the Diamir / Bhasha dam is constructed. Gilgit has a mix (Sheen - Yashkun) population. Religiously it is equaly divided between Shia and Sunni population. Large number of Ismailis also live there. Yes, there is a pathan influence, most of the mochis and smuggler on KKH are pathans, yes they have been instrumental in bringing in charas, opium and klashinkove culture, not to mention the secterian voilance.

4. I have had opportunties to travel in NWFP (including swat) and Balochistan, compares to average individual in those two provinces, Baltis are far more civilized, peaceful and well off, yesterday and today...

Siachen’s Non-paper and the Non-people yes, let us hope Delhi and Islamabad would someday take into account plight of those unfairely wronged people...thanks for your support.

US–India Deal and Kashmir Re: # 74

btw, how about this latest newsweek report...

Promise in Pakistan

What`s behind one of the world`s most surprising economic success stories? In part, September 11.



By Ron Moreau

Newsweek International



March 27, 2006 issue - In the late 1990s Lahore-based businessman Iqbal Ahmed was depressed. Pakistan was isolated internationally and in the grip of a deep recession, and his modest, liquefied-petroleum-gas operation didn`t seem to be going anywhere. ``I used to get up and say, `What the hell, it`s another day`,`` he recalls. ``Now I can`t wait for the day to begin. I see a very bright future.``

Ahmed has good reason to be optimistic. Two years ago he signed a deal with Houston`s Hanover Energy Co. that has helped transform his LPG extraction plant into the largest and most efficient in Pakistan, with revenues last year of $130 million. Backed by several international investors, Ahmed has bid some $400 million to buy a controlling interest in Southern Sui Gas, one of two state-owned gas production and distribution companies that are being privatized. And he recently signed a memorandum of understanding with Excelerate Energy of Houston to import liquefied natural gas into Pakistan in supertankers. ``We`re enjoying a sea change in economic conditions and opportunities,`` says Ahmed, 60. ``Pakistan is open for business.``

The proof is in the numbers. Last year the country`s GDP growth rate hit 8.4 percent, the world`s second highest behind China, following two years of solid 6 percent growth. This year the economy is predicted to expand by nearly 7 percent. After years of instability, with the government and military trying to distract people from their economic woes by waging jihad in Kashmir and railing against neighboring India, a true middle class is now developing. Economic reforms have given the government money to invest in health and education, and foreign investors are eying Pakistan for the first time. In many ways the country has become the world`s most surprising economic success story.

It`s a heady turnaround for a nation that, in the late 1990s, was practically a failed state with near-zero GDP growth. Because of its headlong pursuit of nuclear weapons, Pakistan had become the world`s most sanctioned nation after Libya. International aid had dried up. The government was forced to borrow at exorbitant short-term rates, burdening the country with a crushing $38 billion debt. ``We were in a real soup when [Gen. Pervez] Musharraf took over,`` says Ziauddin (he uses only one name), the Islamabad editor of the Dawn newspaper.

One of Musharraf`s first and smartest moves after his 1999 coup was to appoint Shaukat Aziz, a dapper and urbane international banker, as his economic czar, and to give him a free hand to revive the economy. But what really turned the country`s fortunes around was September 11. ``The 9/11 attack was the best thing that ever happened to Pakistan,`` says Lahore-based businessman Salmaan Taseer. The United States and Europe immediately lifted all sanctions; Washington gave Pakistan $600 million outright to meet urgent debt payments, and forgave another $1.5 billion in debt. Working with Aziz, America and other creditor nations also rescheduled Pakistan`s heavy debt over a manageable 30 to 35 years. In 2004, the United States pledged $3 billion in economic and military assistance over the next five years, in addition to $100 million for education reform. The EU pitched in, lifting quota restrictions on Pakistan`s main export, textiles.

At the same time, Aziz, who is now prime minister, began enacting a series of common-sense economic reforms. They focused on boosting fiscal discipline, government transparency and accountability. He quickly cut the budget deficit from 8 percent to 4 percent by slashing spending, and lowered interest rates. Since 2002, he has increased tax revenues by 20 percent. He also instituted a sweeping privatization program that has won kudos from both domestic and foreign investors. State-owned companies in numerous industries—banking, cement, fertilizer, utilities—have been sold off, as has a chunk of the state`s inefficient telecom giant, PTCL.

The newly privatized and cash-flush banks have been on a lending spree, extending loans to capital-starved domestic businessmen and to the Pakistani middle class, which until 2002 had little access to consumer credit. People have snapped up credit cards, and are buying cars and other big-ticket products with easy-credit bank loans. ``This is the best government we`ve had in the past 30 years,`` says prominent Lahore businessman Syed Babar Ali, who heads some of the country`s biggest joint-venture companies, including Coca-Cola and Nestl�.

Foreign investors have been flocking to Pakistan to bid on privatizations and on licenses in the newly opened telecom sector. The sale of two cellular-phone licenses (won by U.A.E. and Norwegian companies) netted the government nearly $600 million. It`s a good investment as Pakistan, with 24 million cell-phone users, is now the world`s fastest-growing wireless market after China. Indeed, Pakistan is expected to receive upwards of $3 billion in foreign investment this year, largely in telecom and gas and oil exploration. The Karachi Stock Exchange recently hit a record high.

Bullish domestic investors, too, are snapping up telecom licenses and state assets. Businessman Taseer raised $40 million from Pakistani banks and $25 million from a U.S. venture-capital company in two months as part of his successful bid for a wireless license. He is also building a 350-room Hyatt hotel and shopping-mall complex in Lahore with $40 million in debt and equity that he organized from domestic banks and investors in just six weeks. ``This would have been inconceivable before,`` says Taseer, 50, a cigar-smoking tycoon who publishes the Daily Times newspaper and is constructing Lahore`s tallest office building. ``Not long ago, we would have waited at least three years to get a loan from an international bank. In the last two years there has been more economic activity in Pakistan than in the past 50.``

Even Pakistan`s nascent technology sector—dwarfed by India`s—seems to be taking off. Salim Ghauri, the CEO of Lahore-based NetSol Technologies, says his company`s software revenues this year are expected to jump to $19 million, compared with last year`s $11 million. DaimlerChrysler uses Ghauri`s LeaseSoft auto-leasing and financing software in its operations in eight Asian countries, and Toyota uses it in Thailand and China. ``We are competing with the best in the world, and we are coming out on top,`` says Ghauri, 51, who set up NetSol in 1996 after he returned from working as an IT consultant in Australia.

Still, all is not rosy. Pakistan must modernize its creaky infrastructure, further improve tax collection and, most important, normalize economic relations with India. Government critics say the current boom is not benefiting the country`s poorest citizens, who make up more than one third of its 160 million people. ``The rich have become very rich since 9/11, and the middle class is better off, but not the mass of Pakistanis,`` says Dawn`s Ziauddin. Aziz counters that a recent government-sponsored survey indicates that the country`s heady growth has reduced the number of Pakistanis living below the poverty line from one third to a quarter of the population (interview below).

Some bankers and economists warn that the economy is dangerously overheating, due to unsustainable consumer demand and easy credit to both industrialists and consumers. Aziz and the government dismiss the concern—but consumers and the private sector have borrowed more money from the banks in the past two years than they had in the previous 12. Critics argue that growth-spawned inflation, which hit a high of 11 percent one year ago and is running this year at 8.5 percent, is a big reason the poor are not benefiting from the boom. ``Inflation is clearly eroding the purchasing power of the poor,`` says a foreign banker in Islamabad. This year the price of sugar is up by 26 percent; wheat and potatoes, by 15 percent.

According to the foreign banker, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of his comments, ``The government is running the [economy] like it`s heading for elections.`` True: President Musharraf and Aziz are eying the crucial 2007 parliamentary elections. Organized political opposition to Musharraf is rising, and he and Aziz are hoping that an economic resurgence will persuade average voters to return them to power for another five years. That`s what most businessmen are hoping for, too. But if the rewards of the boom don`t start trickling down, the country`s runaway growth could ironically prove to be the government`s undoing.


� 2006 Newsweek, Inc.


URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11902379/site/newsweek/

US–India Deal and Kashmir Ref:#70
Wish you would have studied article 370 of Indian Constitution, don`t tell me that this was inserted by prolofic legislative drafters sitting in islamabad...