US faces the F-16s it supplied Pakistan

The United States is suddenly faced with the uncomfortable scenario of confronting the very same weapons and military hardware, including F-16 fighter jets, it has armed Pakistan with for decades.

The unsavoury prospect of having to take a crack at the its one-time ally has surfaced most starkly in the skies over the Afghan-Pakistan border this weekend after the Pakistan Air Force deployed its US-supplied F-16s to challenge the violation of its airspace by US drones, and in one case, an airborne assault that landed US Navy Seals inside Pakistani territory. The turnaround of Pakistan from an ally to a potential enemy has alarmed lawmakers, some of whom are now questioning the continued supply of arms to Islamabad. On Tuesday, a Democrat-controlled House Foreign Relations panel has scheduled a hearing whose snarky title -- ''Defeating al-Qaida's Air Force: Pakistan's F-16 Program in the Fight Against Terrorism'' == betrays the unease over the Bush Administration’s relentless arming of Pakistan. Al-Qaida has no known air force.

On Sunday, the Pakistani media reported tribal sources as saying a PAF jets were seen patrolling the skies on the country’s western borders with Afghanistan in the afternoon, soon after a US predator was seen flying in the area. ''Neither the CIA-operated Predator nor the Pakistani jet fighter took any offensive action as the two planes didn’t encounter each other,'' a report in the Pakistani newspaper The News, said. Pakistan’s army chief Pervez Kiyani has vowed to defend the country against US incursions ''at all costs.''

The War in Pakistan
U.S. attacks on Taliban and al-Qaeda targets are risky -- but necessary.

Pakistan could end cooperation in war on terror

FOR MORE than six years, the Bush administration has relied on Pakistan's government and army to combat Taliban and al-Qaeda networks based in the country's tribal territories along the border with Afghanistan. The result has been the strengthening of both networks in the rugged and virtually lawless region; a steady increase in Taliban assaults on U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan; and ominous reports that al-Qaeda is using its bases to prepare for new attacks on Western targets, including the United States. By now it is clear that Pakistani army and security forces lack the capacity to defeat the extremists -- and may even support some of the Taliban commanders.


Pakistan's army has arranged truces with some of the extremists that don't preclude them from fighting in Afghanistan. U.S officials say that the Pakistani intelligence service was complicit in a July 7 suicide bomb attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul.
In these circumstances President Bush's reported decision in July to step up attacks by U.S. forces in the tribal areas was both necessary and long overdue. According to a count by the Associated Press, there have been seven missile strikes by remotely controlled Predator aircraft in the past month, as well as one ground assault by helicopter-borne American commandos. At least two of the targets have been Taliban commanders reportedly considered friendly by Pakistani intelligence -- including Jalaluddin Haqqani, the alleged author of the Indian embassy bombing. The results of the attacks are hard to gauge, since U.S. officials refuse to discuss them; reports from the remote areas, often by sources sympathetic to the Taliban, frequently allege that most or all of the casualties are civilians.



To its credit, the Bush administration has tried to execute this shift in tactics while preserving its alliance with the Pakistani army and the new civilian government. It's a tricky balancing act: The latest attacks have prompted outraged public statements by the army commander in chief and the prime minister, and there have even been threats to retaliate against American forces. But army chief Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani was briefed by senior U.S. commanders at a summit meeting on an aircraft carrier last month, and his forces still are in line for billions of dollars in U.S. aid. Pakistan's newly elected president, Asif Ali Zardari, also will desperately need U.S. support to extract the country from a worsening economic crisis and move forward with an ambitious program to counter extremism in the tribal territories with economic development.
There's a risk that the missile strikes will prompt a breach between the U.S. and Pakistani armies, or destabilize Mr. Zardari's democratically elected administration, which is the friendliest Washington could hope for in a country with strong anti-American sentiment. Some experts argue that U.S. attacks only increase support for the Taliban. But the group already appears to have a stranglehold on large parts of the tribal territories. U.S. commanders say that victory in Afghanistan is impossible unless Taliban bases in Pakistan are reduced. And no risk to Pakistan's political system or its U.S. relations is greater than that of a second 9/11 staged from the tribal territories. U.S. missile and commando attacks must be backed by the best intelligence and must minimize civilian casualties. But they must continue.

CANADA VOWS TO PULL TROOPS
"You have to put an end date on these things,"
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Canada's prime minister vowed Wednesday to pull troops from Afghanistan in 2011, saying for the first time that Canadian forces will leave that country.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who has been a steadfast ally of President Bush in the post-Sept. 11 fight against the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan, said Canadians do not want to keep soldiers in Afghanistan beyond then and that 10 years of war were enough.
"You have to put an end date on these things," Harper said. "We intend to end it"
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Did President Bush Authorize Ground Assaults in Pakistan?
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The global War on Terror is focused today lots of activity is taking place in Afghanistan and in Pakistan. Pakistani troops today claimed that they killed up to 100 militants in the northwestern tribal area near the border of Afghanistan.
Now, this comes as we learn that President Bush reportedly approved orders allowing U.S. Special Operations to conduct ground attacks in Pakistan without the permission of that country's government.

So, how will this affect the war in the region?
We're joined by FOX News contributor, Colonel David Hunt. He's a former green beret and who spent a whole bunch of time in that region

Colonel Hunt, thanks for joining us tonight. How likely is it that Pakistan had no idea about this mission that was taking place?

COL. DAVID HUNT, U.S. ARMY (RET.): I think we told them, intelligence sources told them and CIA told them. We didn't ask permission. We told them we were coming.
This particular unit you're talking about was called "detachment one." It's a Marine Corps Special Operations Unit. And the operation has got some problems with it. There's allegations of civilian deaths. But overall, it's much more aggressive on our part, the U.S.'s part to finally go after the safe havens in Pakistan. You cannot solve what's going on in Afghanistan without solving the border region along the Pakistan-Afghani border.

NAUERT: OK. Now, some of our guys have been going into Pakistan for years, in fact, very quietly, but what is different about this? Are we are seeing it just on a larger scale?

HUNT: We're seeing — yes. We're seeing a more directed concentrated effort. The realization that the Taliban and Al Qaeda have grown in strength inside the Pakistan border, partly because we do not have the political will to go after them. Now, we seem to be — as we're winding down in Iraq — we seem to be putting what needs to be now pressure on the Afghanistan situation, which has gotten, for now, decidedly worse over the last two to three years.

NAUERT: OK. Now, Pakistan has a new president, apparently the U.S. supports this guy, but is he going to be any tougher, any more willing to cooperate with us than President Musharraf was, who we gave a whole bunch of money to but he didn't necessarily put it in the right place or the places we wanted him to?

HUNT: Yes. I want to say something like "lipstick on a pig" right now, but I'm sure I can fit that in. The truth is, that unless we put serious pressure on the new president of Pakistan, it will not work. What we thought we had with Musharraf, it didn't. There is active support inside the Pakistani military and intelligence services for the Taliban. And you add that to the lawlessness along the border in Pakistan, it's a recipe for disaster and it's causing our sector — the U.S. sector in Kabul a lot of trouble and the NATO sectors even more trouble in Afghanistan.

NAUERT: Yes, that's a whole another issue. We'll have to talk about that one another day. But Colonel David Hunt, thank you so much for joining us tonight. We'll talk to you again real soon.
HUNT: You're welcome.
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Pakistan order to kill US invaders
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KEY corps commanders of Pakistan's 600,000-strong army issued orders last night to retaliate against "invading" US forces that enter the country to attack militant targets.

The move has plunged relations between Islamabad and Washington into deep crisis over how to deal with al-Qa'ida and the Taliban
What amounts to a dramatic order to "kill the invaders", as one senior officer put it last night, was disclosed after the commanders - who control the army's deployments at divisional level - met at their headquarters in the garrison city of Rawalpindi under the chairmanship of army chief and former ISI spy agency boss Ashfaq Kayani.
Leading English-language newspaper The News warned in an editorial that the US determination to attack targets inside Pakistan was likely to be "the best recruiting sergeant that the extremists ever had", with even "moderates" outraged by it.
The "retaliate and kill" order came amid reports of unprecedentedly fierce fighting in the Bajaur Agency of Pakistan's tribal areas, an al-Qa'ida stronghold frequently mentioned as the most likely lair of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri.
The order to retaliate against incursions by "foreign troops", directed specifically at the 120,000 Pakistani soldiers deployed along the border with Afghanistan, follows US President George W. Bush's authorisation of US attacks in Pakistan.
Washington's determination to launch such attacks has caused outrage across Pakistan, with Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani last night strongly backing a warning by General Kayani that Pakistan would not allow its territorial integrity to be violated.
The "kill" order against invading forces, and the sharp deterioration in relations with the US, has far-reaching implications for the war on terror.
Anger at all levels in Pakistani society was summed up last night in The News, not normally sympathetic to the militants.
"There is an escalating sense of furious impotence among the ordinary people of Pakistan," the newspaper said.
"Many - perhaps most - of them are strongly opposed to the spread of Talibanisation and extremist influence across the country: people who might be described as 'moderates'.
"Many of them have no sympathy for the mullahs and their burning of girls' schools and their medieval mindset.
"But if you bomb a moderate sensibility often enough, it has a tendency to lose its sense of objectivity and to feel driven in the direction of extremism.
"If America bombs moderate sensibilities often enough, you may find that its actions are the best recruiting sergeant that the extremists ever had.
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Pakistan warns US against border incursions

Pakistan has rejected US claims that the rules of engagement gave the coalition forces in Afghanistan the right to enter its territory, saying the nation's sovereignty will be defended at all costs.
"The rules of engagement with the coalition forces are well defined and within that the right to conduct operations against the militants inside own territory is solely the responsibility of the respective armed forces," Pakistani Army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani said in a statement in Islamabad on Wednesday.
"There is no question of any agreement or understanding with the coalition forces whereby they are allowed to conduct operations on our side of the border," he added.
The statement "dispelled a perception that some of the air strikes carried out inside Pakistan by drones and warplanes of the US-led coalition had been authorised by Islamabad", Dawn said on Thursday.
Although this is not the first time NATO forces have attacked inside Pakistan, the increase in the frequency of attacks in days before last week's presidential election here was seen by many as a major shift in the US policy towards Pakistan.
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Bush gave secret OK for Pakistan attacks
Order allows ground assaults for the first time

President Bush secretly approved orders in July that for the first time allow American Special Operations forces to carry out ground assaults inside Pakistan without the prior approval of the Pakistani government, according to senior American officials.
The classified orders mark a watershed for the Bush administration after nearly seven years of trying to work with Pakistan to combat al-Qaida and Taliban fighters, and after months of high-level stalemate about how to confront the militants' increasingly secure base in the tribal areas of Pakistan.
U,.S. officials say they will notify Pakistan when they conduct limited ground attacks like the Special Operations raid last Wednesday in a Pakistani village near the Afghanistan border, but will not ask for its permission.
"The situation in the tribal areas is not tolerable," said a senior U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "We have to be more assertive. Orders have been issued."
The CIA has for several years fired missiles at militants inside Pakistan from remotely piloted Predator aircraft. But the new orders for the military's Special Operations forces relax what have until now been firm restrictions on conducting ground raids on the soil of an important ally without its permission.
Pakistan's top army officer, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, said on Wednesday that his forces would not tolerate U.S. incursions like the one that took place last week and that the army would defend the country's sovereignty "at all costs."
It was unclear precisely what legal authorities the United States has invoked to conduct even limited ground raids in a friendly country.

US-India nuclear deal called “foolish and risky”

The US-India Civil Nuclear Agreement approved by the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) in Vienna is a “foolish and risky deal” that will make every country free to sell nuclear technology to India while “asking virtually nothing from India in return”, in the process undermining the very international system that India so ardently seeks to join, according to a critical assessment published here on Sunday.Mira Kamdar, a fellow at Asia Society, New York, writes in the Washington Post that while India needs energy, “this foolish, risky deal is not the way to get any of these things. India’s democracy has already paid a crippling price, and now the planet may too”. The Indo-US nuclear co-operation agreement was approved by the NSG at its meeting in Vienna this weekend. However, it still has to find congressional approval, an exercise that it may not be possible to complete during the short time left to do that. The deal, Kamdar argues, risks triggering a new arms race in Asia. If it passes, a “miffed and unstable Pakistan will seek nuclear parity with India, and China will fume at a transparent US ploy to balance Beijing’s rise by building up India as a counterweight next door”. The pact will gut global efforts to contain the spread of nuclear materials and encourage other countries to flout the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that India is now being rewarded for failing to sign. Kamdar believes that the deal will divert billions of dollars away from India’s real development needs in sustainable agriculture, education, health care, housing, sanitation and roads. It will also distract India from developing clean energy sources, such as wind and solar power, and from reducing emissions from its many coal plants. Instead, the pact will focus the nation’s efforts on an energy source that will, under the rosiest of projections, contribute a mere 8 percent of India’s total energy needs — and that will not happened until 2030. The deal will generate billions of dollars in lucrative contracts for major US and Indian companies as well as help resuscitate the moribund US nuclear power industry. France and Russia, both of which support the deal, will reap huge profits in India. According to one estimate, the deal will generate more than $100 billion in business over the next 20 years, as well as a large number of jobs in India and the United States..Kamdar writes that India will get unfettered access to nuclear fuel and technology without doing anything in return. It will not have to open all its reactors to inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which means that both the new technologies India will now be able to acquire and the fuel it now has on hand can be ploughed into its nuclear weapons programme. “More ominously, the deal will tell other would-be nuclear powers — and nuclear rogues — that the old barriers to non-proliferation need not be taken seriously. They certainly have not been taken seriously by the US. Other, less high-minded powers will surely follow the shortsighted example being set by Delhi and Washington. Russia has emphatically signalled that it has had enough of global norms that it considers unfair and is keen to return to old-fashioned realpolitik. The prospect of meaningful steps toward disarmament by the existing nuclear powers is slim and dwindling.” The deal will not magically transform India into China’s economic or military equal. Even if India managed to match China reactor for reactor and missile for missile, it could do so only at the expense of precisely the investments in human and physical infrastructure that could make India into a truly great power, prosperous and secure. This is the real tragedy of the US-India nuclear deal, she concludes. .

Third-world feminism

Although women from the so-called third world have always been engaged in the feminism movement, some criticise mainstream Western feminism on the grounds that it is ethnocentric and does not take into account the unique experiences of women from third world countries or the existence of feminism(s) indigenous to third world countries.

Third world women accuse mainstream Western feminists of looking at women's experiences as homogeneous, based on the perspectives of middle-class white Western women. According to Mohanty, third world women feel mainstream feminism bases its understanding of women on "internal racism, classism and homophobia".

Issues important for feminists

Most modern feminist political activists commonly campaign on issues such as reproductive rights, including the right to safe, legal abortion, access to contraception and quality prenatal care, violence within a domestic partnership, maternity leave, equal pay, sexual harassment, street harassment, discrimination and rape.

Many feminists today argue that feminism is a grass-roots movement that seeks to cross boundaries based on social class, race, culture and religion. They also argue that an effective feminist movement should be culturally specific and address issues relevant to the women of the society in question such as female genital cutting in Africa and the Middle East and the "glass ceiling" issue in developed economies. They also debate the extent to which certain issues such as rape, incest and mothering are universal. Themes explored in feminism include patriarchy, stereotyping, sexual objectification and oppression

Third World Countries in terms of political rights and civil liberties.

The most repressive regimes in the world.List of countries with the worst records for political rights and civil liberties. Within these countries and territories, state control over daily life is pervasive and wide-ranging, independent organizations and political opposition are banned or suppressed, and fear of retribution for independent thought and action is part of daily life.According to the Freedom House report Freedom in the World 2007, there are eight countries judged to have the worst records:Burma (Myanmar), Cuba, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Turkmenistan, andUzbekistan.Also included are two territories, Chechnya (Russia) and Tibet, whoseinhabitants suffer intense repression. These states and regions received theFreedom House survey’s lowest rating: 7 for political rights and 7 for civilliberties.The report also includes nine further countries near the bottom of FreedomHouse's list of the most repressive: Belarus, China, Cote d’Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Laos, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Zimbabwe. The territory of Western Sahara (most of the territory is controlled by Morocco) is also included in this group. While these states scored slightly better than the “worst of the worst,” they offer very limited scope for private discussion while severely suppressing opposition political activity, impeding independent organizing, and censoring or punishing criticism of the state.(Source: Freedom House Freedom in the World 2007)See the full report on Freedom HouseSee also below: Third World Countries in Terms of Press Freedom

Do we really need another Web browser?

Chrome a serious challenger in browser battle

Does the world really need another Web browser? Google thinks so. Chrome, its new browser, was developed in secrecy and released to the world Tuesday. The Windows version is available for download now at google.com/chrome; the Mac and Linux versions will take a little longer.

Google argues that current Web browsers were designed eons ago, before so many of the developments that characterize today's Web: video everywhere, scams and spyware, viruses that lurk even on legitimate sites, Web-based games and ambitious Web-based programs like Google's own Docs word processor.
As Google's blog puts it, "We realized that the Web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser."
What this early version of Chrome accomplishes isn't quite that grand. But it is a first-rate beginning.
With no status bar, no menu bar and only a single toolbar (for bookmarks), Chrome is minimalist in the extreme.

At the moment, for example, there's no way to e-mail a Web page to someone, no full-screen mode, no way to magnify the page (rather than just the text), and no screen for organizing bookmarks. Google says that these features are at the top of its to-do list.
Chrome is, nonetheless, full of really smart features that seem to have been inspired by other browsers - or ripped off from them, depending on your level of cynicism.

Pakistan: Current affairs

Helping Pakistan________

Urgent aid for Pakistan

The Democratic vice-presidential candidate, Senator Joe Biden, has drawn up an excellent long-term plan for the United States to help Pakistan economically, thereby strengthening the state against Islamist extremism. This is a vital American interest, not just because of the role of Pakistani Pashtuns in supporting the Taliban's campaign in Afghanistan, but even more importantly because Pakistan itself risks becoming a source of threats to the West that will vastly outweigh those from Afghanistan.

It is to be hoped that if John McCain wins the presidential election, his administration too will devote far more attention to helping Pakistan.
The problem is, however, that Pakistan may not be able to wait that long. By the time a new administration has begun to work out its plans, it will be next spring. And as the editor of a leading Pakistani newspaper said to me in Lahore last Monday, "if the government here can't do something serious to help the population economically within six months, it will be finished."

He and others have warned that mass anger at rising food prices and lengthening electricity cuts could combine with hostility to the government's campaign against the insurgents and to Pakistan's alliance with America. Sporadic violent protests against power cuts have already occurred in several cities. The resulting instability could wreck any hope of Pakistan continuing its tough campaign against the insurgents.

Pakistan's new president, Asif Zardari of the Pakistan People's Party, is already hated by much of the population, in part because he is seen as too pro-American. His government's prestige is being damaged still further by intensifying American raids into Pakistan's tribal areas.

All Eyes On Zardari

Zardari urged to change image and focus

Pakistan's new president, Asif Ali Zardari, must dispel the perception he is an artful politician and urgently address a deteriorating economy and worsening militant violence.The challenges ahead are enormous.

For a starter, he needs a quick and complete makeover of his image from a wily politician ... not mindful of whether he was breaking his promises or losing his credibility.What Mr Zardari needs to do is dispel the impression that he is a political wheeler-dealer who is adept at making backroom deals but unable to rise to the requirements of statesmanship.

Investors and foreign allies led by the United States hope the election will bring some stability after months of political turmoil and rising militant violence. The uncertainty has dragged Pakistani stocks and the rupee sharply lower.

With inflation at nearly 25 percent, dwindling foreign reserves, a widening current account deficit and a sliding rupee, newspapers said the government had to focus on the economy.