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Showing posts from March, 2014

Pakistan Belongs in Nuclear Suppliers Group

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"The Pakistani establishment, as we saw in 1998 with the nuclear test, does not view assistance -- even sizable assistance to their own entities -- as a trade-off for national security vis-a-vis India". US Ambassador Anne Patterson, September 23, 2009 Pakistan has the world's fastest growing nuclear arsenal today in the midst of a fierce insurgency waged against the Pakistani state by Al Qaeda and the Taliban. How should the world respond? Should the response be to further isolate and sanction Pakistan as argued by some Indian and western scholars? Or, should the US and its Western allies engage with Pakistan by accepting it as a legitimate nuclear state and admitting it as a full member of the Nuclear Suppliers Group? The first response, as advocated by the likes of TV Paul , a scholar of Indian origin at McGill University, has clearly not worked nor likely to work as explained well by former US Ambassador to Pakistan Anne W. Patterson. The alternative, as advocate

Is Pakistan a Warrior State? Or a Failed State?

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The Warrior State: Pakistan in the Contemporary World  by Canada's McGill University Professor Thazha Varkey Paul, a graduate of India's Jawaharlal Nehru University, describes Pakistan as a "warrior state" and a "conspicuous failure". It is among a slew of recently published anti-Pakistan books by mainly Indian and western authors which paint Pakistan as a rogue state which deserves to be condemned, isolated and sanctioned by the international community. As Pakistanis celebrate 74th anniversary of  the 1940 Lahore Resolution  calling for the partition of India, it is important to examine TV Paul's narrative about Pakistan and fact-check the assertions underlying his narrative. Here's a point-by-point response to Paul's narrative: 1. Paul argues: Seemingly from its birth, Pakistan has teetered on the brink of becoming a failed state. In 1947 at the time of independence, Pakistan was described as a  "Nissen hut or a tent"  by

Ashar Aziz is Silicon Valley's First Pakistani-American Billionaire

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Silicon Valley has minted the first Pakistani-American billionaire with an incredible 377% surge in the price of Fireeye ( NASDAQ: FEYE ) shares since its IPO last year. The  advanced computer security software company  , founded by Ashar Aziz, priced its initial public offering of 15.2 million shares at $20 per share in September, raising about $304 million after increasing its expected price range to $15 to $17 per share. Aziz owns about 10.91 million shares in the Milipitas, Calif.-based security company; that 9.3% stake on the close of the first day of trading in September was worth more than $392 million. Here are some of the reasons for the huge spike as described by Business Insider : 1. The company's flagship product solves a really hard computer security problem. It is able to stop hack attacks that were previously almost impossible to stop. 2. FireEye bought another security firm, Mandiant, for $1 billion. Mandiant was famous for uncovering links between Chin

Economic History of South Asia Region Since 1 AD

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When the British arrived in Mughal India, the country's share of the world GDP was 25%, about the same as the US share of the world GDP today. By 1947, undivided India's share of world GDP ($4 trillion in in 1990 Geary-Khamis dollars) had shrunk to about 6% (India: $216 billion, Pakistan: $24 billion). Since independence, India's contribution to world GDP has shrunk further to about 4%, according to British Economist Angus Maddison who died in 2010. The colonization of India and many other nations in Asia and Africa began with the advent of the Industrial Revolution  in Europe which resulted in a major power shift from East to West over the time-span of just a few decades. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the world depended mainly on agriculture based on human and animal muscle power. Countries with large populations and farmlands had large share of the world GDP.  The per capita productivity differences among nations and regions were relatively small. The machi