Sabri Assassination; India's NSG Bid; Brexit & Trump; Hamza Yousuf vs ISIS
Who killed Pakistan's world famous sufi singer Amjad Sabri Qawwal last week? Why was he targeted close to home in MQM-dominated Liaquatabad neighborhood? Is the Sabri killing a failure of Sindh Rangers' Karachi operation? Who wants to see the Army-led Karachi Operation fail? India? RAW? TTP? PPP? MQM? Why?
Why is India seeking full membership of NSG? Why has its effort failed so far? How did India succeed in getting the NSG waiver to allow nuclear trade in 2008? Did Pakistan's then ambassador Husain Haqqani recommend to then President of Pakistan Asif Ali Zardari to not ask China to oppose the India NSG waiver? Is the NSG waiver not enough to accomplish India's goal of growing both its civil and military nuclear programs?
Why did the British voters vote 52% to 48% to leave the European Union? Do these British voters supporting Brexit have anything in common with Donald Trump supporters in the United States? Is this vote part of anti-establishment backlash against globalization, immigration and trade sweeping Europe and America? Is this result motivated by racism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia? Or does it reflect a genuine economic anxiety of those who have been left behind?
Why is ISIS naming San Francisco Bay Area based American Muslim scholar Hamza Yousuf as its enemy? What did Yousuf's viral video "Crisis of ISIS" say that so angered ISIS leaders that they named him as an assassination target in their online publication tracked by the US FBI? Is it because Hamza Yousuf has effectively challenged ISIS based on Islamic theology? Or is it because Hamza Yousuf has taken on ISIS on its favorite battleground in social media and cyberspace?
Viewpoint From Overseas host Misbah Azam discusses these questions with panelists Ali Hasan Cemendtaur and Riaz Haq (www.riazhaq.com)
https://youtu.be/LaLi85lRsck
https://vimeo.com/172752421
Sabri Assassination; India's NSG Bid; Brexit & Trump; Hamaz Yousuf vs ISIS from Ikolachi on Vimeo.
Related Links:
Haq's Musings
MQM-RAW Links
Did the West Sow the Seeds of ISIS?
Husain Haqqani's Animosity Toward Pakistan
Sadiq Khan Hails Triumph of Hope Over Fear
Trump Phenomenon in America
Is Trump Getting Foreign Policy Advice From Husain Haqqani?
Trump's Muslim Ban
What Can Pakistani-Americans Do to Stop Trump?
Silicon Valley Opposes Islamophobia
Why did the British voters vote 52% to 48% to leave the European Union? Do these British voters supporting Brexit have anything in common with Donald Trump supporters in the United States? Is this vote part of anti-establishment backlash against globalization, immigration and trade sweeping Europe and America? Is this result motivated by racism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia? Or does it reflect a genuine economic anxiety of those who have been left behind?
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| Source: Harvard Business Review |
Viewpoint From Overseas host Misbah Azam discusses these questions with panelists Ali Hasan Cemendtaur and Riaz Haq (www.riazhaq.com)
https://youtu.be/LaLi85lRsck
https://vimeo.com/172752421
Sabri Assassination; India's NSG Bid; Brexit & Trump; Hamaz Yousuf vs ISIS from Ikolachi on Vimeo.
Related Links:
Haq's Musings
MQM-RAW Links
Did the West Sow the Seeds of ISIS?
Husain Haqqani's Animosity Toward Pakistan
Sadiq Khan Hails Triumph of Hope Over Fear
Trump Phenomenon in America
Is Trump Getting Foreign Policy Advice From Husain Haqqani?
Trump's Muslim Ban
What Can Pakistani-Americans Do to Stop Trump?
Silicon Valley Opposes Islamophobia
Comments
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/06/29/opinion/campaign-stops/bernie-sanders-democrats-need-to-wake-up.html
Surprise, surprise. Workers in Britain, many of whom have seen a decline in their standard of living while the very rich in their country have become much richer, have turned their backs on the European Union and a globalized economy that is failing them and their children.
And it’s not just the British who are suffering. That increasingly globalized economy, established and maintained by the world’s economic elite, is failing people everywhere. Incredibly, the wealthiest 62 people on this planet own as much wealth as the bottom half of the world’s population — around 3.6 billion people. The top 1 percent now owns more wealth than the whole of the bottom 99 percent. The very, very rich enjoy unimaginable luxury while billions of people endure abject poverty, unemployment, and inadequate health care, education, housing and drinking water.
Could this rejection of the current form of the global economy happen in the United States? You bet it could.
During my campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, I’ve visited 46 states. What I saw and heard on too many occasions were painful realities that the political and media establishment fail even to recognize.
In the last 15 years, nearly 60,000 factories in this country have closed, and more than 4.8 million well-paid manufacturing jobs have disappeared. Much of this is related to disastrous trade agreements that encourage corporations to move to low-wage countries.
Despite major increases in productivity, the median male worker in America today is making $726 dollars less than he did in 1973, while the median female worker is making $1,154 less than she did in 2007, after adjusting for inflation.
Nearly 47 million Americans live in poverty. An estimated 28 million have no health insurance, while many others are underinsured. Millions of people are struggling with outrageous levels of student debt. For perhaps the first time in modern history, our younger generation will probably have a lower standard of living than their parents. Frighteningly, millions of poorly educated Americans will have a shorter life span than the previous generation as they succumb to despair, drugs and alcohol.
Meanwhile, in our country the top one-tenth of 1 percent now owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. Fifty-eight percent of all new income is going to the top 1 percent. Wall Street and billionaires, through their “super PACs,” are able to buy elections.
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Let’s be clear. The global economy is not working for the majority of people in our country and the world. This is an economic model developed by the economic elite to benefit the economic elite. We need real change.
But we do not need change based on the demagogy, bigotry and anti-immigrant sentiment that punctuated so much of the Leave campaign’s rhetoric — and is central to Donald J. Trump’s message.
We need a president who will vigorously support international cooperation that brings the people of the world closer together, reduces hypernationalism and decreases the possibility of war. We also need a president who respects the democratic rights of the people, and who will fight for an economy that protects the interests of working people, not just Wall Street, the drug companies and other powerful special interests.
We need to fundamentally reject our “free trade” policies and move to fair trade. Americans should not have to compete against workers in low-wage countries who earn pennies an hour. We must defeat the Trans-Pacific Partnership. We must help poor countries develop sustainable economic models.
Racial diversity will be the most defining and impactful characteristic of the millennial generation. Newly released 2015 Census data points to millennials’ role in transitioning America to the “majority minority” nation it is becoming.
Millennials between ages 18 and 34 are now synonymous with America’s young adults, fully occupying labor force and voting ages. They comprise 23 percent of the total population, 30 percent of the voting age population, and 38 percent of the primary working age population. Among racial minorities their numbers are even more imposing. Millennials make up 27 percent of the total minority population, 38 percent of voting age minorities, and a whopping 43 percent of primary working age minorities.
Millennial diversity stands out
More important for the future is the clear disparity between the racial makeup of the millennial generation and of preceding generations. Millennials were born during a period of heightened immigration and more modest white growth
As of 2015, the population 55-years-old and older, which includes most Baby Boomers, is “whiter” than the country as a whole (75 percent vs. 61.6 percent) and, among them, blacks are the largest racial minority. Those in the 35- to 54-year-old age group, including Gen Xers and the tail-end of the Baby Boom generation (at 61.5 percent white, 17.6 percent Hispanic and 12.5 percent black), roughly represent the national racial composition.
Plainly, the millennial generation is ushering in the nation’s broader racial diversity. Overall, millennials are 55.8 percent white and nearly 30 percent “new minorities” (Hispanics, Asians and those identifying as two or more races). Back in 2000, when millennials were just beginning to impact demographics, this young adult age group was 63 percent white, whereas in 1990 it was 73 percent white.
Quite a few states exhibit more diversity in their millennial populations than the national numbers show (see Map 1). In California, less than one third of millennials are white, and more than 60 percent are new minorities (see Table 1).
Minorities comprise more than half of the millennial populations in 10 states, including Texas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, and New Jersey. In 10 additional states, including New York, Illinois, Virginia, North and South Carolina, minorities comprise more than 40 percent of millennial residents. Other states have whiter millennial populations, but only nine states are home to largely (over 80 percent) white millennial populations (e.g. Wyoming, Iowa, West Virginia, and Maine).
In Al Jazeera’s latest Head to Head episode, former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency Michael Flynn confirms to Mehdi Hasan that not only had he studied the DIA memo predicting the West’s backing of an Islamic State in Syria when it came across his desk in 2012, but even asserts that the White House’s sponsoring of radical jihadists (that would emerge as ISIL and Nusra) against the Syrian regime was “a willful decision.”
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While holding up a paper copy of the 2012 DIA report declassified through FOIA, Hasan reads aloud key passages such as, “there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in Eastern Syria, and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime.”
Rather than downplay the importance of the document and these startling passages, as did the State Department soon after its release, Flynn does the opposite: he confirms that while acting DIA chief he “paid very close attention” to this report in particular and later adds that “the intelligence was very clear.”
Lt. Gen. Flynn, speaking safely from retirement, is the highest ranking intelligence official to go on record saying the United States and other state sponsors of rebels in Syria knowingly gave political backing and shipped weapons to Al-Qaeda in order to put pressure on the Syrian regime:
(Aljazeera's Mehdi) Hasan: In 2012 the U.S. was helping coordinate arms transfers to those same groups [Salafists, Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda in Iraq], why did you not stop that if you’re worried about the rise of quote-unquote Islamic extremists?
Flynn: I hate to say it’s not my job…but that…my job was to…was to to ensure that the accuracy of our intelligence that was being presented was as good as it could be.
The early reporting that treated the DIA memo as newsworthy and hugely revelatory was criticized and even mocked by some experts, as well as outlets like The Daily Beast. Yet the very DIA director at the time the memo was drafted and circulated widely now unambiguously confirms the document to be of high value, and indicates that it served as source material in his own discussions over Syria policy with the White House.
As Michael Flynn also previously served as director of intelligence for Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) during a time when its prime global mission was dismantling Al-Qaeda, his honest admission that the White House was in fact arming and bolstering Al-Qaeda linked groups in Syria is especially shocking given his stature.
https://levantreport.com/2015/08/06/former-dia-chief-michael-flynn-says-rise-of-islamic-state-was-a-willful-decision-and-defends-accuracy-of-2012-memo/
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/headtohead/2015/07/blame-isil-150728080342288.html
'CIA created ISIS', says Julian Assange as Wikileaks releases 500k US cables
WIKILEAKS founder Julian Assange today said the CIA was responsible for paving the way for ISIS as the whistle blowing organisation released more than half a million formerly confidential US diplomatic cables dating back to 1979.
http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/737430/CIA-ISIS-Wikileaks-Carter-Cables-III-Julian-Assange
On the sixth anniversary of the first infamous "Cablegate" by WikiLeaks, when it releases its first batch of sensitive US files, on November 28 2010, it has expanded its Public Library of US Diplomacy (PLUSD) with 531,525 new diplomatic cables from 1979.
In a statement to coincide with the release of the cables, known as "Carter Cables III", Mr Assange explained how events which unfolded in 1979, had begun a series of events that led to the rise of ISIS.
He said: "If any year could be said to be the "year zero" of our modern era, 1979 is it."
Mr Assange said a decision by the CIA, together with Saudi Arabia, to plough billions of dollars into arming the Mujahideen fighters in Afghanistan to tackle the Soviet Union, had led to the creation of terror group al-Qaeda.
This, in turn, he said led to the 9/11 terror strikes, the invasion of Afghanhistan and Iraq by the US, and the creation of ISIS.
Speaking about how 1979 shaped current global events, Mr Assange said: "In the Middle East, the Iranian revolution, the Saudi Islamic uprising and the Egypt-Israel Camp David Accords led not only to the present regional power dynamic but decisively changed the relationship between oil, militant Islam and the world.
"The uprising at Mecca permanently shifted Saudi Arabia towards Wahhabism, leading to the transnational spread of Islamic fundamentalism and the US-Saudi destabilisation of Afghanistan."
He said at this point Osama bin Laden left his native Saudi Arabia for Pakistan to support the Afghan Mujahideen.
He added: "The invasion of Afghanistan by the USSR would see Saudi Arabia and the CIA push billions of dollars to Mujahideen fighters as part of Operation Cyclone, fomenting the rise of al-Qaeda and the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union.
"The 1979 current of Islamification spread to Pakistan where the US embassy was burned to the ground and Pakistan Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was executed.
"The Iranian hostage crisis would go on to fatally undermine Jimmy Carter's presidency and see the election of Ronald Reagan.
"The rise of al-Qaeda eventually bore the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, enabling the US invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq and over a decade of war, leaving, at its end, the ideological, financial and geographic basis for ISIS."
The election of Margaret Thatcher as British Prime Minister and the Three Mile Island nuclear incident are some of the incidents during the year cited by Assange.
Other events of the year included in the cables are papers on the Irish Republican Army (IRA), who in 1979 killed Lord Mountbatten, cousin of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth, and the Iranian hostage crisis, which saw 66 Americans taken hostage after 3,000 Iranian students raided the US embassy in Tehran.
Mr Assange added: "In 1979 it seemed as if the blood would never stop.
"Dozens of countries saw assassinations, coups, revolts, bombings, political kidnappings and wars of liberation."
The Carter Cables III bring WikiLeaks' total published US diplomatic cable collection to 3.3 million documents.
In interview with UK’s Sunday Times, outgoing army commander Gadi Eisenkot says Israel gave opposition groups light arms ‘for self-defense’
https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-chief-acknowledges-long-claimed-weapons-supply-to-syrian-rebels/
Outgoing IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot this weekend acknowledged for the first time that Israel had indeed provided weaponry to Syrian rebel groups in the Golan Heights during the country’s seven-year civil war.
Until Sunday, Israel would say officially only that it had given humanitarian aid to Syrian opposition groups across the border, while denying or refusing to comment on reports that it had supplied them with arms as well.
In an interview in the British Sunday Times, before ending his tenure as chief of staff this week, Eisenkot said that Israel had indeed provided light weapons to the rebel groups along the border, saying it was “for self-defense.”
Israel’s supply of weapons to these opposition groups has been reported for years — both by the Syrian army, looking to discredit the rebels as stooges of the Zionists, and by the opposition groups, interested in expanding their cooperation with Israel in the fight against Syrian dictator Bashar Assad — but was never confirmed by Israeli officials.
Eisenkot’s acknowledgment in the Sunday Times appeared to be part of a larger movement within the Israeli military and defense establishment to be more open about the IDF’s activities against Iran in Syria.
As the outgoing army chief conducts departing interviews with Israeli and international outlets, more and more previously classified information about the IDF’s fight against Iran’s military entrenchment in Syria has emerged.
In his media appearances, Eisenkot acknowledged that the IDF carried out hundreds of raids in Syria — in some interviews, the number given is 200, in others its 400 — and dropped 2,000 bombs on Iranian targets in 2018 alone.
“We carried out thousands of attacks [in recent years] without taking responsibility and without asking for credit,” the army chief told the Sunday Times.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also dropped the policy of “general acknowledgement, specific ambiguity” in Syria, under which Israel says that it does carry out operations in Syria, without claiming individual strikes.