Pakistan Politics

at 2:44 AM

WUXI, China - President Obama wants to make the United States "the world's leading exporter of renewable energy," but in his seven months in office, it is China that has stepped on the gas in an effort to become the dominant player in green energy - especially in solar power, and even in the United States.

Suntech, China's biggest solar panel maker, has reduced the price of panels sold in America to build market share.

Chinese companies have already played a leading role in pushing down the price of solar panels by almost half over the last year. Shi Zhengrong, the chief executive and founder of China's biggest solar panel manufacturer, Suntech Power Holdings, said in an interview here that Suntech, to build market share, is selling solar panels on the American market for less than the cost of the materials, assembly and shipping.

Backed by lavish government support, the Chinese are preparing to build plants to assemble their products in the United States to bypass protectionist legislation. As Japanese automakers did decades ago, Chinese solar companies are encouraging their United States executives to join industry trade groups to tamp down anti-Chinese sentiment before it takes root.

The Obama administration is determined to help the American industry. The energy and Treasury departments announced this month that they would give $2.3 billion in tax credits to clean energy equipment manufacturers. But even in the solar industry, many worry that Western companies may have fragile prospects when competing with Chinese companies that have cheap loans, electricity and labor, paying recent college graduates in engineering $7,000 a year.

"I don't see Europe or the United States becoming major producers of solar products - they'll be consumers," said Thomas M. Zarrella, the chief executive of GT Solar International, a company in Merrimack, N.H., that sells specialized factory equipment to solar panel makers around the world.

Since March, Chinese governments at the national, provincial and even local level have been competing with one another to offer solar companies ever more generous subsidies, including free land, and cash for research and development. State-owned banks are flooding the industry with loans at considerably lower interest rates than available in Europe or the United States.

Suntech, based here in Wuxi, is on track this year to pass Q-Cells of Germany, to become the world's second-largest supplier of photovoltaic cells, which would put it behind only First Solar in Tempe, Ariz.

Hot on Suntech's heels is a growing list of Chinese corporations backed by entrepreneurs, local governments and even the Chinese military, all seeking to capitalize on an industry deemed crucial by China's top leadership.

Dr. Shi pointed out that other governments, including in the United States, also assist clean energy industries, including with factory construction incentives.

China's commitment to solar energy is unlikely to make a difference soon to global warming. China's energy consumption is growing faster than any other country's, though the United States consumes more today. Beijing's aim is to generate 20,000 megawatts of solar energy by 2020 - or less than half the capacity of coal-fired power plants that are built in China each year.

Solar energy remains far more expensive to generate than energy from coal, oil, natural gas or even wind. But in addition to heavy Chinese investment and low Chinese costs, the global economic downturn and a decline in European subsidies to buy panels have lowered prices.

The American economic stimulus plan requires any project receiving money to use steel and other construction materials, including solar panels, from countries that have signed the World Trade Organization's agreement on free trade in government procurement. China has not.

In response to this, and to reduce shipping costs, Suntech plans to announce in the next month or two that it will build a solar panel assembly plant in the United States, said Steven Chan, its president for global sales and marketing.

"It'll be to facilitate sales - 'buy American' and things like that," Mr. Chan said, adding that the factory would have 75 to 150 workers and be located in Phoenix, or somewhere in Texas.

But 90 percent of the workers at the $30 million factory will be blue-collar laborers, welding together panels from solar wafers made in China, Dr. Shi said.

Yingli Solar, another large Chinese manufacturer, said on Thursday that it also had a "preliminary plan" to assemble panels in the United States.

Western rivals, meanwhile, are struggling. Q-Cells of Germany announced last week that it would lay off 500 of its 2,600 employees because of declining sales. It and two other German companies, Conergy and SolarWorld, are particularly indignant that German subsidies were the main source of demand for solar panels until recently.

"Politicians might ask whether this is still the right way to do this, German taxpayers paying for Asian products," said Markus Wieser, a Q-Cells spokesman.

But organizing resistance to Chinese exports could be difficult, particularly as Chinese discounting makes green energy more affordable.

Even with Suntech acknowledging that it sells below the marginal cost of producing each additional solar panel - that is, the cost after administrative and development costs are subtracted - any antidumping case, in the United States, for example, would have to show that American companies were losing money as a result.

First Solar - the solar leader, in Tempe - using a different technology from many solar panel manufacturers, is actually profitable, while the new tax credits now becoming available may help other companies.

Even organizing a united American response to Chinese exports could be difficult. Suntech has encouraged executives at its United States operations to take the top posts at the two main American industry groups, partly to make sure that these groups do not rally opposition to imports, Dr. Shi said.

The efforts of Detroit automakers to win protection from Japanese competition in the 1980s were weakened by the presence of Honda in their main trade group; they expelled Honda in 1992.

Some analysts are less pessimistic about the prospects for solar panel manufacturers in the West. Joonki Song, a partner at Photon Consulting in Boston, said that while large Chinese solar panel manufacturers are gaining market share, smaller ones have been struggling.

Mr. Zarrella of GT Solar said that Western providers of factory equipment for solar panel manufacturers would remain competitive, and Dr. Shi said that German equipment providers "have made a lot of money, tons of money."

The Chinese government is requiring that 80 percent of the equipment for China's first municipal power plant to use solar energy, to be built in Dunhuang in northwestern China next year, be made in China.

Dr. Shi said his company would try to prevent similar rules in any future projects.

The reason is clear: almost 98 percent of Suntech's production goes overseas.

at 2:43 AM

By Nita Bhalla

ISLAMABAD, Aug 26 (Reuters) - Foreign donors, many of whom are slashing funding due to the global downturn, should give priority to helping Pakistan recover from the war against Taliban militants in its northwest, the United Nations said on Wednesday.

Around 2.3 million people were forced from their homes by an army offensive against the militants in the northwest of the country, mostly since April.

In the past month, more than half of them have returned home only to find their schools bombed, hospitals looted, roads damaged and their crops lost.

Martin Mogwanja, the top U.N. official in Pakistan, told Reuters in an interview there was a serious shortfall of funds to help restore basic services to conflict-affected areas, but he believed the donors would respond, despite the economic crisis.

"Given Pakistan's strategic significance and given the direct relevance of stabilisation of North West Frontier Province (NWFP) to the stabilisation of the region, I would think that the international community is going to prioritise humanitarian assistance to the most vulnerable populations in Pakistan," he said.

Pakistan is a key ally of the United States in its battle to crush Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan and destroy the al Qaeda network in tribal areas straddling the Afghan-Pakistan border.

The U.N. needs around $58 million for what it calls "early recovery" projects -- the provision of food as well as the restoration of schools, hospitals and water supply systems -- in areas such as the former tourist spot of Swat valley.

While foreign donors have given $300 million for the emergency needs of the people, only 3 percent of the money required for early recovery has materialised.

REHABILITATION

Aid workers say the credit crunch has impacted their ability to work effectively both on development and emergency operations as donors have cut their funding across the world.

The U.N. World Food Program has had to cut food aid rations and shut some operations in eastern Africa and North Korea, while aid agencies in India have been reluctant to respond to cyclones and floods this year due to concerns on funding.

Mogwanja, the U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator, said restoring basic services to conflict-affected areas would be the first step in a five-year rehabilitation and reconstruction program which would help address the underlying causes of the conflict in NWFP.

"The situation of poverty and lack of services and the deprivation which comes with that certainly provides fertile ground for extremist militants to undertake their recruitment activities," he said.

"There needs to be investment in human development, particularly in education services, vocational training, food security, clean water and functioning health services."

Economic opportunities -- skilled, semi-skilled and manual jobs "should be made available for Pakistanis who are moving into their early working years," he added.

At an international donors meeting in Turkey this week, Pakistan failed to secure funds of $5.7 billion in aid which was pledged four months ago, with some donors wanting more details of where the money will go.

at 2:43 AM

Ghalib Sultan

By a strange coincidence whenever there is going to be legislation on aid or arms sales to Pakistan the US media throws a spanner in the works. This is done by either dredging up the nuclear proliferation issue or coming up with something new. This time it is the idea that Pakistan has modified the US supplied HARPOON sea to sea missile for sea to land attack and has extended its range. Pakistan should be happy to note that it is credited with such technology innovation capabilities but unfortunately the US media is also sometimes a vehicle for indirectly disseminating US official thinking.

That is not all. The US is also the happy hunting ground for various lobbies and the one that has worked against Pakistan is the Israeli-American Jewish and the Indian lobby. India would be at the heart of any such endeavor. There is also the money factor that works so well in Washington DC with lobbyists all over the landscape.

Read Complete Article : HARPOONING THE HARPOON

at 2:43 AM

Expert says Washington does not need private security personnel for domination

By Ansar Abbasi

ISLAMABAD: While in Pakistan there are growing reports of the presence of Blackwater personnel, at home in America the US security agency's founder and former owner is alleged to have used the company as "merchants of death" as he views himself as a "Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe".

Defence analysts and Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaaf Information Secretary Dr Shireen M Mazari in her article in The News, published on Wednesday, claimed that after Peshawar now Islamabad has Blackwater (now hiding under the new label, Xe Worldwide) and the rather obvious CIA front-company Creative Associates International Inc (CAII). She cited the last week sealing off of the road in Super Market in front of a school as the endorsement of her information.

US embassy spokesman Richard W Snelsire, however, when asked about the presence of Blackwater personnel in Pakistan, said, "We don't discuss security, issues related to the security that include the contractors, who are assigned the security tasks." Snelsire or Rick, as he is commonly known, said that making public such details would endanger lives. He said that 95% of the security personnel doing security work with the US embassy and its officials are from the Pakistani security companies. Regarding Marines, he said that presently the US embassy has only eight Marines and when the expansion project of the embassy would complete in years to come, this strength would go up to 15-20 maximum.

Rick though did not want to discuss anything about the American security contractors assigned security task here, there are many here who talk of the presence of Blackwater personnel here. A senior lady anchorperson was heard sharing her information about Blackwaters with a senior PML-N leader during Nawaz Sharif's recent interaction with a group of newspaper and electronic media journalists.

She insisted that the Blackwater operators are in Peshawar, Quetta and Islamabad. She also said that in the recent Pearl Continental terrorist attack in Peshawar, amongst other two Blackwater men were also killed. Blackwater is a US security company that has track record in Iraq where they killed innocents.

Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit was not in Pakistan to confirm if the foreign security contractor hired by the US embassy is Blackwater.

Meanwhile at home in US, the Blackwater is facing a district court in Alexandria, which will decide whether one of the darkest chapters of the Bush era, the relationship between the administration and the private security company Blackwater, should be re-examined?

According to SPIEGEL ONLINE, a German publication, some of Blackwater's former employees want to shine light on the company's shadowy activities. In just one incident, according to the report, 17 people including women and children were killed on Sept 16, 2007 at Nisoor Square in Baghdad by mercenaries working for Blackwater.

Erik Prince, Blackwater's founder and former owner, is referred in the suit, filed by one Susan Burke as a "modern-day merchant of death," and she alleged that the 40-year-old created a "culture of lawlessness and unaccountability" at Blackwater, where the "excessive and unnecessary use of deadly force" was commonplace. In her motion, Burke also accuses Blackwater of war crimes.

The US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, in Alexandria, Virginia, will now decide whether to take on Burke's civil suit. Burke now plans to call 40 witnesses to testify against Prince. If the court agrees to hear her suit on Friday, eyewitnesses to the various killings will be summoned from Baghdad.

Meanwhile, a Pakistani expert on Pak-US relations deplored that the Pakistanis used to indulge in politics of blame games. On condition of not being named, he said in the presence of its army in Iraq, the US did not need security personnel of its private companies to fight civilians or dominate the host country. He said when the US missions or buildings came under attack in Iraq, several innocent women and children of US citizens are also killed. Similarly, he said it is possible that in retaliatory attack by the security personnel civilians including women and children are killed. He said such casualties do occur in the situation of war and they are always unintentional. He said such killings should not be portrayed as campaign to kill innocent Muslims.

at 2:43 AM

Ahsan Waheed

Billa is the local Urdu word for Tomcat. Tomcats as you know are notorious for their lack of morals, ethics and loyalty. Billa is also the nickname in Punjabi for someone with tomcat-like grey eyes and again such people are considered shifty and unreliable-wrongly of course. Tomcats are tomcats and people are people-the Billa epithet notwithstanding.

These days we are being regaled by the unseemly sights and sounds of people spilling their guts in front of TV anchors employed by a commercial and sensation oriented media. In fact there seems to be a competition of sorts among the anchors 'to do more'. What is amazing is that the Army fighting and dying on the western border is forgotten as is the fact that a resurgent TTP has struck thrice in three days with major attacks and that Al Qaeda has struck in the heart of the security apparatus of Saudi Arabia. Nobody is analyzing these developments.

Read Complete Article : http://pakistan-pal.newsvine.com/_news/2009/08/31/3209993-about-tomcats-

at 2:42 AM

The Middle East talks look like an act of grand displacement unless Obama stops giving Israel an unequal say

Peter Beaumont

It may be early days in the hammering out of the details of a new US-sponsored plan to broker a resumption of Middle East peace talks, but what are clearly visible are the operating assumptions. At their very heart, the reporting in this paper suggests, is what the government of Binyamin Netanyahu has always wanted: a link between Iran's nuclear programme and a very partial freeze on settlement building, offered in exchange for opening up an even more partial track of a peace process whose focus would be on the West Bank.

A step forward? Hardly. For while one cannot deny that Israel is afraid of Iran, its overstated fears of the "existential threat" that the Islamic Republic poses serve a useful diplomatic purpose. That is to make Israeli-Palestinian peace talks contingent on progress in an unrelated and equally difficult issue. In that respect it is nothing less than a grand act of displacement that makes the prospect of a final settlement more distant still rather than hauling it closer.

The explicit linkage is, in any case, a dangerous gambit. The logic of tough sanctions against Iran's oil and gas industry under consideration, on which Tehran's economy depends, is dangerously close to an act of war in itself. An act of war, it should be said, that would be framed not only by the circumstances of Iran's intransigence over its nuclear ambitions (which make many neighbouring Arab states nervous) but by the demands of Israel, an entirely different circumstance. On the entirely practical front, regarding Iran, the factoring in of Israel's desires into a new round of sanctions hardly seems likely to persuade Iran's leaders to behave in a different fashion.

The truth is that Iran is for Israel - as for the rest of the region and the international community - a geopolitical challenge, not an "existential threat". What Israel's politicians and generals fear as much as the overstated threat of annihilation is a redrawing of the military balance that would undermine Israel's unique nuclear capability in the region, weakening its capacity for military deterrence, so long a bulwark of its foreign policy.

And it is not only in the regard of any linkage to Iran that the new assumptions appear deeply flawed.

Netanyahu, despite the claims of some, has yet to show himself as a partner for peace - the demand made so often of Palestinians by Israel. His marked ambivalence over a two-state solution is compounded by the fact that he has shown himself (like other Israeli leaders before him) to have little regard for either international opinions or the obligations that Israel has entered regarding settlement building, which was supposed to have been frozen with President George W Bush's road map and yet has continued unfettered.

Instead, the only concession that has been wrung out of Netanyahu appears to have been the promise of a partial and temporary freeze. His refusal to accept his obligations to a total cessation on building are instructive: not least because Netanyahu believes that President Bush gave Israel the green light to annexe some of the settlement blocks as part of a future land swap deal.

All that is on offer from Israel for now is a loosening of the strangulation imposed on the West Bank by Israeli checkpoints that had fragmented it into so many bantustans, whose gradual removal - unsurprisingly - has stimulated Palestinian economic growth once more. Far from moving forward, what is visible is a small step towards renormalising the lives of Palestinians from a low point, not improving them.

And what is glaring is what is hardly mentioned - the question of Hamas-run Gaza still under a crushing Israeli economic siege, except to deliver the somewhat distant promise to them that if Gaza's people divest themselves of the Islamist movement (who lest we forget won the 2006 Palestinian elections) then they might get some of what the West Bank is getting now. It is precisely this that Israel's ambassador to London, Ron Prosor - writing in the Telegraph without a hint of irony - sees fit to congratulate his country on. How Israel is helping the Palestinian Authority to strengthen the Palestinian infrastructure that - he forgets to mention - his country has done so much to dismantle.

Perhaps we should not be surprised by any of this. Netanyahu has been here before, managing Israel's position through a combination of dogged obstructionism - including his "three nos" - so that when he offers the slightest concession it is seized on by the international community as a leap forward. Netanyahu today seems to be replicating precisely his tactics during his previous period as prime minister from 1996 to 1999, going through the motions of talking yet delivering almost nothing.

And what appears to be driving the logic of this cynical deal-making in progress is fear. Not Israel's fear of Tehran - although that informs it - but rather the fear in Washington, London and elsewhere that Israel might pre-empt the imposition of a new economic sanctions regime by launching a unilateral attack on Iran. The reality then - unsurprisingly - is that once again it appears to be Israel that is dictating what is in Israel's and the region's interest, with the US foreign policy falling into step.

If all this is disappointing it is because it all seems so distant from the rhetoric of Barack Obama's speech in Cairo in June where he promised a new beginning to America's relationship with the Muslim world. Then Obama insisted that he believed that the situation for the "Palestinian people is intolerable", adding: "the obligations that the parties have agreed to under the road map are clear. For peace to come, it is time for them - and all of us - to live up to our responsibilities." They are words that appear to have been forgotten in the anxiety to get a deal. Any deal. At any cost.

If these then are the assumptions driving forward the present attempt to wrestle out a new dialogue for peace, then the seeds of its failure have already been sown. For as Jonathan Freedland wrote here, the reason that "successive efforts at peace have failed" is because they "ducked the core, existential issues of 1948". His suggestion that what is required is more than a mechanistic formula of land swaps and compensation packages is right. But something more fundamental is required.

A truly honest and equitable approach - as suggested by Obama in Cairo - requires the abandonment of an unequal approach that for too long has allowed Israel a unique say in defining and redefining the contingent conditions for each step of progress. Depressingly the indications are that there is very little chance of that. And if that is true, Obama will have failed in the "responsibility" he set for himself.

at 10:34 PM

Brian Cloughley

British politicians, especially the deeply insipid Prime Minister Gordon Brown, want people to believe their foolish Afghan adventure is essential because, they say, there are still terror plots in progress

There is talk of the war in Afghanistan being "Obama's Vietnam", but while there are some similarities the main thing of note is that the Afghan war was begun by a group of malevolent bullies in Washington who were addicted to violence and held that diplomacy was for fainthearted. Their arrogance was illustrated by use of overwhelming military power.

But President Obama seems to be less partial to the policy of joy through strength than was his appalling predecessor. Ms Clinton, his feisty Secretary of State, while not averse to flexing American muscle, has demonstrated subtlety and sagacity, thanks to Mr Obama's guidance.

It is not the fault of either of them that Iraq has been wrecked as a country, with continuing atrocities causing scores of deaths. It is not their fault that two million Iraqi refugees are living lives of desperation in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon, or that there are over two million internally displaced refugees whose lives have been shattered by America's war.

Such has been the legacy of Bush-Cheney in Iraq; but what of their war on Afghanistan?

Unfortunately, developments in the Afghan war are reminiscent of the Vietnam debacle, which was embraced without long-term planning, and there seems to have been little change. In his superb book about the Vietnam war, The Best and the Brightest, the late David Halberstam described a meeting between President Lyndon Johnson and retired General Ridgeway, who had saved the day for US and UN forces in the Korean war.

Ridgeway had reservations about America's war in Vietnam, and Johnson asked his advice in 1968 when the commander in Vietnam was the curiously ingenuous General Westmoreland. So Ridgeway went to the White House with Vice President Humphrey to talk about it. Johnson was called to the telephone and then: "Ridgeway turned to Humphrey and said there was one thing about the war that puzzled him. 'What's that?' Humphrey asked. 'I have never known what the mission for General Westmoreland was,' Ridgeway said. "That's a good question,' said Humphrey. 'Ask the President.' But when Johnson returned he immediately got into one of his long monologues about his problems...and the question was never asked."

Neither has it been asked forcefully in Washington or London concerning Afghanistan. The British foreign minister, one David Miliband, said last month that "This is a mission that's been developed with a very clear strategy: above all, to make us safer here because we know these areas of Afghanistan and its neighbour Pakistan are used to launch terrorism around the world. So the mission for us is clear."

But no "clear mission" has been enunciated in military terms.

British and American and other soldiers are being killed in Afghanistan, and their deaths are not making the world a less dangerous place. Further, British soldiers are dying because there are far too few of them to secure the vast area for which they have been given responsibility by the politicians. They are dying because they lack essential equipment, courtesy of a criminally incompetent defence ministry. They are dying because nobody knows how to stop the slaughter.

The smug and ignorant machine politician Miliband, barely comprehensible in his ungrammatical spluttering, declared that the war in Afghanistan "is a security challenge of the highest order. It's based on real facts about murder that's being done [sic] to British citizens both in Britain and around the world from this place...70 percent of the terrorist plots that are pursued in Britain are linked to the badlands between Afghanistan and Pakistan."

(This is the oaf who said in an interview a few days ago that he believed there are times when which terrorism is "justifiable, and yes, there are circumstances in which it is effective." Of course he was talking about terrorist bombers of the African National Congress killing people in South Africa, which atrocities are, to him, different from other terrorist murders.)

But let's look at the Miliband assertion that 70 percent of terrorist plots in Britain are "linked to the badlands".

There have been two recent terrorist attacks in Britain: in London in July 2005 and Glasgow in June 2007. There were also two abortive bombing attempts in the same months.

Of the perpetrators, none came from the "badlands". All were British residents or citizens, and planning took place in Britain.

But British politicians, especially the deeply insipid Prime Minister Gordon Brown, want people to believe their foolish Afghan adventure is essential because, they say, there are still terror plots in progress. Mind you, he conjured up a different percentage figure: according to Brown, 75 percent of plots were laid in Afghanistan or Pakistan. Any advance on 75 percent?

He burbled that "We are trying to deal with the terrorist threat to prevent attacks here [the UK] and elsewhere," and "three quarters of the most serious plots against the UK have links into these [Afghan] mountains."

How many of these plots are there? If there are eight, then six are linked; if there are 60, then 45. But if Brown knows exactly how many - which he must do, otherwise he couldn't state precisely that three quarters of them come from "these mountains" - then why are there no prosecutions? Surely they can't all be bubbling away, with all details known by the spooks and the government, without action being taken? Why not arrest some of these dangerous terrorists?

Brown declared in July that Britain's Afghan war is "a patriotic duty", which is always an attractive fallback position for politicians. It was Doctor Samuel Johnson who said that that "patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel", and he certainly summed up prime minister Brown and his dismal entourage, who, at a loss to explain their shambles in Afghanistan, continue to sacrifice the lives of British soldiers.

What is the mission of foreign troops in Afghanistan?

Good question. But there are no good answers.

The writer can be found on the web at www.beecluff.com

at 12:22 AM

By JEAN MacKENZIE

The dust had barely settled on the Afghan elections before the U.S. government, the United Nations and the European Union were hailing them as a success, commending voters for their heroism and election workers for their relative efficiency.

This would be laughable if it were not such a great shame. The elections were severely marred by violence and widespread fraud, and the results are unlikely to placate a population already frustrated by eight years of mismanagement and corruption.

The haste with which U.N. Special Representative Kai Eide held a press conference to say that Aug. 20 was "a good day for Afghanistan" merely served to underscore the central, if unappetizing, truth about the Afghan poll: It was never meant for the Afghans.

Instead, it was intended to convince voters in New York, London, Paris and Rome that their soldiers and their governments have not been wasting blood and treasure in their unfocused and ill-designed attempts to bring stability to a small, war-torn country in South Asia.

If last Thursday was, indeed, a "good day," one would have to wonder what a bad day looks like. There were three explosions in Kabul by 8:00 a.m., and several more during the voting period.

Reporters calling in to our news bureau from the south were dodging rockets all day - we could hear explosions in the background as they filed their stories. By day's end 14 rockets had fallen on Helmand Province, 17 on Kandahar.

At least 30 people died, and possibly many more. How many we do not know exactly, since the Afghan government imposed a news blackout on reporting violence during the elections.

Turnout was minimal. Even in Kabul, polling stations were half empty. During parliamentary elections in 2005, barely 36 percent of registered voters in the capital went to the polls. What I saw last Thursday fell far below even that modest threshold. Nevertheless, the Independent Election Commission is claiming the turnout was between 40 and 50 percent.

The figure is merely notional. For one thing, in a country where there are no voter rolls, there are not even approximate figures for how many voters there actually are. The I.E.C. can say with confidence that there have been about 17 million voter registration cards issued in Afghanistan since 2004. But many voters have multiple cards, or have lost their old ones and acquired replacements.

Media sources claim that 7 million people voted last Thursday. What they actually mean is that 7 million ballots were cast. This is far from the same thing. Voting requires merely the number of a voter registration card. There are no signatures, no thumbprints. Tribal leaders (who in many cases were administering polling stations) have been collecting and copying voter registration cards for weeks, telling villagers that it was necessary in order to register them for material assistance.

All that was needed on election day was a low voter turnout. If by day's end, for example, 100 people had voted, but there were actually 500 registered cards in a district, the polling center administrator could cast up to 400 ballots for the candidate of his choice.

Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on what is, essentially, a charade. But that is not the real tragedy of these elections. What the international community has done is demonstrate to Afghans that democracy is a sham. Trust in these elections has been very low among Afghans from the outset.

President Hamid Karzai will most likely receive more than 50 percent of the vote in the first round, leaving the international community in a bit of a quandary. "We cannot just let him walk away with it," fumed one foreign diplomat.

But what choice is there? For weeks the E.U., the U.S. Embassy and other international players have been predicting that the vote will go to a second round. The only way this can happen is if the Electoral Complaints Commission disallows enough votes to bring Mr. Karzai under 50 percent.

Then there will be a runoff, most likely between Mr. Karzai and his main rival, former Foreign Minister Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, in early October. And then Mr. Karzai will win, since Mr. Abdullah is unlikely to appeal to a majority of the voters, given his mixed ethnicity and Northern Alliance background.

"That will look more like democracy, won't it?" said one international observer.

Over the next three weeks or so, the Electoral Complaints Commission will vet complaints and make recommendations. Only then will we know what happens in Act Two.

"No person wants to live in a society where the rule of law gives way to the rule of brutality and bribery. That is not democracy, that is tyranny, even if occasionally you sprinkle an election in there," President Barack Obama said.

He was not discussing Afghanistan, of course: He was speaking to the Parliament of Ghana. But his words ring just as true in Kabul.

Jean MacKenzie is the director of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting in Afghanistan, and the Kabul correspondent for GlobalPost.com

at 12:22 AM

Ulan Bator: Russia and the US are planning creation of a missile monitoring centre, possibly in Moscow, to avoid accidents or misunderstandings on missile launches, Russia's top general said on Wednesday.

"Work is being done on making a joint control post to ensure control of missile launches and to report any unauthorised launches," General Nikolai Makarov said in Mongolia where President Dmitry Medvedev was visiting.

Russia strongly opposes US plans to install a new missile shield in eastern Europe. The administration of President Barack Obama says it is reviewing those plans and wants to ease Moscow's security concerns.

Moscow says the planned US missile shield threatens Russian security. Washington says this is not the intent of its system, which is designed instead to counter growing missile threats from "rogue states," Iran in particular.

The two sides have in recent years explored various confidence-building ideas, including incorporating a Russian radar site in Azerbaijan into the US system and giving Russian personnel access to US missile defence sites.

Makarov said talks on establishing a joint Russia-US missile launch monitoring facility was not new.

Such a centre would permit Moscow and Washington to communicate instantly in the event of an unexpected missile launch and would "protect our countries from a possible accident situation that could arise" in this regard, he said.

Bureau Report

at 12:22 AM

Washington, 26 August (WashingtonTV)-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US Middle East envoy George Mitchell emerged from a four-hour meeting in London on Wednesday, agreeing that "meaningful" talks must start with Palestinians.

George Mitchell and Benjamin Netanyahu

A joint statement characterized the meeting as "good", but made no mention of the thorny issue of Israeli settlements, reports the Jerusalem Post.

The Obama administration has pressed Israel to freeze all settlement activity, as part of Washington's efforts to kick-start the stalled peace process. Netanyahu has said he would limit construction to what is necessary to meet growing population needs in existing communities, reports the Bloomberg news network.

It was agreed that Israeli officials would travel to the United States next week for further meetings with Mitchell and his staff.

"The prime minister and George Mitchell agreed that there is a need to begin meaningful negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians in order to move towards a regional peace agreement," the statement said, according to AFP.

The two men also agreed "that all sides should take practical steps to advance peace."

Speaking alongside Mitchell before their meeting, Netanyahu said he hoped peace negotiations would resume "shortly", reports the Jerusalem Post.

Palestinian officials said today that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was willing to meet Netanyahu on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly session next month.

The officials, who spoke to the Jerusalem Post on the condition of anonymity, said that the meeting would be a chance to talk, but would not amount to negotiations. Abbas has refused to resume peace talks until Israel halts all settlement activity.

Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Gabriela Shalev, also said today that a three-way meeting between US, Israeli and Palestinian leaders on the sidelines of the General Assembly session was "a possibility".

Briefing reporters traveling with him, Netanyahu said that the real obstacle to peace was not the settlements, but the Palestinian refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, reports Bloomberg news.

On Thursday, Netanyahu will meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin, where he is expected to discuss sanctions against Iran.

at 12:22 AM

Jennifer Andrew

Despite attempts to impose democracy in Afghanistan the very approach appears to be undermining U.S. counterinsurgency. According to BBC election watch, As it happened: Afghan election 2009, the elections were marred by widespread and deadly Taliban attacks, patchy turn-out and claims of fraud. It is learned, through Nader Naderi, Director, monitoring organization of Free and Fair Elections in Afghanistan (FEFA) that the Taliban had first threatened and later actually amputated ink-stained fingers; in the countryside they set up roadblocks to keep people from getting into polling stations; in major towns they launched bomb and rocket attacks to keep people homebound. In many areas no one dared to designate polling stations for women.

Envisioned to stimulate necessary mechanism of governance required to hold 'something of Afghanistan' accountable for the aid and assistance injected in the theatre of doom, the ongoing presidential elections have yielded fierce reaction from the leading Pushtoon population. Taliban and their nationalist allies, who constitute majority of the Pushtoons have rejected the election as a fraud concocted to validate prolonged stay by the 'foreign occupiers'. They would only participate in the elections when US and NATO troops withdraw. Moreover, these elections have obliged Karzai to shed all that dignifies by enforcing bills that legalize marital rapes and allow husbands to starve their wives on their refusal to have sex; teaming up with notorious drug/warlords - all to fortify his chances of winning. Clearly this doesn't look quite like the investment the American and British taxpayers had in mind and lies far beyond the premise of receiving fresh body bags every week in return for enormous aid packages.

Read Complete Article : http://jenniferandrew6.newsvine.com/_news/2009/08/28/3200876-afghan-democracy-and-coin

at 12:21 AM

By Amjed Jaaved

Foreign media continues to express doubts about security and safety of Pakistan's nuclear materials. It is suggested that terrorists may steal radioactive material to fabricate a 'dirty bomb', a euphemism for a radiological-dispersal device. It is claimed that facilities housing the nuclear and radiological material, including spent-fuel storage and fuel-cycle facilities, are an easy prey for the terrorists or religious extremists in Pakistan.

Dr Shaun Gregory, in his article 'The terrorist threat to Pakistan's nuclear weapons', went as far as to claim that three attacks on Pakistan's nuclear facilities have already taken place: one on nuclear-missile-storage facility at Sargodha (November 1, 2007), the second on Pakistan's Nuclear Air Base at Kamra (December 10, 2007), and the third on Wah Armament Complex (August 20, 2008). Shaun's article appeared in CTC Sentinel (July 2009 edition, vol 2, issue 7). The content, tone and tenor of his story was, understandably, orchestrated in pro-Israel Canadian newspaper National Post (July 18, 2009), the Times of India (August 11, 2009), and aired on Indian channel 'Times Now' orchestrated the story on August 11, 2009. The purpose was to bring into limelight 'vulnerability' of Pakistan's nuclear sites and stores.

The truth about the attacks is that they are all figments of rotten imagination. The attack in Sargodha was on PAF staff bus, and the one at Kamra was on a school-children's bus. The Wah attack was on labourers of the factory. For one thing, the factory does not produce nuclear armaments.

Professor Shaun Gregory had earlier also published a malicious report titled "Security of Nuclear Weapons". It contends that those guarding about 120 nuclear weapon sites, mostly in northern and western parts of Pakistan, have fragmented loyalties. As such, they may aid or abet terrorists' attacks on or theft of nuclear materials from the facilities. Shaun echoes 'concern', through baseless, expressed earlier by Frederick W Kegan and Michael O'Hanlen in their 'research paper' "Securing the Bomb". The paper suggests that, in case of take-over of Pakistan by religious extremists (Taliban, al-Qaeda, et al.), the country's nuclear material should be seized and stashed in some 'safe' place like New Mexico (USA).

Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins, authors of The Nuclear Jihadist, also suggest that Pakistan's A-bombs may fall into hands of Osama Bin Laden who may use it against the West. Harvard professor Matthew Bunn says, he would not live either in New York or Washington for possibility of a nuclear attack.

Pakistan's critics, mysteriously, fail to mention that there has been no security lapse in or theft of radioactive material from any of Pakistan's nuclear establishments. It is worth mentioning that Pakistan is a party to the United Nations' Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Materials. The steps taken by Pakistan to safeguard its nuclear assets conform to international standards.

Abdul Mannan, in his paper titled "Preventing Nuclear Terrorism in Pakistan: Sabotage of a Spent Fuel Cask or a Commercial Irradiation Source in Transport", has analysed various ways in which acts of nuclear terrorism could occur in Pakistan (quoted in "Pakistan's Nuclear Future: Worries beyond War"). He has fairly reviewed Pakistan's vulnerability to nuclear terrorism through hypothetical case studies. He concludes that the threat of nuclear terrorism in Pakistan is a figment of imagination, rather than a real possibility.

There are millions of radioactive sources used worldwide in various applications. Only a few thousand sources, including Co-60, Cs-137, Ir-192, Sr-90, Am-241, Cf-252, Pu-238, and RA-226 are considered a security risk. The Pakistan Nuclear Regulatory Authority (PNRA) has enforced a mechanism of strict measures for administrative and engineering control over radioactive sources from cradle to grave. It conducts periodic inspections and physical verifications to ensure security of the sources. The Authority has initiated a Five-Year National Nuclear-Safety-and-Security-Action Plan to establish a more robust nuclear-security regime. It has established a training centre and an emergency-coordination centre, besides deploying radiation-detection-equipment at each point of nuclear-material entry in Pakistan, supplemented by vehicle/pedestrian portal monitoring equipment where needed.

Fixed detectors have been installed at airports, besides carrying out random inspection of personnel luggage. All nuclear materials are under strict regulatory control right from import until their disposal.

The 'research work' by well-known scholars reflects visceral hatred against Pakistan. The findings in fresh 'magnum opuses' are a re-hash or amalgam of the presumptions and pretensions in earlier-published 'studies'. Will the Western press stop churning out reports about vulnerability of nuclear Pakistan? It is time that the West deflected its attention to India where movements of nuclear materials, under 123 expansion plan, would take place between nuclear-power plants sprawling across different states.

. The writer has been contributing free-lance, at home and abroad, for the past 37 years.

at 3:04 AM

JERUSALEM - Israeli ultra-nationalist Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said on Monday that he wanted to impose restrictions on those wishing to become career diplomats, a move that would bar most Israeli Arabs.

Avigdor Lieberman

"All those who wish to join the foreign ministry's diplomatic training programme must serve in the army or perform the equivalent civil service," a senior official quoted Lieberman as saying during a meeting at the ministry.

The move would effectively bar most Israeli Arabs, along with ultra-Orthodox Jews, from becoming foreign ministry employees as they do not perform Israel's mandatory military service and few serve in civil service.

Lieberman vowed to change legislation if needed to enact the measure, as current Israeli law guarantees all citizens equal access to civil service branches.

The one-time bouncer and immigrant from the Soviet Union is known for his anti-Arab diatribes that have earned him the label of "racist" from critics.

at 3:04 AM

by Jahanzaib

The 'Reko Dik Copper-gold project' is expected to produce 0.3 million tons of copper annually through indigenous physical and human capabilities. However, this is subject to entering into viable agreement between the mining company, federal government and Balochistan government.

The Duddar lead-zinc deposits in Balochistan being developed by Pakistan Mineral Development Corporation (PMDC) have come into production to produce 100,000 tons of zinc concentrates and 33,000 tons of lead concentrates for export.

Official reports reveal that the mineral sector is expected to grow by two per cent in the fiscal year, beginning next month with an allocation of Rs580 million earmarked by the Planning Commission in its annual plan.

The government has decided to launch three projects during the coming fiscal year which include ground follow-up of aeromagnetic anomalies in Chagai district, accelerated Geological Mapping and Geochemical exploration of the out-crop area of Pakistan, and up-gradation and strengthening of Geo-sciences Advance Research Laboratories of Geological Survey of Pakistan (GSP).

The Thar coal field containing 175 billion tons of good quality lignite, on completion, would be used for power generation and gasification.

Non-precious minerals are also to be fully utilized, such as producing gypsum plaster from native deposits to partially replace cement in the housing sector, as well as to reclaim saline soils and treat of low quality tube-well water using gypsum products.

Phosphate reserves in NWFP, evaluated by spending colossal amounts of money and tireless efforts by international organizations and national institutions, would be exploited to set up phosphatic fertilizer industries.

Dimension stones, precious and semi precious stones industries and other mineral based industries would be developed to meet the ever increasing demand of various sectors of economy.

The mineral potential of the country recognized to be excellent but the sector remains poorly developed due to the political and security situation, poor research and development, infra-structure and budgetary constraints. The contribution to GNP has therefore remained locked at 0.5 per cent to one per cent over the last several decades.