Drama of Succession - Pakistan People’s Party re: Leadenwinter

Your article stated the problems well, but then lost focus when it swooned over the military's role in Pakistan.

That one lapse of reason, a failure to judge the military on past its performance and but only on its future intentions, was the Achilles' Heel of your article. An objective analysis should judge the situation on the basis of a documented past record and from that record, to infer a conclusion. Your article clearly showcased the problems/issues in Pakistan, but then again; did what was done in the past - state the problem but never offer a probable solution. :)

Secondly, analysis of this sort generally contains an element of a solution embedded within the article, which has a realistic probability of happening, but your article did not have that element and as a result, came across as stilted and one of grandstanding.

Ciao

American Muslims and Presidential Elections 2008 Re: hamidm# 62

I am supporting McCain also and I think that if Hillary is nominated, she has enough of a "hate bank" amongst conversatives that they will likely support McCain despite his not being a republican wunderkind.

Ciao

Drama of Succession - Pakistan People’s Party re: Leadenwinter

I read your article on your ilog. I will respond to them, when I have some time.

Re: Masadi

I am not coming around to anything. My comment was based on the past evidence and besides, the civilian governments could only be blamed if they had ever governed Pakistan without being ruled themselves. Since 1958, most of our civilian government have been bonzai creations of the military itself.

America usually gets it right when it has used up all the alternatives. I still love to quote the Declaration of Independence and I still get misty eyed over the memories of Omaha Beach. I have not changed; the events in my country are sad and tragic and that is where the comparsion ends.

Ciao

Drama of Succession - Pakistan People’s Party re: Leadenwinter

Till civilian government are allowed in Pakistan and really allowed to govern without limitations, we can not and should not pass judgements on them.

Remember - a bad but a free government is always better than an oppressive, but efficient government.

On the other hand, the military has ruled Pakistan for a better part of its history and what does it have to show for itself?

As to 9/11, I rather prefer to have the choice to die than be told that I must die. But you will not understand that because you do not understand what freedom of choice means.

Ciao

Taliban, Pashtoons and Pakistan Re: HP

You said, and I quote:

"One more thing, only the western educated people have the ability to run the modern states. When barely educated try to run the country, they end up giving their independence and their resources to others fairly quickly. The Taliban could not run Afghanistan. The Pakistani Taliban and the Madrassah educated maulvi and their fellow traveler Jihadi will not be able to run the Tribal areas too."

Agreed!

That is the argument; can Taliban govern Pakistan? The politics of FATA - tribal politics - is different from Pakistani politics and it is much more easy to conguer than govern. Governance means making compromises and accepting the interests of all the stakeholders and the Pakistani society is much more varied than the simplicity of the Afghan tribal bonds, which held and allowed the rule by Taliban, which was a cocktail of Islam, feudalism and tribal loyalities.

Pakistan is a feudal society and not a tribal society per se and it may be conservative, but it is not regressive as the tribal lands in their customs.

Would be interested in hearing more on this topic from you if you have the time and interest...

Ciao

Afghanistan - A Strategic Analysis re: fuzair # 457

Fuzair, you are very correct in your hypothesis for a probable German victory over the Russians.

Operation Barbarossa was scheduled for early spring 1941. The delay resulted from the fact that Hitler's ally, Mussolini, decided to invade Albania and got bogged down there and the Germans had to come to his rescue. In the process of subjugating the Balkans, the Wehrmacht lost critical time and had to re-inventory its losses and Barbarossa was pushed back to early summer.

Secondly; Hitler made a mess of the operational schedules of the German Army. When the Germans were on the outskirts of Moscow, Hitler ordered that the capture of the Baku oil fields was the primary target and not Moscow and then changed his mind again and said Moscow was the prime target. In the process, the German advance was fragmented as the Wehrmacht was send on a goose chase and the Red Army had the opportunity to bring up reinforcements from the east; and by the time the Germans did get close to Moscow, again, the weather had turned against them and first snow had started to fall - making the roads impassable for the armor and the Soviets counter-attacked the Germans.

There is a possibility that had Hitler not over ruled the professional advice of his generals and diverted the spearhead of the German advance southwards, towards Baku, the Germans might have entered Moscow by late October and the war might have had a different result.

The German military, from a study of its internal memos, had warned Hitler that German army was still in a state of rearming and would not be fully operational, for war, till 1942 or 1943. The German Navy had said that same that the German naval rearmament program was still in the process and the German Navy need till 1944 or 1945 before it could support the army; only the Luftwaffe had attained war readiness status (courtsey of the Spanish Civil War) and the professional military advice to Hitler was to delay the onset of the war till mid-1940s.

Ciao
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Afghanistan - A Strategic Analysis Read General Franz Haldler's War Diary in which he details the preparation for the opening of Operation Barbarossa.

The vast bulk of the Wehrmacht was committed to the fight against Russia. The Eastern Front was the most crucial front of the Second World War and it was at Stalingrad that the German Army suffered its first loss in the war.

It was on the Eastern Front that the flower of the German Army was totally destroyed; a loss from which the Wehrmacht never recovered.

Ciao

US Conspiracy to Destablize Pakistan? re: tahmed32

The inspiration, in a real and practical sense, if there was one, behind the United States Declaration of Independence and its' constitution were the acts of the English Parliament passed to limit the monarchy's power vis-a-vis the parliament.

Specifically; The Act of Habeus Corpus; the Petition of Rights; The Grand Remonstrance; the Act of Settlement; the Act of Supremacy and others, which clearly established and gave legislative power to parliament over the monarchy, including the power of taxation. These laws, also acted as the precedents upon which the colonial legistures of the thirteen American colonies operated, which later gave way to the arguments of state versus federal rights, once the British started to by-pass the colonial legislatures and started to govern the colonies by a parliamentary fiat.

The American distrust of a strong monarchy-federal government was based on their experiences under the British rule; a British parliament dominated by Lord North, the prime minister at the time, who wanted to use the colonies as markets for Britain's growing mercantalist empire.

Ciao

US Conspiracy to Destablize Pakistan? Re: tahmed32 # 505

I was not defending the Aztecs. I agree, the Aztecs were no boy scouts either, but I was merely replying to nkg's rather blanket admiration of the Europeans in his post # 487.

As to the Puritans, please keep in mind that the Puritans were the more exterme members of the protestants in England and were rabidly anti-Catholic and they were basically expelled from England by James I, when he succeded Elizabeth I as the king of England in 1601. The Puritans, were no angels either and their acts, as seen in the Salem Witch trials, were not enlightened but rather were regressive and barbaric. The Mayflower Compact and John Winthrophe's wish to create the "city on the hill" were religiously motivated and the Mayflower Compact did not offer the gurantees normally associated with constitutional rights and thus, should not be identified as one.

The American Declaration of Independence was more a result of the ideals of the Enlightenment and the American constitution was more inspired by the works of a Frenchman named Montesquieu (sp?) and his book; "The Spirit of Laws", which basically argued for a seperation of powers between the seperate branches of government.

The rest of your post on Pakistan is well reasoned and I agree, with its conclusions and hopes for Pakistan' future.

Ciao

US Conspiracy to Destablize Pakistan? Re: nkg # 487

Hernan Cortes was a plunder and a looter, whose expedition to South America was self-financed, mostly, in search for personal glory. The much touted Age of Exploration's motto was "God, Gold, Glory" and in this, God was an after thought. The so-called "explorers" were opportunists, whose idea of exploration was a means to enrich themselves and they caused more harm to the cultures they came into contact with than they benefitted them.

Pizzaro practiced genocide and between the introduction of European diseases (small-pox, measles and common cold), alcohol and mass murder, the explorers from Spain annihilated entire communities of Aztecs and Mayans. The Spanish rule of their South American and Caribbean possesions was marked by a rule of racial prejudice, religious intolerance and social apartheid.

The explorers from Portugal were no different. The struggle for the control of the spice trade, which brought the Portugese to India and then towards the Far East, was marked by acts of political terror, such as collective punishment for Muslim and Hindu traders, who did not trade with them. The Portugese committed acts against the local populations that Nazi doctors at Auschwitz would have balked at from doing!

The Portugese, under Prince Henry the Navigator went to Africa in search of gold, but they did not find gold and instead they brought a few captured Africans back to Lisbon and sold them. The sale was so profitable, that they would start trading in "black gold" and in the process, institutionalized slavery and made Lisbon the center of European slave trade.

The Portugese and the Dutch provided weapons to the Japanese warlords, which fuelled the Japanese civil war in the late 1500s and early 1600s, because they were fighting each other over the control of the spice trade and were using the Japanese to fight their proxy wars; the Japanese died and the European profited. The introduction of European weaponary into Japan, increased the lethality of Japanese civil wars to such an extent that when Tokoguwa established his shogunate in the 1600s, he killed all the Europeans in Japan in order to secure the peace.

Francis Drake was a thief and pirate, who stole gold from Spanish main and gave it to Elizabeth, and which paid for England's Golden Age. The stolen Spanish gold was sold in Amsterdam, and this not only devauled the price of gold in Europe, but caused a massive inflation in Spain and the first economic recession in Europe.

As to the European educational institutions; they were only for the Europeans. European educational institutions in Africa, for example, were exclusively for Europeans and so were the European hospitals and the roads build by the Europeans were not open for the Africans to travel upon and the best agricultural lands were taken from the Africans and converted into tea and coffee plantations to feed the needs of the commerical capitalism in Europe.

Historic truths should not be gloried and though, I am against the ideas of politically correct history; the reality is that the European contact with the outside world was a devasting experience for the non-European world. The Congress of Berlin, in 1878, called the "scramble for Africa" drew the lines on the map of Africa in the name of colonization, which tore asunder African communites and were/are responsible for the present day problems in Africa.

The peace treaty of Versailles in 1919, based on the understanding of the Skyes-Picot pact, established the present-day Middle East and what was settled between two bureaucrats in a Cairo hotel room in 1916, would be responsible for the killing of millions not yet born!

I have read my history, as you adviced, but I do not agree with you and your version of history. :)

Ciao

Pakistan\'s Flawed and Feudal Princess re: Zeemax

I have seen the footage, but it was blurred. Judging from it, though, the pistol looks like a 9mm.

Ciao

Pakistan\'s Flawed and Feudal Princess http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article3177691.ece

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Pakistan\'s Flawed and Feudal Princess re: Arjun # 106

I agree, with you. The Colt .45 1911 was designed as the USA's (United States' Army) personal side arm for close quarter defense and was intended to put down a man cold at short ranges.

One of my college buddies was a cop and we once went plunking at watermelons with a .45 and there was no small hole in the watermelon after shooting it....there was no watermelon period!

Same result, with a rifle. Having fired rifles at ranges in the USA, the impact of a high velocity projectile will not leave a neat entry or exist would but would cause massive trauma to human tissue.

I remember a conversation with a US Army Ranger in which he explained how a Japanese soldier was cut into half by a volley of rifle fire. The rifle, I believe was the standard US Army issue - Garand.

If any one is interested in the issue, I would recommend that you Google case studies of doctors, who treated high velocity rifle fire victims during the conflict in Ireland to see what are the characteristics of a rifle wound.

Ciao

Daughter of the Beast: The General\'s New Clothes re: Asadi # 31

Asadi, your posts have nothing to do with comprehension, but interpretation. To be honest with you, since your posts towards intactors who have disagreed with you have been generally abusive and insulting, it makes sense to ask you what you mean. :)

Secondly, please review your sources. Pre-1789 industrialization in France was limited and did not really take hold till the time of Napoleon III.

Thirdly; I still restate that the bourgeoise in the city were more crucial in the revolution than the artisans and serfs, because if you check your sources, you will know it was the educated bourgeoise in the National Assembly that framed the contexts of the revolution and not the serfs in the fields and also that the French Revolution was an urban based event before it spread to the countryside and for most part, the power remained in Paris. That is why I had said that the artisans and the serfs did not benefit from revolution; both before or after it.

I think your assessment is fair that the bourgeoise used the revolution for their own interests, but at the same time, self-interest in politics and not social alturism generally is the motivating influence.

Regarding the Americans;

Non-appeasement with the Americans implies an ability to resist the American pressures to conform with the status quo and though in theory, it may sound nice and noble; in reality it is not so easy.

No sir, the question asking you to define the implementation of your ideas is not a bureaucratic non-sense because if you do not have an implementing plan, for your theories/ideas, they will remain as mere theories. Your ideas are good and if they are not implemented in policy, they will only remain as slogans and that is why a process of implementing them is important.

Asadi, if there is any excuse mongering, it is by you because you state these ideas will help but offer no practical means on how they should be made into realistic policies. What you have is slogans/ideas and slogans/ideas have not benefited Pakistan in the last 60 years.

I am not interested in slogan mongering, but realistic policy options and we can disagree on the policy choices and that is only fair, but we need policies that work and not wishful slogans. :)

I have a few deadlines in the works, so I will leave this board and maybe, we can pick up this argument somewhere else. :)

Best Wishes!

Ciao

Daughter of the Beast: The General\'s New Clothes re: Asadi # 27

Asadi wrote, "I know exactly what you meant because this was no firsthand invention of yours but a copying from what others have already written."

(lol)

Tell me, how can you be so sure that you know exactly what I meant or are you assuming again? (lol)

Minor point of correction. The bourgeoise did lay the founditions of the French industrialism, but after the Napoleonic period; they created French industrialism in the post-1815. In pre-1789 France, the primary industry of France was agriculture and there was hardly any industries in France and in fact, the Industrial Revolution had recently started in England, circa 1750s and would not reach France till after 1815. French industrial growth of hindered by the European wars from 1791 to 1815.

Second point; the Third Estate's most important group was the bourgeoise and not the peasants/serfs because the French Revolution was an urban event before it became common in the countrysides of France. Granted, the peasants/serfs did constitute the majority of the population, but they never had any political, or economic powers even before the revolution or after it.

Third point; I agree that Pakistani politics without its military influence cannot be understood in its totality.

Fourth point and a point of clarification.

If non-appeasement to United States' policies is the answer, as you state, then explain by what means the United States' policies can be resisted?

Provide the explantion on how the Pakistan will realize the needs of its population, and please define those needs so that we "are on the same page" and explain how it will break free from the "oppressive" world system?

Do you visualize the creation of alternative world system and if so, please explain this system and explain, why you think it has a better chance of success than the present system?

Explain your solution to the problem in detail.

Ciao

Daughter of the Beast: The General\'s New Clothes re: zeemax # 28

Do you remember the name of the Wali of Swat, who agreed to join Pakistan in 1969?

Was it Prince Aurganzeb?

Ciao