Banner Advertiser

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

[ALOCHONA] Osama Bin Laden's family tree



Osama Bin Laden's family tree

Since the US raid on Osama Bin Laden's compound in Pakistan on 2 May, three of his wives and an unspecified number of his children have been detained by Pakistani authorities. This graphic highlights some details about the complex family network and its suspected links with al-Qaeda.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-13358730


__._,_.___


[Disclaimer: ALOCHONA Management is not liable for information contained in this message. The author takes full responsibility.]
To unsubscribe/subscribe, send request to alochona-owner@egroups.com




Your email settings: Individual Email|Traditional
Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required)
Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch to Fully Featured
Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe

__,_._,___

[ALOCHONA] Is the Arab Spring a Black Swan?



Is the Arab Spring a Black Swan?

by Richard Falk

Understanding the Western response to the Arab Spring, a colorful designation of the democratizing movements of varying character that have rocked the foundations of the Arab world, is an ongoing process.  These movements are also seen as posing possibly serious threats to the structure of economic and strategic interests associated with long standing American and European influence in the region.  On the surface, after some obvious hesitation, even ambivalence, the liberal democratic governments of the West, headed by the United States, declared their support for the Arab Spring, and even mounted a 'humanitarian intervention' (disguised as a No Fly Zone to protect the Libyan civilian population so as to discourage Russian and Chinese vetoes in the UN Security Council) to help the rebels prevail in their civil war against the Qaddafi regime. Everywhere in the region the political outcome of these unfinished uprisings remain shrouded in multiple doubts.

Having just visited Egypt for a week I came away with this dual sense that the revolutionary dynamics have produced remarkable results that form a glorious chapter of Egyptian history, but also that there are a variety of dark forces that are working under the radar to contain if not reverse this exhilarating democratizing momentum. In the foreground was the widespread acknowledgement by all sectors of public opinion in Cairo that the more reflective governing policy is of popular sentiments the more likely is a definite adjustment of diplomatic stance with regard to the Israel/Palestine conflict. This stance is already evident in the opening of the Rafah Crossing and in the robust Egyptian encouragement of Palestine Authority/Hamas reconciliation.

Looking from outside, I encountered one brief insight into real American thinking about the Arab Spring that was for me particularly revealing. It was published in the comment section of the May/June 2011 online website of Foreign Affairs, the most influential voice on foreign policy in the United States. It was written by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Mark Blyth, and opened with this rather startling sentence: "The upheavals in the Middle East had much in common with the recent financial crisis: both were plausible worst-case scenarios whose probability was dramatically underestimated." What an odd comparison! The equivalence was premised on the negative character of both occurrences, which led the authors to identify the emancipatory movements in the Middle East with the perjorative label of "upheavals," thereby ignoring the manifest revolutionary and reformist challenges being directed at the established repressive political order. At their worst, these movements could be downgraded to 'uprisings,' rather than the image of 'upheavals' that mainly suggests purposeless disorder.

The most remarkable aspect, by far, of the Taleb/Blyth comment was to treat these Middle Eastern events as illustrative of unanticipated "worst-case scenarios." Worst-case? Such a perception only makes sense if it unintentionally reflects the undisclosed underlying strategic consensus that the Arab Winter was far better for the West than the Arab Spring. In effect, that authoritarian government in the region was a necessary correlate of Western grand strategy long built around petro-politics, and more recently extended to the containment of political Islam and sustaining Israeli regional security goals. Netanyahu and other political leaders in Israel acknowledged as much by their outspoken admission that they were sorry to see the Mubarak regime collapse.

Nissam Nicholas Taleb is a financial risk analyst who made a wider stir when he published his book Black Swan a couple of years ago. It has as its central and compelling thesis that there is a pervasive tendency for history to be shaped by unpredicted events, and especially by occurrences that have not taken place in the past. His vivid central metaphor is the assumption that all swans are white because no other color had been seen until the black swan variety was discovered in Australia. This is an interesting alternative approach to what I have been calling 'the politics of impossibility,' a phrase meant to suggest that the impossible repeatedly happens, making future studies based on past trends and statistical projections almost certain to be wrong.

I am not contesting the idea that implausible happenings should be taken into far greater account when contemplating the future. What I am remarking critically upon is the bland classification of the Arab Spring as 'a worst-case scenario,' and the fact that such a comment could survive scrutiny from the normally very adept gatekeepers at Foreign Affairs. Is it to be explained as an accidental political oversight or more darkly as a revelation of the mindset so ingrained within the American foreign policy establishment as to be unnoticeable? If the latter, then, it is not surprising that such a phrasing would not even be noticed because it was accurately expressive of the private discourse among foreign policy elites on the impact of these developments. Supportive of this latter interpretation is the fact that this Black Swan comment has remained featured on the Foreign Affairs website.

It is possible that I am exaggerating a flourish that is nothing more than a slip of the pen! At the very least, however, it should serve as a reminder, if not a warning, that there is not only pro-democracy cheering going on in the Washington situation rooms that shape the foreign policy of Western countries, especially the United States, with respect to what to hope for in the Middle East. As the Chinese supposedly believe: "two persons sleep in the same bed but they have different dreams."


Richard Falk is an international law and international relations scholar who taught at Princeton University for forty years. Since 2002 he has lived in Santa Barbara, California, and taught at the local campus of the University of California in Global and International Studies and since 2005 chaired the Board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. Read more articles by Richard Falk.
http://richardfalk.wordpress.com



__._,_.___


[Disclaimer: ALOCHONA Management is not liable for information contained in this message. The author takes full responsibility.]
To unsubscribe/subscribe, send request to alochona-owner@egroups.com




Your email settings: Individual Email|Traditional
Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required)
Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch to Fully Featured
Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe

__,_._,___

[ALOCHONA] Anwar Hossain Manzu on election prospects of AL



Anwar Hossain Manzu on election prospects of AL


http://www.bd-pratidin.com/?view=details&type=gold&data=Leather&pub_no=374&cat_id=1&menu_id=1&news_type_id=1&index=1


__._,_.___


[Disclaimer: ALOCHONA Management is not liable for information contained in this message. The author takes full responsibility.]
To unsubscribe/subscribe, send request to alochona-owner@egroups.com




Your email settings: Individual Email|Traditional
Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required)
Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch to Fully Featured
Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe

__,_._,___

[ALOCHONA] Supreme Court on CTG:A case of confusion confounded



Supreme Court on CTG:A case of confusion confounded

A seven-member Appellate Division bench of the Supreme Court has ruled that the constitutional provision of a caretaker government (CTG) is illegal. In a judgment delivered yesterday on a petition filed in January 2000, the apex court declared the 13th amendment void and ultra vires of the constitution. More intriguingly, the court has observed that the next two parliamentary elections can be held under caretaker administrations. It has also made the point that Parliament may amend the constitution to exclude the provision of retired chief justices or judges of the Appellate Division taking over as heads of caretaker governments.

We are, to say the least, perplexed by the judgement because we are not quite sure what it says specifically. If the provision of a caretaker government is now deemed to be illegal, there can be no difficulty in understanding what the Supreme Court is saying. However, for the court to suggest at the same time that the next two elections, scheduled for 2013 and 2018, can be supervised by caretaker regimes in order to 'avoid chaos' only confounds the issue. At a time when various ideas are being mooted about the next caretaker government and politicians as well as civil society are engaged in a debate about the probable nature of it, the Supreme Court verdict only adds to the confusion. How can a provision deemed illegal be permitted to continue for two more elections? What is the guarantee that the elections conducted under the caretaker system in 2013 and 2018 will not become questionable under the law? Additionally, the SC view on judges in the caretaker system leaves quite a few questions to be answered.

We cannot but state the obvious here. In a political climate where politicians have always distrusted one another on the matter of elections, the caretaker system has ensured locally and globally credible free and fair elections in the country. The four caretaker governments we have had since 1991 are thus deserving of credit. An aberration was of course the lengthy tenure of the last such government. To ensure, however, that the experience is not repeated, the Supreme Court, rather than opening up a whole new controversy with its latest mixed-bag pronouncement, could simply have put a watertight cap on the caretaker system being in place for no more than ninety days.

http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=185081
http://amardeshonline.com/pages/details/2011/05/12/80950
http://amardeshonline.com/pages/details/2011/05/12/80964
http://www.bd-pratidin.com/?view=details&type=gold&data=Soccer&pub_no=374&cat_id=1&menu_id=1&news_type_id=1&index=2
http://www.bd-pratidin.com/?view=details&type=gold&data=Soccer&pub_no=374&cat_id=1&menu_id=1&news_type_id=1&index=4
http://jugantor.us/enews/issue/2011/05/12/news0548.htm




__._,_.___


[Disclaimer: ALOCHONA Management is not liable for information contained in this message. The author takes full responsibility.]
To unsubscribe/subscribe, send request to alochona-owner@egroups.com




Your email settings: Individual Email|Traditional
Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required)
Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch to Fully Featured
Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe

__,_._,___

[ALOCHONA] Pakistan: Destabilization and invasion long planned



Pakistan: Destabilization and invasion long planned


by Tony Cartalucci


Bangkok, Thailand May 11, 2011 - In a 2007 article from the London Guardian titled, "Bush handed blueprint to seize Pakistan's nuclear arsenal," it is stated that fears of destabilization inside Pakistan might prompt the United States to occupy Islamabad and the provinces of Punjab, Sindh, and Baluchistan in an attempt to secure Pakistan's nuclear warheads. Behind this report is Fredrick Kagan, brother of the equally sloven Robert Kagan of the Foreign Policy Initiative, yet another contrived, corporate fueled warmongering think-tank.

Fredrick Kagan sits within the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). AEI's board of trustees represents a wide variety of corporate-financier interests including those of the notorious Carlyle Group, State Farm, American Express, and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co (also of the CFR). War criminal Dick Cheney also acts as a trustee. Joining Kagan as members of AEI's "research staff" are warmongers Newt Gingrich, John Bolton, Richard Perle, John Yoo, and Paul Wolfowitz.

While the sense of self-importance these degenerates shower upon themselves may seem comical, with titles like "senior fellow" and "resident scholar," the fact that their "policy research" usually becomes corporate subsidized "policy reality" and subsequently the American people's unending nightmare, is enough reason to keep tabs on them. For instance Fredrick Kagan was supposedly the architect behind the US troop surge in Iraq. And while we may kid ourselves that with Obama taking office the agenda of these supposed Neo-Conservatives is sidelined, Paul Wolfowitz' plan to overthrow the nations of the Middle East, now being fully executed with US-funded revolutions, probably couldn't have been done without the veil of "left-cover."

Kagan's report regarding Pakistan's partial occupation and the seizure of its nuclear arsenal is founded on what may first appear to be a reasonable concern; the fear of Pakistan collapsing and its nuclear arsenal falling into the wrong hands. According to Kagan's narrative, Islamic extremists seizing Pakistan's nuclear arsenal pose as much a threat today as "Soviet tanks" once did.

It's not terrorists, it's China

What Kagan leaves out is the very source of this destabilization and America's overall grand strategy in the region. America's continued presence in Afghanistan as well as its increasingly aggressive "creep" over the Afghan-Pakistani border has been justified under the ambiguous and omnipresent threat of "terrorism." In reality, the true goal is to contain the rise of China and other emerging economies using the pretense of "terrorism." Destabilization via foreign-funded ethnic insurgencies, regime change via foreign-funded sedition, and a regional strategy of tension between power brokers in Beijing, New Delhi, and Islamabad have for years attempted to keep in check not just China and Pakistan's rise, but India's as well.

This is not merely speculative conjecture. China itself has recently accused the United States of directly attempting to destabilize their nation as well as using the pretense of "terrorism" as a means to hobble China's growing influence. In an April 2011 Reuters report, it was stated that "a senior domestic security official, Chen Jiping, warned that "hostile Western forces" -- alarmed by the country's rise -- were marshalling human rights issues to attack Party control." Compounding China's accusations are open admissions by the US State Department itself declaring that tens of millions will be spent to help activists circumvent China's security networks in an effort to undermine Beijing. This comes after it has been revealed that the entire "Arab Spring" was US-funded.

The issue of Pakistan in regards to China is not merely a figment of a paranoid Beijing's imagination, it is stated policy circulating throughout America's corporate-funded think-tanks. Selig Harrison of the Soros funded Center for International Policy has published two pieces specifically calling for carving off of Pakistan's Baluchistan province, not as part of a strategy to win the "War on Terror," but as a means to thwart growing relations between Islamabad and Beijing.

In "Free Baluchistan," he explicitly calls to "aid the 6 million Baluch insurgents fighting for independence from Pakistan in the face of growing ISI repression." He continues by explaining the various merits of such meddling by stating, "Pakistan has given China a base at Gwadar in the heart of Baluch territory. So an independent Baluchistan would serve U.S. strategic interests in addition to the immediate goal of countering Islamist forces."

In a follow up article titled, "The Chinese Cozy Up to the Pakistanis," Harrison begins by stating, "China's expanding reach is a natural and acceptable accompaniment of its growing power—but only up to a point. " He then repeats his call for meddling in Pakistan by saying, "to counter what China is doing in Pakistan, the United States should play hardball by supporting the movement for an independent Baluchistan along the Arabian Sea and working with Baluch insurgents to oust the Chinese from their budding naval base at Gwadar. Beijing wants its inroads into Gilgit and Baltistan to be the first step on its way to an Arabian Sea outlet at Gwadar."

Gwadar in the southwest serves as a Chinese port, the starting
point for a logistical corridor through Pakistan and into Chinese

territory. The plan is to plunge the entire nation into chaos and use
US forces to systematically "help" restore order.
(click to enlarge)

The very suggestion of fomenting armed violence simply to derail sovereign relations between two foreign nations is scandalous and reveals the absolute depths of depravity from which the global elite operate from. It is quite clear that the "War on Terror" is but a pretense to pursue a policy of regional hegemony with the expressed goal of containing China. This in turn, is part of a greater strategy covered in the 2006 Strategic Studies Institute report "String of Pearls: Meeting the Challenge of China's Rising Power across the Asian Littoral." Throughout the report China's growing influence and various means to co-opt and contain it are discussed. SSI makes special note to mention engaging with all of China's neighbors in an effort to play them off against Beijing in order to maintain American preeminence throughout Asia.

Destabilizing Pakistan

In addition to the Gwadar port in Pakistan's Baluchistan region, China has also built dams, roads, and even nuclear power plants in the country. China has also supplied Pakistan with a tremendous amount of military technology. The only cards America seems to have left in its hand to counter this growing relationship are threats of destabilization, the subsequent stripping of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, and Pakistan's Balkanization into smaller, ineffectual states.

In a 2009 article by Seymour Hersh titled, "Defending the Arsenal," much attention was given to the immense amount of suspicion and distrust Pakistan views America with. In particular, distrust is garnered over America's obsession with "defending" Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. Under the pretense of "helping" Pakistan if ever it fell into chaos, America has been trying to ascertain the location of Pakistan's nuclear weapons as well as the trigger assembles kept separate as a security measure.

While America supposedly "fears" destabilization, concurrently, the effects of their war with the Taliban on the Afghan-Pakistan border has overtly stirred up instability inside Pakistan. At one point, Hersh describes Islamabad's request for predator drones to conduct the attacks themselves, which was denied. They then asked for America to at least pretend to have given the drones to Pakistan and give them Pakistani markings - this was also denied. In fact, it seems almost as if the war against the Taliban, especially the drone campaign, is being used specifically to stir up the Pashtun minority and aim them at Islamabad, just as Harrison had suggested the Baluchistan insurgents be used to carve off Pakistan's southwest coastal region.

This brings us back to Fredrick Kagan's "blueprint," which is summed up in a New York Times piece co-authored with Brookings Institution's Michael O'Hanlon. Their article titled, "Pakistan's Collapse, Our Problem," describes the complete collapse of the Pakistani government, overrun by "extremists." It goes on to describe "Pro-American moderates" within the Pakistani army in need of US forces to help them secure Islamabad and their nuclear arsenal. Several options are given for where the nuclear weapons could be stored safely, all of them involve US oversight. This would give the US an ideal geopolitical scenario that would permanently Balkanize the country along Pashtun, Baluchi, and other ethnic minority lines, and result in a permanent Western presence inside the country.

The article then goes on to say larger military operations to take back Balkanized sections of the country could be undertaken, "If a holding operation in the nation's center was successful, we would probably then seek to establish order in the parts of Pakistan where extremists operate. Beyond propping up the state, this would benefit American efforts in Afghanistan by depriving terrorists of the sanctuaries they have long enjoyed in Pakistan's tribal and frontier regions."

It should be noted that co-author Michael O'Hanlon also contributed to the "Which Path to Persia?" report which described how using foreign-funded armed insurgency, foreign-funded popular revolutions, co-opting members of the military, and covert military operations could be used to topple Iran's government. In Iran's case, this plan has already gone operational. In Pakistan's case it seems all but a foregone conclusion that it is at least being attempted.

If Kagan's plan were executed after sufficient instability and justification had been created, China's holdings in Pakistan would be entirely eliminated, with Pakistan itself becoming a permanent extension of the unending US occupation of Afghanistan. This explains China's initial reaction to the "Bin Laden" hoax. Immediately recognizing the unfolding implications, China rushed to Islamabad's defense calling for support from the international community for Islamabad. China also criticized America's intrusion into Pakistan's sovereign territory.

The US raid incensed the Pakistani people, attempted to drive a wedge between the military and the government, as well as gave rhetorical leverage to the US over Islamabad and the Pakistani military. The suggestion by the US that "Bin Laden" had a support network inside Pakistan's military appears to be an initial attempt to usher in some form of Kagan's "nuke-napping" invasion plan. With Beijing openly accusing the US of interfering in its internal affairs and with the "Arab Spring" quickly turning into regional warfare, there is no turning back for the globalists.

The corporate-financier oligarchs and their many helping hands are a degenerate elite who have spent their entire lives sheltered from the consequences of their actions. It has always been the soldiers and the taxpayers who bore the brunt for their delusions of grandeur. To them, war is a cost-benefit analysis, and like their financial pyramid schemes that only get bigger and bigger, so too their gambles with our lives and treasure. It appears that they are quite willing to destabilize Pakistan, a nation with 170 million people, and risk war, a nuclear exchange, and a possible confrontation with China and Russia in the process.
http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2011/05/globalists-pakistan-war-plan.html


__._,_.___


[Disclaimer: ALOCHONA Management is not liable for information contained in this message. The author takes full responsibility.]
To unsubscribe/subscribe, send request to alochona-owner@egroups.com




Your email settings: Individual Email|Traditional
Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required)
Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch to Fully Featured
Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe

__,_._,___

[mukto-mona] BNP is not happy with the rule on CTG. Is it surprising?




Following link has details:

http://www.rtnn.net/details.php?id=34653&p=1&s=1


-mujib


__._,_.___


****************************************************
Mukto Mona plans for a Grand Darwin Day Celebration: 
Call For Articles:

http://mukto-mona.com/wordpress/?p=68

http://mukto-mona.com/banga_blog/?p=585

****************************************************

VISIT MUKTO-MONA WEB-SITE : http://www.mukto-mona.com/

****************************************************

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".
               -Beatrice Hall [pseudonym: S.G. Tallentyre], 190




Your email settings: Individual Email|Traditional
Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required)
Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch to Fully Featured
Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe

__,_._,___