Showing posts with label America. Show all posts
Showing posts with label America. Show all posts

Friday, October 24, 2008

Taliban part 2?

According to a news report the Americans with the Pakistani officials are going to provide ammunitions to the anti-Taliban forces in the tribal areas to help eliminate the Taliban.

It is now a well established fact that the Taliban were trained by the CIA with the help of ISI in order to defeat the Soviets and now they are providing arms to the anti-Taliban forces to defeat the Taliban and then they will create another group to defeat the anti-Taliban forces?

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

The dead of Iwo Jima


Just saw the movie Flags of our Fathers. Quiet sentimental. World war 2. Americans conquering the island of Iwo Jima of Japan. Thousands died. Six men while raising the American flag on mount Suribachi were photographed by Joe Rosenthal. That photo became iconic of American victory and was all over American press. The six men became famous. Three of them died without even knowing that they were celebrities. The rest of the three were brought back home and were used to raise funds for the war. Ira Hyes, one of the three men was Indian. He faced anti-Native American prejudice both during and after the war. He returned to his home in Arizona, where he drank heavily and sank into poverty. He was eventually found dead in a ditch, after a heavy drinking spree. Rene Gagnon, the second also returned to his home, where he spent the rest of his life holding a series of dead-end jobs. John Bradley was the only one who apparently lived a happy life financialy after the war. He had terrible memories. He had hallucinations. He would wake up at nights from nightmares. He stashed away all of his war time memorabilia including a Navy Cross. He did not even tell anything at all about the war to his son, James Bradley who learnt the details after his fathers death and that his father had got a Navy Cross. James later wrote a book on which this movie is based.

What did they fight for? What did they get? They did not get Japan. They killed and returned and led miserable lives. A common man can never see what they saw on the island, what made them lunatics. Why do people fight? A war is the ugliest thing in the world.

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

The NRO: injustice, fraud

The National Reconciliation Ordinance 2007 contains seven sections most of which are an amendment of National Accountability Bureau Ordinance, 1999. Subsection 2 of section 2 says

'The Federal Government or a Provincial Government may, before the judgment is pronounced by a trial court, withdraw from the prosecution of any person including an absconding accused who is found to be falsely involved for political reasons or through political victimization in any case initiated between 1st day of January, 1986 to 12th day of October, 1999.'

Subsection 3 says

'For the purposes of exercise of powers under sub-section (2) the Federal Government and the Provincial Government may each constitute a Review Board to review the entire record of the case and furnish recommendations as to their withdrawal or otherwise.'

After reading these two provisions one must think about the role of judiciary itself. The federal and the provincial governments are being given the power to withdraw any case pending in the court if they find the accused to be falsely involved for political reasons. Now this is exactly what the role of judiciary is. Wether the accused is falsely involved or otherwise will be decided by the court and this is why the accused were tried. Why does the federal and the provincial governments have to intervene? What is the role of judiciary then? And secondly why specifically from the period of 1986 to 1999? Were people falsely involved only in this period? Before 1986 and after 1999 the crimes were genuine crimes? Then the federal and the provincial governments can constitute a Review Board to review the entire record of the case. Again this is the job of the courts. The federal and the provincial governments have more important things to do.

Section 7 says:

Withdrawal and termination of prolonged pending proceedings initiated prior to 12th October, 1999.

(1) Notwithstanding anything contained in this Ordinance or any other law for the time being in force, proceedings under investigation or pending in any court including a High Court and the Supreme Court of Pakistan initiated by or on a reference by the National Accountability Bureau inside or outside Pakistan, requests for mutual assistance and civil party to proceedings initiated by the Federal Government before the 12th day of October, 1999 against holders of public office stand withdrawn and terminated with immediate effect and such holders of public office shall also not be liable to any action in future as well under this Ordinance for acts having been done in good faith before the said date;
Provided that those proceedings shall not be withdrawn and terminated which relate to cases registered in connection with the cooperative societies and other financial and investment companies or in which no appeal, revision or constitutional petition has been filed against final judgment and order of the Court or in which an appellate or revisional order or an order in constitutional petition has become final or in which voluntary return or plea bargain has been accepted by the Chairman, National Accountability Bureau.


(2) No action or claim by way of suit, prosecution, complaint or other civil or criminal proceeding shall lie against the Federal, Provincial or Local Government, the National Accountability Bureau or any of their officers and functionaries for any act or thing done or intended to be done in good faith pursuant to the withdrawal and termination of cases under sub-section (1) unless they have deliberately misused authority in violation of law.

Look what we are doing in the name of national reconciliation. It is a humiliation of the judiciary and NAB. It means the courts have been wasting their time for so long hearing those cases? And why in the first place should the cases be withdrawn and that too against holders of public office. Before october 1999 if any one was murdered, if money was laundered, if corruption was done, are we going to give liberty to people responsible of such acts that easy? We are giving freedom to the obvious beneficiary of this ordinance, the chairperson PPP against whom there are charges of corruption and money laundering in the courts of not only Pakistan but also Switzerland, Poland, France and Middle East. According to this ordinance that was all done in good faith? For a split second if we believe that they are sorry for what they did, what is the guarantee that they will not do it again? Not only this, the government has also exempted itself from any possible trouble by making another provision that no action can be made against the government for withdrawing and terminating such cases.
The minister for information confessed yerterday that it was all done on the demands of the United States. (Nawa-e-waqt) Pakistan is America's.