By Muhammad Saleh Zaafir
ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani has decided to dissolve the federal cabinet next week and the new cabinet would be formed after consultations with respective leaders of the ruling alliance.
The new cabinet will consist of about 15 members in the first phase while the expansion process will continue subsequently. All the ministers, ministers of state, special assistants and advisers will cease to stay in their offices immediately after the announcement regarding the dissolution of the cabinet.
Sources told The News on Friday that an ultimate policy pertaining to the formation of new cabinet and timings of the dissolution of the incumbent cabinet would be worked out at the highest-level consultations within two days.
Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani has convened a high- level meeting of his constitutional experts and senior officials of the federal ministry of Law and Justice today (Saturday) at the PM House, where the overall legal matters would be discussed threadbare and the government’s line of action would be determined vis-a-vis cases before the judiciary directly relating to the shape of the government and its officials.
Prime Minister Gilani sent a message to the members of the federal cabinet to be prepared for stepping down any time since he had made up his mind to bring about major changes in the structure of the administration. Read more…
Hugh Tomlinson and James McLean
Times Online
The engine of the black Corvette revved to a gasket-popping roar. Its driver leant out of his window. He was dressed in traditional Arab robes but wore a rubber wizard’s mask. He held an aerosol aloft and directed a jet of party foam into the air. Four-wheel drives plastered in pictures of Dubai’s Royal Family roared their engines back in approval. The cacophony was deafening.
On the opposite carriageway smoke billowed from the spinning back wheels of a new Land Cruiser as the driver pressed the brakes and floored the accelerator. This was the favourite way for many of the fervently patriotic and car crazy Emiratis to mark National Day in Dubai this week, the 38th anniversary of the founding of the United Arab Emirates, and one of the biggest celebrations of the year.
A mile away at the new Marina Yacht Club, Western expats were also working their way into a party mood. Deferential Filipino staff served a foamy lobster broth as an amuse bouche between courses. Beer and cocktails loosened tongues and a knot of dancers formed in front of the band. Tens of millions of pounds worth of powerboats bobbed at their moorings beneath the revelry on the terrace. Behind the boats a dozen skyscrapers framed the view, a few of the lights in their thousands of flats were on. “It’s so beautiful here,” said a pretty young Anglo-Indian woman clutching a large glass of chilled white wine and taking in the scene.
Welcome to the modern equivalent of the last days of Rome. The failure of Dubai World, one of the Emirate’s flagship companies, to honour a debt due last month has rocked this city state to its foundations. By any conventional logic Dubai is now a busted flush. Read more…
GENEVA: Pakistani High Commissioner in Britain Wajid Shamsul Hasan headed a secret operation in Geneva and received at least 12 cartons comprising the original documents and evidences against some Pakistani high-ups in Swiss money laundering case, Geo News reported Tuesday.
According to Geo News correspondent, the Prosecutor General of Pakistan in Geneva deposited these cartons in the era of former President Pervez Musharraf.
The sources said the secret operation was carried out at the bidding of a top personality of Pakistan, as these evidences could be used if Swiss Money Laundering case is reopened after the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) terms comes to an end.
The sources at Pakistan embassy said if the concerned officials or the courts do not interfere by taking the evidences back from Wajid, then these documents would be wasted for good. Read more…
At a covert forward operating base run by the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, members of an elite division of Blackwater are at the center of a secret program in which they plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, “snatch and grabs” of high-value targets and other sensitive action inside and outside Pakistan, an investigation by The Nation has found. The Blackwater operatives also assist in gathering intelligence and help direct a secret US military drone bombing campaign that runs parallel to the well-documented CIA predator strikes, according to a well-placed source within the US military intelligence apparatus.
The source, who has worked on covert US military programs for years, including in Afghanistan and Pakistan, has direct knowledge of Blackwater’s involvement. He spoke to The Nation on condition of anonymity because the program is classified. The source said that the program is so “compartmentalized” that senior figures within the Obama administration and the US military chain of command may not be aware of its existence.
Story Via The Nation.com.
Read more…
October 21, 2009
by Paul Craig Roberts
The US has every characteristic of a failed state.
The US government’s current operating budget is dependent on foreign financing and money creation.
Too politically weak to be able to advance its interests through diplomacy, the US relies on terrorism and military aggression.
Costs are out of control, and priorities are skewed in the interest of rich organized interest groups at the expense of the vast majority of citizens. For example, war at all cost, which enriches the armaments industry, the officer corps and the financial firms that handle the war’s financing, takes precedence over the needs of American citizens. There is no money to provide the uninsured with health care, but Pentagon officials have told the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee in the House that every gallon of gasoline delivered to US troops in Afghanistan costs American taxpayers $400.
“It is a number that we were not aware of and it is worrisome,” said Rep. John Murtha, chairman of the subcommittee.
According to reports, the US Marines in Afghanistan use 800,000 gallons of gasoline per day. At $400 per gallon, that comes to a $320,000,000 daily fuel bill for the Marines alone. Only a country totally out of control would squander resources in this way. Read more…
“What does imperialism mean? It means the assertion of absolute force over others.” — Robert Lowe 1878
The G-20 ministers declared their meeting in Pittsburgh a success, but as Rob Kall reports in OpEdNews.com, the meeting’s main success was to turn Pittsburgh into “a ghost-town, emptied of workers and the usual pedestrians, but filled to overflowing with over 12,000 swat cops from all over the US.”
This is “freedom and democracy” at work. The leaders of the G-20 countries, which account for 85% of the world’s income, cannot meet in an American city without 12,000 cops outfitted like the emperor’s storm troopers in Star Wars. And the US government complains about Iran.
The US government’s complaints about Iran have reached a new level of shrillness. On September 25 Obama declared: “Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow.” The heads of America’s British, French, and German puppet states added their two cents worth, giving the government of Iran three months to meet the “international community’s demands” to give up its rights as a signatory to the non-proliferation treaty to nuclear energy. In case you don’t know, the term “international community” is shorthand for the US, Israel, and Europe, a handful of arrogant and rich countries that oppress the rest of the world.
Who is breaking the rules? Iran or the United States?
September 28, 2009
by Paul Craig Roberts
Via FPJ
continue reading
Read more…
DI KHAN: The man whipping a girl publicly in Swat, as shown in a video footage on media some months ago, has been arrested.
Nine suspects were nabbed from Dera Ismail Khan a few days ago including Amin alias Chhota Aftab, source said. Police said during investigation it was found that he is the same man whipping the Swat girl, as shown in the footage.
He is said to hail from Swat and is not even the relative of the girl he whipped.
Chhota Aftab was shifted from DI Khan eight days ago
via Police arrests man whipping Swat girl publicly – GEO.tv.
