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Posted by admin in DAMAGE TO PAKISTAN BY NAWAZ FAMILY on November 10th, 2013
I remember the good old days of Gen. Zia when Gidani beach was full of activity….more than 150 ships getting scrapped same time was an activity seen by myself, as i searched for industrial components, available so cheaply that one cannot imagine….the booming $1billion industry at that time, with thousands of people employed…was destroyed ..by no other than our ….Nawaz Sharif…because Ittefaq foundry needed more profits…now they are in line to get into higher roles again … what a disgusting thought!!!
GADANI: Pakistan’s forgotten ship-breaking industry is set for a boost as it prepares to tear up the oil tanker Kapetan Michalis, the largest ever ocean-going vessel to be scrapped.
The formerly Greek-owned Kapetan is poised to be broken here at Gadani, the heart of the nation’s once-thriving ship-breaking industry about 60 kms northwest of Karachi, on the edge of the Arabian Sea.
“It is so huge that it could take a year to be completely scrapped,” says Mohammad Akram, a labourer with 29 years in the industry under his belt.
A typical tanker can be stripped in around six months, but the Kapetan Michalis — the first of the gargantuan 70s-era tankers to be scrapped anywhere — is going to require a lot more work.
The tanker’s vital statistics — 427 metres long, 71 metres wide and 37 metres high — make her almost twice the size of the infamous Titanic, and the largest ship in the world “This is the largest ship that has ever been brought here for breaking and it will be an experience for me to supervise it,” says Mohammad Uzair, another veteran of the industry.
After nearly 25 years cruising international waters under its Greek owner, she pulled up her anchor for the last time in October after she was steered here by a Pakistani ship breaker.
The scrapping of Kapetan Michalis is giving a one-off boost to the ship breaking industry here, which has been floundering since its hay days of the late 80s and early 90s.
“I still remember the days when a long queue of ships was always waiting for scrapping and almost 100,000 labourers were at work,” Uzair sighs.
Now there are no more than a few thousand men working here, earning around Rs 6,000 per month, and only five to six ships are anchored at any one time.
Once stripped, Kapetan’s remnants of steel, motors and pipes will be sold to steel mills and other dealers. A supervisor at the yard estimates her parts will bring in over Rs 1 billion (17 million dollars).
In the 1970s the ship breaking industry was mainly concentrated in Europe, but high wages and the increasing cost of upholding environmental, health and safety standards led to Asia emerging as an alternative.
These days most of the world’s ships end their days on the beaches of India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, where environmental and other regulations are either non-existent or loosely enforced.
Still, Pakistan’s industry has struggled since the introduction early last decade of taxes — including higher duties on purchasing ships — which ship breakers say make it difficult to earn a profit.
Salahuddin Ahmed, secretary general of the Pakistan Ship-breakers Association, says duties have doubled from five to ten percent. Sales taxes meanwhile have jumped from 15 percent in 2000 to 20 percent and “rendered the business unviable”.
Around 5,500 tankers currently ply the world’s oceans. More than 40 percent were built before 1980, according to figures from environmental watchdog Green Peace.
Environmentalists are highly critical of the industry, branding it highly-polluting and accusing it of subjecting its underpaid workers to dangerous conditions
Posted by admin in SHARIF FAMILY CORRUPTION on November 9th, 2013
Misuse of Political Power for Personal Gains
13 November, 2009
ISLAMABAD: Nawaz and Shahbaz Sharif have allegedly indulged in money laundering, according to one of their close associates and a high-profile PML-N leader, Ishaq Dar.
NAB Court documents have recently emerged which show that Senator Dar made some interesting revelations in an accountability court in April 2000.
The court was hearing the famous Hudaibiya Paper Mills case against the Sharif brothers.
The 43-page confessional statement of Senator Ishaq Dar was recorded on April 25th 2000 before the District Magistrate Lahore. Dar was produced before the court by the then Assistant Director Basharrat M Shahzad, of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA).
Dar, in his statement had admitted that he had been handling the money matters of the Sharif family and he also alleged that Mian Nawaz Sharif and Mian Shahbaz Sharif were involved in money laundering worth at least $14.886 million.
The statement by Senator Ishaq Dar is irrevocable as it was recorded under section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC).
Senator Ishaq Dar is a high-profile PML-N leader and has always been considered close to the Sharif brothers as his son, Ali Dar, is married to Nawaz Sharif’s daughter, Asma.
But in April 2000 the top PML-N leadership had hit a rough patch by then and some of their loyal lieutenants were busy developing a new political system for General (retired) Pervez Musharraf after his October 1999 military coup.
In this context, Ishaq Dar Nawaz and Shahbaz Sharif of money laundering in the Hudaibiya Paper Mills case.
Interestingly, Ishaq Dar also implicated himself by confessing in the court that he along with his friends Kamal Qureshi and Naeem Mehmood had opened fake foreign currency accounts in different international banks.
He said that the entire amount in these banks finally landed in the accounts of Hudaibiya Paper Mills Limited.
Senator Ishaq Dar was the main witness against Nawaz and Shahbaz Sharif in the case.
The Hudaibiya Paper Mills case is still pending in the National Accountability Bureau.
Since the statement made by Dar was recorded under section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code, the statement has become a permanent part of the case against the top PML-N leaders.
If the case is opened again, the Sharif brothers may discover that the tightening noose around them was originally prepared by one of their own family members and trusted lieutenant Senator Ishaq Dar.
Posted by admin in Pakistan-A Nation of Hope on November 9th, 2013
“I took the boat a few times. I got sent back. But I collected enough miles to upgrade to Qantas, and I flew in.” SAMI SHAHConor Ashleigh for The New York Times
Mr. Shah, his wife, Ishma Alvi, and their daughter, Anya, live in the Western Australia town of Northam.
But not right away. He first did some freelancing as a graphic designer and a radio commentator, but mostly he became a stay-at-home father, minding his daughter while his wife went to work. He got depressed. “I was definitely worried about him,” Ms. Alvi said over a burger lunch at Fitzgeralds Hotel in Northam. “There were a lot of days coming home and finding him eating straight from a jar of Nutella.” So when Mr. Shah announced that he wanted to pick up his career as a stand-up comedian in Australia, she was cautiously supportive. His first attempts at getting a gig in Perth, about 60 miles from Northam, were met with a mixture of bemusement and disbelief. “I’m sure that to them a comedian from Pakistan made about as much sense as a kickboxer from Geneva,” he said.
Mr. Shah attended an event commemorating Pakistan’s independence.
Posted by admin in Shining India on November 9th, 2013
By DAVID LAT
Some stories just won’t go away. Consider the tale of Reema Bajaj, the attractive Illinois attorney who pleaded guilty to prostitution last June. Reema keeps coming, and coming, and coming.
After the story climaxed with her guilty plea, we expected it was all over. But then Bajaj thrust herself back into the headlines by suing one of her former lawyers, along with other attorneys, alleging that they shared nude photos of her around the courthouse.
And now Reema Bajaj has been hit with ethics charges from the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission (IARDC). The IARDC’s most salacious allegation: that Bajaj traded sex acts for office supplies.
What would Reema do for a ream of printer paper? How much toner to access that taut, toned body?
After Bajaj’s guilty plea to prostitution, we asked Michael S. Frisch, ethics counsel to the Georgetown University Law Center and an editor of the Legal Profession Blog, whether her plea to a a single misdemeanor prostitution count would cause Bajaj to lose her law license. Professor Frisch suggested that her plea, standing alone, would not result in substantial discipline.
But it appears that the IARDC is hot and bothered over more than just Bajaj’s plea. The commission also cites alleged misrepresentations by Bajaj related to her prostitution activity in support of its request that her case be referred to an investigatory panel for further factfinding.
Here’s a report on the IARDC ethics complaint from the Chicago Tribune:
The complaint filed and made public last week against Reema Bajaj, 27, by the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission contains the first detailed account of what led to criminal charges being filed against her in DeKalb County in 2011 — including that she allegedly had sex in exchange for supplies for her law office.
Between 2005 and 2008 — before she became an attorney — Bajaj posted online ads under the name Nikita and accepted money from two men in exchange for sex, according to the complaint. The first man paid her $200 for sex at a DeKalb hotel, then paid her $100 per meeting for about 25 encounters they had over the next three years, the complaint alleges. A second man paid her between $25 and $70 in cash or an equivalent amount in DVDs or gift cards for sex on at least 15 occasions between 2007 and 2011, according to the complaint.
Say what? Bajaj allegedly performed sex acts for $70 or less — and not even in cash, but in DVDs? Do people still use DVDs? And one can only imagine what she’d do for unlimited Netflix.
But wait, there’s more. Here is the “sex for office supplies” allegation:
That same year, she had sex with the second man in exchange for about $70 worth of office supplies for her legal practice in Sycamore, according to the complaint.
It’s hard out here for a solo practitioner. Seventy dollars won’t buy you three red Swingline staplers.
You can access the complete complaint at the IARDC website (via the Legal Profession Blog). The complaint has three counts:
The second count seems straightforward. The complaint alleges that Bajaj lied under oath to an IARDC administrator in September 2012 when she was asked about her alleged prostitution acts. According to the complaint, Bajaj denied charging for or being paid for sex, even though she acknowledged her June 2012 guilty plea to prostitution. From paragraph 17: “I guess I’m saying I pled guilty to it [prostitution] and I do not believe that he paid me for sex.” Strange — last time I checked, a guilty plea was supposed to have a factual basis.
My favorite count is the third count, which is overreaching in a humorous way. The IARDC charges Bajaj with making false statements on a bar application, to wit:
26. Respondent’s answers to the questions, “Have you ever been known by any other first, middle or last name?” were false, because Respondent used the name “Nikita” during the period of at least 2005 and until 2011.
According to the complaint, “Nikita” was Bajaj’s nom de whore on Adult Friend Finder. I’m not sure that’s what the question about “be[ing] known by any other first, middle or last name” is going for. Are bar applicants required to disclose their handles on OkCupid or Grindr? Doubtful.
Also part of count three:
30. Question 16 of the questionnaire, described in paragraph 24 above, required Respondent to provide [information about self-employment].
31. In answer to questions 25 and 16, described in paragraphs 29 and 30 above, Respondent did not disclose her self-employment wherein she accepted cash and other monetary items in exchange for sex acts from [two men].
Going after Bajaj for failing to disclose her prostitution work as “self-employment” seems like a stretch. But given all the publicity Bajaj’s case has received, and how going easy on her could undermine respect for the IARDC as a disciplinary body, one can understand why they’re riding Reema so hard.
Still, it seems to me that Bajaj should be pitied rather than prosecuted. Remember: she allegedly traded sex acts for DVDs, gift cards, and office supplies.
UPDATE (8/9/2013, 10:45 a.m.): Reema Bajaj has agreed to a three-year suspension of her law license(fourth item).
If the IARDC allegations are true, how difficult was it to get sex out of Reema Bajaj? I leave you with the slogan of Staples:
In the Matter of Reema Nicki Bajaj [Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission]
Reema Bajaj Bar Complaint [Legal Profession Blog]
Ethics Charges Filed In Reema Bajaj Matter [Legal Profession Blog]
Lawyer who pleaded guilty to prostitution faces state disciplinary board [Chicago Tribune]
Complaint Alleges Lawyer Had Sex for Office Supplies [NBC Chicago]
Lawyer accused of lying about claimed ‘self-employment’ as prostitute and name used in online ads
[ABA Journal]
Earlier: Reema Unchained: Attorney Who Pleaded Guilty To Prostitution Sues A Slew Of Local Lawyers
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