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Posted by admin in DEBT BOMB TICKING, Economic Hitmen, Economic Terrorists of Pakistan, NAWAZ SHARIF SAGA OF ABSOLUTE & CHRONIC CORRUPTION, OPINION LEADER, Saeed A. Malik, ZARDAR'S CORRUPTION on July 8th, 2019
There is much that Pakistan needs to pull itself out of the hole it finds itself in. Among these is the utmost need for clarity on the following questions:
Unless clear and precise answers to the above are forthcoming, the way forward cannot be determined. And losing our way in the dark of the night will only increase our pain and add to our troubles. So trying to find answers to these questions the best we can, should at least be attempted.
If a person owes more money than he has the resources to pay back his debt, technically he can be said to be bankrupt. So is the case with states.
This is the closest Pakistan has come to national bankruptcy. Thus far the efforts of the government have succeeded to buy time to set the national house in order. There are goals set for the future. And to the achievement of these goals, our hopes are tied.
But there is no certainty as yet that these goals will be achieved.
Pakistan has borrowed even more to gain time in order to prevent a total shipwreck and to plan its way out of the morass. It had no other option.
From now until we turn the corner therefore, our national security must remain in the most parlous state that it has ever been. This must be very clear to all.
We are supposed to be a parliamentary democracy. We elect people who are sworn to defend the highest national interest. Each of these people who offer themselves for elections must spend at least Rs ten crores to have any chance of winning. When they win, it is their first goal to recover what they have spent in the process. Then they must make a hefty profit on this investment. Thus the very system is rooted in illegal money-making, out and out corruption, and subversion of the rule of law. And yet we insist on calling this system a democracy.
The elected members of parliament cannot recover their investment and then go on to make a profit on it, without help from the bureaucrats. So they subvert the bureaucracy. Next, they must indemnify themselves against the possibility of facing criminal proceedings on account of their crimes of corruption. To ensure this all law enforcement agencies and the judiciary must also be subverted. Concurrently with this, the political opposition and the media must be made friendly. They make a partnership with the first and buy the second. And ultimately they aim for the greatest immunity of all i.e the certainty to be elected perpetually. This they manage by mangling the constitution.
This is precisely what has happened to Pakistan. What ought to have been a democracy, turned out to be a vast criminal enterprise. Every national institution, except the armed forces, was co-opted, and then destroyed in the process. And also destroyed along with these institutions was the value system which holds any halfway decent society together.
A system in which one must first invest to get elected, and then make a profit on this investment, has to be founded on the legitimation of plunder. And this leads to the fattening of the leaders and emptying of the national treasury. The already poor are ground into dust, and the middle classes are pushed into poverty.
To expect a system founded on its opposition to the rule of law to blossom into a democracy, can only be the expectation of an idiot. The system is designed to promote crime. This is exactly what befell Pakistan. On this, there must be total clarity.
But the question that will not easily be put to rest is, whether it was insatiable greed alone which drove the Zardari-Sharif to combine to inflict rape on their motherland, or was there some other force propelling them in this direction as well.
To get an answer to this we need to examine the case of Iran. There are a number of motivating factors driving the U.S policy against Iran. But the main driver of this policy is Israel’s central, Yinon-driven obsession with Iran i.e to destroy any Muslim country in the middle east which could potentially challenge Israeli hegemony in this region.
Iran has been groaning under decades of sanctions. The aim is to bankrupt this state so that the pain inflicted on the common man brings him out on the street, and this brings about a regime change.
But Iran does not even have the rudiments of a bomb as yet, while Pakistan has hundreds of them, as well as proven delivery systems. Why are there no sanctions on Pakistan, which is not only potentially a far greater challenge to Israel, but additionally it has done the most to undermine the “containment of China policy” by its full support for the CPEC, which will bring China directly into the middle east?
The answer should be clear as daylight. And this answer is that when you have your team of economic hit men directly ruling the roost in Pakistan, they will do a far quicker job of bringing the country to its knees than any number of sanctions could!
The reader needs to just examine the ease with which loan after the loan was extended to Pakistan for the last ten years, without bringing under scrutiny our country’s ability to repay the same!
And this is precisely what the role of an Economic Hitman is defined as i.e take the target country to a stage where it no longer has the ability to repay its loans. Once there, such a country’s arm can be twisted to till it surrenders its sovereignty. See the attached video below.
For the moment Pakistan’s economic situation has left it few options but to borrow more and to print currency to get by. This is directly responsible for the inflation Pakistan is experiencing i.e there is more currency in the country than there are goods to buy, so that the value of the currency is depreciating, while that of the goods is appreciating relative to it.
But very soon all employers, including the government, will have to revise the pay structure of its employees so that people get a livable wage. For this, it will have to print more money. And this will have to be repeated every few months. And the more is the currency that gets printed, the lower the value of money will fall, and the more expensive will the goods become.
And this is exactly what has happened to the dollar rate. It will keep rising in value in inverse proportion to the fall in the value of the Pakistani rupee i.e as the value of the rupee falls, so that of the dollar will increase.
So unless something spectacular happens to save our hides, we are on our way to hyperinflation. And what follows this is hyper-instability. And this is a frightening prospect.
What makes the situation worse is that a global recession in 1020 is almost a certainty. And as per economist Nouriel Roubini, if there is a war on Iran, this could result in the first global depression since 1929.
Thus there is little hope for the situation in Pakistan turning around in a year, or two years, or three.
This needs to be foreseen.
So this is where the Zardari-Sharif machine and their teams of hit men have left Pakistan. That this slide occurred on the watch of two army chiefs, who held ultimate de facto responsibility for national security, makes me retch.
Nothing in the short term can help ease the economic situation of Pakistan than speeding up work on the CPEC. Additionally, China needs requesting to set up some industries in Pakistan on an urgent basis. Chinese interests in Pakistan will make it likely that they will agree to help out Pakistan. But they will think over this twice unless Pakistan has a strong government and a considerably more efficient bureaucracy in place. And most importantly, China would like Pakistan to be first embedded solidly in the pro-China camp.
It must be quite clear to all that Hafeez Shaikh and company are products of the Chicago School’s economic thinking. They have been schooled to push the neo-liberal economic agenda. It is absolutely essential for Pakistan to get an alternative view on all the economic plans they have crafted. No point wading into what might well turn out to be another economic minefield without first having it reexamined from an alternate point of view.
Be very clear on how to deal with the business community. No raids. No random arrests. It will pay to listen to their genuine grievances and to address them before taking any action against them.
Stolen assets need to be recovered, and hidden ones documented.
The principle that needs to be adopted is that if the people who have plundered Pakistan and inflicted such unbearable pain on its wretched millions do not return stolen assets, they shall not be allowed to enjoy the fruits of their ill-gotten wealth either. No deals, no “production orders”, no A or B class in jail. Let them be treated as the thieves that they are. All their wealth should be confiscated by the state e.g Asif Zardari’s 19 sugar mills etc fall in this category.
And all such people who have not returned stolen assets, should not be allowed to leave the country even after they have completed their jail terms. And those against whom prima facie evidence of wrongdoing exists, but who have yet to be indicted because of the overstretched state resources to do this, should at the very least be put on ECL.
If this is meticulously done, those who have undocumented wealth will on their own begin to come forward to pay their dues.
Broadening the tax base and the system of gathering taxes has to be improved. A lot will depend upon how FBR functioning is improved. And this is a whole new subject.
How to repatriate assets held abroad will be the real problem, but there are ways to do this as well. No country would want Pakistan to be pushed against the wall to the extent that it will be forced to sell off some of its defense technologies in order to survive. If they SERIOUSLY suspect this, they will become amenable to repatriate both our criminals hiding among them, as wealth as Pakistan’s stolen millions. But this will happen only if China is standing squarely behind Pakistan.
This drive will have to begin with tightening up NAB. This should begin with bringing Choudhary Qamar Zaman on trial for deliberately facilitating mega-crooks to go free. Begin this by bringing charges against him for the way he handled the Hudaibya case. If this is done, it shall serve notice to the rest of NAB, which needs to be done if NAB is to function optimally.
From all of the above, it should be quite clear that the government can do little to give immediate economic and financial relief to the people of Pakistan, beyond setting the right direction, so that each passing day brings about an improvement. However, what the government can do, without any additional expenditure, is to significantly improve governance. For this to come about, all that is really needed is to weed out the worst officers from all institutions, and place, promote, empower, and support the very best.
Pakistan does not have the financial capital to fall back on. Yet it has reserves of human capital, which it can tap to bring about a significant improvement in governance. Greater reserves of this human capital lie lost in the ranks of the retired, than in those of the serving, which have largely been infected by the rot which spread in the last ten years. It is for the government to set aside many of the rules governing employment and massively requisition the services of such retired officers whose claim to fame was ability and integrity, and who are still in reasonable health to serve the state.
The sad thing, however, is, that even with the limited supply of very good officers which the government can deploy in certain areas to improve governance, this has not been done. One’s take is that on the subject of governance, the performance of the present government is even poorer than the outgoing one. And this must have taken some doing!
But the reason for this is again the “system”. All MNAs and MPAs are interested in having DCs and SPs of choice posted in their constituencies. Their prime interest is not good governance, but that of exercising control.. Thus the system has made the PM hostage blackmail by the legislators, whether these belong to his own party, or belong to his affiliates.
And this is the central problem. Pakistan is forced to sustain a political system which is directly responsible for the ills and maladies the state and its people are suffering from. It is a system which is antithetical to the demands of good government but must be borne nonetheless. Pakistan is in the unhappy position of trying to clean out the village well, without first fishing out the dead dog which is the cause of the pollution. The dog is this very system. The well cannot be cleaned as long as the dog is there. Pakistan is grappling with the direst emergency of its existence, and trying to combat it, pinning its hopes on a dead dog!
Only when there is absolute clarity on this issue can Pakistan move purposefully ahead. This is an emergency situation and must be combated as one. The constitution was deliberately mangled to remove all remedies against such a situation. But the Supreme Court exists. The PM should resort to S.C for an in camera hearing, to lay before it the reality of our national security, and how it has been undermined. He should make a plea for the formation of a national government by the President of Pakistan to tide us through this period of national emergency and to restore the fortunes of the state.
Each day that passes with the government trying to address the situation with tools not adequate to it, is a day lost. And each day the dog stinks worse.
Confessions Of An Economic Hitman
What is an economic hitman?
Cenk Uygur and John Perkins, hosts of The Conversation, break it down.
MORE TYT: https://tyt.com/trial
Preview YouTube video Confessions Of An Economic Hitman
Posted by admin in Decline of Empires, GLOBAL NEWS, US FOREIGN POLICY & INTERNATIONAL LAW on July 8th, 2019
Today’s Political World at a Glance
Global politics is overwhelmingly becoming robotic when the question of safeguard of mankind comes up. Global political leaders are fast becoming actors on stage – issuing abstract statements of outrage and phoney sense of grief when thousands and millions of human lives are constantly bombarded by the weapons they manufacture and sell to crush the human soul and to support the war economies. The UNO and it’s Secretary-General and the UN Security Council – all are just debating clubs engaged in time killing exercises to deceive the mankind and to betray the ideals of the Charter to “safeguard the humanity from the scourge of wars.” Many top UN officials are paid employees with no sense of accountability to the global community. The reality of man-made catastrophic conflicts enhanced by national interests and war-led economies are ingrained in the war racketeering plans across the globe. The 21st-century knowledge-based informed mankind is the next victim of the global political monsters. Millions of human beings are forcibly displaced, evicted by plans and charcoaled by forbidden chemical weapons across the Middle East yet; most global leaders do nothing to prevent the aggressive catastrophes except statements of fake ‘outrage’ reaction as if others were inhuman casualties. We are witnessing the abnormal political culture of a human bloodbath as being normal.
The global community – a divided and dispersed mankind is unable to challenge the war racketeers and global hangmen who claim to be political leaders. They are egoistic professionals with the big mouth without wisdom and full of self-engineered false democratic clichés, contradictions, distortions and misrepresentation of the rights of common citizens in modern democracies. These are frightening trends for the present and future generations to survive. Most of the economically influential actors occupy the political platforms – either through backdoor conspiracies or entrenched political intrigues. They profess to be intelligent and outspoken for the rights of the people but in reality are offensive to truth and listening to voices of reason and honesty. How do we call for a balancing act in a world terribly imbalanced by nationalism, political and economic ideologies of supremacy and shallow imaginations and practices of human equality, human rights, peace and harmony amongst all the diverse segments of the living humanity?
We cannot abandon the search for a better and more rational world of systematic mechanism to protect the peace and security of mankind on this One Planet. We, the People, We the Humanity and conscientious thinkers and scholars must wake-up to the immense sophisticated and technologically advanced challenges to disconnect us from the Nature of Things and to dehumanize us by global scenarios of ethnicities, nationalism, state borders and cultural superiorities and ruling class distinctions. William Godwin (Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and Its Influence on Modern Moral and Happiness, 1793), said it right:
Men of genius must rise up….to analyse the machine of society to demonstrate how the parts are connected together… and point out the defects and remedy. It is thus only that important reforms can be produced…He who is a friend to general happiness will neglect no chance of producing in his pupil or his child, one of the long-looked-for saviours of the human race.
Do We, the People Realize to be One Humanity on One Earth?
We are One Humanity on One Planet and we have a right to be here in peace and harmony, not in conflicts, not collaborators to kill the mankind and destruction of the human environment and habitats. This will be contrary to our Nature and inhuman if we cannot come to terms with our peaceful co-existence, identity and responsibility being the chief guardians of the living planet in a living Universe. We, the humanity lives on a balanced Planet – Earth located at a measured distance from the Sun and Moon and other stars. God created the Universe and blessed it with all functionalities and provisions for life-sustaining factors since millions and billions of years. Do you realize if there was no water, no oxygen or hydrogen and other gases or sunlight to support all the living creations – what would have been the shape and form of life on Earth?
Could we the human kind count the blessings of God to maintain life for millions and billions of years on this planet? All things exist in a mathematical order, whether we recognize it or deny it. So strange, we know all about other material things and scientific-technological developments but we are ignorant and arrogant to learn about our own origin and existence on a living planet. We are born from a mother’s tummy – one and the same all over the globe – One Humanity. Yet, we dare to challenge each other with nationalism and ethnic superiorities and indulge in wars and deaths and destruction of our own beings. Are we the human being intelligent enough to know about our own existence and Purpose of Life? How could we imagine peace and harmony amongst ourselves when we bomb and destroy each other with weapons of destruction as if we were not the human kind but some kind of animals without any sense of rational thinking?
We, the People of Conscience can only correct the political fallacies if we are united and blended together with reason and accountability to be the saviour of our own world. We must awaken the minds and soul of the 21st-century humanity to synthesize the vitality of peace and human security in a world of time and opportunities for political justice, equal rights and participation to be part of the change phenomenon for a better and more promising world of tomorrow. The voices of reason will echo across the globe if we together are committed and united for this idea and human ideals. We strongly believe that knowledge-based wisdom, plans and actions will lead to benevolence and global harmony, peace and justice and will nullify the malignity and political tyranny from the 21st century highly challenging and competitive world. When We, the People articulate cooperation and understanding in societal diversity, it will replace the impulse and urge for competition and unjust indulgence to destroy fellow human beings.
Political Propaganda: War as “Noble” but Truth and Peace are Offensive
Strangely enough, warmongers hire war propagandists to classify wars as “noble”, “good”, the necessity of the ruling nobility and to protect the flag, borders and national interests. George Bush claimed to be “Man of God” who started the day with the Bible, to orchestrate the bogus war on terrorism. These are cynical notions implied to enforce the monstrous viewpoints of the few warlords in every age. Professor Camillo “Mac” Bica, School of Visual Arts, New York City and an activist of Peace and Justice (“Atrocity and War”, OpenedNews), offers a penetrating insight on the inequality criterion and falsification of information and facts of human life.
Having been indoctrinated by the propaganda of those whose militarism and war-mongers agenda requires acceptance of the mythology of the “good war” and the “noble warrior,” the uninitiated and unaffected most civilians and many non warrior members of the military fail to realize this truth, that all war is barbarism in which cruelty and brutal atrocity is the norm rather than the exception. During World War II, for example, often cited and celebrated as the “good war,” over 50 million civilians were murdered by both Axis and Allied Nations. The American servicemen in the Wikileaks video who so nonchalantly “engaged the target” slaughtering some 12 human beings are no different from the pilots and bombardiers from the “greatest generation” who with equal nonchalance, incinerated millions of civilians during the terror bombings of Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, etc. Despite the moral depravity of their actions, these individuals were not born killers. Rather they were created to do our bidding, first conscripted or lured into the military with promises of employment, a college education, or U.S. citizenship, then subjected to sophisticated indoctrination techniques of value manipulation, moral desensitization, and psychological conditioning, aimed at destroying/overriding their humanity, their moral aversion to killing, reinforced by the violence and horrors of the battlefield environment.
Blame Games of Distortion and Prejudice against the Informed Humanity
To be united in global political diversity, We, the People must exercise forbearance, canons of rationality and strive for blended unity of mankind – the core of human understanding and harmony. Leaders who want to lead must have rational thinking and followers to claim leadership effectiveness. Most contemporary leaders are devoid of REASON as the focal point of policy formulation and decision-making in global human relationships. Often they use blame game and popularity numbers to score fictitious rating in public eyes. Most leaders are infected with this syndrome and egoistic sickness to remain influential and powerful.
To protect the mankind from further dehumanization and annihilation, People of new ideas (Idea Men) are needed to take initiatives for political change – indeed a navigational change at this critical moment: a New UNO with people’s leadership, New Global Political Systems of Governance planned and developed by the people of knowledge and integrity and rejecting Hobbesian “wars of all against all”; and producing a rational rebuttal to the war of insanity, torture, political tyranny, inept global leadership and offer a balanced new vision of a world enriched with learning knowledge of rational policy-making and decision-making, human equality, fairness, protection of life and its natural support systems, and the Universe and equal justice for all the living beings on this planet. The leaders have not learned from the imposed deaths and destruction of the Two World Wars. The Third World War is already in progress in Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Yemen, Libya and soon to engulf many self-made tribal Arab kings, princes and authoritarian dictators.
Surely, We, the People could create a better and more sustainable world of today and tomorrow. A natural sense of piety and political wickedness cannot co-exist in one human character as most of the world leaders pretend to be. We must THINK and ACT outside the global box of political wickedness and cult of political allegiance to the few and sickening political minds of egoistic leadership. Time and history are not going to wait for the few insane outrage, phony statements on human deaths and destruction unless we take this challenge in its time and opportunity to make things happen for change and for the best of all mankind. The Divine Revelation (Al-Qur’an) states clearly: “Intelligent people always readily accept advice.”
American historian Harry Elmer Barnes (“Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: A Critical Examination of the Foreign Policy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and It’s Aftermath”), offered this stern warning to American politicians if the US-led wars to continue leading to man’s annihilation from this planet:
“If trends continue as they have during the last fifteen years, we shall soon reach this point of no return, and can only anticipate interminable wars, disguised as noble gestures for peace. Such an era could only culminate in a third world war which might well, as Arnold J. Toynbee has suggested, leave only the pygmies in remote jungles, or even the apes and ants, to carry on ‘the cultural traditions’ of mankind.”
Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in international affairs – global security, peace and conflict resolution and IR with keen interests in Islamic-Western comparative cultures and civilizations, and author of several publications including the latest: Global Peace, Security and Conflict Resolution: Approaches to Understand the Current Issues and Future-Making. Lambert Academic Publishing, Germany, October 2017.
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