Pakistan Rock Music / Al Jazeera Video

LINK

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkBaQDOerYE

A short video by al jazeera channel, pakistani rock music in recent years have been making waves around the world, with many of the pakistani songs taken in bollywood movies also.

singers like Atif Aslam , Ali Zafar, Call Band, Junoon, Strings, Jal Band, are famous in India as well as Pakistan,and whereever urdu and hindi is understood.

Pakistan music combines east with west.

There are a lot more underground bands making their way into the mainstream rock scene in pakistan in recent years,. With singers like Rahat Fateh Ali giving background music for Mel Gibson movie, Appoclypto, and Salman Ahmed from Junoon, www.junoon.com, singing the title song of American t.v. series CW channel' Aliens in America.,and collaborating with artistes like , Melissa Ethridge,

Pakistani music sure has a long way to go.

http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/3888722-paistan-rock-music-al-jazeera

BIBLE IS TRUE

http://www.msnt.com/

The Soon Coming ClimaxProof The Bible Is True
WE ARE NOW IN THE LATTER DAYS OF THE END TIMES, HOW TO BE SAVED

(A brief summary)

• Will Russia and some Arab nations invade Israel and the U.S.A. become involved? Yes.
• Will there be a one-world system or global economy? Yes.
• Will diseases increase such as AIDS? Yes.
• Did you know the Bible tells us about what is happening?

WHAT IS GOING ON?

People have said the end was near many times in the past—true. But did you know the Bible shows us no prophecy of the latter days meant anything until Israel was reborn into a nation? Did you know God’s Word indicates to us a generation would not pass from Israel’s rebirth, till all be fulfilled (which includes the Rapture, the Tribulation, and Jesus Christ’s return)? A generation could be as little as 40 years or as much as 70 to 80 years (Note, Parable of the Fig Tree in site menu).
Many people have been preaching about the latter days of the end times in churches, on radio, TV, the Internet and through books and magazines. Some include Billy Graham, Hal Lindsey, Ray Brubaker, John Hagee, Zola Levitt, Jack Van Impe, Peter Lalonde, and Tim LaHaye just to mention a few. To those that understand the Bible, no explanation is needed. To those that are prideful, self-centered, that love this world, that despise God’s correction, that are contentious or seeking the praise of men rather than of God, no explanation is possible-ref Dan 12:4, 10; Mt 24:37, 39.
It has been said that it is virtually impossible for anyone to make 11 straight predictions, 2000 years into the future. There is only one chance in 8 x 10 to the 63rd power, or 80 with 63 zeros after it that such a thing could be done. If such a set of predictions existed, it would have to be the Word of God.
Consider, could you write eleven straight predictions that would take place in the year 4000 A.D.? Include the rebirth of a specific nation and exactly how it would be reborn. Include specific nations that would exist, certain nations that would be allied together, and the exact size of a nation’s army. Include what the people and church would be like. .....read on ....http://www.msnt.com/

Robert Fisk "The Age of the Warrior"

JUAN GONZALEZ: The US strategy in Afghanistan is back in the news, just ahead of the vice-presidential debate tonight. The British ambassador to Afghanistan has been quoted in a French newspaper as saying that the American military strategy in that country is “destined to fail.” Ambassador Sherard Cowper-Coles’s critical comments about the NATO operation in Afghanistan were part of a leaked memo from a French diplomat. He also said, “The coalition presence—particularly the military presence—is part of the problem, not the solution.”
The British ambassador’s leaked statements were published just as the top US commander in Afghanistan called for three additional combat brigades—that is, over 10,000 soldiers—to be immediately deployed to Kabul. General David McKiernan told reporters in Washington, D.C. Wednesday that Americans were facing a “tough fight” in Afghanistan that “might get worse before it gets better.”
AMY GOODMAN: As the US-led wars in the Middle East show no sign of abating, we turn now to a man who has chronicled eleven major wars in this part of the world and shows no sign of abating, himself. Robert Fisk is Britain’s most celebrated foreign correspondent, has borne witness to countless tragedies in the Middle East for over three decades.
Robert Fisk has been named British Press Awards’ International Journalist of the Year seven times. He is currently the Middle East correspondent for The Independent of London. His previous books include Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon and The Great War for Civilization: The Conquest of the Middle East. His latest is a collection of his essays and articles from The Independent; it’s called The Age of the Warrior. Robert Fisk joins us here in New York in our firehouse studio.
Welcome to Democracy Now!
ROBERT FISK: Thank you, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, you’re traveling through this country in the midst of a major crisis and a war abroad. Talk about your observations.
ROBERT FISK: Well, I suppose the first thing is how similar the two things are. I mean, first of all, the Europeans were constantly advising more banking regulation, in case they got infected by any economic crisis. The United States, this had to be a free market, deregulation totally. In other words, once more, the United States did not listen to its foreign partners and allies, on economic issues this time.
Number two is, rushed into a quick fix for a rescue bailout without any really serious planning, like crossing the Tigris River without a plan for post-war Iraq.
And three, it’s the little people who get hit: the little Iraqis, in the hundreds of thousands, who’ve died; and, of course, poor Americans, for the most part, who join the Marines or the Reservists because they want to have a university education, they end up in Iraq, and they get killed. The little people, once more, are the people who are getting hit. They’re very parallel things, in my view. I can see it all the time.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And, of course, here, in this country, as the number of US casualties has declined, so has the attention in the media or in the public to the situation in Iraq, and everyone has now bought into the thought that things are getting better.
ROBERT FISK: Ha ha ha, yes. Look, the degree of ethnic cleansing that actually took place—genocidal, in some ways—and the fact that the Americans have now built walls through every community in every major city in Iraq, which has divided between the communities, means that there isn’t, in fact, any free flow of movement. There isn’t a country operating anymore.
But now, I mean, if you stand back a little bit and look at it like this, first of all, we went to Afghanistan, we won the war. Then we rushed off to Iraq and won the war. Then we lost the war in Iraq, or maybe we won it again. And then we’re going back to Afghanistan, where we seem to have lost the war, to win it all over again. And in due course, perhaps we’ll have to go back to Iraq. I mean, in my reports, I’m calling this Iraqistan. And now, we’ve actually got soldiers on foot turning up in Pakistan. I mean, has nobody actually stood back and said, “What on earth are we doing out there?” I mean, I calculated for our Sunday magazine that we now have twenty-two times as many military personnel per head of population as the Crusaders had in the twelfth century. You know, what are we doing?
It was a baker in Baghdad who asked me this very obvious question. He said, “Why are you”—“you” meaning Western military—“Why are you in Kazakhstan and Tajikistan, French air base at Dushanbe running close as support for the British in Helmand province in Afghanistan? Why are your people going into Pakistan? Why are you in Afghanistan and Iraq? Why are you in Turkey? Why are you in Jordan and Egypt and Algeria? US Special Forces have a base outside Tamanrasset in the southern Sahara. Why are you in Bahrain? Why are you in Oman? Why are you in Yemen? Why are you in Qatar? Biggest US air base.” I didn’t have a reply.
But I was struck when I was having lunch on the West Coast a few days ago, by a very educated lady sitting next to me, saying, “But the Muslims wanted to take over the world, and they had already taken over France.” I mean, how does this happen? I mean, she might have told me that Martians had landed in New Mexico, only thing you could do to counter that kind of argument. It looks like somehow we’re on a brainwashing trip. And we’ve all bought the narrative. You know, we even have Mrs. Palin talking about victory in Iraq. It doesn’t feel it if you go to Iraq. It doesn’t feel it if you live there.
AMY GOODMAN: She also has talked about Iraq as being God’s war.
ROBERT FISK: Yeah, well, we’ve had some generals who’ve talked about that, too—haven’t we?—and kept their uniform on in church when they said it. You know, more and more, I look back on the early statements by bin Laden, statements we never actually read. The narrative is always “Is this bin Laden?” when he appears. “Is he ill? When did he make the statement? And have the CIA confirmed it’s his voice?” What his voice actually says is never of any interest to us.
But if you remember, he went on and on about crusaders, and he actually made a very important statement before we invaded Iraq, in which he called upon Muslims in Iraq to collaborate with Baath Party officials against the crusaders, on the grounds that Salahadin had collaborated with the non-Muslim Persians against the crusaders in the twelfth century. We missed all this. And this was the detonation that set off the insurgency.
JUAN GONZALEZ: I’d like to ask you, at the debate, the presidential debate last Friday, we had the situation where the so-called candidate of peace—
ROBERT FISK: Yeah, yeah.
JUAN GONZALEZ: —Barack Obama, is talking about, well, we took our eye off the ball in Afghanistan, as if this is a game here that’s being played and we made a mistake in the game. And so, now we must go back to Afghanistan and possibly even into Pakistan.
ROBERT FISK: Look, I think you have to realize—and the Arabs do not, and I’ve been trying on Al Jazeera Arabic service to say this—it’s not going to make any difference who is the next president of the United States, as far as Southwest Asia and the Muslim world is concerned. I was in Qatar, actually, in the Al Jazeera Arabic studios when Obama made his famous Middle East trip. You know, he gave forty-five minutes to the Palestinians, twenty-four hours to the Israelis. And the Arabic anchorman turned to me. He said, “So, Robert, do you think Obama will win the election?” I said, “He’ll win the election for the Israeli Knesset. I don’t know if he’s going to get the presidency of the United States.” You know, we’ve got here a one-track policy into the Middle East by the United States, and it’s not going to change.
AMY GOODMAN: But, Robert, is that true? On the one hand, you have, yes, they don’t sound that different when it comes to, for example, Afghanistan. They agree that’s the main site of the war, the main candidates. But I guess it’s the question of what could happen next and what approach McCain or Obama would take.
ROBERT FISK: Look, the Taliban now control half of Afghanistan, not just at night, but in the day—during the day, too. There’s no doubt that Petraeus has got it right when he talks about things are going to get worse.
AMY GOODMAN: Petraeus.
ROBERT FISK: Petraeus. And there’s no doubt, too, that the famous British ambassador, Mr. Cowper-Coles—by the way, he’s in my book, and he’s the guy who persuaded the British, when he was ambassador to Saudi Arabia, not to continue with the bribes inquiry by the British fraud squad into arms sold to Saudi Arabia. He’s the guy who actually advised the fraud squad people to drop it.
AMY GOODMAN: And this involved Bandar Bush. This involved the former Saudi ambassador to the United States.
ROBERT FISK: Absolutely, it’s the same guy. I should add—I should just add that more than twenty years ago, a young diplomat in the Egyptian embassy—in the British embassy in Cairo advised me to drop one of our stringers in the region and take on another stringer who was rather favorable to the foreign office. I didn’t do as I was told. But that man was also Cowper-Coles. What a strange career he has!
However, let’s go back to your Obama thing. Look, at the end of the day, we cannot win in Afghanistan. The Taliban are not crossing porous borders. They don’t even acknowledge the border, because, for them, it’s Pashtunistan. The border was drawn by a British civil servant called Sir Mortimer Durand in the Victorian age, and no one there, apart from us, accepts that it’s there—and, I suppose, the Pakistani army.
And the fact of the matter is that we have no policy there. The Karzai government is totally discredited. Karzai himself only rules his palace, with the help of American mercenaries to protect him. His government is full of drug barons, warlords and criminals. And that includes the people down in Kandahar, which is virtually a lost city. The troops cannot enter Kandahar anymore. It’s gone, effectively, especially at night. You can’t go there. No Westerner can walk through the streets of Kandahar. And you don’t see any women, except in Kabul, who are not wearing burqas. You remember the famous liberation of women, equality, gender equality was coming? It’s all turned out to be totally false. And we’re going to win there? We’re going to win there?
JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, and, of course, the issue of Pakistan, to me, is the most frightening one of all, because—
ROBERT FISK: Absolutely.
JUAN GONZALEZ: —you’re talking about a country that is really almost a failed state at this point.
ROBERT FISK: We’ve been told that—the narrative is that the mad mullahs with black turbans and the crackpot Ahmadinejad of Iran—and he is a crackpot—are going to destroy Israel, and then, of course, they’re going to destroy the Palestinians, and they’ll get destroyed with all these nuclear weapons.
I’ve been saying for more than two years there is one nation in Southwest Asia, which is packed with Taliban supporters and al-Qaeda supporters, and it’s got a bomb, and it’s totally corrupted, from the shoeshine boy to the president, via its intelligence services and army, and it’s called Pakistan. And only now are we beginning to see Pakistan pop up. I bet you if you run a computer check in the next few months, Iran will go right down to the bottom of the page, unless Israel chooses to bomb it, and up will go Pakistan.
And suddenly, how do we deal with this country? It will be a whole crazed mixture, which is already symbolized by the fact that, first of all, we put troops in on the ground in Pakistan and infringed its sovereignty. Then, when the Marriott Hotel blows up, the FBI offers its help in finding out the criminals. I mean, are we friends, or are we enemies of Pakistan? We don’t even know that.
And we start talking, using phrases like “victory.” We should be talking about phrases like "justice for the people of the Middle East.” If you have justice, you can build democracy on it, and then we can withdraw all these soldiers. We’re always going—promising people in the Middle East democracy and packages of human rights off our supermarket shelves, and we’re always arriving with our horses and our Humvees and our swords and our Apache helicopters and our M1A1 tanks. The only future in the Middle East is to withdraw all our military forces and have serious political, social, religious, cultural relations with these people. It’s not our land.
AMY GOODMAN: Robert Fisk, just before we went on air, this came over AP: suicide bombers targeted Shia worshippers as they left morning prayers at two Baghdad mosques, killing nineteen people, injuring fifty others. In a separate attack, gunmen fatally shot six people as they traveled in a minibus at Wajihiyah, a town sixty miles north of Baghdad.
ROBERT FISK: Yeah, well, and we won, and the surge was successful, and everything’s going back to ordinary life, and people—I mean, that map which we saw, the two maps coming up—it’s preposterous. I mean, I get phone calls from Iraqis in Damascus, when I’m in Beirut, saying, you know, “Can you help us stay in Syria? Can we come to Lebanon? We cannot go back to Baghdad.” And they’re still getting calls saying, you know, “If you come back to your house, you’ll be murdered.” This is not a success; it’s a hell disaster for all the peoples of the Middle East. I mean, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, southern Lebanon, Gaza, the West Bank—I mean, is no one waking up to say that there is no hope there at the moment? You know, there’s no light at the end of the tunnel out in the Middle East.
JUAN GONZALEZ: I’d like to ask you, you mentioned the West Bank, obviously, the original center of this entire conflict. The—
ROBERT FISK: I’m not sure it is the center anymore, by the way, but, yeah.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Right. But the comments recently by Ehud Olmert, saying that—
ROBERT FISK: Look, Ehud Olmert is a has-been. He’s gone.
AMY GOODMAN: But he is prime minister.
ROBERT FISK: Just.
AMY GOODMAN: And he said you should give back the West Bank.
ROBERT FISK: Yes, but he’s going, Amy. He’s going. This is the same as all your generals who go out to fight in Iraq and in Afghanistan, and when they’re asked to comment to the press, they say, “Everything is going fine; it may be a tough battle,” and they salute and click their heels to Rumsfeld, or they did. And the moment they retire, they demand Rumsfeld’s resignation and say it’s all gone wrong. I mean, if only just one of them, just one, would say it in a press conference when they still had their uniform on, we might see a few changes coming about, but they don’t. They keep their—they go heel.
AMY GOODMAN: Robert Fisk, we’ll end it there, but we’re going to do part two. Robert Fisk, bestselling author, journalist, writes for The Independent, currently the Middle East correspondent for The Independent of London. His latest collection of essays and articles is called The Age of the Warrior.

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/10/2/the_age_of_the_warrior_robert

GEO TV is a friend or ...... ?

QUESTIONS GEO CANNOT ANSWER: Why does Geo collude with foreign media? Why does it focus on creating chaos and general discontent? Why does it act like an instrument of an politicalparty? Why does Geo behave like the arm of a foreign force? Why did Geo deliberately broadcast falsebad news about the economy when the stock market was booming? What hand did Geo play in scaring the foreign investors away from Pakistan? Why did Geo repeat the false news about the growth figures which led to the crash of the stock market? Why does Geo show wrong Pakistani maps? Why does Geo almost never cover the insurgencies in India? Why is Geo so infatuated with Anti-Pakistan Bollywood films? Why is Geo bent upon creating a “Indianization” of Pakistan? Why does Geo pay so much attention to Bollywood? Why does Geo show dead bodies? Is this all part of a psy-op or is it part of an agenda? Mr. Husain Haqqani of the Hudson institute is on the payroll of JINSA and AIPAC (public information posted on Rupee News) is a known neocon with his own agenda. His wife Ms. Isphani is involved with VOA and Geo pursuing the same Neocon agenda....



http://rupeenews.com/2008/01/02/is-geo-tv-an-affiliate-or-is-it-a-subsidary-of-cnn-time-warner-inc/

Dr. Afia Siddiqui missing since 2003

An MIT-educated Pakistani woman once identified as a possible Al-Qaeda associate has been brought to New York to face charges she tried to kill US agents and military officers during an interrogation in Afghanistan, federal prosecutors said. Aafia Siddiqui, who was shot and wounded last month during the confrontation, was expected to be arraigned in federal court in Manhattan on charges of attempted murder and assault, US Attorney Michael Garcia said in a statement. A lawyer for her family said the allegations are false. A Pakistani government statement said the country’s ambassador to Washington had sought consular access to Siddiqui. US prosecutors and Afghan police gave different accounts of her arrest and the shooting incident.
Federal prosecutors said in a statement that Siddiqui, 36, was arrested outside the governor’s office in Afghanistan’s Ghazni province on July 17 after police searched her handbag and found documents on making explosives, excerpts from the book “Anarchist’s Arsenal” and descriptions of New York City landmarks. While detained in a meeting room, Siddiqui grabbed an M-4 assault rifle from a US Army warrant officer who had placed the weapon on the floor not knowing she was being held there, the statement said. Two FBI agents were also in the room. Siddiqui fired at least twice at the captain but the shots missed as a military interpreter lunged at her. The warrant officer then shot her with his pistol, the statement said. “Despite being shot, Siddiqui struggled with the officers when they tried to subdue her; she struck and kicked them while shouting in English that she wanted to kill Americans,” it said, adding she then lost consciousness and was given medical treatment. The Afghan police in Ghazni told a different story. They said officers searched Siddiqui after reports of her suspicious behavior and found maps of Ghazni, including one of the governor’s house, and arrested her along with a teenage boy.
US troops demanded the woman be handed over to them but the police refused, a senior Ghazni police officer said. US soldiers then disarmed the Afghan police, at which point Siddiqui approached the Americans complaining of mistreatment by the police, the officer said. The US troops, the officer said, “thinking that she had explosives and would attack them as a suicide bomber, shot her and took her.” The boy remained in police custody.
Siddiqui and her three children disappeared from her parents’ home in the port city of Karachi in 2003 and Pakistani human rights groups said they believed she had been held at Bagram, the main US base in Afghanistan, all these years. Her family yesterday sought her repatriation, terming the US accusations an attempt to “cover up” her five-year illegal detention, rape and torture at Bagram. The family said Siddiqui and her children were in fact arrested by Pakistani intelligence agents in Karachi in March 2003, after she was the subject of an FBI alert for alleged links with Al-Qaeda. At an emotional press conference in Karachi, her sister Fauzia Siddiqui said: “After five years of detention, Aafia was suddenly ‘discovered’ in Afghanistan? I am not that much of a believer in coincidence.” The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan also termed the US claims as lies. “To say that she had been taken into custody only on July 17, 2008 is a blatant lie,” it said. “The insinuation that she had been hiding with her children since 2003 is a travesty of truth.” “Dr. Aafia’s case is a reminder of the grave injustice done to God knows how many Pakistanis in US detention facilities in Bagram in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere, who have been listed as missing,” the commission said in a statement. US intelligence agencies have said that Siddiqui has links to at least two of the 14 men suspected of being high-level members of Al-Qaeda who were moved to Guantanamo in September 2006.
A US government statement said Siddiqui helped Majid Khan, a former Baltimore resident and terrorism suspect held in Guantanamo, get documents to re-enter the United States. The statement said Ali Abd Al-Aziz Ali, known as Ammar Al-Baluchi ordered Siddiqui to help Khan in his paperwork.

Turnaround for US and Iran

In two weeks, the period it has been granted, Iran might make known its intentions on its nuclear plans, and hence the future of its tenuous links with the US. The talks in Geneva did not result in Iran’s accepting the so-called “freeze for freeze” deal — a halt in its uranium enrichment in return for no strengthening of UN sanctions. There is no guarantee that at the end of the deadline, Iran will decide, as expressed by the US, between confrontation and cooperation. But after all the threats and counterthreats in recent weeks, the very fact that Iran and the US got together at one table for the first time concerning the nuclear issue represents a huge turnaround for both sides and provides distinct signs that a collision course is being averted.
By agreeing to send Undersecretary of State William Burns to Geneva to join talks between the EU and Iran, Washington has shown what has been acknowledged from the outset: Any realistic solution to the nuclear crisis must involve active US engagement. And President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s pronouncement that he was interested in direct talks with the US, and interested in the idea of a US diplomatic mission being opened in Tehran for the first time since the 1979 revolution, constitutes a remarkable U-turn. These are major shifts by both the Bush administration and Iran and look light years away from the recent rhetoric and threats.
There are, of course, those who still expect the US or Israel or both to launch a military strike on Iran, but the recent peace overtures are persuading more people into realizing that international, regional and local considerations weigh too heavily against such a military adventure. The US cannot embark on a major military operation while its forces are bogged down in Iraq, tensions everywhere else in the region are rife, and many of the US’ allies in the region are opposed to the military option. In addition, a military strike against Iran would wreak havoc on the already troublesome energy situation as Iran sits on a huge oil reserve of its own and overlooks the world’s most important transit route for oil. Also in favor of at least a cooling down in tensions between the US and Iran is the fact that other international powers, most notably Moscow, are disinclined toward a military strike, even if they are not necessarily opposed to an escalation of international sanctions against Tehran.
As tenacious and willing to go to the brink as Iranian leaders may appear, in the final analysis they are consummately pragmatic. Iran is a modern institutionalized state, and while it has the elements of a theocracy, it is ultimately rational and capable of placing the welfare of the whole above all other considerations. Before reaching the stage of no return, the “rational camp” in Tehran would put the breaks on, halting the brinksmanship tendencies evinced by Ahmadinejad. The repercussions for Iran, regionally and internationally, would be too great. Iran holds too many political and economic cards that Washington is interested in, and the people in Tehran know that Washington holds many of the keys that will unlock their ambitions.
What has been said and done have not been figments of the imagination. The recent Israeli military exercise, apparently a rehearsal for bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities; the Iranian test-firing of missiles in reply; Iran’s threat to block the Strait of Hormuz, the lifeline of the world’s oil supplies, if attacked were all real and had — and still have — the world watching and worrying. However, for at least the moment, diplomacy has taken over.

The FBI's plan to "profile" Muslims

July 10, 2008 The U.S. Justice Department is considering a change in the grounds on which the FBI can investigate citizens and legal residents of the United States. Till now, DOJ guidelines have required the FBI to have some evidence of wrongdoing before it opens an investigation. The impending new rules, which would be implemented later this summer, allow bureau agents to establish a terrorist profile or pattern of behavior and attributes and, on the basis of that profile, start investigating an individual or group. Agents would be permitted to ask "open-ended questions" concerning the activities of Muslim Americans and Arab-Americans. A person's travel and occupation, as well as race or ethnicity, could be grounds for opening a national security investigation.
The rumored changes have provoked protests from Muslim American and Arab-American groups. The Council on American Islamic Relations, among the more effective lobbies for Muslim Americans' civil liberties, immediately denounced the plan, as did James Zogby, the president of the Arab-American Institute. Said Zogby, "There are millions of Americans who, under the reported new parameters, could become subject to arbitrary and subjective ethnic and religious profiling." Zogby, who noted that the Bush administration's history with profiling is not reassuring, warned that all Americans would suffer from a weakening of civil liberties.

In fact, Zogby's statement only begins to touch on the many problems with these proposed rules. The new guidelines would lead to many bogus prosecutions, but they would also prove counterproductive in the effort to disrupt real terror plots. And then there's Attorney General Michael Mukasey's rationale for revising the rules in the first place. "It's necessary," he explained in a June news conference, "to put in place regulations that will allow the FBI to transform itself as it is transforming itself into an intelligence-gathering organization." When did Congress, or we as a nation, have a debate about whether we want to authorize the establishment of a domestic intelligence agency? Indeed, late last month Congress signaled its discomfort with the concept by denying the FBI's $11 million funding request for its data-mining center.

Establishing a profile that would aid in identifying suspects is not in and of itself illegal, though the practice generally makes civil libertarians nervous. When looking for drug couriers, Drug Enforcement Agency agents were permitted by the Supreme Court in United States v. Sokolow (1989) to use indicators such as the use of an alias, nervous or evasive behavior, cash payments for tickets, brief trips to major drug-trafficking cities, type of clothing, and the lack of checked luggage. This technique, however, specifically excluded the use of skin color or other racial features in building the profile.
In contrast, using race and ethnicity as the -- or even a -- primary factor in deciding whom to stop and search, despite being widespread among police forces, is illegal. Just this spring, the Maryland State Police settled out of court with the ACLU and an African-American man after having been sued for the practice of stopping black and Latino men and searching them for drugs. New Jersey police also got into trouble over stopping people on the grounds of race.

The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled last year in State v. Calvin Lee that a defendant's plausible allegation that the arrest was initiated primarily because of race would be grounds for discovery: The defense attorney could then request relevant documents from the prosecution that might show discriminatory attitudes and actions on the part of the police. Because racial profiling is most often felt by juries to be inappropriate, its use could backfire on the FBI. Suspects charged on the basis of an investigation primarily triggered by their race could end up being acquitted as victims of government discrimination.
If the aim is to identify al-Qaida operatives or close sympathizers in the United States, racial profiling is counterproductive. Such tiny, cultlike terror organizations are multinational. Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, is a Briton whose father hailed from Jamaica, and no racial profile of him would have predicted his al-Qaida ties. Adam Gadahn, an al-Qaida spokesman, is from a mixed Jewish and Christian heritage and hails from suburban Orange County, Calif. When I broached the topic of FBI profiling to some Muslim American friends on Facebook, a scientist in San Francisco replied, "Profiling Muslims or Arabs will just make al-Qaida look outside Islam for its bombers. There are many other disgruntled groups aside from those that worship Allah."
It is a mystery why the Department of Justice has not learned the lesson that terrorists are best tracked down through good police work brought to bear on specific illegal acts, rather than by vast fishing expeditions. After Sept. 11, the DOJ called thousands of Muslim men in the United States for what it termed voluntary interviews. Not a single terrorist was identified in this manner, though a handful of the interviewees ended up being deported for minor visa offenses. Once it became clear that the interviews might eventuate in arbitrary actions against them, the willingness of American Muslims to cooperate declined rapidly, and so the whole operation badly backfired.

Alienating Pakistan

Alienating Pakistan13 June 2008
AMERICAN artillery and air strike inside Pakistani territory that killed 11 paramilitary soldiers and Islamabad’s expected response more or less mark the beginning of the dismantling of the war-on-terror’s most central business arrangement.
It had begun weakening for some time now and American predator incursions deep inside Pakistani airspace of late were ample indications for analysts familiar with the relationship that something was about to give way soon.
That the position crumbled with Pakistani army blood being spilled will anger local opinion at a time when the government is indulging in diplomatic experiments with elements in the tribal belt mainly to appease a public very angry over unstinted support extended to the Americans all these years. The pressure facing Islamabad now is well understandable.
For now, it seems difficult that the Pakistan-US equation that Musharraf and Bush held for more than half a decade will be returned to. Islamabad will now rightly fear a déjà vu of its previous hands-in-glove with the Americans, when the State Department and CIA ended cooperation as soon as the Soviets rolled their tanks out of Afghanistan, leaving Pakistan to struggle with refugees, drugs, Kalashnikovs, and continuous uncertainty on its borders. General Musharraf rightly sought assurances before shaking on the post 9/11 deal, reminding the Americans in straight terms that the premature withdrawal was more or less also responsible for the mutation of the Afghan mujahideen into what eventually became the Taleban.
Now, with an American election just around the corner, and the likelihood of a Democratic stint at the House that’ll be surely quick to distance itself from Bush’s war method, there is growing anxiety in Pakistani circles that they’re about to be hung out to dry again. Such concerns are not helped by what some are rightly calling the Bush U-turn, with Washington ignoring Pakistani concerns and blatantly violating the country’s airspace and territorial integrity.
The Pentagon’s response to the latest tragedy, that they coordinated the attacks with the Pakistani military, will not wash easily since they’ll reflect very poorly on the sole superpower’s military credentials. The Pakistani reaction is understandable, which is why America will have to go the extra mile if the situation is to be controlled. If the long years of the terror-war have not convinced America and Afghanistan that they will always need Pakistan, then it is little surprise that their fortunes are on a continuous downside.
Pakistan has paid dearly for participation in the war against terrorism, economically, socially and politically. To add to its military troubles is to force it to opt out of the arrangement it has held despite the difficulties. The ball is in America’s court now. How they handle the situation will reflect the level of their interest in South Asia’s worsening political landscape.


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