NightBlogger

Paul Craig Roberts
It was obvious to anyone with any sense—which excludes the entire Bush Regime and almost all of the “foreign policy community”—that the illegal and gratuitous US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and Israel’s 2006 bombing of Lebanon civilians with US blessing, would result in the overthrow of America’s Pakistani puppet. The imbecilic Bush Regime ensured Musharraf’s overthrow by pressuring their puppet to conduct military operations against tribesmen in Pakistani border areas, whose loyalties were to fellow Muslims and not to American hegemony. When Musharraf’s military operations didn’t produce the desired result, the idiotic Americans began conducting their own military operations within Pakistan with bombs and missiles. This finished off Musharraf. More

Webster G. Tarpley
…the United States and NATO now escalating the hopeless and unwinnable Afghan war, and is preparing to send US and NATO forces on the ground to seize parts of Pakistan, a country which is almost 3 times more populous than Iran, and possesses a nuclear arsenal and the means to deliver it. The Bush-Cheney-neocon era in foreign policy is over, and the Brzezinski-Trilateral-Rockefeller-Soros phase of aggression has begun; the US hit list now features Chinese allies like Sudan, Zimbabwe, and Pakistan. Brzezinski is striving to put together some huge provocation for the Beijing Olympics, to make the Chinese government lose face and begin disintegrating. The ultimate targets of the new Obama-Brzezinski foreign policy are Russia, China, and the other members and friends of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the main pole of resistance in the world to the designs of Washington and London. The stakes are now much higher than a mere conventional clash in the Persian Gulf. Brzezinski’s adventurism goes far beyond that of the neocons, and objectively places the danger of a thermonuclear exchange on the world agenda. Watch for the Polish-Czech-Lithuanian missile crisis, a Balkan crisis, and a crisis between Georgia and Russia to point the world in this ominous new direction.

The US government is now being run by the Principals’ Committee, an interagency cabal that includes Defense Secretary Gates, Secretary Of State Rice, Joint Chiefs Chairman Mullen, Secretary of the Treasury Paulson, and other operatives of the Trilateral Wall Street financier faction. It is clear that under the new policy, Iran will be able to continue to process uranium: ‘The Bush administration’s decision to send a senior American official to participate in international talks with “More news and information about Iran.” Iran this weekend reflects a double policy shift in the struggle to resolve the impasse over the country’s nuclear program. First, the Bush administration has decided to abandon its longstanding position that it would meet face to face with Iran only after that country suspended its uranium enrichment, as demanded by the “More articles about Security Council, U.N.” United Nations Security Council. Second, an American partner at the table injects new importance to the negotiating track of the six global powers confronting Iran - France, Britain, Germany, Russia, China and the United States - even though their official stance is that no substantive talks can begin until uranium enrichment stops. The increased engagement raised questions of whether the Bush administration would alter its stance toward Iran as radically as it did with North Korea, risking a fresh schism with conservatives who have accused the White House of granting concessions to so-called rogue states without extracting enough in return.’ (New York Times, July 17, 2008) This gambit of appeasing Iran is being done in the hopes of turning Iran against Russia and China ­ a project of incalculable folly. Brzezinski is glad to see the Iranians have nukes, because he thinks he can keep them, pointed at Moscow. More

Source: AFP
A number of people have been injured when hundreds of angry investors in Pakistan staged violent protests at the country’s main stock exchange in Karachi. Share values have been sliding for two weeks amidst growing economic and political uncertainty in the country. More than 200 small investors gathered in the main hall of the Karachi Stock Exchange alarmed by falling stock prices for the 14th day in a row. They demanded a temporary halt to trading. When this was denied some protesters went on a rampage smashing windows and lights until they were dispersed by police. There has been a slump in investor confidence amid doubts that Pakistan’s newly elected Government can deal with economic challenges like runaway inflation and wide trade and budget deficits. The authorities have inherited much of the problem from the previous government. That has been compounded by high world oil and food prices.

Bob Morris
polizeros.com
The Pakistan stock market recently dropped off a cliff so the government banned short selling for a month then pumped $446 million into the market. They also decreed that prices could not fall more than 1% a day. This of course forced the market up. Traders there no doubt were overjoyed by this gift of free money and immediately went long too, riding that money train up. Then, when the ban on shorting is lifted, they’ll go short again. More

Pakistan has warned it will not tolerate any violations of its borders. Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gillani said Pakistan did not interfere with other countries and would not allow any interference in its affairs. His warning came after Afghan President Hamid Karzai threatened to send troops over the border into Pakistan to confront militants based there. He said his nation had the right to retaliate in “self-defence” when militants crossed over from Pakistan. “Neither do we interfere in anyone else’s matters, nor will we allow anyone to interfere in our territorial limits and our affairs,” Mr Gillani told the Associated Press news agency.

The Afghan president has long pleaded for Pakistan and international forces to confront militants in Pakistan but has never before threatened to send troops over the border. He said: “Afghanistan has the right of self-defence. When they cross the territory from Pakistan to come and kill Afghans and to kill coalition troops it exactly gives us the right to go back and do the same.” Read More

Karzai was handpicked by the US. You can bet he says nothing without US approval

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) Afghan President Hamid Karzai warned Sunday his troops would take their battle against Taliban extremists across the border into Pakistan to prevent them launching attacks in his country. Karzai told reporters in Kabul on Sunday that Afghan soldiers had the right to enter Pakistan because insurgents crossing the border to attack Afghan targets “gives us the right to go back and do the same.”

The Afghan president has previously urged Pakistan and its U.S.-led coalition allies to do more to tackle extremists holed up in Pakistan’s remote border regions, but this is the first time he has indicated taking matters into his own hands. Karzai said his administration’s “patience was running thin.” He said the cross-border attacks have destroyed homes and schools. Read More

In a statement, the Pakistani military quoted a spokesman who condemned “this completely unprovoked and cowardly act”. The spokesman said the incident “hit at the very basis of co-operation and sacrifice with which Pakistani soldiers are supporting the coalition in the war against terror” and added that the army had launched a “strong protest”. The BBC’s Barbara Plett in Islamabad says the statement was very strongly worded, describing the incident as an “act of aggression”. A similar government statement condemned the “senseless use of air power” as “totally unacceptable”. More

Pakistan is engulfed in its own version of the Long March, and just as that pivotal event changed the face of China in the mid-1930s, Pakistan’s political landscape could be significantly altered, as could that of its neighbor Afghanistan.

Thousands of black-suited lawyers gathered in Karachi on Monday for the beginning of a country-wide protest that is scheduled to finish outside parliament in the capital Islamabad on Thursday.

The protests began as a move to have more than 40 members of the judiciary, sacked by President Pervez Musharraf last year, reinstated, but have evolved into a direct challenge to Musharraf’s position and into antagonism towards his backer, the United States. The driving force behind the protests is the country’s premier Islamic party, the Jamaat-e-Islami, and the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz group)of former premier Nawaz Sharif. More

RICHARD ESPOSITO and BRIAN ROSS
ABC News
In another sign of growing tensions with the United States, Pakistan is threatening to turn over to Iran six members of a tribal militant group Iran claims are “spies” for the CIA. The group, Jundullah, operates in Baluchistan on both sides of the border between Iran and Pakistan and has carried out a number of violent attacks on Iranian army facilities and officers inside the country.

The CIA has denied any direct ties with the group, but U.S. officials tell ABC News U.S. intelligence officers frequently meet and advise Jundullah leaders, and current and former intelligence officers are working to prevent the men from being sent to Iran. The six Jundullah members were taken into custody by Pakistani authorities last week, and the Iranian Mehr News Agency reported Pakistan would soon extradite the men to Iran, where they would likely be put on trial as spies and face execution. Read more

Sky News
An angry mob has set two muggers on fire after the men tried to rob a group of bus passengers. The pair were in the middle of fleecing the passengers in the Pakistani city of Karachi when they were attacked by a group of bystanders. The group sat on the men while others fetched cans of gasoline.

The pair were then doused and set alight. One of the men died while the other is being treated for burns. “They were robbing passengers on a bus when people from the neighbourhood caught them and beat them. They then set them on fire,” said Aleem Jafri, the local police chief. The incident follows a similar attack this week in which another mob burnt three robbers to death. Read more

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, May 15 (UPI) — Two missiles struck a house in northwest Pakistan believed to be holding Islamic militants, killing about 12 people, residents and security forces claimed.

The BBC, citing local sources, said the missiles were suspected to have been fired by a unmanned U.S. aircraft at the house near the village of Damadola in the Bajaur tribal area near the border with Afghanistan.

No other details were immediately available.

Drone planes have been targeting areas suspected to be al-Qaida and Taliban militants, but such incidents are not confirmed by U.S. or Pakistani authorities, the report said. Read more

Photo soylentgreen23

Sudha Ramachandran
Asia Times Online
The serial blasts that killed 80 people and injured 200 in the western Indian city of Jaipur on Tuesday occurred less than a week after a major infiltration attempt by militants was thwarted on the international border with Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir state.

That incident set off a heavy exchange of fire along the border, the first major flareup since an India-Pakistan ceasefire took effect in 2003.

Intelligence contacts have told Asia Times Online that while there is “no direct cause-effect link” between the incidents on the border and the Jaipur blasts, the former indicate that “infiltration from across the border in Pakistan will increase as summer progresses and more attacks like the ones at Jaipur can be expected”. Read more

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - At least one missile suspected to have been fired by a suspected U.S. drone hit a house in northwest Pakistan near the Afghan border on Wednesday but there was no word on casualties, a Pakistani security official said. Maulvi Omar, a spokesman for Taliban militants in Pakistan, said the house that was hit belonged to an ethnic Pashtun tribesman. Read more

This video is the first training launch of the Hatf Six, also known as the Shaheen Two, fired April, 22, 2008

Pakistan on Thursday test-fired the nuclear-capable Hatf-VIII air-launched cruise missile, which its military said would enhance its capability to strike at targets on land and at sea. The test of the Hatf-VIII or Raad missile, which has a range of 350 kilometres, was part of a “continuing process of validating the design parameters of the weapon system”, said a statement from the military.

The statement did not say where the missile was tested. Describing the launch as successful, it said the indigenously developed missile had “special stealth capabilities”. Read more
See India’s launch here