Kerry-Lugar - 2

On looking carefully at at the Kerry-Lugar Bill it is obvious that although the intentions of its initiators may have been noble, it has been used to renege on the three agreements reached with the government of Pakistan on Sept 30, 2006 and to create possible excuses for not honoring in future the commitments being made now.
It is true that the Americans are desperate to break the Indians away from the Russian who are still communists and have the Indians as their only allies, but they should not do so at the expense of the Kashmiris or the pride and honor of the Pakistanis.
It is now Pakistan's internal necessity to fight the Taliban insurgency, but the problem is far too complex to be solved by sheer military force. A lot needs to be done in the West if the growing trends the Islamic world are to be set in the right direction.
Christian extremism has existed for so long that it has become the norm in the West. The recent rise of Islamic extremism is a reaction to the awareness of realities gained in the past two decades mainly through the internet.

Obama's Peace prize

President Obama should be congratulated on winning the Nobel Peace Prize. After all it is a prestigeous award. The interesting thing is that the Nobel Awards committe found none of the nomonations entered before the due date worthy of the award, which means that the world has run out of people with a record of working for peace. Another interesting news is that the UN is now prepared to try some Israelis for war crimes in Palestine. Does it have anything to do with President Obama, or have the influential American Jews finally and rightly realized that the Israelis do not belong to them? In the past the US had won notoriety for unjustifibly vetoing resolutions against Israel. Let us hope that the world is moving in the right direction and will continue to do so in future.

Kerry-Lugar

The Kerry Lugar Bill is perhaps the greates exercise in corruption ever made in the world. It aims to set aside 1.5 billion dollars every year half of which would be paid out to the US politicians' favorite consultants and the other half would be doled out to the relatives of Pakistani rulers. At the end of 5 years the Pakistani public would be saddled with a debt of 7.5 billion dollars and a hefty amount of interest which it will have to pay through the nose. It doesn't make any difference to the American public because money borrowed from the Chinese at a lower interest rate would be lent to the Pakistanis at a higher rate, so if anything they stand to gain from it.

If the Americans are really interested in helping Pakistanis and establishing a long-term relationship, they should double the money and direct it to providing loans at discounted rates for US-Pak private sector joint venture projects in power generation, mining, oil and gas exploration, coal gasification, basic chemical industries, industrial plant and machinery production and offer scholarships to Pakistani students for technical training and higher education in USA on merit. They could also spend some money on reducing the time taken for visa issuance to Pakistanis.

The absurdity of the Bill is that it makes "aid" for social and educational purposes conditional upon the actions of the military and intelligence organizations. It also intends to take away from the Pakistani people their right and duty of defending their national institutions. The worst part is that instead of being based on any laws or principles its dispensation is based entirely on the discretion of the Secretary of State. Will Hillary be remembered in history as the lady with the whip?

It seems that the Indian origin advisors of the US lawmakers have ensured that the bill would worsen rather than improve their relationship with Pakistan. The school home-work of most rich american kids is being done in India via internet, perhaps the same is true of the politicians. Or did the few extremist Christians of USA have a hand in it?