Saturday, September 28, 2019

Furious indignation,but not righteous.

As was expected Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan vented fury on India at the UN General Assembly. "Terrorism has nothing to do with any religion," Khan said. "No one did any research that before 9-11, the majority of suicide bombers in the world were Tamil Tigers. They were Hindus." "No one blamed Hinduism. And quite rightly. What does Hinduism got to do with what desperate people were doing in Sri Lanka." Spot on. We are not blaming religion, we are blaming Pakistan. "Fielding a junior diplomat in its right of reply to Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan's address to the United Nations, India mocked his angry presentation before the General Assembly on Friday as 'hate speech' coming from a 'medieval mindset' from a country that has 'monopolised the entire value chain of the industry of terrorism"."  Giving a list of Pakistan's support of terror groups, India's first secretary Vidisha Maitra asked why its minority community has shrunk from "23% in 1947 to 3% today" due to "draconian blasphemy laws, systemic persecution, blatant abuse and forced conversions". Ouch. Actually Imran Khan should thank India for diverting people's attention from the economy. Pakistan's foreign exchange reserves are just enough to cover two months of imports, "its budget deficit (at 8.9% of GDP) is the highest in about 20 years, its liabilities (at over Pakistan Rs 40 trillion) exceed the size of its economy" and the rupee has lost a third of its value against the US dollar. It is surviving on $6 billion loan from the IMF (the 13th in 30 years) and loans from China, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Apparently, "Firecrackers were burst and slogans shouted in Srinagar, the main city in Indian-administered Kashmir, immediately after Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan ended his belligerent speech." In addition to all the loans that he has taken, Imran had to travel on a plane borrowed from the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. Unfortunately he had to return by commercial flight because the Saudi aircraft developed a fault. Who paid for his ticket? "Indian Kashmir is a state that receives much greater central government  aid per capita than any other state in the country," wrote Carl Clemens. In Balochistan, on the other hand, "the local population is kept impoverished and uneducated, and the youth routinely culled. This is exactly what Pakistan did in Bangladesh in 1971". After the massacre of children of army officers in a school in Peshawar in 2014 the army killed thousands of suspected militants and hundreds have been hanged after brief trials. Pakistan has ethnically cleansed the part of Kashmir it occupies and even handed over 5,180 sq km of Gilgit-Baltistan to China in 1963. A US official asked why Imran is silent about the 1 million Uyghurs, "Muslims who are being detained in Western China, literally in concentration-like conditions". With Article 370 gone Kashmir becomes a part of India and Pakistan cannot lay claim to it. That takes away the army's special position in Pakistan. That is why they are frothing at the mouth.

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