Vital Concerns for the World: Pakistan: Conflicting views of a deteriorating situation.

Monday, May 04, 2009

Pakistan: Conflicting views of a deteriorating situation.

The news from Pakistan gets more worrisome by the day. Not only because the situation is obviously deteriorating but because the legitimating explanations for the situation there are so different, depending on which side of the information flow you are on. Today’s New York Times has two articles on the situation, one yesterday, all revealing how dangerous is the long term trend. Compare those with an article by Iqbal Jafar in Dawn today.

The NYTimes article by Sabrina Tavernise [“Pakistan’s Islamic Schools Fill Void, but Fuel Militancy”], for instance, describes the conditions under which the madrasas of Pakistan have grown in number. The government and the wealthy class have no interest in funding a viable educational system for the country, madrasas are a source of income for those whose only training has been in the memorization of the Koran, and anyway education beyond learning to recite the Koran is not prized among the poor. The trend in Pakistan seems to be toward the continuance if not the expansion of Islamic schools. Such schools are not necessarily radical or Islamist but some of them can be an early stage in the radicalization of some young people. [For this article go to: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/04/world/asia/04schools.html?ref=todayspaper]

Consider how different is the view presented in Dawn today, “The roots of fanaticism,” by Iqbal Jafar. His point is that the advance of other religious groups into “Muslim lands” is the cause of the advance of Islamic insurgency. His concluding sentence captures it all: “Hence, so long as Muslim lands remain under the occupation of others [Jews, Christians, Hindus], militants will be seen as freedom fighters and liberals as collaborators of the West. The West should not, therefore, expect to eliminate the militants while it remains in possession of Muslim lands. . . . As for the liberals, they will be lucky if they merely cease to be relevant.” [For this article go to: http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/pakistan/14-the-roots-of-fanaticism-zj-11]

No comments:

A major source of the American debt problem

Notable Concerns

"Not one has taken responsibility for the biggest foreign policy disaster in U.S. history." Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condolezza Rica, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith.
The crash of September 2008 brought the largest bankruptcies in world history, pushing more than 30 million people into unemployment and bringing many countries to the edge of insolvency. AlJazeera 10/15/11
GE, America's largest corporation, paid no taxes last year even though it made 5.1 billion dollars profit in the country [and even more outside the country] [source: same as below]
In 2009 the richest 5% held 63.5% of American wealth; the bottom 80% controlled 12.8%. [source: same as below]
Between 2000 and 2007 the richest 10% in America benefited from all of the average growth in the period. In the post WW II period the top 10% benefited from only one third of the growth, the bottom 90% benefiting from the rest of the growth. [Economic Policy Institute, cited by Bob Herbert, NYT 3/26/11]
In 2010 a "premier" investment bank paid each of its 26,000 employees an average of $370,000. [Bill Gross Pimco Investment Outlook Feb, 2011.]
In 2005, one-quarter of the corporations in America making a trillion dolars in revenue paid no taxes.
The 833% Medical Insurance Ripoff: Medicare charges 3% for service; the health insurance companies in Missouri charge 25% for services
The richest 1 percent of Americans have more net worth than the bottom 90 percent.
The richest 1 percent of Americans receive more income than the bottom 50%. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/dec/10/bernie-s/bernie-sanders-viral-speech-says-top-1$ >