Governance is a critical issue of the 21st century South Asia. It has assumed greater significance
in respect of Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan because of the strategic geo-political positioning
of these countries in the sub Asian region consisting of Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Iran,
Russia, Central Asian Republics and China. This sub region has peculiar characteristics.
Read the full paper by Mumtaz Piracha at http://southasiagovernance.blogspot.com
Today, President Obama nominated Judge Sonia Sotomayor to be the next U.S. Supreme Court justice. Of course, the Right is already fighting against her confirmation—so we need to get the facts out about her impressive qualifications and background.
Below is a list of 10 key things about Sonia Sotomayor that you might not know. Can you check it out and send it to 10 friends today? If each of us forwards the list, we can start to get the word out about Judge Sotomayor, and help to ensure that she gets a speedy and fair confirmation process.
Ten Things To Know About Judge Sonia Sotomayor
1. Judge Sotomayor would bring more federal judicial experience to the bench than any Supreme Court justice in 100 years. Over her three-decade career, she has served in a wide variety of legal roles, including as a prosecutor, litigator, and judge.
2. Judge Sotomayor is a trailblazer. She was the first Latina to serve on the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and was the youngest member of the court when appointed to the District Court for the Southern District of New York. If confirmed, she will be the first Hispanic to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court.
3. While on the bench, Judge Sotomayor has consistently protected the rights of working Americans, ruling in favor of health benefits and fair wages for workers in several cases.
4. Judge Sotomayor has shown strong support for First Amendment rights, including in cases of religious expression and the rights to assembly and free speech.
5. Judge Sotomayor has a strong record on civil rights cases, ruling for plaintiffs who had been discriminated against based on disability, sex and race.
6. Judge Sotomayor embodies the American dream. Born to Puerto Rican parents, she grew up in a South Bronx housing project and was raised from age nine by a single mother, excelling in school and working her way to graduate summa cum laude from Princeton University and to become an editor of the Law Journal at Yale Law School.
7. In 1995, Judge Sotomayor "saved baseball" when she stopped the owners from illegally changing their bargaining agreement with the players, thereby ending the longest professional sports walk-out in history.
8. Judge Sotomayor ruled in favor of the environment and against business interests in 2007 in a case of protecting aquatic life in the vicinity of power plants, a decision that was overturned by the Roberts Supreme Court.
9. In 1992, Judge Sotomayor was confirmed by the Senate without opposition after being appointed to the bench by George H.W. Bush.
10. Judge Sotomayor is a widely respected legal figure, having been described as "...an outstanding colleague with a keen legal mind," "highly qualified for any position in which wisdom, intelligence, collegiality and good character would be assets," and "a role model of aspiration, discipline, commitment, intellectual prowess and integrity."
Judge Sotomayor is an historic, uniquely qualified nominee to the Supreme Court. Let's get the word out and make sure we get a prompt, fair confirmation on her nomination.
Thank you!
To the best of my understanding, the US would prefer power-sharing between the PPP and the PMLN in Pakistan for the sake of continuity of the present civilian political setup and to ensure peace and stability at the same time; while the Pakistan military would prefer midterm elections to bring unity, cohesion and good governance in the country. Absolute power never suits Pakistan; it breeds corruption, maladministration and stalls progress and prosperity to the people at large, irrespective of whether it is the civilian government or the military rule.We need two-party system in Pakistan; one party in power and the other in opposition. The history tells us that military steps in whenever the party in power becomes unpopular with the people or with the military or with the US. There is no second choice. The party in power does not let the opposition play its role as a body to exercise checks and balances on the executive branch of the government and remain intact as a second choice. It is so unfortunate that every government in Pakistan, civilian or military, has invariably resorted to the same tactics aimed at taming the bureaucracy, judiciary, parliament, media and military. At this critical juncture, the long lasting solution lies in midterm elections under an interim multi-party national government with the support of the military and the independent election commission. It is only through fresh elections that the political parties/groups sitting outside the legislatures at the centre and the provinces can be inducted to bringabout national cohesion. Likewise, the representatives of smaller parties/groups in smaller provinces in particular can be given the opportunity to enter the legislatures with the support of the leading parties in the larger national interest. The general sense of deprivation in the smaller provinces especially in the rural areas can be minimized by the participation of the representatives of all parties/groups in the decision making of the federal and provincial governments.A truce and patchup between the PPP and the PMLN is not likely to work. That time has already passed. The leader of the PMLN, Mian Nawaz Sharif, is now heading a mass people's movement rather than a merely lawyers' movement. That difference needs to be understood by all that matter in the politics and power of Pakistan. At the moment, there is no check on the functioning of the government at the centre or the provinces. There is no will and no competence to address public issues. The whole country is beset with unbearably high inflation, widespread poverty, extremely poor law and order, economic stagnation or recession in the commercial and industrial sectors, absence of fair legal and social justice, political wranglings, sectarian, ethnic and religious divides of all sorts. Pakistan has today become a country where the values of its founding fathers are fading away to give way to greed, corruption, class conflict, religious intolerance, social and economic inequalities and non-participation of the people in the decision-making of the government at all levels. Even the political party in power does not engage its rank-and-file echelons in the decision-making process of the party and the government.As the Founder of the Pakistan's largest, most diversified and globally-searched Good Governance Forum, I call upon the US and its allies as well as the Pakistan military to help establish and strengthen the institutions i.e. parliament, judiciary and media to exercise checks and balances on the functioning of the executive. All the stakeholders have to act with absolute determination and indomitable will to put the country on its track as fast as possible.
Mumtaz A. Piracha
Founder & Moderator
Good Governance Forum
Karachi - Pakistan -- Good Governance Forum, founded by Mumtaz A. Piracha, is indexed on hundreds of search engines across the globe. It is the largest, most diversified and most global platform of its kind for the exchange of views, opinions and ideas of learned men and women from almost all walks of life. It is a non-political, non-ethnic and non-profit platform for exchange of views among the network members numbering 1000+. The actual number of our email readers runs into hundreds of thousands as our network members circulate emails of the forum in their social circles.It does not assume any liability whatsoever for the network members' views nor does it necessarily agreewith them. We respect privacy. Anybody can join in or opt out of the network any time by informing the forum via email.Anybody can post his/her comments by visiting the blogsite and clicking on the link COMMENTS on its home pageBlogsite: http://ggovernance.blogspot.comEmail: good.governance@gmail.com
THE BRIEFING ROOM • THE BLOG
Tuesday, January 27th, 2009 at 9:48 am
President to Muslim World: "Americans are not your enemy"
In his first interview with an Arab television station, President Barack Obama offered a bold change to America's relations with the Muslim world.
"My job is to communicate to the American people that the Muslim world is filled with extraordinary people who simply want to live their lives and see their children live better lives," President Obama told Al Arabiya. "My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy."
In the interview, conducted in the White House map room, President Obama also expressed his commitment to tackling the Middle East peace process immediately.
"Sending George Mitchell to the Middle East is fulfilling my campaign promise that we're not going to wait until the end of my administration to deal with Palestinian and Israeli peace, we're going to start now," he said. "It may take a long time to do, but we're going to do it now."
The interview is part of the President’s broader outreach to the Muslim world, which includes a promise to make a major address from the capital of a Muslim nation.
Al Arabiya is a 24-hour Arabic-language news channel based out of Dubai.
Redrawn South Asia map shows truncated Pakistan; sparks fear23 Nov 2008, 1304 hrs IST, PTI
I Remember When a TrillionDollars Was Real Money
1) The Fed Pledges $7.2 Trillion of YOUR Money. Bloomberg News reports that the U.S. government is prepared to lend more than $7.4 trillion — approximately half the value of everything produced in the nation last year — to rescue the financial system, which has been in cardiac arrest since the credit markets seized up.
How much is that? The pledged money is equal to $24,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. And $2.8 trillion of that has already been spent, according to Bloomberg.Now brace yourself for the bad news ...
2) The Government Has Already Spent $4.3 Trillion Bailing Out Wall Street. According to CNBC, as of last week, the Federal government had already spent $4.3 trillion in bailouts, from $900 billion for the Term Auction Facility ... to $112 billion bailing out AIG ... to $540 billion backing up Money Market funds ... to $700 billion for the Treasury Asset Relief Program (TARP), and more.$4.3 trillion — that's more than America spent on World War II, adjusted for inflation. And it's all going down a black hole created by Wall Street bankers.
The Federal government has already spent $4.3 TRILLION in bailouts and has hardly made a dent in the financial crisis.
All that money has to come from somewhere. Investors are stuffing their money into Treasuries with no yield, and the government still has to go out and borrow more. The U.S. Treasury is on course to borrow $1.5 trillion this year, and it's still not enough! Next year's budget deficit will easily top $1 trillion; more than double this year's deficit.
The overall impact of what the bailout will cost ultimately should be very negative for the U.S. dollar ... and that should be bullish for gold.
3) Wall Street Is Probably Going to Need $Trillions More! The financial crisis is really the death of a thousand cuts. Let's take the Citigroup fiasco as an example. You may have heard that Citigroup is getting a $20 billion equity injection on top of the $25 billion it got in October.But Citi will also carve out $300 billion in troubled assets, which will remain on its balance sheet.The first $37-$40 billion in losses on those assets will go to Citi.
The next $5 billion in losses will hit Treasury.
The next $10 billion in losses will go to the FDIC.
Any more losses will go to the Fed.
These assets are crap-tacularly bad, so basically Uncle Sam is on the hook for another $260 billion in assets, in addition to the $45 billion in liquidity poured onto the desert of Citi's balance sheet.And do you notice that the clowns on Wall Street are balking at giving Detroit a $25 billion bridge loan to save America's auto industry (and prevent a chain of dominos as all of the Big Three's suppliers, finance units and vendors go belly up) but Citi — a zombie of a bank that is probably lurching towards failure — gets $45 billion without even a debate.That brings me to point #4 ...
#4) Obama's Administration: More of the Same? Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson has set the bar pretty low as he limbos past barriers of logic and fairness to bail out his fat-cat friends. So you might think that the new administration, and Obama's nomination for Treasury Secretary, New York Fed President Tim Geithner, would be a welcome change from the crony capitalism at work now.The widely respected Big Picture blog has a post by institutional risk analyst Chris Whalen titled: "What Barack Obama Needs to Know About Tim Geithner, the AIG Fiasco and Citigroup." I highly recommend you read Whalen's post. He makes the following point:
By embracing Geithner, President-elect Barack Obama is endorsing the ill-advised scheme to support AIG directed by Hank Paulson et al at Goldman Sachs and executed by Tim Geithner and Ben Bernanke. News reports have already documented the ties between GS and AIG, and the backroom machinations by Paulson to get the deal done. This scheme to stay AIG's resolution cannot possibly work and when it does collapse, Barak Obama and his administration will wear the blame due through their endorsement of Tim Geithner.
Read the whole thing. If Whalen is right, the crisis of confidence already shaking the financial markets is nothing compared to the tsunami of trouble that will follow.
For more information and archived issues, visit http://www.moneyandmarkets.com
Happy National Metric Day - October 10
http://lamar.colostate.edu/~hillger/metric-week.html
http://www.metricationmatters.com/docs/NationalMetricDay.pdf
I haven't engaged in debunking Obama emails, but this one insulted my candidate and my Christianity so I wanted to take action lest others receive it and think less of Obama OR my religion. This message claims that "Revelations 13" has predictions in it that point to Obama being the anti-Christ. It claims to describe the anti-Christ as being "a man, in his 40's, of muslim descent, who will deceive the nations with persuasive language and have a massive Christ-like appeal" It claims he "will promise false hope and world peace." It then urges people to send around the email.
Checking with my NIV study bible, I find almost everything about that is wrong from a biblical standpoint. Here are the glaring un-truths...
This is the interview that NPR's Fresh Air show had with Thomas Friedman, the author of The World is Flat. http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=13&prgDate=9-8-2008. Inthe interview, Friedman provides great analysis of the energy situation in the U.S. and the world and how McCain's energy plan is a certain disaster on so many levels.
Please listen to it and circulate widely.
McCain's bellicose, against-all-enemies foreign policy is COLLAPSING - and NOT a moment too soon
Great article from TIME magazine
http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1826064,00.html
On July 15, I had the honor and privilege of visiting the offices of 6 members of Congress with my IL colleagues from the RESULTS advocacy group. RESULTS is a citizen's group that advocates against hunger and the worst aspects of poverty. The first office we visited was of our very own jr senator, the Honorable Barack Obama.
I'll break the suspense right here. We didn't meet him. Nor did we expect to. I rather hoped he'd fly in and out as the Lantos-Hyde global health bill was to be voted on that day, but he may have been privy to knowledge that I didn't have (duh!) and known that it was to likely to pass by a large majority. So, he wasn't around, but we had an appt with ne of his foreign policy aides as our focus was on global poverty.
I'd never been to a senator's office before. Much smaller and less glamourous than you might think. Good for a taxpayer to see :) We were not the only visitors. A US soldier was there picking up a flag for a family member along with some tourists complete with 2 little girls all dressed in red, white, and blue from their dresses to their hair ribbons. His lobby is filled with Chicago pics and literature. My partners were disappointed it was all Cubs stuff, but hey...I'm north-sider. I didn't mind. But...down to business
After profuse thank you's for the Global Poverty Act support, our first order of business was the mentioned Lantos-Hyde act. It's main purpose was to expand US resources to fight three diseases of poverty around the world: TB, HIV/AIDS and Malaria. Our exciting, breaking news to talk about was a point of order that came up the day before that could have killed the whole $50 billion proposal! We were there to urge that it be waived and to oppose the 10 amendments that were meant to weaken the bill. We had no idea whether or not he would be in town for the voting, so we did our pitch as if he were. Obama supported the bill anyway, so we were only following up on the breaking news. Going further in our requests, we asked him to support the Education for All Act (S 1259) which seeks to provide basic education for all children around the world by: authorizing $3 billion by 2012, requiring the president to prioritize basic education funding and strategies for the most disadvantaged kids (child laborers, girls in remote areas, orphans, the disabled, etc), eliminating school fees, funding for refugee camps, etc. Obama is NOT a co-sponsor as of 7/10/08 and we urged him to become one. Clinton was the original sponsor...could that be why he was previously not on her bill? Well, if that's the reason, it's done with, so we want him on it now. There was an appropriations ask as well to speak to other senators on our behalf since the State and Foreign Ops committee was to consider its spending bill on 7/17.
So those were the issues on the table. We still don't know why he isn't a Education for All sponsor, but we'll follow up on that later. His aide was polite, but busy and it was a good experience to start the day. We also got gallery passes there so we could go into the Senate chamber during the Lantos-Hyde debate...which was pretty dang cool since Durbin was speaking in support of it when we were there. Later that evening, one of his aides showed up at a banquet RESULTS threw, which was an extremely nice gesture for his office to make!
Hopefully, that will be the last time I get to lobby in SENATOR Obama's office and I can direct my comments to PRESIDENT Obama next time!
ccyl
http://endpoverty-ccyl.blogspot.com/
I'll write more about this later, but suffice it to say that I am beyond ecstatic that the Lantos-Hyde bill passed yesterday!!! It was my extreme pleasure to be lobbying for it with about 200 other RESULTS activists on the Hill the morning it went up for votes in the Senate. I was in Obama and Durbin's office voicing last minute concerns about the amendments and a potentially damaging point of order that could have killed the whole $50B bill. Obama supported this legislation prior to the vote, but the staffers could not tell me if he was in DC at the moment of the vote. They said he would likely fly in and immediately out if he was going to participate, so I'm curious to see if he made it or not. Our other IL senator,Dick Durbin, was not only present but speaking passionately in favor of the bill an hour or so before the vote. I was so excited to be in the Senate galley while he was speaking.
Regardless of whether Obama was there or not, I'm all heady with the feeling that one person can really help make a positive difference in the world!!!!
An email from Barack Obama regarding a recent letter I wrote to him regarding poverty, the food crisis, and the need for more international emergency aid. -ccyl-----------------------------------------------------------------Thank you for taking the time to write about hunger and poverty throughout the world. I completely agree that we can and must do more to address the global food crisis. The rising price of food is causing immense hardship for the world's poorest people. According to the World Bank, an estimated 100 million people may be pushed into deeper poverty and hunger because of soaring food prices. Press reports have described the crippling effects of the high prices and the suffering of those who are most vulnerable, especially young children. The risk of civil unrest is significant in dozens of countries, making this an important global security issue as well.
(more in the extended post text)
