Former Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, the Chicago Democrat who became the leading architect of congressional tax policy in the Reagan era but later went to federal prison for corruption, died Wednesday, a family friend said. He was 82.

Rostenkowski was born and raised in the old “Polish Downtown,” a blue-collar neighborhood on Chicago’s Northwest Side. Born to a political family, he was a product of the Chicago machine, serving in the state legislature at age 24. A few short years later, with the support of his close ally Mayor Richard J. Daley, Rostenkowski was elected to the U.S. Congress.

He was present in Chicago for the famously disastrous 1968 Democratic National Convention, and his association with that event sidetracked his otherwise meteoric political rise. By 1981, though, he had risen to sufficient prominence to become the Chairman of the influential Ways and Means Committee.

In that role, he oversaw passage of the Tax Reform Act of 1986, one of the most significant overhauls of the tax code in American history. He also led the way on Medicare, welfare and Social Security reforms.

At the same time, “Mr. Chairman,” as he was commonly known, was a reliable supporter of his beloved home town, aggressively securing federal funds for Chicago and aligning himself closely with the city machine. He secured $32 million for construction of the Blue Line, $75 million for the remodeling of Navy Pier, and $150 million for construction of the White Sox’s Comiskey Park, now U.S. Cellular Field.

His political career came to an abrupt end in 1994, when a Justice Department investigation led to federal charges against Rostenkowski. He was implicated in the Congressional Post Office scandal, in which he allegedly laundered office money through postage stamps to buy gifts for friends and supporters. He pled guilty to mail fraud, and served 17 months in prison.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and longtime Rosty critic Mike Royko wrote at the time, “Most of the things he was nailed for would have been legal and common or, at worst, nickel-dime offenses when he began his career in Congress.”

shannon-meehan

When he and his men tried to evacuate the area endangered the life of house to house, using a microphone and the Arabic translator to tell someone in the house for a bomb attack outside air regions. In the book beyond the duty to write about his struggle with the monitoring of decisions

Shannon Meehan said: “I will continue to serve” his announcement

Meehan and Roger Thompson is scheduled to appear at a book signing tomorrow in Johnstown, Pennsylvania

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistani Taliban on Sunday denied fresh rumours that their chief Hakeemullah Mehsud is dead, while the army said it was investigating as reports re-emerged that he was killed by US drone missiles.

Speculation about the warlord’s death first surfaced after a January 14 bombing by unmanned US spy planes in Taliban stronghold North Waziristan, but within days Mehsud released two audio statements denying his demise.

Security sources said at the time that he may have been wounded, and on Sunday local television stations carried a report that he had been buried.

“I don’t have the confirmation, my sources have not confirmed it, whether he is dead or alive,” chief military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas told AFP, adding that they were investigating the report.

Taliban spokesmen had earlier this month admitted that Mehsud was in the Shaktoi area where the drones hit, but said he left about an hour before the strike. US officials said they had no information about his reported death.

The chief Taliban spokesman again Sunday dismissed the reports.

“Hakimullah is alive and safe. The purpose of stories regarding his death is to create differences among Taliban ranks, but such people will never succeed,” Azam Tariq told AFP by telephone from an unknown location.

“People who are saying that Hakimullah has died should provide proof of it – we have already proved that he is alive and we have provided two audio tapes of him to all the media.”

Mehsud assumed leadership of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), blamed for the deaths of thousands of people in attacks, after his predecessor, Baitullah Mehsud, was killed in a US drone strike in August last year.

The TTP denied Baitullah Mehsud’s death for weeks, apparently amid fierce infighting over who would succeed him.

protest again drones

According to newspaper reports, nearly 19 drone attacks have taken place in Pakistani territory in the first month of 2010. The number swells to nearly 60 if the total attacks in 2009 are added to the figure.

In recent months, international and local attention has begun to focus on the legality of these attacks and the international instruments that control incursions by one government organisation into the territory of another.

In the United States, some of these questions have begun to arise as commentators begin to evaluate President Obama’s first year in office in relation to the promises of his campaign. In Pakistan, debates have been instigated by the attacks themselves as well as recent threats of their reach being expanded to beyond the immediate border areas and South Waziristan.

The doctrine of jus ad bellum or the right to wage war is the subject of several international treaties that together provide a legal framework that defines the parameters for lawful conflict between nations. Article 2(4) of the UN charter provides that: “All members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.”

Based on the article, unless justifications are provided, drone attacks in their current form are in contravention of the UN charter and hence a violation of international law.

The most prominent justification offered by the US is that these attacks are occurring with the consent of the Pakistani government. Consent, it seems, obviates any violation of the UN charter. Specifically, Article 20 of the UN’s ‘Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts’ states: “Valid consent by a state to the commission of an act by another state precludes the wrongfulness of the act in relation to the former state to the extent that the act remains within the limits of that consent.”

Simply speaking, the argument is that since Pakistan implicitly agrees to the use of drones on its territory, it consequently precludes the possibility of complaining against any international law violations. As noted by Sean Murphy in his article on the legality of drone attacks, the problem with this justification is that it has been based almost entirely on news reports and ambiguous indications by unnamed officials.

Indeed, one Washington Post report of September 2008 states that while Pakistan “formally protests such actions as a violation of its sovereignty, the Pakistani government has generally looked the other way when the CIA conducted Predator missions or US troops respond to cross-border attacks by the Taliban”.

The consent justification also becomes problematic in the light of the actual statements that have been made by Pakistani leaders. Mere days after the report mentioning the tacit agreement with Pakistan, Gen Ashfaq Kayani stated: “There is no question of any agreement or understanding with the coalition forces whereby they are allowed to conduct operations on our side of the border.”

Ultimately, however, the consent argument is problematic because a covert or tacit agreement suggests the absence of a written instrument that demarcates the boundaries and instances of such incursions and the nature of those that are being consented to. The absence of such an agreement at worst makes the drone attacks a violation of international sovereignty and at best relegates them to the status of legal limbo. There is simply no stipulation of what is allowed, what area it covers and how long such incursions may occur, all crucial questions given the indefinite nature of the war on terror itself.

A second legal argument offered in justification of drone attacks is based on their status as acts of self-defence against attacks by non-state actors. Article 51 of the UN charter allows such actions provided that the military force used is necessary to achieve a defensive purpose and does not cause a disproportionate loss of civilian lives and property. Furthermore, it is necessary also that the non-state actors whose actions have motivated the defensive action are actually in control of the state.

In the present case, this argument would be based on the fact that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks — was arrested in Pakistan and is accused of having planned the attacks there. The obvious problem, however, is that there is no proof whatsoever that the non-state group in question, Al Qaeda, is under the control of the Pakistani government.

Furthermore, if the argument for self-defence is based on the fact that the Taliban are conducting raids against allied and US forces from across the border in Pakistan, it runs into a different problem. If the drone attacks are seen as motivated by the ‘hot pursuit’ doctrine through which they are actually pursuing Al Qaeda operatives who have attempted to escape across the Afghan border, then they must be connected to specific operations.

Instead, it is common knowledge based on statements made by various US defence and military officials that the drones are actually launched in response to intelligence gathered from reconnaissance also conducted through drone aircraft, making the hot pursuit doctrine inapplicable in this situation.

While there has been much anger and public outcry against the drone attacks in Pakistan, there have been few attempts to present objections to international forums where the violations of international instruments can be noted. Commentators in the Pakistani media have focused exclusively on the utility of these attacks in killing foreign fighters rather than their legality. The problem with the former approach is that it evaluates the attacks from the angle of political and tactical considerations at the expense of the legal.

Given the increasing frequency of drone attacks in Pakistan, as well as the likelihood of the expansion of the programme, it is imperative that human rights and civil society groups in Pakistan unite in protesting the illegality of the attacks and attempt to garner the support of the international community against them.

Reference:

DAWN NEWS

what is talban want

Often, I am asked by readers or friends abroad what the Taliban want. Why, they ask, are they slaughtering hundreds of innocent people wherever they can? What is their purpose? What is their agenda?

The short answer is power. Other excuses for their murderous excesses are a fig-leaf: demands for the Sharia and the expulsion of foreign forces from the region are no more than window-dressing.

These terrorists realise that they cannot achieve power through peaceful, democratic means as they have no support. Even relatively moderate Islamic parties have been repeatedly trounced at the polls in Pakistan. So extremists reject democracy as it does not give them access to power.

Established religious parties in Pakistan have exploited the repeated bouts of army rule to further their agenda. So far, they have been remarkably successful. But while jihadi groups might cut secret deals with intelligence agencies, even our army is reluctant to enter into open, formal agreements with them.

This leaves only the path of terrorism open to them. Pakistani extremists watched enviously as the Afghan Taliban under Mullah Omar were propelled to power with help from our army. Seeking to replicate this success, they have mounted a sustained campaign of destabilisation against the government.

Another thing Islamic extremists oppose vehemently wherever they are operating is modern, scientific education. Educated only in the scriptures, they have little understanding of the physical and social sciences. While they may have many operatives who are highly educated, the top ideologues are seminary-trained zealots. Although they use Islamic rhetoric and rationalisations, their true goal is to seize and wield absolute power.

In Nigeria, an obscure Muslim sect recently launched a deadly campaign under the banner of ‘Boko Haram’, meaning that modern education was haram, or sinful. Hundreds died as they went on a rampage before being ruthlessly crushed. Nevertheless, their primitive credo lives on.

In Pakistan, the Taliban and their murderous partners have destroyed hundreds of schools. They have focused on girls’ schools, issuing threats to those they haven’t yet demolished. Underneath their theocratic justifications for their violent opposition to rational education lies the knowledge that they are not equipped to compete in the modern world. They are thus locked in a battle to tear down a system that marginalises them, and to force everybody else to obey their diktat since, according to them, only they are qualified to interpret the scriptures.

Their apologists — and they are legion in our ruling classes as well as our media — demand that we must negotiate with them. What they do not say is how this should be done. How do you talk to ruthless killers who saw off their victims’ heads and gleefully post the videos of their acts on the Internet? Or force young boys to gun down tied and blindfolded prisoners? Or flog young girls screaming for mercy?

Hakeemullah Mehsud of the Pakistani Taliban and his cohorts want nothing short of absolute power. The only thing they are willing to discuss are the terms of surrender of the Pakistan government. If we cede territory to them — as we did earlier in Swat — we are consigning our citizens to the kind of nightmare the people of Swat had to undergo.

The first thing Fazlullah did when he was handed Swat was to shut down the schools that had not been blown up earlier. Barber shops and video shops were ordered to follow suit. All forms of entertainment were effectively banned. Is this the kind of life we wish to condemn our countrymen to?

Remember that we have a model of this kind of barbaric society: under the Afghan Taliban, our neighbour was rapidly pushed back to the dark ages. Women were flogged for the crime of showing an inch of their ankles as they walked wearing all-enveloping shrouds. Male doctors could not attend to them, even in life-threatening cases. They were not allowed to leave their homes to work, and girls were forbidden from going to school.

Those urging the government to negotiate with the Pakistani Taliban need to be clear whether they want their mothers, wives, sisters and daughters to lead the lives their Afghan counterparts had to not so long ago. To the Taliban, these are non-negotiable conditions to their stated desire to impose their version of the Sharia on the rest of us.

Largely due to the shrill voices that have crowded out reason from media debate, there is a lot of confusion and ambiguity about what the Taliban want, and how far the government should go in meeting their demands. Some argue that their excesses are the result of the western presence in Afghanistan, and our government’s military anti-Taliban operations in the tribal areas. How the extremists hold school-going children responsible for these policies, and destroy schools is something their apologists in the media have failed to explain.

What sustains this mindset is the steady inroads madressahs have made in Pakistan during and since the Zia era. The decades since the 1980s have witnessed a rapid erosion of modern, secular values. The voices of reason have been muted, and we are caught in the grip of a mindless anti-West hysteria that pushes even moderates into the Taliban camp.

As the threat of the Taliban looms larger over Pakistan, schools in Karachi and Lahore have come to resemble armed camps. The fear of terrorist attacks unsettles children and parents alike. Ever the enemies of education, the Taliban will stop at nothing in their quest for power.

How should the government respond to this deadly threat? The voices of appeasement clamour for concessions. But the Taliban have repeatedly said they will halt their campaign of terror only when their version of the Sharia has been imposed, the army withdraws from the tribal areas, and the Americans cease their drone attacks.

Even if the first two demands are conceded, it is unlikely the Americans will stop using the only weapon that is proving effective in this conflict. Should our army actually pull out, it is more than probable that American troops will partially replace them in fighting the Taliban on our side of the border. There is no way they will allow the jihadis in Fata to target them without retaliating.

So much as I wish it were otherwise, I fear a military solution is the only one currently available. Negotiating from a position of weakness is a sure recipe for disaster.

irfan.husain@gmail.com

Reference:

Dawn News

Sirajuddin Haqqani

Al Jazeera has obtained an exclusive interview with Sirajuddin Haqqani, a Taliban commander fighting US and Nato forces in Afghanistan.

US commanders have identified the Pakistan-based Haqqani network – which allegedly has ties with Pakistan’s ISI – as one of the biggest threats to US forces in Afghanistan. The network carries out attacks on foreign forces across the majority of eastern Afghanistan. The US has put a $5 million bounty on Sirajuddin Haqqani’s head. David Chater has the latest from Kabul. The Aj Jazeera guy rightly points out the fact that the whole Haqqani network is CIA trained. So the mess is created by CIA in the first place and now they want Pakistan to clear it for them.

Many tenants stuck in the building as it caught fire after the blast and later were evacuated by the local people and rescuers arrived at the scene soon after the incident.

Police have also cordoned off the area while the fire fighters are engaged in extinguishing fire that has captured the ground and first floors of the building, many vehicles and a neighbouring fast-food restaurant.

Police officials say several vehicles were damaged and the windows of nearby stores were shattered in the explosion. Heavy black smoke caused by the fire has surrounded the blast site.