Thursday, October 27, 2011

Turkey Earthquake 2011 Pictures



About 46 hours after an earthquake decimated the Turkish town of Ercis, rescue workers cradle 14-day old Azra Karaduma after pulling her from a collapsed apartment building. "Given the work conditions and hardships of rescue teams, the best prize is to bring people back to life," Ercan Toprak, leader of the rescue team that saved the girl, told NTV. "We feel the joy of connecting her back to life and hope her mother and grandmother will also be saved very shortly." Her mother and grandmother had taken shelter with the baby behind a couch in their damaged apartment. After hearing their cries for help, rescuers drilled a hole into their wall. (Reuters)

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Two men comfort each other near a collapsed building in Ercis, near the eastern Turkish city of Van. Ercis sustained some of the worst damage from the earthquake, and 3,000 rescue workers have converged on the site, with many digging with only their hands.(Baz Ratner/Reuters) #

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A rescuer inspects a hole in the debris to search for possible survivors trapped under a collapsed building where seven people are believed to be buried in Ercis on Oct. 25. The 7.2 magnitude quake in eastern Turkey Sunday killed at least 450 people and injured more than 1,300 (Burhan Ozbilici/Associated Press) #

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An earthquake survivor collects his belongings in a collapsed building on Oct. 25 in Ercis. With thousands of homeless survivors facing near-freezing temperatures, Turkey said it would accept international aid offers, even from Israel, with which it has had strained relations. (Osman Orsal/Reuters) #

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A gravedigger works in Ercis on Oct. 25. (Morteza Nikoubazl/Reuters) #

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Mourners attend a funeral of an earthquake victim in Ercis on Oct. 25. (Morteza Nikoubazl/Reuters) #

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Funerals in Ercis increase as workers dug deeper into collapsed buildings in a battle against time to find survivors.(Morteza Nikoubazl/Reuters) #

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As temperatures fall, men sit around a fire amid the rubble of collapsed buildings on Oct. 25 in Ercis. Tens of thousands of people have had to spend their nights under canvas, in cars or huddled round small fires in towns rattled by aftershocks. (Baz Ratner/Reuters) #

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A Turkish soldier guards a rescue operation on Oct. 25 amid collapsed buildings in Ercis. Pockets of jubilation over successful rescues have been tempered by many more discoveries of bodies. (Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP/Getty Images) #

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Passing a resting rescue worker, a man carries a half dozen loaves of bread on Oct. 24 in Ercis. Shortages of food and shelter have gripped the region, with desperate survivors forcing aid trucks to pull over before they even reach their destinations. (Mustafa Ozer/AFP/Getty Images) #

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People stay amid the rubble of a collapsed building on Oct. 25 in Ercis. (Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP/Getty Images) #

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Residents grab tents from a Turkish Red Crescent truck on Oct. 24 in Ercis. Much of the town still lacked running water or power two days after the earthquake and aid workers said they could only provide shelter for about half of the thousands of homeless people. (Mustafa Ozer/AFP/Getty Images) #

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A refugee camp has been set up in Ercis, where casualties have been concentrated so far. Officials are still checking outlying areas. (Baz Ratner/Reuters) #

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Relatives of quake victims watch as workers try to rescue survivors from a collapsed building in Ercis on Oct. 25, two days after the 7.2-magnitude earthquake reduced scores of buildings to rubble. (Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP/Getty Images) #

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Survivors pick through the rubble of their collapsed apartment on Oct. 25 in Ercis. (Osman Orsal/Reuters) #

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Relatives of quake victims gather as rescue workers take part in an operation to pull people from a collapsed building in Ercis on Oct. 25. (Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP/Getty Images) #

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A rescue worker enters the crevice created by a collapsed building on Oct. 25 in Ercis. (Baz Ratner/Reuters) #

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A boy looks through a hole on a collapsed building on Oct. 25 in Ercis. Scores of people remain missing in the town. (Mustafa Ozer/AFP/Getty Images) #

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A man makes a bed of concrete blocks in Ercis on Oct. 24. Distraught families mourned outside a mosque or sought to identify loved ones among rows of bodies in the town. (Burhan Ozbilici/Associated Press) #

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More than 2,200 buildings were damaged in the town of Ercis and the surrounding Van province, according to the emergency unit of the prime minister's office. (Mustafa Ozer/AFP/Getty Images) #

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Rescue teams, working with bare hands and heavy machinery, try to find survivors in the rubble in Ercis on Oct. 24, the day following the earthquake. (Mustafa Ozer/AFP/Getty Images) #

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Emergency service workers carry an earthquake survivor after pulling him from the rubble on Oct. 24 in Ercis in mainly Kurdish southeast Turkey. (Osman Orsal/Reuters) #

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A man stands amid the remains of a building in Van in eastern Turkey on Oct. 24. Interior Minister Idris Naim Sahin said that at least 100 people had died in both the city of Van and the town of Ercis. (Adem Altan/AFP/Getty Images) #

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Turkish men and rescue workers try to find survivors in a collapsed building in Ercis on the evening of the earthquake, Oct. 23. (Mustafa Ozer/AFP/Getty Images)#

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Yunus, a 13-year-old with a hand of a victim on his shoulder, waits to be rescued from under a flattened building on Oct. 24 in Ercis. (Umit Bektas/Reuters) #

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Rescuers pull survivors from the rubble hours after an earthquake hit a village near the city of Van on Oct. 23. (Ali Ihsan Ozturk/Reuters) #

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Villagers and rescue workers try to save people trapped under debris on Oct. 23 in Tabanli, near the eastern Turkish city of Van. (Abdurrahman Antakyali/Reuters) #

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A member of a search and rescue team combs through the darkness of a collapsed building for survivors in Ercis on Oct. 25. (Morteza Nikoubazl/Reuters) #



--
Shahzad Afzal
http://www.pakistanprobe.com/



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Monday, October 24, 2011

Heroic Tale of Holocaust, With a Twist – The Muslim Help


Heroic Tale of Holocaust, With a Twist – The Muslim Help

Posted: Wed, 05 Oct 2011 

By Elaine Sciolino – NYT

HolocaustThe stories of the Holocaust have been documented, distorted, clarified and filtered through memory. Yet new stories keep coming, occasionally altering the grand, incomplete mosaic of Holocaust history.

One of them, dramatized in a French film released here last week, focuses on an unlikely savior of Jews during the Nazi occupation of France: the rector of a Paris mosque.

Muslims, it seems, rescued Jews from the Nazis.

"Les Hommes Libres" ("Free Men") is a tale of courage not found in French textbooks. According to the story, Si Kaddour Benghabrit, the founder and rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris, provided refuge and certificates of Muslim identity to a small number of Jews to allow them to evade arrest and deportation.

It was simpler than it sounds. In the early 1940s France was home to a large population of North Africans, including thousands of Sephardic Jews. The Jews spoke Arabic and shared many of the same traditions and everyday habits as the Arabs. Neither Muslims nor Jews ate pork. Both Muslim and Jewish men were circumcised. Muslim and Jewish names were often similar.

The mosque, a tiled, walled fortress the size of a city block on the Left Bank, served as a place to pray, certainly, but also as an oasis of calm where visitors were fed and clothed and could bathe, and where they could talk freely and rest in the garden.

It was possible for a Jew to pass.

"This film is an event," said Benjamin Stora, France's pre-eminent historian on North Africa and a consultant on the film. "Much has been written about Muslim collaboration with the Nazis. But it has not been widely known that Muslims helped Jews. There are still stories to be told, to be written."

The film, directed by Ismaël Ferroukhi, is described as fiction inspired by real events and built around the stories of two real-life figures (along with a made-up black marketeer). The veteran French actor Michael Lonsdale plays Benghabrit, an Algerian-born religious leader and a clever political maneuverer who gave tours of the mosque to German officers and their wives even as he apparently used it to help Jews.

Mahmoud Shalaby, a Palestinian actor living in Israel, plays Salim — originally Simon — Hilali, who was Paris's most popular Arabic-language singer, a Jew who survived the Holocaust by posing as a Muslim. (To make the assumed identity credible, Benghabrit had the name of Hilali's grandfather engraved on a tombstone in the Muslim cemetery in the Paris suburb of Bobigny, according to French obituaries about the singer. In one tense scene in the film a German soldier intent on proving that Hilali is a Jew, takes him to the cemetery to identify it.)

The historical record remains incomplete, because documentation is sketchy. Help was provided to Jews on an ad hoc basis and was not part of any organized movement by the mosque. The number of Jews who benefited is not known. The most graphic account, never corroborated, was given by Albert Assouline, a North African Jew who escaped from a German prison camp. He claimed that more than 1,700 resistance fighters — including Jews but also a lesser number of Muslims and Christians — found refuge in the mosque's underground caverns, and that the rector provided many Jews with certificates of Muslim identity.

In his 2006 book, "Among the Righteous," Robert Satloff, director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, uncovered stories of Arabs who saved Jews during the Holocaust, and included a chapter on the Grand Mosque. Dalil Boubakeur, the current rector, confirmed to him that some Jews — up to 100 perhaps — were given Muslim identity papers by the mosque, without specifying a number. Mr. Boubakeur said individual Muslims brought Jews they knew to the mosque for help, and the chief imam, not Benghabrit, was the man responsible.

Mr. Boubakeur showed Mr. Satloff a copy of a typewritten 1940 Foreign Ministry document from the French Archives. It stated that the occupation authorities suspected mosque personnel of delivering false Muslim identity papers to Jews. "The imam was summoned, in a threatening manner, to put an end to all such practices," the document said.

Mr. Satloff said in a telephone interview: "One has to separate the myth from the fact. The number of Jews protected by the mosque was probably in the dozens, not the hundreds. But it is a story that carries a powerful political message and deserves to be told."

A 1991 television documentary "Une Résistance Oubliée: La Mosquée de Paris" ("A Forgotten Resistance: The Mosque of Paris") by Derri Berkani , and a children's book "The Grand Mosque of Paris: A Story of How Muslims Saved Jews During the Holocaust," published in 2007, also explore the events.

The latest film was made in an empty palace in Morocco, with the support of the Moroccan government. The Paris mosque refused to grant permission for any filming. "We're a place of worship," Mr. Boubakeur said in an interview. "There are prayers five times a day. Shooting a film would have been disruptive."

Benghabrit fell out of favor with fellow Muslims because he opposed Algerian independence and stayed loyal to France's occupation of his native country. He died in 1954.

In doing research for the film, Mr. Ferroukhi and even Mr. Stora learned new stories. At one screening a woman asked him why the film did not mention the Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern European origin who had been saved by the mosque. Mr. Stora said he explained that the mosque didn't intervene on behalf of Ashkenazi Jews, who did not speak Arabic or know Arab culture.

"She told me: 'That's not true. My mother was protected and saved by a certificate from the mosque,' " Mr. Stora said.

On Wednesday, the day of the film's release here, hundreds of students from three racially and ethnically mixed Paris-area high schools were invited to a special screening and question-and-answer session with Mr. Ferroukhi and some of his actors.

Some asked banal questions. Where did you find the old cars? (From an antique car rental agency.) Others reacted with curiosity and disbelief, wanting to know how much of the film was based on fact, and how it could have been possible that Jews mingled easily with Muslims. Some were stunned to hear that the Nazis persecuted only the Jews, and left the Muslims alone.

Reviews here were mixed on the film, which is to be released in the Netherlands, Switzerland and Belgium. (American rights have been sold as well.) The daily Le Figaro said it "reconstitutes an atmosphere and a period marvelously." The weekly L'Express called it "ideal for a school outing, less for an evening at the movies."

Mr. Ferroukhi does not care. He said he was lobbying the Culture and Education Ministries to get the film shown in schools. "It pays homage to the people of our history who have been invisible," he said. "It shows another reality, that Muslims and Jews existed in peace. We have to remember that — with pride."





--
Shahzad Afzal
http://www.pakistanprobe.com/



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Thursday, October 20, 2011

CIA’s Biological Attack On Pakistan Suspected---Dengue Fever


CIA's Biological Attack On Pakistan Suspected---Dengue Fever

CIA



Islamabad—Fears are growing in Pakistan that the spread of dengue fever also known as break-bone fever may have been caused by some kind of biological experiment or deliberate release of virus by foreign elements. 

Pakistan Medical Association (PMA) representatives have called on security agencies to investigate fears of deliberate spread of dengue virus in Pakistan. According to a report, the PMA members and experts have demanded in-depth investigation over mysterious spread of Dengue virus in Punjab. 

Dengue fever is an infectious tropical disease caused by the dengue virus and the disease has caused alarming situation in Lahore and other Punjab cities. Lately the disease has spread to other cities of Pakistan and has killed over 100 people affecting thousands. According to experts the virus has four different types; infection with one type usually gives lifelong immunity to that type, but only short-term immunity to the others. Subsequent infection with a different type increases the risk of severe complications.

As per Internet info, in the spring and summer of 1981, Cuba experienced a severe hemorrhagic dengue fever epidemic. Between May and October 1981, the island nation had 158 dengue-related deaths with about 75,000 reported infection cases. At the height of the epidemic, over 10,000 people (per day) were found infected and 116,150 were hospitalized. At the same time during 1981 outbreak, covert biological warfare attacks on Cuba's residents and crops were believed to have been conducted against the island by CIA contractors and military airplane flyovers. Particularly harmful to the nation was a severe outbreak of swine flu that Fidel Castro attributed to the CIA. American researcher William H. Schaap, an editor of Covert Action magazine, claims the Cuba dengue outbreak was the result of CIA activities.

In 1982, the then Soviet media reported that the CIA sent operatives into Afghanistan from Pakistan to launch a dengue epidemic. The Soviets at the time claimed the operatives were posing as malaria workers, but, instead, were releasing dengue-infected mosquitoes. The CIA denied the charges. In 1985 and 1986, authorities in Nicaragua accused the CIA of creating a massive outbreak of dengue fever that infected thousands in that country. CIA officials denied any involvement, but Army researchers admitted that intensive work with arthropod vectors for offensive biological warfare objectives had been conducted at Fort Detrick in the early 1980s, having first started in the early 1950s. American Fort Detrick researchers reported that huge colonies of mosquitoes infected with not only dengue virus, but also yellow fever, were maintained at the Frederick, Maryland (U.S.), installation, as well as hordes of flies carrying cholera and anthrax and thousands of ticks filled with Colorado fever and relapsing fever. 

It is significant to note that in early 2011, American CIA sponsored a fake vaccination drive in Abbottabad city of Pakistan to get DNA samples of Osama bin Laden, developing aversion to the real and much needed polio vaccination programme in Pakistan.

Bilogical attack on Afghanistan: Britain and the US have been accused of a biological attack on Afghanistan's poppy fields in an attempt to defeat the Afghani resistance, destroy wheat and fruit trees and blight the opium crop. The British daily "Telegraph" reported in May 2010 that "poppy plants (in Afghanistan) have been suffering a mysterious disease that leaves them yellow and withered and slashes the yield of opium resin, which is sold and processed into heroin. The worst-affected farmers said the scale of the infection was unprecedented. Yields have dropped by 90 per cent in some fields. 

Some have claimed the British and Americans are responsible for the plague, but they strongly denied involvement. The blight was first noticed a month ago and linked to an infestation of aphids in wheat and fruit trees. It has since been found in four provinces across the south.

These biological attacks on the Afghani people brings to memory the American biological war against the Vietnamese people in the 1960s and 1970s.

Jean-Luc Lemahieu, the head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime in Afghanistan was quoted as saying: ''We are at this  moment not sure if it is a fungus or some insect. Spraying has been forbidden in very clear words by the President of Afghanistan. Hence, awaiting the results from our lab tests.''


http://pakobserver.net/
--
Shahzad Afzal
http://www.pakistanprobe.com/



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Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Saudi Ambassador Assassination Attempt

Important New Video: Saudi Ambassador Assassination Attempt
I have been truly amazed that in spite of the hard evidence that the Saudi Ambassador assassination attempt that has been running absolutely "Fast and Furious" over the Jewish controlled mainstream media is absolutely fraudulent, the American public is still swallowing it, and accepting it at face value! It does seem that try as we may to reach people everywhere, the American public continues to act like drones and accept the lies that their own governments and media propagate!


Now, I want to present a very important video that just came out the other day. It comes courtesy of Youtube user: "postpanic1", and gives a very truthful and honest assessment of this absolutely laughable yet disturbing latest attempt to get a war with Iran off and running... It is called: "Saudi Ambassador Assassination Attempt", and I do recommend that everyone watch it and pay attention to the message presented. I have some comments to follow:

 Yes, this is the same narrator as in previous videos presented in this blog, and again his message comes through crystal clear. 


It does not take a rocket scientist to see that the US Government is obeying their Jewish masters and pushing desperately to get their masters' long cherished war with Iran off and running. These criminals do not give a damn that this war could spread and become World War III, which could cost the lives of BILLIONS of innocent people. All they want is world hegemony and the survivors to become their permanent slaves!


Readers, I absolutely want all of you to take this video and pass it around to everyone you can reach and have them understand what we are up against. Our very survival may depend on everyone taking a stand now and preventing these criminals from starting a war that may kill us all!

Source Email:
mailing list <joinpakistan.googlegroups.com>
chaudry k_w572001[at]yahoo.com

--
Shahzad Afzal
http://www.pakistanprobe.com/



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Monday, October 17, 2011

BUSTING THE MYTH OF US AID TO PAKISTAN

BUSTING THE MYTH OF US AID TO PAKISTAN


WoP

In ten years since 9/11, Pakistan received only $448 million in US aid. Our losses? $70 billion. Our debt? $86 billion.


ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—Get it straight. Since 9/11, Pakistan has received only about $448 million net in economic assistance. The Economic Survey of Pakistan says that the costs Pakistan has incurred on America's failed 'War on Terror' are $68 billion. Deduct our external debt from $68 billion and we would have a billion of two left over, which the US should pay. Sad was the day we decided to help this multi-bankrupt country.

Yet propagandists and conspiracy theorists in the US corporate media (with their Pakistani poodles yapping in tandem) keep peddling the myth of the "enormous" American aid to Pakistan since 9/11. Figures vary wildly from $10 to 20 billion. This is perception management at its best.

After a study he conducted for the Woodrow Wilson Centre, Shahid Javed Burki said: "If US civilian assistance is completely withdrawn, it will only have an impact of 0.14 percent on Pakistan's GDP growth." Calculations were based on gross aid, 40 percent of which goes to American 'consultants'. These are conservative estimates compared with how US aid is being spent in Iraq and Afghanistan, where more than 60 percent of the money remains with American 'contractors' and 'consultants'.

Mr. Anjum Rizvi of Vibe TV helped me to put these facts and figures together to expose the myth of US 'aid' to Pakistan.

Former State Bank Governor Ishrat Husain says that American aid does not help the government's precarious fiscal situation in any meaningful way. Only "12-15 percent of the total amount is channeled for budgetary support… Assuming that the whole $3 billion [per annum] in economic and military aid is disbursed fully, this accounts for less than seven percent of the total foreign exchange earnings of the country… The increase in export revenues and remittances in the current year was almost twice that amount."

What price then Hillary Clinton's boast in Islamabad on May 27 that, "We provide more support than Saudi Arabia, China, and everybody else combined…but I will stand here and admit that I'm not sure many Pakistanis know that." Of course they don't, Madam Secretary, because its all bull and you know it and we know it.

1. Since 2006 militancy has spread like a contagion throughout Pakistan. So far, it has cost the country more than 35,000 citizens, 3,500 security personnel, destruction of infrastructure, internal migration, nose-diving production and growing unemployment.

2. The US has so far provided $13 billion in aid to Pakistan, of which almost $9 billion were military disbursements. The government expects to receive $1.45 billion this year from CSF as reimbursements for money Pakistan has already spent on US behalf.

3. America has made the process of auditing Pakistan's invoices for reimbursement more stringent and rejected several claims in recent years.

· 50 percent of the aid has to be spent on US 'contractors' under US law, so this goes back to America.

· 25 percent is wasted on administrative expenses.

· The rest is given to the US Ambassador's favorite NGO to be deposited in US accounts.

· Almost none makes it to Pakistanis.

Compare this to China's spending of $30 billion in infrastructure projects in Pakistan.

If American military 'aid' looks big to you, please pause. Much of it is our money – reimbursements for money we have spent on America's behalf. It comes under 'Coalition Support Funds' for reimbursement to allied militaries for operations beneficial to the United States.

· The Pakistanis submit their costs; the US decides whether to pay or not.

· More than 40 percent of Pakistan's requests have been rejected.

· If any of our requests are "bogus" as the US informally claims, prove it. Or shut up.

· The problem is more likely with American bureaucracy, not Pakistani "mistakes". America is now even declining to pay for death benefits that it used to.

· Compare this to Afghanistan's $100 billion and Iraq's $600 billion aid, countries that are eight times smaller than Pakistan. Because America hasn't formally occupied Pakistan yet?

· Efforts to increase civilian assistance to $1.5 billion annually have failed.

Mrs. Clinton also said: "America cannot and should not solve Pakistan's problems. That's up to Pakistan. But in solving its problems, Pakistan should understand that anti-Americanism and conspiracy theories will not make problems disappear. It is up to the Pakistani peopleto choose what kind of country they wish to live in and it is up to the leaders of Pakistan to deliver results for the people." Quite. But most Pakistanis think that it is the US that spawns conspiracies that spawn "conspiracy theories" and it is the US that continues to cause problems for Pakistan.

Security-related funding, including CSF (2002-2010), amounted to about $14.14 billion.

· This includes the operational cost of the 140,000 Pakistani troops deployed along the 2,560-kilometer border with Afghanistan and training programmes for the paramilitary Frontier Corps.

· Almost two-thirds of the amount goes into security-related heads, while the social sector and economic infrastructure receive the remaining one-third.

· US AID and 'private contractors' spent more than 70 percent of the funds allocated for socio-economic development on their own support infrastructure.

· Half of the money never leaves US accounts. It's the same for Iraq and Afghanistan.

Pakistan's ministry of finance was prompted to seek US clarifications on how $488.537 million being provided under the Kerry-Lugar-Burmen Law (KLL) were being spent.

· KLL provided for two modes of assistance: one, budget money worth $1,025.335 million for the year 2010-11 and, two, "off the budget" $488.537 million.

· Of "off the budget" assistance of $488 million, America plans to spend $170 million for International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement, $106.387 million for Office of Transition and $60 million for humanitarian assistance.

· The remaining over $240 million will be spent through international and local NGOs. Pakistani authorities do not know details of this spending.

· The American "Spent Plan" shows that Washington has so far obligated $1.025 billion for Pakistan after completing Congressional procedural requirements.

US media might scream about the "billions of dollars" of aid to Pakistan, but the fact remains that its impact on Pakistan is insignificant. US aid doesn't come close to funding the difference with Pakistan's losses. The war's cumulative impact on Pakistan is worse: loss of investment, decline in industry and capital flight. US and NATO forces abuse Pakistan's roads and bridges but don't pay for their maintenance. Add infrastructure loss due to militant activity and it gets worse. The truth is that aid from this bankrupt country creates more problems than it is worth.

First published by Pakistan Today newspaper. The paper's rights are reserved. 
http://khudi.pk/2011/10/04/busting-the-myth-of-us-aid-to-pakistan/

--
Shahzad Afzal
http://www.pakistanprobe.com/



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