Pakistani Christians, police, clash after neighbourhood torched

A Pakistani Christian demonstrator throws a tear gas shell back towards riot police during a protest against the attack on the homes of members of the Christian community by Muslim demonstrators in Lahore on March 10, 2013.

Photo: AFP

Hundreds of Pakistani Christians took to the streets across the country on Sunday, demanding better protection after a Christian neighbourhood was torched in the city of Lahore a day earlier in connection with the country's controversial anti-blasphemy law.

Police fired into the air in Lahore and the country's largest city, Karachi, to try to disperse protesters furious at the arson attack, which caused no casualties and was the result of an allegation of blasphemy.

Rights campaigners say the anti-blasphemy law in Pakistan is widely used against religious minorities, including Christians, Ahmadis and Shi'ite Muslims, usually on flimsy pretexts.

Aside from a Taliban insurgency, U.S. ally Pakistan is facing hardline Sunni groups who are determined to wipe out the Shi'ite minority. Suicide bombings have killed over 200 Shi'ites this year, triggering revenge attacks against Sunnis.

Christian protesters smashed the windows of buses and clashed with baton-wielding police in Lahore, near the Saint Joseph Colony neighbourhood that was set on fire.

A protest in another Christian neighbourhood of the city turned violent when protesters blocked the main road and attacked vehicles, police said. In Karachi, Christian protesters threw stones at shop windows.

"We tried to disperse them peacefully ... They started throwing stones at police, resulting in several officers receiving injuries," senior Lahore police official Rai Tahir told Reuters.

Elsewhere throughout Punjab province, Christians held small, peaceful protests.

Punjab's Law Minister condemned the protests: "We will bring the culprits (arsonists) to the gallows ... But Christians should not take the law into their hands".

Tahir said more than 150 Muslims were arrested in Lahore of suspicion of torching the homes, and will be tried in anti-terrorism courts. Hundreds of residents had fled their homes, escaping the violence.

In Islam, allegations of blasphemy are treated seriously. Police said two men, one Christian and one Muslim, argued in Lahore on Friday, leading to the Christian being accused of blasphemy. He is reportedly in police custody.

The recent case of a young Pakistani Christian girl accused by a cleric of burning pages of the Koran highlighted the danger of the country's anti-blasphemy law for ordinary Pakistanis, including Muslims outside the Sunni majority.

Anti-Christian pogrom in Pakistan

About 150 people have been arrested for a pogrom in Badami Bagh, a suburb of the city of Lahore in Pakistan’s east. A surveillance camera fixed that on Saturday, these people set houses on fire in this suburb, which is populated mainly by Christians.

As a result of this pogrom, which was set by Muslims against Christians, about 170 houses were burnt, and many others plundered. Many Christians fled from the town.

The pretext for the pogrom was that allegedly, one of the town’s residents has spoken disrespectfully about Prophet Muhammad.

Over 100 Pakistani Christians homes set ablaze

Pakistani Christians demanded protection of the authorities after Muslims burned down dozens of Christian churches in the city of Lahore.

Protesters in Lahore and Karachi demanded indemnity for those whose property has been damaged.

In Lahore on Friday a group of Muslims went from a mosque straight to the house of a Christian who was accused of insulting Islam. He was taken to a police station for alleged blasphemy. Soon hundreds of Christians left their homes in fear.

On the next day angry Muslims robbed and burned down over 100 Christians’ houses.

About 1.6% of Pakistanis are Christians.

Voice of Russia, Reuters, TASS, BBC

Source: Voice of Russia.

US after elections: people still worry about unemployment

Yekaterina Kudashkina

Nov 11, 2012 11:38 Moscow Time

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Photo: EPA

Sean Gibbons – who is the Vice-President at Third Way, which Reuters recently proclaimed as the future of think tanks.


We don’t think of ourselves as being in an economic crisis any more, we think of ourselves as being in an economic recovery, not moving as swiftly as anyone might like, but it is pretty clear that we are adding jobs steadily for the last several years, unemployment rate continues to drop, consumer confidence is up which is a very good thing and that is actually the reflection of how the consuming class, which is largely the middle class in America, feel about their economic fortunes.

And we just had an election and obviously some of the exit polls told us that people continue to be concerned about the economy. But I think the fact that they returned President Obama at office in the light of the fact that the unemployment rate is still over 7% and previously no President had even won with an unemployment rate above 7.5%, it suggests that American people are feeling confident and optimistic about what is to come over the next couple of years.

As far as I remember at the beginning of the first term of President Obama the economic situation and consumer sentiment were on the low.

That’s correct, yes. When President Obama was sworn in the office at the beginning of 2009 the US was in the midst of a global economic crisis. Credits were largely frozen and the US Congress and the President had to take emergency measures to try and rescue the economy. And that included a number of different things, including a bailout for an auto industry, as well as an agreement between the members of Congress and the Administration to pass what was a massive stimulus. It was the combination of tax cuts and also Government spending on a variety of projects where money were to be granted to the states to help them pay for unemployment insurances and other things of this nature.

And then we think it has started to prompt the recovery, that we are no longer in recession for economy is no longer contracting, it is expanding at a rate that is good but not great, but that is typical of what you see after these sorts of crises. It takes a little while to first find the bottom and then start building on that. That’s what we’ve been doing over these last months.

I remember that in pre-election debates when economic issues were looked at, there were some discussions about moving part of the production back to the US from the overseas destinations.

It certainly is a priority for the President and his Administration I think and for many members of Congress to see a return to manufacturing here in US. There are ample opportunities for what’s called advanced manufacturing where you actually need high skills and high-tech equipment to actually manufacture things. These are potential targets of the US to deal with in the next couple of years. The truth and the matter is that we are an extraordinary innovative country and society and over the last decade or two our economic policy, our industrial policy hasn’t necessarily been as thoughtful as perhaps it maybe should have been. We have not rewarded companies who have located their manufacturing here in the US. And in some cases we’ve taken technology we’ve developed here, a good example might be the flat screen television, and rather than seeing that as an intellectual property behind the design of this television but to in fact also make sure that we are manufacturing it here in the US. There is more of an emphasis on that now than there has been in the past and that’s a good thing.

How are you going to convince the corporations that they need to move manufacturing from places where labour is cheaper?

So, think the question is – is labour cheaper? You know, you have to remember that in some places the flight of capital and manufacturing abroad was because there was yes, cheaper labour. But the truth is that as we see the emergence of global middle class in places like India, China and elsewhere, particularly in South Asia, the costs of doing business there is going to increase, and never mind the fact that you have a built in cost of transporting these goods. The US is still the largest consumer economy in the world. And so, when you manufacture television in Taiwan or Korea or Vietnam or China or wherever it may be, it ultimately still has to make its way back to the US which incurs obviously some costs.

So, not every manufacturing job that is moved overseas is going to come back to the US but I think it is reasonable to believe that both as Asia stands up economically and as their consumer base grows there is a great opportunity for the US to export more goods to places in the Asia-Pacific region.

Mr. Gibbons, do you think that the case story of the US could be somehow applied to the Eurozone countries?

I think that we are in very different places as societies. The US has a challenge before us in the next few months in terms of coming to grips with what’s called the “fiscal cliff”. That’s where we will see the end of austerity tax cuts enacted by President Bush, its mandate by law is to expire. The US Congress is going to impose something called “a sequester” – which is an across the board cut of Government funding for programs. This was done to try to arrest the deficit and the nation’s debt that decreases if you run successfully of deficit over a number of years. And then finally the fact that we have in the US something that’s called “debt ceiling”, so the Congress actually requires a lot being passed in order to expand the amount of money that the US Treasury can borrow. All those things I said, they sort of come together in the next 90 days.

And so that could be an action-forcing event here in the US where we think not only President Obama and the Congress will have an opportunity to fix those discreet items, it may also be an opportunity for them to address the longer term potential issues, including the cost of entitlement spending here in the US. Those are the social programs, things like social security, medic care and medic aid which, if they are modestly treat right now, would probably be on track to remain solvent and well decades into the future. If we do not do that however, given to the demographics here in the US and aging population that is living longer, that is going to potentially cause some massive stresses on our economy looking out into the next 10-15 years.

Europe is in a different place. Europe made those sorts of similar obligations, social programs, and has now demographically an older population and a smaller workforce – that is you basically have a lot of people who are older or pensioners and you have a fewer working age folks in the Eurozone. That’s a challenge for them. I don’t know how they fix it. I think they’ve figured it out quite how to fix it. There are also obviously some monetary policy questions there as well. But it is very hard, it is sort of staunch if to compare the US to the Eurozone just because we are simply very different in terms of demography of our country and the Eurozone.

Source: Voice of Russia.

Muslim cleric Abu Qatada wins appeal against deportation

12.11.2012, 23:33





Muslim cleric Abu Qatada will be released on bail on Tuesday, having won his appeal at the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (Siac).


His appeal against deportation was upheld after lawyers claimed he would not get a fair trial in Jordan, where he is accused of plotting bomb attacks.He will be subject to strict conditions including a curfew when he leaves Long Lartin prison in Worcestershire.


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Source: Voice of Russia.