Charlie Rose

GRB  01/17/2013 09:33 PM Report

Charlie Rose is one of the best interviewer in the world if not the best. Yet I will remember this one as one of the worst one with Hina Khoti. Charlie did ask why Pakistan seemed to a place where some of the most dangerous terrorist in the world end up getting a shelter?

And Hina did not give all of us a convincing answer. And Charlie failed to press her on the issues of Pak providing terrorists a safe heaven NOT TO MENTION BIN LADEN WAS LIVING LESS THAN A MILE FROM PAK-WEST-POINT for years. Pak is a failing country and very dangerous one. It is in everyone's self interest if that person believe in peace. First thing, we as global citizens and humans, need to tall Pak to fix her own house and stop blaming USA, India, and all the other countries for all the mess. Once Pak realize the real problems and its cause....perhaps they may one day solve them too.

Ajay_2012  01/16/2013 04:38 PM Report

SharkswithfrikingLazers. The sarcasm and irony in your posts is priceless. The biggest impact of the U.S. financial to Pakistan is to line up the pockets of the Pakistani armies and the money is being indirectly used to fund the very terrorists that the U.S led coalition army is fighting. So, from the Pakistani point of view is very straightforward (I believe Mrs. Khar refers to when she says that Pakistan is very clear in how it deals with it's neighbors) - It is very advantageous for them to not completely wipe out the terrorist infrastructure because if they did that then they won't get this "free" U.S. tax payers money. It is high time that we stop wasting our money on our aid to Pakistan. When the aid stops, you'll see how fast the terror infrastructure perishes as then the islamic tribals would be of no use to the Paki army. We won't be abandoning the Pakistani people, but instead have the money distributed via targetted U.N. funding for development in Pakistan tribal areas without any control of the army or the government.

Ajay_2012  01/16/2013 04:24 PM Report

Ellen_Dibble, said "To me, most revealing was the idea that conflict resolution starts on the ground, with people finding a way to use dialogue, in the largest sense, rather than going straight to force."

Ellen, this is not a revealing idea. I don't believe the U.S or that matter west or even India is unwilling to negotiate at the ground level. You'll hopefully observe that based on the history of the Afghanistan and Kashmir issue. A fruitful ground level dialogue is only possible if there is a sincere, earnest desire and effort from all the parties involved. The problem here is that the Pakistani army and most of the government have been conveniently using the islamic millitant terrorism as a strategic tool of their foreign policy for many years now. The terrorist events that I mentioned in my earlier post are a direct result of that and it continues to happen. So, dialogue in such a situation amounts to discussion with a gun pointing to your head. The ground reality is that there are numerous terrorist camps and sympathizers in Pakistan who are thriving right under the nose of the Pakistan Army/ISI and the government. Agreed, there should be dialogue with Pakistan BUT should be conditional to their sincerity and tangible progress in shutting the terrorist infrastructure including support from other Islamic nations like Saudi Arabia. Otherwise, they will continue to laugh their way to the bank and innocent lives will keep getting lost at the expense of the American tax payer. If we want to make a change, we need to do something about it and let our senators or other government representative know about our un-willingness to play this game of double standards displayed by Pakistan.

kamalsapra  01/16/2013 12:36 PM Report

Hina Rabbani Khar is such a fool that she didn't know Osama Bin Laden lived a mile from military academy. How will she know what happens at the Indian border?

SharkswithfrikingLazers  01/16/2013 02:15 AM Report

Charlie my friend, $5M is almost yours:

http://www.rewardsforjustice.net/index.cfm?page=haqqani

Fuel up the drone.

I will cross him off the list.

(Yes, it is ironic that the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize has a kill list.)

SharkswithfrikingLazers  01/16/2013 02:05 AM Report

Last month Pakistan received US $ 688 million under Coalition Support Fund (CSF) as a reimbursement for the expenses of supporting over 150,000 coalition forces deployed on Pakistan-Afghan border.

Money well spent.

We should continue to fund both sides of the conflict because this is "Why We Fight" in the "Fog of War".

These forces should not only get hundreds of millions of our dollars but should be absolved from any possible charges from now into eternity for dereliction of duty.

SharkswithfrikingLazers  01/16/2013 01:54 AM Report

In August 2012, Pakistan had received $1.12 billion from the US for funds pending upto 2010. 60 per cent of the fund is apportioned to the Pakistan Army while the remaining amount is used to meet the fiscal deficit of economy.

So then America has a huge deficit and part of that deficit is to help Pakistan with its deficit?

Brilliant.

Now giving 60% of that money to a military that can't even find bin Laden when he is right up their nose.

Priceless.

Max83  01/16/2013 01:23 AM Report

America has many problems of its own that need to be addressed firstly before it can be a completely believable and reliable foreign policy player and partner again. Most of them are domestic.

Thank you to Bill Moyers for speaking out and up about these domestic problems.

Mr. Rose please forward this letter to Mayor Bloomberg and Warren Buffett and any other benevolent and patriotic billionaire or multi-millionaire you know.

Thank you.

Link: http://www.democracyjournal.org/27/an-open-letter-to-patriotic-philanthropists.php

''Issue #27, Winter 2013

An Open Letter to Patriotic Philanthropists

Bill Moyers & Arnold Hiatt

Dear Fellow Citizen,

Shortly before the election last fall, The New York Times ran an editorial about the flood of independent money in the campaign. The editors noted, “The business interests behind those hundreds of millions are not going to give up the influence and the power that spending has given them. That’s the reason this unlimited money is so corrupting: win or lose, it binds lawmakers, corporations and special interests ever closer.”

If the Times’s readers could tolerate it, such editorials could run every day—and not just during elections.

Because others in this issue of Democracy are writing about the many dimensions of the problem, we won’t pile on. But we do want to point out that both of us have, for eight decades now, been witnesses to—and proud products of—the American experiment. And in that time we have never seen our democracy so utterly subjugated by the power of well-heeled special interests.

So, what can be done? A lot, is the answer. But here’s one simple idea: Help fund the groups that fight for political reform.

Both of us have been doing so for a long time—one as the president of a small family foundation whose benefactors were devoted to the renewal of democracy, one as an individual citizen concerned for his country. Over the years, we’ve collectively helped reform groups raise millions of dollars. But that’s only a thimble-sized sum compared to the need.

It’s been rewarding to see the many groups we’ve supported do so much with so few resources. But it’s also been painful to see them toil away in a long and losing battle, seriously outgunned on Capitol Hill by the lobbyists who profit from the current system, and outmaneuvered in the courts by the lawyers and justices who deem money the equal of speech.

How much do these reformers spend annually? An estimated $45 million. Only about .01 percent of total charitable giving in America (which was roughly $300 billion in 2011). It’s about one-fourth of what the U.S. Chamber of Commerce spends annually (roughly $200 million in 2010), and roughly one-tenth of what Koch-related groups committed to spending in the 2012 elections to promote their agendas ($400 million, according to Politico).

The two of us could list most of the funders of reform on the back of a napkin. Like their grantees, they’re very capable and dedicated people who strive to accomplish much with few resources. Like us, many of them are frustrated that the pool of philanthropists has remained so consistently small over the years. And, also like us, many can’t keep investing in this cause much longer, not for lack of interest but for lack of resources.

Over the years, we’ve encountered various reasons why there is so little investment in reducing the power of Big Money over politics and policy-making: Good-government groups don’t do a good enough job of selling themselves and are too fractured along policy lines; money in politics is seen as a wonky issue that only liberals care about; philanthropy is increasingly focused on short-term “deliverables” and “quantifiable outcomes” and reform is too hard to measure in those terms; foundations are risk averse when it comes to supporting efforts that might be perceived as political. And the list goes on.

All of these are understandable concerns. But none of us can any longer afford to allow such arguments to stifle the flow of money into the struggle to save our democracy. Citizens United and super PACs have brought America to a historic juncture—one path leads toward oligarchy, the other toward representative government. Abraham Lincoln defined the latter as the American ideal. It was the cause of Thomas Paine, the Revolution, and the Constitutional Convention. Today it is the inspiration for good health care and a good education, for fair and competitive markets, for honest government, for a sustainable environment, and for a decent job and livelihood for everyone. For these promises to be kept, the deep pockets of the moneyed class must be countered, because to travel upstream of any major issue facing our country—from Too Big To Fail banks to climate change—is to encounter a small, extremely powerful group of well-connected and well-heeled interests controlling the flow of the stream.

That’s why it’s about time for others who are well connected and well heeled to provide a counterweight. When some people think about philanthropy, they think of building libraries and wings of hospitals, of endowing university chairs and curing diseases, of providing comfort to the afflicted, and preserving pristine lands. All noble goals. But beneath them lies a larger structural problem with the way our country functions, or doesn’t function. Helping solve that problem offers philanthropists a shot at a different kind of legacy—one that would make Jefferson and Lincoln proud.

Now is the time to invest in such a legacy. The tinder of public opinion is dry. In a recent Gallup poll, 87 percent of respondents said that ending government corruption should be a “very important” or an “extremely important” priority for the President. The only priority that ranked higher was job creation.

There are more than two dozen groups working mightily to ignite the popular movement necessary for rekindling the American Dream of justice for all. If patriotic philanthropists fail to meet the challenge, future editorials in The New York Times on money in politics will read less like urgent calls for change and more like obituaries.

Sincerely,

Bill Moyers & Arnold Hiatt''

tstump  01/15/2013 10:24 PM Report

Wow! Smart, beautiful, positive, and a wonderful role model for women in the Muslim world, in fact all people, not just women or Muslims. It was a very insightful interview.

Anjaan  01/15/2013 08:16 PM Report

How many times Pakistan can get away by telling lies .... ?

Lie#1 Pakistani Intelligence claims they did not know that Dr AQ Khan ran a Nuke Walmart.

Lie#2 Pakistani Intelligence claims did not know that Osama Bin Laden was living right in the Military garrison for six years.

Admiral Mullen spilled the beans when he described the Haqqani network as a veritable arm of the Pakistani ISI.

The big question is, what is the compulsion for the American administration to buy Pakistani rubbish ..... ?

The British might be acting from behind the scene to influence American actions of protecting Pakistan from punitive actions like International sanctions. The reason is not hard to understand .... the British have their own score to settle with India, through their proxy Pakistan.

Ellen_Dibble  01/15/2013 07:44 PM Report

To some extent, the way we describe ourselves becomes the reality, and we have had Hillary Clinton going around officially explaining our position, it seems, and I can think of lots of American realities she probably skips over. If we want to hear other Pakistani perspectives, maybe we can wait for that too. To me, most revealing was the idea that conflict resolution starts on the ground, with people finding a way to use dialogue, in the largest sense, rather than going straight to force. And rather than accepting an authoritarian imposed "peace."

What would that kind of dialogue be, say in Afghanistan, where it might not have been practiced much in the past? Actually, what would that be in the United States, where we use money to buy elections, and money to buy lobbyists, and our arguments seem to be battling talking points, name-calling, and angrily stalking off at times? I don't know, but the fact she has that concept in mind, not only for her country but for other countries, means a lot to me.

Ajay_2012  01/15/2013 06:54 PM Report

Mrs. Khar is out of touch with reality and telling outright lies. I always try to read a few news reports before forming my opinion on something. In these cases of border violations, it is difficult to determine whose allegations are correct, and who violated the line of control first. However, if we look back in history, we see less of a reason to trust Pakistanis. Why? #1 they lied about Osama Bin Laden hiding in the country in same city where they have the largest Pakistani Army base. #2 They lied and cheated the whole world about Nuclear Bomb development. #3 They export terrorists all over the world - most of the 9/11 terrorists were trained in Pakistan, and the Pakistanis continue to do so. #4 The 2008 Mumbai attackers were trained and sent from Pakistan. #5 They take the money give for development aid and use it for buying weapons. #6 Pakistan is an Islamic state formed on the basis of religion and non-muslims face regular threats and persecution #7 Majority of Pakistanis hate the "West" and just want our money #8 I've researched the Kashmir history a bit and even visited there a while ago and talked to a few people. From what I could tell the Kashmir problem has been created by Pakistan as it continues to try to send tribal terrorists/mercenaries across to Indian side of Kashmir. The border firings are a result of that where the terrorists try to infiltrate under the Pakistani army cover fire. Also, the islamic tribals backed by Pakistan Army annexed part of the Kashmir area right after India's independence in 1947 as the then ruler of Kashmir wanted Kashmir to join India but Pakistan took advantage of the situation and annexed part of the territory. Since then the Islamists have systematically persecuted the non-muslims to leave the area and many non-muslim places of worship have been destroyed so that now the area is predominantly muslim. This reminds me of how Taliban destroyed the ancient statues of the Buddha in Afghanistan.

Hoping that sharing this information gives everyone a better perspective. So, based on all that I am inclined to believe the Indian version of events and they have full right to defend their borders. The reports that the Pakistani soldiers mutilated the Indian soldier is quite disturbing. I think that needs to be strongly condemned by the international community as it violates the Geneva convention. I hope it is not true but if it is then Pakistan will and should face consequences.

MisterMittster  01/15/2013 06:47 PM Report

If her own people kill her, it won't be the first time.

My advice to her, live in America.

SharkswithfrikingLazers  01/15/2013 05:11 PM Report

Charlie, did she give you great hope?

Yeah, buddy I am with ya.

Pakistan is as confusing as the sound emanating from her vocal folds.

fishtexas777  01/15/2013 04:26 PM Report

I was very impressed with how articulate Hina Rabbani Khar was in explaining her view of Pakistan. She truly seems to want the best for her country.

Dasein  01/15/2013 02:28 PM Report

Question for ReMant. Who ordered those killings?

REMant  01/15/2013 12:10 PM Report

Govts, no less than the monarchies which banded together to suppress the French Revolution, have an interest in combating rebellion, but I would rather see rebellion than everyone who complains about liberty and justice made into terrorists. And with the US, it's do as we say, not as we do.

According to figures compiled by the Pakistan Ministry of Interior, 2,670 people have been killed by US drones, 487 of them civilians, including 171 children and 43 women. Just 42 were "high value" al-Qaeda and Taliban-linked targets while the rest were believed to be low and mid-level. Our drones have killed an average of 333 people for the past eight years.