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London riots hint at wider risks of youth unrest
Hotel maid files civil lawsuit against DSK
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More EU sanctions slapped on Libya
Pak sees green on Siachen, Sir Creek
Pakistan Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar today said she has conveyed to India that her country is keen to seek progress on the Siachen and Sir Creek issues, which are “doable”. Khar made the remarks while briefing the National Assembly on her talks with her Indian counterpart SM Krishna in New Delhi last month.
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London riots hint at wider risks of youth unrest
London, August 9 But while those in the Middle East have marched in the hope of positive change, Britain's violence has been almost nihilist, focused on looting and a quick burst of the sort of publicity and power inner-city youth feel they have long been denied. Across the world, the financial crisis may leave a whole generation of young people with opportunities that fall well short of their aspirations, perhaps to the point where they might even abandon hope for the future at all. In the developed world, the crisis means they almost invariably face fewer and less well paid entry-level jobs at every level, from graduate openings to factory work. Benefits and educational support are also being cut. In the developing world, economic opportunities might still be rising but expectations may often have risen faster. Now, the downturn leaves them ever more unfulfilled. In ageing economies, the young may also have to fund rising social bills. Whether that sense of disenchantment fuels political protest, extremism or simply random crime and contempt for the law, the running battles, destruction and arson in London, among the worst seen in Western Europe in decades, suggest politics and protest could get uglier in the years to come. "It's very sad to see. But kids have got no work, no future and the cuts have made it worse," Hackney electrician Adrian Anthony Burns, 39, told Reuters. "These kids are from another generation to us and they just don't care. You watch, it's only just begun." The sort of near-spontaneous riot that began in Tottenham on Saturday is far from new. Similar grievances helped kindle unrest in Paris's poor peripheral suburbs in 2005, "service delivery" riots in poor South African townships and other occasional urban protests from China to Latin America. But two dynamics in particular may be now acting as a powerful accelerant, the rise of social media that allow rapid organisation putting authorities on the back foot as well as economic shifts that worsen pre-existing hardships. In North Africa earlier this year, the last straws were rapidly rising food prices and then anger at authority encapsulated by the self-immolation of a Tunisian vegetable seller. As governments tried to crush the protest with force and Internet controls, they merely fanned the flames. In Britain, pre-existing social problems were compounded by initial austerity measures, including shutting down "non-essential" public services such as youth clubs, and then fury at a perceived attempted cover-up of a police shooting. A blizzard of social media incitement, primarily using Blackberry smart phones and their semi-encrypted messaging system, and wall-to-wall media coverage then look to have sparked copycat rioting as surely as satellite TV and Twitter coverage of Egypt's protests sparked similar events elsewhere. One clear lesson of the "Arab Spring", it seems, is that crushing unrest through use of force may simply not work. Even the killing of hundreds or more by Syria's security forces has not been enough to stem the pro-reform uprising there. — Reuters
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Hotel maid files civil lawsuit against DSK New York, August 9
Nafissatou Diallo (32), a Guinean immigrant, filed the civil suit in the New York State Supreme Court in Bronx yesterday seeking unspecified damages for mental anguish. “Believing that he was immune from the laws of this country, Strauss-Kahn intentionally, brutally and violently sexually assaulted Diallo and in the process humiliated, degraded, violated and robbed her of her dignity as a woman,” the 16-page lawsuit said. It adds that Diallo suffered physical and psychological harm due to the “senseless attack” and faces “permanent harm to her professional and personal reputations... from which she may never fully recover.” The civil lawsuit comes even as a criminal case against Strauss-Kahn, 62, is pending in state court in Manhattan. — PTI
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More EU sanctions slapped on Libya Paris, August 9 The measures decided yesterday "reinforce the system of international sanctions" already in place against Gaddafi's regime, foreign ministry spokeswoman Christine Fages told reporters. They target the Al-Sharara, which operates in the oil sector, and an administrative organisation which are both "directly linked" to Gaddafi, she said. Forty-two people and 49 "entities" in total are now targeted by EU sanctions on Libya, she said. An EU assets freeze and travel ban against dozens of Gaddafi loyalists and firms suspected of propping up the regime includes national oil vehicles, the Libyan leader's inner circle and Libya's busy low-fare Afriqiyah airline. The EU has also imposed an arms embargo and officially opened an office in the rebel capital of Benghazi. Meanwhile, fighting flared today between rebels and forces loyal to Gaddafi along the Brega battlefront in eastern Libya, killing at least two rebels, a spokesman for the insurgents said. "We have fighting between our troops and Gaddafi forces. We have two killed and five wounded on our side," Mohammed Zawawi said. Gaddafi loyalists have sown hundreds of mines in the area and dug trenches to fill with flammable liquid, according to the rebels. — AFP
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Pak sees green on Siachen, Sir Creek Islamabad, August 9 She said she had conveyed Pakistan’s position on the Siachen and Sir Creek issues during the parleys. Pakistan’s intention is to make the dialogue process with India “uninterrupted and uninterruptible”, Khar said. “We want to create a conducive environment in which the two countries could talk about core issues and move towards their resolution,” she said. India and Pakistan had held a “frank, constructive, cordial and meaningful” dialogue and agreed to carry forward the process to peacefully resolve all outstanding issues, she said. Khar said she had delivered Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani’s letter inviting his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh to visit Pakistan and this had been “accepted”. Singh had conveyed that he is committed to heralding a “new spring” in relations between the two countries, she said. Singh also conveyed that India wants friendly relations with Pakistan and resolution of all outstanding issues, she added. Pakistan is seeking good relations with all its neighbours, especially those with which it has traditionally had difficult ties, Khar said. Pakistan wants to build trust with countries like India and Afghanistan and begin a new era of cooperation, Khar said. During her speech in Parliament, Khar said Prime Minister Gilani took Pakistan’s entire political leadership into confidence before the Foreign Minister-level talks with India. This had sent a strong message that Pakistan is serious about engaging with India, she said. Pakistan also conveyed its desire for a meaningful and result-oriented engagement on the Kashmir issue, she said. — PTI Contentious Issues Though considerable progress was made towards resolving the Sir Creek boundary issue over the past decade, it suffered a setback earlier this year when Pakistan reverted to its traditional position of resolving the problem according to the Bombay Government Resolution of 1914. The two sides have failed to make progress in resolving the military standoff on Siachen as Pakistan is unwilling to accept India's call to demarcate the actual troop positions of both sides on the glacier.
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Young, lacking opportunity, angry at the system and organising phenomenally fast over social media, London's rioters show some of the same characteristics as the pro-democracy demonstrators of the "Arab Spring".
We want to create a conducive environment in which the two countries could talk about core issues and move towards their resolution
— Hina Rabbani Khar, Pakistan Foreign Minister