The writer is the executive director of the Center for International Strategic Studies. While the international strategic community continues to be preoccupied with land-based nuclear developments in the South Asian region, little attention is being paid to the fearsome prospect of the nuclearisation of the Indian Ocean, and the adjoining waters of the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal. The induction of nuclear weapons and platforms in the Indian Ocean by any one state…
Posts published in “Day: May 23, 2016”
ISLAMABAD: India’s nuclear-armed missiles deployed on nuclear-powered submarines pose a threat to the maritime security of the Indian Ocean Region’s (IOR) 32 littoral states, besides upsetting the strategic balance in South Asia, the Senate was told on Thursday. Making a policy statement on the deployment of nuclear-armed missiles on submarines in the Indian Ocean, Adviser to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz said Pakistan was considering a proposal for tabling a resolution at…
BEIJING — Accusations of police brutality are roiling China’s social media for a second time this month, since two men in Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu Province in the northwest, said the police beat them harshly after one of them filmed a member of the Public Security Bureau kicking the other. The episode’s online moniker — “Lanzhou buttocks” — belies its seriousness. Last week, another scandal swept through online conversations when a 29-year-old man, Lei…
Contrary to popular belief, China’s legions of pro-government Internet commentators aren’t really out to convince critics of anything. They just want everyone to think happy thoughts. That’s the conclusion of a first-of-its-kind study published this week by a trio of U.S.-based scholars that delves into a large, lightly examined archive of leaked Chinese propaganda emails. Portrayals of Beijing’s online opinion warriors in both the media and academia have largely focused, perhaps not surprisingly, on those…
Dhaka: Anyone spreading negative propaganda against the Liberation War or the Father of the Nation, using digital devices, will risk being sentenced to life in prison, according to the draft of a new law. The draft of Digital Security Act-2016 also stipulates two-year imprisonment for “deliberately” defaming someone or hurting anyone’s religious sentiment by publishing or broadcasting something through digital devices. The ICT division of the posts, telecommunication and information technology ministry has prepared the…
ISLAMABAD: The Senate was informed on Thursday that 2,393 Pakistanis were languishing in jails of Saudi Arabia. During the question hour, the ministry of foreign affairs told the house that there were 1,621 Pakistani prisoners in Jeddah and 772 in Riyadh. The ministry said that Pakistan’s mission in Saudi Arabia had taken various steps, including consular visits to meet the prisoners, and extend them every possible assistance. It said that emergency travel documents were issued…
(The blogger is a journalist based in Lahore. She is an MPhil in Political Science from Kinnaird College.) Since the emergence of ISIS on world’s stage, it has occupied vast swathes of Iraq and Syria. The basic agenda behind the emergence of ISIS is the creation of a so-called Islamic Caliphate, which is not limited to boundaries of Syria, Iraq Jordan, Israel, Palestine and Levant but beyond these borders. According to an estimate, up to…
It is often mistakenly thought that George Orwell invented the term ‘doublespeak’ in his dystopian novel 1984 — but he did not. Orwell created ‘newspeak’ and taken as a package, these portmanteau words describe saying one thing while meaning another, and Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah has just delivered a master class in arcane communication. He says that legal action against militant groups that he named as Jamaatud Dawa and Jaish-e-Mhammad (JeM) was not possible…