The Indian budget every year has always been an eagerly awaited event. For many decades, the best minds in economics, finance, tax, business and industry throng the media house to analyze the provisions shared by the Financial Minister.
Sometimes major events completely disconnected may be data points for the plans of the different powers around the world. The challenge is to discern what purpose they serve? More critically, what are we moving towards?
When the US Ambassador threatened India's "Strategic Autonomy" policy over India's friendship with Russia - much more than meets the eye was at stake. Let us unpack how the Ukraine war has fundamentally changed the US and the world. And why are we here anyway?
The blitzkrieg of media opinion pieces from Pakistan’s narrative in many publications and sites in US for Kashmir has been unprecedented. While there are many who surely have joined hands with Pakistan to help their cause (including some may say, Congress Party), it is very interesting that a lot of this work may be happening courtesy American taxpayers dollars.
A man named Moeed Yusuf is with a think-tank called US Institute of Peace, which calls itself…
USIP is a national, nonpartisan, independent institute…
USIP is funded and founded by the US Congress. Moeed Yusuf participates in local Pakistani debates regularly. I have watched him discuss with many hosts on Urdu channels in Pakistan on how to handle the economy, Kashmir, India, and Modi Government.
Moeed Yusuf – Moderate in US and Pak Establishment voice in Urdu media
One of his most recent appearances on Pakistan TV is very instructive in where he really comes from with respect to his geopolitics.
He riles against Modi and ‘his agenda” – even when the Indian Parliament abrogated Article 370 – as he tries to berate India and its duly elected government. Not content with that, he actually goes on to repeat the threat that when the curfew gets off – which it will, after all, he says, how long can they continue? – then there will be violence. So, on the one hand, Yusuf, like Imran Khan, says that they should take off the curfew and on the other hand, they brazenly say that there will be violence. How do they know? How?! Do they have something going there which gives them such confidence?
And, the security forces have caught terrorists infiltrated by Pakistan and Pakistani side is openly readying them on its side.
But, bottom line – does he even remotely look “non-partisan” or nationalistic in an American way?
Now, as he is the Vice president at the Asia Center at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), he joins the Pakistani government’s core group of the security establishment. While being on our, the American taxpayers dime!
He is now a member of Imran Khan’s National Security Council!
Questions raised by Christine Fair
Christine Fair, an analyst on Pakistan has come out with important and valid questions on Moeed Yusuf! (Disclaimer – I am no fan of Fair and have had run ins with her on twitter myself and I find her rather opinionated on many issues. But her questions are valid.)
As Christine Fair says – these kinds of appointments while they are US citizens and are paid for by the American taxpayers – is done by spies!
It's even worse than it sounds. @USIP sponsored this shit for his citizenship and towed a nauseatingly pro-Pakistan line at his "direction." Then he takes this job on Imran Khan's NSC. Who does that? Spies do that. https://t.co/EV2tgttYng
Signs of irregularities with respect to funds and also what he has been doing are there. Waiting to be investigated.
2. @USIP denied a legit FOIA request arguing that comms with Moeed's Mother Ship (aka the Pak Embassy) are part of the "intra-agency or inter-agency" process. 3. Next questions. Where has @USIP's programming funds to Pakistan gone? 4. I'm willing to bet they went to his cronies.
Would this be ok? That someone who had not just infiltrated a major think-tank from a country like Pakistan but his knowledge and scholarship were paid for by American taxpayers, including yours truly!
Lobbying for Pakistan on US Taxpayers’ dime
Quite honestly, there are many who would be aghast that their tax dollars are going to pay salary to a man whose only motive is to advise an establishment that uses terrorism as a tool of statecraft.
So the Pakistanis have long used lobbyists to get OP Eds placed. All Pak govts do it. A good paper will disclose this. Lobbyists also ghost write op eds which "leaders" publish in their name. But the biggest asset is free to Pak: @USIP which the US taxpayer pays for. https://t.co/88C8KH0GSM
Not only were the lobbyists who paid for media Op Eds responsible for the noise and fury against India on Kashmir, but so were people like Moeed, who have rigged the American think-tanks to further the agenda of Pakistan within Washington DC.
And, that is precisely what Christine Fair is mad about. She is correct when she says that Pakistan does not need to spend money on lobbyists, when the American taxpayers can do the dirty work for them!
Yet the Clown Car (aka "@USIP") thinks it's completely normal that it hires a non-AMCIT, sponsors his citizenship while he bloviates on behalf of the Derp State (on my fucking dime) and then takes a job on Cocain Khan's NSC.
It needs to get attention here. @USIP's Vice President (count how many VP's that joint has, ffs) complained but did NOT dispute facts. @USIP has a lot of explaining to do. Pak doesn't need to pay for a lobby when it has that asshat sanctuary doing its work for free. https://t.co/gsvxSU8Pew
When a Freedom of Information Act request was filed to get the correspondence of Moeed with the Pakistani government, that request got denied, citing a silly reason on why that was not covered under FOIA rules!
2. @USIP denied a legit FOIA request arguing that comms with Moeed's Mother Ship (aka the Pak Embassy) are part of the "intra-agency or inter-agency" process. 3. Next questions. Where has @USIP's programming funds to Pakistan gone? 4. I'm willing to bet they went to his cronies.
Many commentators’ silence has been bought by giving them visas to Pakistan. Visas to Pakistan? Really?!! These guys are so cheap to buy? The problem is that Pakistan is a hot potato in the global geopolitics and it makes itself even more important by using terrorism. The only way an analyst can make his/her living by talking about that country is to go there. And Pakistanis do not grant visas to such analysts anymore, as Christine Fair knows so well.
While @USIP is the most egregious, @MichaelKugelman is another one who happily writes garbage for his Pak visas as well as Krepon and Perkovich. It's a "sing for your visa game." Everyone fucking knows it. Access trumps truth. Who wants a Visa from a state that murders our cits? https://t.co/3cs4xjVpcd
Threatening Gupta while tarnishing Fair’s image was what Welch, USIP’s Vice President, External Relations was doing.
She does everything but deny the charges by Fair. Was the institute dishing out Pro-Pakistan opinion pieces and ‘analysis’ under Moeed Yusuf? Before he joined Pakistan’s National Security Council? We all know that it did!
But she does apparently say it's totally fine with @USIP that Moeed is a traitor to the country that paid his salary while working for a congressionally-funded organization that sponsored his citizenship. pic.twitter.com/PFCeDiUfiq
The worst thing is that USIP has an important task. That of being an important player for inputs into what happens in Afghanistan. Which the US government was quite keen to hand over to Pakistan until President Trump pulled the plug on it at the last minute with that famous tweet.
And for those who have just joined the conversation about @USIP, it is also the "analytical office" for Khalilzad who has been trying to hand Afghanistan back to the Pakistanis. And Andrew Wilder, who I thought was a decent person, should be resigning in protest over this.
Let us listen in to what Christine Fair tells WION channel.
Conclusion
Pakistani lobbyists and closet Jihadis will try to enter different organizations and systems in Western countries to do a coup of sorts on India. That is how they got their Nuclear technology via AQ Khan. But what is astonishing is that the American taxpayers are paying for that. You and I, we the US tax payers are paying for a guy to get all the information and importance to not just shape the US policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but also go ahead and advice the Pakistani establishment (as the member of its National Security Council) on how to hit back at US.
When you play chess with your opponent running your pieces and his, guess who wins? So if Moeed Yusuf ends up laying the pieces that will create the foundation for the next 9-11, one should know whom to blame – the US establishment. For their spectacular masochism!
The Indian budget every year has always been an eagerly awaited event. For many decades, the best minds in economics, finance, tax, business and industry throng the media house to analyze the provisions shared by the Financial Minister.
When the US Ambassador threatened India's "Strategic Autonomy" policy over India's friendship with Russia - much more than meets the eye was at stake. Let us unpack how the Ukraine war has fundamentally changed the US and the world. And why are we here anyway?
This visit of India left me with many questions. Many observations and inputs from different people and sections. Food for thought that I have tried to contemplate on and make sense of. Sharing all that with you.
When you analyze the last 60 years of the economic miracles of Singapore, South Korea and Malaysia versus the continued impoverished Indian economy, you get very interesting lessons. Can Indians have the wherewithal in them to do in one generation so that the coming generations may rise?
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