Defending Pakistan the Pakistan way
Sabir Nazar best explains what it means to defend Pakistan the Pakistan way!
… 
[The Express Tribune, September 29, 2013]
Riyasati Ashrafiya’s “Insider trading”
Some of the issues are not political. Maybe one party which is in power toady will be in opposition tomorrow. So better be considerate regarding one’s political trading! Also, they are all brothers in arms after all!
See this news item regarding such an act of the Riyasati Ashrafiya’s (State Aristocracy’s) “insider trading”:
ISLAMABAD: Deafening political rancour apart, Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif has approved “compulsory” acquisition of a huge piece of land, 1,000 acres (8,000 kanals), for the Namal College Mianwali of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan at a throwaway price but several key PML-N figures are loudly protesting the decision.
Top officials of the Punjab government and Namal Education Foundation (NEF), which runs the facility, confirmed to The News that the chief minister has sanctioned acquisition of 1,000 acres of land from local landowners under the 1894 Act,
Rule of law and its phony guardians
That’s not uncommon in Pakistan; rather it’s sort of usual!
… See this report – how the guardians of the rule of law turn into phony guardians of the rule of law in Pakistan. One may follow up with this news item and see nothing happens at the end, though the Chief Minister of Punjab has taken notice of it.
FAISALABAD: Scores of traffic wardens staged a protest demonstration here on Friday shortly after a traffic warden was beaten up allegedly by an MPA’s guards.
The warden was taken to a hospital, from where he was released a few hours later.
The protesting wardens surrounded the office of the regional police officer and shouted slogans against the MPA. They demanded that action be taken against the MPA and his guards.
The wardens said that a Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz MPA was passing through the road, when
Rule of Law’s Minor Domains
All men have equal rights to liberty, to their property, and to the protection of the laws.
[Voltaire, 1694-1778]
Years ago, it was in a National Book Foundation book-shop in Lahore that I came to realize the helplessness of hapless fellow citizens, though I am as unlucky as any one of them could be. The Foundation is a government body, and we know that government employees are a bit privileged than other people. For police it is not easier to harass or coerce them. Also general public consider them under a protective umbrella. But probably it was so in the past.
That man just reaching his middle age was in-charge of the shop. How weak he might be feeling at that time that he did reveal his heart to me. He lived apparently in an unprivileged locality. He owned a small house and was a father to three young ones,
Exposing the hypocrites
Sabir Nazar instead of pencil and brush uses knives and choppers and cuts his subject / subjects mercilessly into pieces!
[The Express Tribune, October 2, 2013]
Shame on the newspapers . . .
Shame on this and other such newspapers which play in the hands of Pakistan’s Riyasti Ashrafiya, and promote their sons and daughters and thus perpetuate Ashrafi Democracy in Pakistan!
[The Express Tribune, October 2, 2013]
Just give a thought what’s the political status of this little girl, what political wisdom she has that makes her statements placed in the national newspapers; other than that she is the daughter of an opportunist leader who betrayed the Pakistani citizens’ trust. And what about this little girl’s father – didn’t he irreparably damage the state machinery of Pakistan as well as the moral basis of Pakistani society!
See some of the previous posts on this issue:
The monster and the loath monster-killers
See this cartoon, which was published in The New York Times / International Herald Tribune on August 3-4, 2013.
… 
Are the monster-killers serious in exterminating the monster?
My successes and my failures – a short note
Whatever I achieved is fruit of my own labor, hard work, sincerity and commitment!
I do acknowledge I learned a lot from two of my teachers: Lakht Pasha and Dr. Sajid Ali
But in another realm, where elitist roots, connections and PR (Public Relations) count, I am a total failure!
That is why all of my work which is focused on the fate of Pakistanis especially and human world in general remains unidentified and ignored and is nowhere part of the mainstream debate.
Sometimes my work was taken notice of; however, as I understand now, it may have been discarded since it was not supported by any elitist roots, connections and PR. I have a number of such stories to tell; and waiting for the moment when they ought to be told.
But: There’s no regrets!
Here is some of my work:
Books:
This picture of a lone warrior will haunt you too!
This picture was published in the International Herald Tribune on the 1stof August. I kept this page of the newspaper in my loose-paper file. But this continued haunting me, and then finally made me to scan and post it in my Blog.
The caption reads as: A supporter of Pfc. Bradley E. Manning at a demonstration Tuesday night in front of the White House. The soldier now faces a theoretical maximum sentence of 136 years in prison.
I have been to this place where this lone warrior is waging his war, and I am all praise for such places and such lone warriors, and the spirit and determination of such lone warriors!
Hats off to all the Lone Warriors!
Popular Urdu columnist, “Javed Choudhry inventing stories and spouting nonsense”
A measure to measure a society’s level of culture and civilization is to see whom it rewards most. In Pakistan, Javed Chaudhry is one of the few Urdu columnists and television talk show hosts who are unimaginably highly paid.
The quality of Urdu language he writes in his columns is precarious. The accent with which he speaks Urdu in his talk show and the way he pronounces words may never be approved by a refined taste. His arguments defy logic, his sources are un-scrutinized and most of his information is misleading. Yet he is one of the most popular Urdu columnists!
C. M. Naim in his personal blog, www.cmnaim.comhas taken Javed Chaudhry to task regarding one of his columns, مذاکرات سے پہلے, which published in a national daily, Express, on September 17, 2013.
Here is C. M. Naim’s post:
Mr. Javed Chaudhry is a
In Lahore, a lecture on Cosmic Dust
On September 2, in an Urdu daily, a small advertisement appeared. It was about a lecture on Cosmic Dust on September 3 under the auspices of the Khwarizmi Science Society in the Ali Institute of Education, Lahore.
I made it a point to attend the lecture.
Dr. Tayyaba Zafar delivered the lecture. She teaches at the Department of Physics, University of the Punjab. I wondered whether University of the Punjab every holds such events!
Dr. Tayyaba was very much conversant with the topic of her lecture. She dwelt at length on Dusty Cool Cosmos.
She explained: 95 % of the universe is invisible; and 4.6 % consists of atoms. The invisible universe is 72 % dark energy, and 23 % dark matter. Through telescope only 5 % of the universe is visible to us.
She told: Cosmic Dust is carbon and silicate grains – sub-micron in size. This Dust
Who is Drone-prone!
Here is a cartoon by Sabir Nazar, which exposes the fallacy of opposing the Drone attacks. The cartoon published in The Express Tribune on September 26, 2013.
… 
See also two previous posts of mine on the issue of Drone attacks:
How to protect citizens from their killer governments
So Immanuel Kant already knew it!
See this article published in The News York Times on September 13, 2013.
Link to the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/14/opinion/the-duty-to-protect-still-urgent.html?_r=0
The Duty to Protect, Still Urgent
By Michael Ignatieff
TORONTO — PRESIDENT OBAMA’S failure to get Congress to support airstrikes in Syria, coupled with the vote against military action in the British House of Commons, brings home a key fact about international politics: when given a choice, democratic peoples are reluctant to authorize their leaders to use force to protect civilians in countries far away.
In 2001, the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, on which I served, developed the idea that all states, but especially democracies, have a “responsibility to protect” civilians when they are threatened with mass killing. For those of us who have worked hard to promote this concept, it’s obvious that our idea is facing a crisis of democratic legitimacy.
Let’s be
With Taliban, talks or no talks – a self-created dilemma
With Taliban, talks or no talks seems to be a self-created dilemma!
… Is it a tragedy or a farce . . .
See this cartoon by Sabir Nazar:
[The Express Tribune, September 20, 2013]
The Kings Among Us
[When I wrote this piece, I titled it as, Saddam Hussein: A King of our Times, but The News carried it with a better title: The kings among us]
Once upon a time, there was a king. He was born in a city called Tikrit. He was brought up in a fatherless family with poor means of livelihood. He rose from a street fighter to be a Powerful King of Iraq.
It may be objected that the story of Saddam Hussein cannot be narrated in such a manner. Because the times are different! We are living in a modern or as is said in a post-modern age. But going through the details of Saddam Hussein’s life and career as a ruler makes one convinced that his tale may easily be narrated like the tales of Kings are described in story, history or semi-historical books.
Here is an attempt
A cartoonist’s depiction of the Pakistan’s economy
A cartoon worth more than a thousand words!
… [The Express Tribune, September 16, 2013]
Financing the parasitism of Riyasati Ashrafiya
Tax reform agenda
By Huzaima Bukhari & Dr. Ikramul Haq
By Huzaima Bukhari & Dr. Ikramul Haq
The dire need in today’s Pakistan is to tap the real tax potential and make the country a self-reliant economy, stop wasteful, unproductive expenses, cut the size of the cabinet and government machinery, make government-owned corporations profitable or restructure them, accelerate industrialisation and increase productivity, improve agricultural sector, bring inflation to single digit and reduce inequalities through a policy of redistribution of income and wealth.
High rates of income taxes, capital transfer taxes and wealth taxes are some means adopted for achieving these ends in all democratic countries. In Pakistan, there has been a gradual shift from equitable taxes to highly inequitable taxes. The shift from removing inequalities through taxes to presumptive and easily collectable taxes has destroyed the fundamental principle of horizontal and vertical equity.
In Pakistan, the poor are subjected to heavy and cruel taxation to finance the
Many faces of a shameless democracy
So someone had the guts to expose the brazen falsity of those outrageous praises showered on Asif Ali Zardari published in various newspapers on September 12.
The other day, one riposte appeared in The News.
Democracy must be hiding its face
By Ishaque Khakwani
ISLAMABAD: I am using my right to respond to Farahnaz Ispahani’s article in praise of Asif Ali Zardari published in The News. In any civilized country a person with Zardari’s credentials would have long been hauled up and in custody, leave alone qualified to enter the race for the office of the president of Pakistan.
Getting elected and completing 5 long years in office is the biggest humiliation, which the coming generations of Pakistan will face. All because we were so subservient to the foreign dictates that the entire establishment and the large majority of political parties of Pakistan bowed down to their wishes. All this
Lying through the Asif Ali Zardari’s teeth
This post is in continuation of a previous post: Pakistani media’s alchemy – making a seer out of a crook
On September 12, various newspapers carried the following article:
President’s Zardari’s legacy
By Bilawal Bhutto Zardari
[The Express Tribune]
The same article was carried by The News with a different title.
Zardari’s legacy will be written in gold, the best leader ever
Compares ex-Pak president with former US president Lyndon B Johnson
Link to this article: http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-13-25385-Zardaris-legacy-will-be-written-in-gold-the-best-leader-ever
The Zardari legacy
By Farahnaz Ispahani
On Sunday, September 8, 2013, Asif Ali Zardari, the leader of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) stepped down as the president of Pakistan. Many will write about this historic day as it represents the first time a democratically elected president completed a five-year term, followed by a peaceful transition to another democratically elected government. Most of Pakistan’s leaders have been removed from office in coups d’tat or
The state is absent, let’s kill them all
A wealthy family’s arrogant young man kills another young fellow. The killer’s family is able to buy every instrument of the state which otherwise exists to protect life and property, and liberty, of the citizens without any discrimination. They do buy: they send their son abroad making travesty of every requirement, formality and legality of traveling abroad; though the father of the deceased is a high-ranking in-service police officer, registering a report of the murder with the police remains in doldrums.
Somehow, friends of the deceased bring out the cause of justice to the social media. Then the print and electronic media get hold of the case. An unprecedentedly independent and judicially active Supreme Court goes for a suo moto and oversees that the murder case proceeds according to the dictates of the law.
Overcoming all the obstacles and distractions money can create in Pakistan, the murder case reaches its