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
Jamat-e-Islami, Al-Qaeda and the Taliban
“A senior serving intelligence agency officer, who also led operations in which wanted al Qaeda figures Ahmad Khalfan Ghalani and Naeem Noor Khan alias Abu Talha were arrested, told The Express Tribune that JI (Jamat-e-Islami) has been directly and indirectly involved in providing accommodation to al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan.
“Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, supposedly No 3 in the al-Qaeda hierarchy was arrested in March 2004, from the house of a women’s wing leader of the JI in Rawalpindi, while another al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaida was arrested in the same year from Faisalabad, and was given shelter by Jamaatud Dawa (JuD) and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).”
[From The Express Tribune]
See the story which published in The Express Tribune on September 11, 2013:
All the cartoons on the same page!
See this cartoon by Sabir Nazar carried by The Express Tribune on September 11, 2013.
Any guess: what’s the book all the parties are on the same page of!
Is it the Constitution of Pakistan! Or what else!
Plato’s dark forecast about Democracy without Rule of Law
Plato knew well democracy without rule of law in Pakistan will be dominated by demagogues, chaos will ensue, to reestablish order, the people will welcome tyrant, and tyranny will give to other evils!
See this article which appeared in The New York Times on September 11, 2013:
Democracy as chimera
The news from Egypt confirms Plato’s dark forecast about democracy. Early this month the ruling junta in Cairo arrested a labor lawyer and a journalist, raising concerns that the regime’s repression now targets not just Islamists but also secular critics.
As Plato warned, extreme freedom risks extreme slavery. He predicted that democracy — “people rule” — will quickly be dominated by demagogues. Chaos will ensue. To reestablish order, the people will welcome a tyrant. Tyranny will give birth to other evils.
One of America’s leading specialists on the Arab world, the late Ambassador Hermann F. Eilts, agreed with Plato. Having helped mediate the
Murders, Pakistani State writes
Re Shahzeb murder case
Today’s tweet:
Pakistan is fast turning into a state of the murderers, for the murderers, by the murderers! Where and how the 66 years were wasted!
Now see this news item:
Sindh govt sought pardon for Shahrukh Jatoi from Zardari
KARACHI: Important revelations have come to light regarding the Shahzeb murder case. It was revealed that the Sindh government had sent a summary to the Aiwan-e-Sadr to quash the death sentence of Shahrukh Jatoi.
According to the information received by Geo News, the home minister Sindh had sent the summary to the president by bypassing the Interior Ministry. The Aiwan-e-Sadr sent this summary back to the Interior Ministry. Federal Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali had rejected the summary.
The Sindh government had sent this summary to governor Sindh on July 19 and sent the same to the Aiwan-e-Sadr on August 6. The Sindh government
Everything that glitters in Media is not gold!
Today’s tweet:
… Re Pakistani media’s praise for Asif Ali Zardari: Everything that glitters in Media is not gold!
Pakistani media’s alchemy – making a seer out of a crook
What’s happening at this time in Pakistani media has no precedent! It’s desperately trying to transform Dust into Gold using its science of alchemy and its alchemists.
As Asif Ali Zardari leaves the Presidency, Pakistani media slides into a frenzy to be all praise for him, forgetting all the names it has been calling him with. Probably all the television (may be radio also, do not listen to any) channels and almost all the English and Urdu newspapers are making a seer out of him. As is said in Urdu and Punjabi:
’’چوروں قطب بننا‘‘
It may be translated into English as: a thief’s turning into a (sufi) saint
So the Pakistani media’s alchemy is transforming Asif Ali Zardari into a Great Democrat!
This act of Pakistani media reminds of a classic idiom:
Everything that glitters is not gold!
And, I would like to amend this idiom as:
Everything that
Political parasitism in Sindh
Today is the day when the five-year term of President Asif Ali Zardari has come to an end (writing this blog in the evening).
See the today’s newspapers. I guess almost in every paper there is a full-page ad. I saw 4 newspapers: Jang, Express, The News, The Express Tribune. The ad has been given by the Sindh Government, where Peoples Party is the ruling party.
In the ad with a photo of Asif Ali Zardari is printed:
I translate: “The trustee / preserver of democratic traditions”
Then the “achievements and the accomplishments” of this “trustee / preserver” has been counted.
In the end is printed:
Sharjeel Inaam Memon
Minister for Information and Archives, Commerce and Industries
Government of Sindh
Obviously, Sharjeel Memon did not pay for these ads eulogizing his mentor. Nor the Peoples Party! This was done at the cost of taxpayers of the Sindh province.
I think
Good Riddance Day – President Asif Ali Zardari leaves presidency today
Today’s Tweet:
… Good Riddance Day – the devastation caused by Asif Zardari to exert its impact on the Pakistani state, society and ideas for years to come!
Killing human beings for their ideas
It’s just inhuman, against the very norms of the human world, that anyone be killed for his / her ideas.
Everyone has ideas, good or bad, and nobody knows whose ideas are good and whose ideas are bad.
Ideas are extensions of thinking beings. And, it’s ideas which have built this human world. It’s ideas which protect us in an unknown universe. Hence, killing human beings for their ideas amounts to killing this human world, our abode!
“Kabuliwala’s Bengali wife” was living inside the camp of the enemy and fighting the killers of this human world and her weapons were but Ideas!
[From The News International]
See the full story carried by The New York Times:
Civil Pakistan – a blog for Urdu posts
Be informed that I have decided to separate the Urdu postings from English ones and put them together into another blog.
For the Urdu posts, I am setting up, CivilPakistan: Urdu Blog. As the setting up of the Urdu Blog finishes, all the Urdu postings will be shifted there.
This will let the Blog: NotesFromPakistan.combe available wholly for English posts.
Khalil
Yeh Hawaon Kay Musafir, Yeh Samandron Kay Rahee – another accomplishment
Please note: This post has been shifted to the Urdu Blog – Civil Pakistan. To see it, click the link below:
Riyasati Ashrafiya (State Aristocracy) and the chronic debt dependence
Chronic ‘debt dependence’
By Huzaima Bukhari & Dr Ikramul Haq
All is set for the executive board of the International Monetary Fund (MF) to consider Pakistan’s request for a fresh bailout package on September 4, 2013 after Islamabad has purportedly “fulfilled all prior requirements” — the IMF has already circulated amongst members the Letter of Intent (LoI) it received from Islamabad. Reportedly, though the IMF has agreed to provide $6.6 billion under the Extended Fund Facility (EFF), Islamabad is insisting on $7.3 billion confirming its insatiable ‘debt addiction’.
Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, in a news conference on August 26, 2013, revealed that “in the first year, the IMF will give $2.2 billion while we have to pay back over $3 billion.” He conceded that Pakistan had no option but to borrow $12 billion “to retire its previous debts”. Dar said the “most vital precondition of the IMF for broadening of
Pakistan Kay Tufaileyay Siyasatdaan
Please note: This post has been shifted to the Urdu Blog – Civil Pakistan. To see it, click the link below: