Balochistan – in the Line of Fire?

A nice article on Balochistan situataion with a historical perspective. ‘Orya Maqbool Jaan’ sahib knows the province more than the most columnists around. He gave the account of his own knowledge, experience etc. The situation has become more critical after the recent menacing comments by the USA….

Dungeon?

Not very long ago, someone asked Imam Khomeini in 1982/1983. Imam sahib, what you have gained in the last four years after the revolution? If one compare the Economic condition now with the one before the revolution, it is in a bitter condition now. The condition of general public has deteriorated considerably in the last four years. What you have achieved? Imam Sahib replied, at least we have achieved one thing in the last four year and that is “That the decisions [destiny] of Iran are made in Tehran and not in Washington”.

The purpose here was not to Idealize Iran and Imam Sahib but to point out the weaknesses [deficiency] of the most other Muslim leaders. The more one reads about it and thinks about it… the more it strengthen the believe [fact] that we [specifically our leaders] might have achieved the independence (on papers) colonialism but mentally [even physically now] are still trapped inside the deepest dungeons of slavery. There is still a colony somewhere within us serving the purpose of the master. Anyhow check out the article to find out more thought provoking things.

Zara nam ho tu ye matti bari zarkhaiz hai saaki?

http://thenews.jang.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=196326

Neo-Colonialism‏!

Most of us would curse[blame] the Jews/West for the hunger and bloodshed around the world. Some new discoveries shed some light on the imperialists of a different sort. It seems to me that anyone with enough power and money[resources] will try to get the benefit out of anything – no matter if it’s of the same religion, ethnicity, country or whatever. Get a chance avail[exploit] it… Disgusting!

Read this article, some interesting developments and (possibly) one more reason for the present food shortage in the country.

Article Link

After shocks:

http://thenews.jang.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=195516

http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=195590

Moral courage‏

http://blog.dawn.com:91/dblog/2009/08/21/jinnah-is-out-of-the-dock/

Thinking of Pakistan academic system from early age as it was the first journey(for most) into the arena of history. But was it providing the history as it happens? or at least as it was in the history books? In my humble opinion, it was hugely biased[one side story] and most of the time showed us a glorified image of anything that has an association with us. Other times, it showed that base-less opposition with some one and magnify the negative aspect of. It off course can have some repercussion in the personality of the children reading those book – one of them is the habit of labeling someone as ‘agent’, ‘treacherous’, ‘kaafir’ if the person speak against[criticize] some of the those pseudo belief’s that we developed[brain-stained] over the years.

I don’t know much about the situation right now but recently[last year] I saw text book with some one like Mush giving the ‘honihar e watan’ a moral lesson on the front page. So, you can think of the state of affairs… This situation comes into mind with a recent event of Jaswant Singh of India coming up with nertral analysis but the uproar in India showed me that we are not alone . Praising someone is important (motivation and other factors) but healthy ‘criticism’ should be duty[farz] of every one and no one should be beyond criticism. Coming out of the mind set of biasness, basless opposition, glorification is off course in the interest of everyone.

صورت شمشیر ہے دست قضا میں وہ قوم
کرتی ہے جو ہر زماں اپنے عمل کا حساب

Check out the link above which i found rather interesting. Some interesting comments below.

Would a Pakistani academic have the same moral courage to examine history as Jaswant Singh?

Conspirators

Life is just messed up with [full of] all those conspiracies these days (another reason to admire[desire] a child’s life) and there seems to be absolutely no escape (at least for some). It might be attributed sometimes to some one’s habit of just browsing the internet, watching youtube stuff, read/watch fictions, getting into the details of thing… but still guys there are just too many of those… we have to think twice[limits->infinity] some time even to click a mouse button, drinking a cold drink, buy something to eat, starting the engine of your vehicle, withdraw money, use your credit card, watching TV, listening to music, watching movies, reading religious stuff, listening to a religious scholar… plus many more. Everything seems to have an element of  doubt associated with it. Isnt it? [1]

Any how I found the following one rather interesting. A kind of tussel going on the between the two. Check out the videos and the detailed blog entry.

http://blog.dawn.com:91/dblog/2009/08/11/in-defence-of-reason/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aCu4jap1eo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obboA3-8m88&feature=related

Another interesting post I found that I would like to share here. Check out yourself and decide whether it is hitting where it hurts the most?

http://www.urban75.org/info/conspiraloons.html

[1] Dont give me the reason, Allah say loo laga lo, sab theek ho jaye ga . I know that.

Witch of Blasphemy!

Check out the link.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/urdu/pakistan/2009/08/090805_witchhunting_rh.shtml

A few things I would like to share here.

Although I am not very fond of BBC website (various reasons) but someone shared this article with me and I am sharing it with you. As you know the matter of these sacrilegious and blasphemous act up heated up again with another significant incident took place in the “Gojra”. It has always been a controversial matter and everyone knows the sentiments associated with it.

There is absolutely no confusion in my mind that the matter has always been exploited by the majority of the country for various personal/social reasons and these minorities are always been the victim of it. The blasphemous acts happened in other part of the world and the offenses are published/documented at various level but these offender are still at large and no one going behind them. Crushing poor people (who not have the strength/power to retaliate) is relatively easy as compared to the more powerful offenders.

To make the matter even worse, the law of the country has the capital punishment for blasphemous behavior. Although I am not totally against the strict rules in the society but the judicial system (upward, downward) should be capable enough to bring justice to the people. What do you think; we have the judicial system that capable enough to provide justice 95% of time? Hell NO. It will be blessing if it will be able to provide justice in 50% of time. Blasphemy offenses are the most delicate [life and death associated] of the matter and the danger of confrontation/clash between different elements of the society is grave. There has always been question raised about the decision made by the courts but they were always buried under the high emotions and love for the religion. So, need to rethink the strategy and in my opinion benefit of the doubt (even the slightest) should always go with the accused.

Another point is the ‘Hero’ image associated with the persons who take the matter into his own hands and start killing the accused. The person gets the recognition both at the local level and at the national level. We need to rethink about it and require campaigns to go and change the mind set of the general public (which is stained by the different elements of the society from the out set). Someone taking the law in his own hand is offender in all aspect of our daily life (religious, social etc).

Now talk about the blasphemous acts, no doubt a religious element associated with it but if we forget the religious element for the time being and just talk in terms of simple moralities (right and wrong) of the life, it is off course a condemnable [punishable] act. No one should be allowed to play with the emotions/aspirations of group of people (minority or majority). A society always require a level of tolerance to harmonize it different elements.

Now comes to the point of whether these kinds of events never happen? My answer is… they do happen. You just need to find out the hundreds (if not thousands) of non Muslims took refuge in the Western countries based on blasphemy reasons (sometimes false). I know quite a few (in double figure) of the non Muslims who provided the similar reasons and get the support of France and now the whole family are living there. It’s another matter that the living status of these non Muslims in our country is very poor (as the living standard in general is at least ‘Poor’) but this is off course not a reason for the offense [crime].

That was purely my own POV.

Expats: An easy way to come back home‏

Pakistani government has taken some serious measure to bring back the talent working abroad. Now the Expats don’t need to buy a ticket. Just send a love SMS to your beloved president and here you go. He will bring you back home. Iss say sasti to sirf ‘toofi’ Great!!!!

Beware of sending provocative e-mails, SMS

By Ashfaq Ahmed, Chief Reporter Published: July 13, 2009, 23:10 http://www.gulfnews.com/world/Pakistan/10331375.html

Dubai: Sending indecent, provocative and ‘ill-motivated’ e-mails or SMS is now a punishable offence in Pakistan and violators can be jailed up to 14 years under the Cyber Crime Act, Gulf News has learnt. Overseas Pakistanis will be liable to be deported to Pakistan in case they violate the new law, according to a senior official in the Ministry of Interior. The Pakistan government has also entered into an agreement with the Interpol to identify e-mail addresses and websites registered abroad that are being used for malicious campaigns against the government. A senior official at the Pakistan Consulate in Dubai said the Interpol would aid in the deportation of Pakistanis found involved in cyber crime. “The Pakistan government can also request action against foreign nationals or companies if they are involved in any provocative campaign against Pakistan or the civilian government. We can request the relevant government to take action against such elements abroad,” he added. “The new law was introduced by the government to stop the onslaught of negative propaganda campaign through this ‘alternate media’ against the civilian government and the armed forces, especially President Asif Ali Zardari,” the official said. Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency’s (FIA) Cyber Crime Cell will trace or block such SMSes and e-mails and take action against the violators.. The FIA will book offenders under the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Ordinance. All internet service providers will regularly be checked by the FIA. Meanwhile, an official told Gulf News that neither the FIA nor did the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority has a system to screen such communications in bulk. “FIA will launch investigation against the accused only after receiving complaints as they are able to track down individuals or companies who send such SMS or e-mails,” he said. Under this law a violator faces imprisonment up to 14 years, besides confiscation of his or her property. Cases will be referred to the Prevention of Electronic Crimes tribunals being set up in major cities.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/urdu/pakistan/2009/07/090728_sms_case_zs.shtml

Turning Point? Noam Chomsky

Recent development in the middle east peace process with Obama’s speech at Cairo seems to be filling the gaps between the stakeholder. Detailed analysis of the current situaltion with references from history. Do read if you have time. A few excerpts from the main article are as below.

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Turning Point?

Noam Chomsky

International consensus or “fried chicken”

http://www.chomsky.info/articles/20090607.htm

The Obama-Netanyahu-Abbas meetings in May, followed by Obama’s speech in Cairo, have been widely interpreted as a turning point in US Middle East policy, leading to consternation in some quarters, exuberance in others. Fairly typical is Middle East analyst Dan Fromkin of the Washington Post, who sees “signs Obama will promote a new regional peace initiative for the Middle East, much like the one championed by Jordan’s King Abdullah… [and also] the first distinct signs that Obama is willing to play hardball with Israel.” (WP, May 29). A closer look, however, suggests considerable caution.
…
Furthermore, the consensus calls for a Palestinian state to be established in Gaza and the West Bank after Israel’s withdrawal. The Arab Initiative adds that the Arab states should then normalize relations with Israel.
…
Obama has indeed pronounced the words “Palestinian state,” echoing Bush. In contrast, the (unrevised) 1999 platform of Israel’s governing party, Netanyahu’s Likud, “flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan river.” Nevertheless, it was Netanyahu’s 1996 government that was the first to use the phrase. It agreed that Palestinians can call whatever fragments of Palestine are left to them “a state” if they like — or they can call them “fried chicken” (David Bar- Illan, director of Communications and Policy Planning in the office of the Prime Minister; Interview, Palestine-Israel Journal, Summer/Autumn 1996).
…
Obama continues to support all of these programs, and has even called for substantially increasing military aid to Israel for an unprecedented ten years (Stephen Zunes, Foreign Policy in Focus, March 4). It appears, then, that Palestinians may be offered fried chicken, but nothing more. Israel’s forced separation of Gaza from the West Bank since 1991, intensified with US support after a free election in January 2006 came out “the wrong way,” has also been studiously ignored in Obama’s “new initiative,” thus further undermining prospects for any viable Palestinian state.
…
Since January 1991, Israel has bureaucratically and logistically merely perfected the split and the separation: not only between Palestinians in the occupied territories and their brothers in Israel, but also between the Palestinian residents of Jerusalem and those in the rest of the territories and between Gazans and West Bankers/Jerusalemites. Jews live in this same piece of land within a superior and separate system of privileges, laws, services, physical infrastructure and freedom of movement” (April 24, BitterLemons.org).
After Israel’s December [2008] assault, Gaza’s already compromised conditions have become virtually unlivable. Livelihoods, homes, and public infrastructure have been damaged or destroyed on a scale that even the Israel Defense Forces admitted was indefensible. In Gaza today, there is no private sector to speak of and no industry. 80 percent of Gaza’s agricultural crops were destroyed and Israel continues to snipe at farmers attempting to plant and tend fields near the well-fenced and patrolled border. Most productive activity has been extinguished…

One crucial element of Israel’s siege, little reported, is the naval blockade. Peter Beaumont reports from Gaza that “On its coastal littoral, Gaza’s limitations are marked by a different fence where the bars are Israeli gunboats with their huge wakes, scurrying beyond the Palestinian fishing boats and preventing them from going outside a zone imposed by the warships.” (Guardian, 27 May).

These Israeli naval attacks began shortly after the discovery by the British Gas group of what appear to be quite sizeable natural gas fields in Gaza’s territorial waters. Industry journals report that Israel is already appropriating these Gazan resources for its own use, part of its commitment to shift its economy to natural gas. The standard source, Platt’s Commodity News, reports (Feb. 3, 16)…
…
The term “legal” in US-Israeli parlance means “illegal, but authorized by the government of Israel.” In this usage, unauthorized outposts are termed “illegal,” though apart from the dictates of the powerful, they are no more illegal than the settlements granted to Israel under Bush’s “vision.” …
Returning to reality, all of these discussions about settlement expansion evade the most crucial issue about settlements: what Israel has already established in the West Bank. The evasion tacitly concedes that the illegal settlement programs already in place are somehow acceptable (putting aside the Golan heights, annexed in violation of Security Council orders) — though the Bush “vision,” apparently accepted by Obama, moves from tacit to explicit.
It should perhaps be added that despite much fevered rhetoric, rational souls understand that the Iranian threat is not the threat of attack — which would be suicidal. Wayne White, former deputy director of the Near East and South Asia office of State Department intelligence (INR), quite plausibly estimates the likelihood that the Iranian leaders would carry out “some quixotic attack against Israel with a nuclear weapon,” thus instantly destroying Iran and themselves, as “down there with that 1 percent possibility.” Also timely is his confirmation, from direct knowledge as the INR Iraq intelligence analyst at the time, that Israel’s 1981 attack on Iraq’s nuclear reactor did not end Saddam’s nuclear weapons program, but initiated it.
…
Obama’s “new initiative” is spelled out more fully by John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate, now chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in an important speech at the Brookings Institute on March 9. (http://kerry.senate.gov/cfm/record.cfm?id=309250). In interpreting Kerry’s words, we have to suspend normal rationality, and agree that the actual facts of history are completely irrelevant. What is important is not the contrived picture of past and present, but the plans outlined.
Washington’s new initiative for Middle East peace, so it is hoped, will integrate Israel among the “moderate” Arab states as a bulwark for US domination of the vital energy-producing regions. It fits well into Obama’s broader programs for Afghanistan and Pakistan, where military operations are escalating and huge “embassies” are being constructed on the model of the city-within-a-city in Baghdad, clearly signaling Obama’s intentions (Saeed Shah and Warren Strobel, McClatchy Newspapers, May 27).
…
These are among the unparalleled services that Israel provides for US militarism and global dominance. They afford Israel a certain leeway to defy Washington’s orders — though it is skating on thin ice if it tries to push its luck too far, as history has repeatedly shown. So far the jingoist extremism of the current government has been constrained by more sober elements: for example, the shelving of the proposals to require a loyalty oath and to prevent citizens from commemorating the Nakba — the disaster for Palestinians in 1948. But if Israel goes too far, there might indeed erupt a confrontation of the kind that many commentators perceive today, so far, with little basis

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Comments if you will be able to read it?

Taliban?‏

http://www.ummatpublication.com/2009/05/29/story1.html

Failure of Imagination!‏

Many eyes many stories? this phrase seems to have lost its meaning in the recent times where we beginning to see what someone else want us to see.

“Sublime, empyreal, flawless, smooth, calm, refreshing, profound, intense, significant, inspiring eloquent… and yet with the ever increasing transience and specificity“.  This one can definitely have calming influence on masses. A “breath of fresh air” in a world where the oppression and hatred is increasing with every passing day.

How much has said in such a short amount of time… Amazing!. Do listen/read the following.

http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~hartleyg/docs/comeSeptember.pdf

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAoIwJKfExA&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J235p3vv7-A&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPo1TZfa5oA&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCxx6NfIYqA&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjFgar7ZoaU&feature=related