American children in 2010 have a bright, clear reason for being. They exist to furnish subjects for digital photographs that can be corrected, cropped, captioned, organized, categorized, albumized, broadcast, turned into screen savers and brandished on online social networks.— Virginia Heffernan in the NYT
In the pre-partitioned Western Punjab, especially Lahore--locals celebrated the Basant festival by flying kites. Muslims of Punjab celebrated the Basant although it was considered as a local (non Islamic folk) festival. It was mainly Muslims that participated in kite flying as an event.
Our clerics, more influenced by Afghanistan’s Taliban, have been doing their best to prevent people from having fun. Innocent pleasures are denounced from the pulpit, and people are forced into enjoying the simplest forms of pleasures behind closed doors.
Over the years, this ‘Deobandi-Wahabi-Salafi axis’, to borrow Pervez Hoodbhoy’s term, has been pushing us further and further away from normalcy. Intolerance and hypocrisy are now the norm, and extremist thugs have a tight grip on university campuses to make sure nobody has any fun.
....
When we ban the shared enjoyment of traditional festivals like Basant, we are only strengthening the extremists who have come to shape our national agenda. Each time they gain one concession, they immediately demand another. We had long ago ceded New Year celebrations to the extremist thugs who went around smashing up hotels and clubs on Dec 31 if there were any signs of festivities. Is Basant going to follow the same path?
I do not always see eye to eye with my old friend, Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab, but when he declared he would go ahead and celebrate Basant, and forget the consequences, my spirits lifted at his defiance. Almost immediately, Senator Pervez Rashid of the PML-N threatened to have Salman dragged out of the Governor’s House in handcuffs if he defied the ban. This, alas, is the level of persons who fill our assemblies.
For far too long, we have accepted the edicts of our moral police without raising an outcry. One by one, simple pleasures have been legislated away.
"Unfortunately, our recognition in the comity of nations today is only as a ´ breeding ground ´ for religious extremism and militancy and as a country afflicted with a culture of violence and sectarianism. " Shamshad Ahmed, ex-Foreign Secretary, Pakistan, Nov 24, 2007
"Pakistan has everything that gives you an international migraine. It has nuclear weapons, it has terrorism, extremists... " Madeline Albright, Oct. 2008
"Let me be very clear. Today, virtually every major terrorist threat that my agency is aware of has threads back to the tribal areas." Michael Hayden, Director, CIA, Nov 13, 2008
"Why is it that all terrorist plots – from the Sept. 11 attacks, to Madrid, to London, to Mumbai – seem to have roots in Islamabad? " Ms. Benazir Bhutto, Washington Post, March 12, 2007
“Three quarters of the most serious plots investigated by the British authorities have links to al-Qaeda in Pakistan. The time has come for action, not words.” Gordon Brown, British Prime Minister, Islamabad, Dec., 15, 2008
For over a decade, India has been in the bull's eye of both al Qaeda and the global jihadist syndicate that has its hide outs in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Bruce Riedel, Chairman, Policy review Committee on Pakistan & Afghanistan, Dec 3, 2008
“Pakistan is on the top of the international community’s agenda for its internal conflicts and being home to potential terrorists”. Raymond Johansen, Dy. Foreign Minister, Norway, Mar. 2009
“. . . this country will drift from crisis to calamity, from calamity to catastrophe, and from catastrophe to disaster.” Perico, Duke of Amalfi, a former Spanish ambassador to Pakistan {This was said sometime in the late 50s. What a prescient statement}
''I don't have a lot of confidence that the Pakistani government has the will or the capability to take on the violent forces inside of their country,” Senator Carl Levin, Chairman, Senate Armed Services Committee, USA, Mar. 2009
“The Pakistani military and police and intelligence service don't follow the civilian government; they are essentially a rogue state within a state.” David Kilcullen, Adviser, Gen. Petraeus, March 23, 2009
“I have absolutely no confidence in the ability of the existing Pakistan government to do one blessed thing,” David R. Obey, Chairman, House Appropriations Committee, April 2009
“There is a line of terror, a chain of terror that goes from Pakistan and the border areas of Afghanistan right back to the streets of all our countries” Gordon Brown, British Prime Minister, Addressing British Troops at Afghanistan, April 29, 2009
“This is not our army, this is not our government. They’re worse enemies of Muslims than the Americans.” Muslim Khan, Spokesperson, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, Swat, referring to Pakistan and its Army, May 2009
“Pakistan is the headquarters of Al Qaeda’s senior leadership” Gen. David Petraeus, Commander, US CENTCOM, May 2009
“Russia and Asian allies have ‘legitimate concerns’ that terrorists could gain access to Pakistani nuclear weapons.” Vladimir Nazarov, Secretary, Russian Security Council, May 2009
“The main terrorist threat comes from Pakistan and Somalia – not Afghanistan.” Lord Malloch-Brown, Foreign Office Minister for Africa and Asia, UK, July 22, 2009
". . .the ultimate control of this conspiracy {August 2006 Trans-Atlantic Flights Bombing case} lay in Pakistan. . . the plot was run, monitored and funded from there." Justice Richard Henriques, Woolwich Crown Court, London, Sep. 14, 2009
“Homeland security begins in many instances abroad, and particularly what happens in Pakistan . . . ”, Janet Napolitano, Secretary, Homeland Security, US Government, Oct 2009
“. . . billions have gone down a rat hole in the past in Pakistan. . .”, Howard L Berman, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman, Oct. 13, 2009
“We know that much of the training and direction for the terrorists comes from Pakistan” Ms. Hilary Clinton, Secretary of State, CNN Interview, Dec. 10, 2009
Symbol for Indian Rupee
106. In the ensuing year, we intend to formalise a symbol for the Indian Rupee, which reflects and captures the Indian ethos and culture. With this, Indian Rupee will join the select club of currencies such as the US Dollar, British Pound Sterling, Euro and Japanese Yen that have a clear distinguishing identity. — From Indian Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee's 2010-11 budget speech to Parliament
India is the legal successor to British India, Pakistan is the new creation. Thus e.g., India is among the founding members of the United Nations; Pakistan’s membership dates to September 30, 1947. These are the facts, easily google-able.
Even while conceding Pakistan, Mahatma Gandhi told Jinnah – let us (India, Pakistan) separate as two brothers who do not want to stay in the same house (i.e., we remain brothers, though we separate). Jinnah did not agree, he said Muslims and Hindus are separate nations – the so-called “Two Nation Theory”. To see now Pakistanis apparently repudiate Jinnah saying that we have so much in common (or Indians repudiating Mahatma Gandhi, denying any commonality) is ironic in the extreme.
From the Indian point of view, I think they’d be satisfied with a cold peace with Pakistan. The main reason Pakistan impinges on Indian consciousness is because of the actions of Lashkar-e-Taiba and the like, which Indians believe are backed by the Pakistani army and the ISI. These actions are actual bomb blasts and attacks in India, as well as radicalization of Indian Muslim youth by these organizations.
Further, it is a common Indian impression that making any treaty with a Pakistani civilian government is pointless because it will be repudiated whenever the Pakistani military eventually overthrows this government. Until there is some continuity in civilian government in Pakistan and it shows it has firm control of defence and foreign policy, so the army becomes an instrument of the state instead of determining state policy, this mistrust will continue. Indians also believe that any Indian covert action in Pakistan ceased with Prime Minister I.K. Gujral (1997) whose Gujral Doctrine is supposedly still being followed.
Can there be peace? Yes, but this will require great patience. From the Indians’ side the distrust factors mentioned above will have to dissipate. And of course, Pakistanis have their own reasons to distrust India, they will have to decide when that can cease.
It is true though India is legally a continuation of the state that existed before 1947, India is new in many ways.
- For the first time in its very long history, India is not a land revenue state. In all previous regimes a good part of the government’s revenue was obtained by taxation of agricultural land.
- For the first time in its history, the legal equality of all citizens is enshrined in the law.
- For the first time in its history, the government is based on universal adult franchise.
This is what the Democratic Party does; it's who they are. They're willing to feign support for anything their voters want just as long as there's no chance that they can pass it.
In the book, The Idea of Justice, Amartya Sen motivates the discussion on the importance of processes and responsibilities by relying on an example. In the Gita (part of the Mahabharata), on the eve of the crucial battle episode in the epic, Arjuna expresses his doubts about leading the fight which will result in so much killing. Lord Krishna, tells him that he, Arjuna, must perform his duty, that is, to fight. And to fight, irrespective of the consequences.
Krishna’s blessing of the demands of duty is meant to win the argument from a religious perspective. But most of us would share Arjuna’s concerns about the fact that, if the war were to occur, with him leading the charge on the side of justice and propriety, many people would get killed. He himself would be doing a lot of the killing, often of people for whom he had affection.
Arjuna’s dilemma goes well beyond the process-independent view of consequences. Like him, most of us believe that an appropriate understanding of social realization has to take the comprehensive form of a process-inclusive broad account.
A rich text such as the Gita can live with more than one interpretation. Amartya Sen makes good use of the contrast between Krishna's ethics ("do your duty") and Arjuna's dilemma. Should Arjuna do his duty and fight (and kill many people including people he loved)? Or should he spend the rest of his life in exile (without being responsible for a brutal battle and much killing)? Even if there would not be peace, Arjuna could choose between leading the battle or not.
The purpose of Pakistan, transcending anything to do with safeguarding Islam or promoting democracy, was to create conditions for the Muslims of India, or those who found themselves in the new state, to recreate the days of their lost glory.
The Government of India spent Rs 4 trillion on various poverty alleviation programmes last year. The report points out that if even half this money had been distributed among our estimated 60 million poor households, they would each get Rs 80 a day and so rise above the poverty line. Our own Planning Commission pointed this out more than a decade ago but because there has not been the smallest attempt to get our babu-log to work more efficiently, nothing has changed.
How do I tell her that every 3 seconds a child dies from something that we could’ve stopped? From hunger. From not enough food. From not having an apple. Or clean drinking water. Or just a little porridge in the morning. That we have it in our power to stop it if we want. But we choose not to. How do I tell her?
I am well aware from your family, and have shared the story all over the world, of your uncle who was violently killed by Israeli soldiers in front of you when you were a small child, and of the uncle you lost in the second intifada. I think that there was a definite longing for revenge. I also think that you will find out with time that there is no revenge for a loved one.
The suspect first came to Seoul in 2001 using a false passport, but was deported in June 2003 by the Immigration Service, according to authorities.
However, he returned within two months, using a new name and passport, with his wife, two sons and four daughters.
While there's no real danger of the Taliban's taking over Pakistan, electorally or militarily, there's a danger of Pakistanis becoming destitute and hospitable to terrible ideas – largely because we've turned the country into an anti-India military force.
Abhishek Sharan, Hindustan Times
Email Author
New Delhi, February 15, 2010
First Published: 00:49 IST(15/2/2010)
Last Updated: 01:01 IST(15/2/2010)
A serving major of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) was among those directing 26/11 terrorists over phone from across the border, India has been told by the US’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
The major was referred to by a pseudonym — Major General Sahab — in his phone conversations with the terrorists during the attacks, recordings of which are with the security agencies.
David Headley, the Pakistani-origin American Lashkar-e-Tayyeba operative who surveyed the 26/11 targets months before the attacks, disclosed this during interrogation, Indian intelligence agencies were told.
Headley’s disclosure, a security agency official said requesting anonymity, confirmed India’s stand that “state actor/s” was/were involved in the planning and execution of the Mumbai attacks. Pakistan has consistently maintained no state-player was involved.
Ten terrorists from Pakistan reached Mumbai on November 26, 2008 and killed 166 people over the next two days.
This ISI major oversaw their training, with Lashkar founder Hafeez Saeed. And he was constantly on phone with the terrorists during the attacks.
India has been aware of this “Major General Sahab” for a while, Home Minister P. Chidambaram had told NDTV last September. But it was not known then if he was still with the ISI or was a retired officer.
Headley has said he was with the ISI then.
They raped the taxpayer, and they raped their clients.
Pakistan’s development into a highly Islamised society today can be divided into five periods.....Some like Rubina Saigol (The News February 21, 2009) have even questioned Jinnah’s intentions about secularism and modernism. Her essay ‘Myths versus Facts About Fundamentalism’ is to dismantle eight of the most common myths about Muslim fundamentalism and extremism ‘(in our part of the world) by juxtaposing such myths against observable facts.’ One of the myths she dismantles is the belief or the claim that fundamentalism is the result of mental and moral backwardness, attitudes religion and beliefs. Her argument is that ‘Fundamentalism is about geopolitics, involving power, money, and control over territory, people and resources....
Most physics crackpots are engineers. More than 95% of my sample boast engineering degrees, or combine an undergraduate maths/physics degree followed by an engineering PhD or equivalent.and
On Usenet, in a group devoted to crackpottery, many years ago, one Bruce Salem came up with the Salem Hypothesis (it was named later) that if a creationist has an advanced technical degree, it will be in engineering.(the two above from here)
Al Qaeda’s members are not the Palestinian fourteen-year- olds we see on the news, but join the jihad at the average age of 26. Three-quarters were professionals or semi- professionals. They are engineers, architects, and civil engineers, mostly scientists. Very few humanities are represented, and quite surprisingly very few had any background in religion. The natural sciences predominate. Bin Laden himself is a civil engineer, Zawahiri is a physician, Mohammed Atta was, of course, an architect; and a few members are military, such as Mohammed Ibrahim Makawi, who is supposedly the head of the military committee.(from here. Continuing on that thread:)
In discussing educational levels, Sageman observes the high prevalence of individuals pursuing technical studies such as engineering and medicine among jihadis. Why are so many jihadis engineers? This is the topic of an important recent Oxford study, Engineers of Jihad, by Diego Gambetta and Steifen Hertog (2007).(from here)
The sociology paper {Engineers of Jihad} published last November, which has been making rounds over the Internet and was recently picked up by The Atlantic, uses illustrative statistics and qualitative data to conclude that there is a strong relationship between an engineering background and involvement in a variety of Islamic terrorist groups. The authors have found that graduates in subjects such as science, engineering, and medicine are strongly overrepresented among Islamist movements in the Muslim world. The authors also note that engineers, alone, are strongly over-represented among graduates who gravitate to violent groups.and
A past survey in the United States has already shown that the proportion of engineers who declare themselves to be on the right of the political spectrum is greater than any other disciplinary groups--such as economists, doctors, scientists, and those in the humanities and social sciences.(the above from here)
Paraphrasing a Mao dictum, the jihadis survive since they swim in a pond of fanatics. Without the latter, like fish out of water, the jihadis would not survive.and
In June-July 2006, I participated in the goodwill mission between Mumbai and Karachi. Within a few days of our return from a goodwill trip to Karachi, the terrorists struck at Mumbai's local trains on July 11, killing more than 200 innocent people. But such is public memory in India that it has been forgotten totally. The pseudo-peaceniks and sundry busybodies now want Indians to forget the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and continue the peace process with Pakistan.
Let me hasten to add that we met a lot of people of goodwill and peace in Pakistan. But most of them were part of the elite. There is no doubt about their sincerity as well. But there is a total disconnect between the elite and the masses. The biggest problem in the case of Pakistan is that civil society has very little influence over either the masses or the government.
The argument then was and today is -- the jihadis want to derail the peace process, that is why they are doing it but we must continue with normal relations, sporting ties, cultural exchanges et al. All this while the Pakistanis deny any connection/responsibility towards these atrocities. I do not buy this argument. If the peace process is not capable of bringing about these minimum conditions, then it is useless. I publicly disassociated myself from this pointless exercise.
The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.
As worries over Greece rattle world markets, records and interviews show that with Wall Street’s help, the nation engaged in a decade-long effort to skirt European debt limits. One deal created by Goldman Sachs helped obscure billions in debt from the budget overseers in Brussels.
...
In 2001, just after Greece was admitted to Europe’s monetary union, Goldman helped the government quietly borrow billions, people familiar with the transaction said. That deal, hidden from public view because it was treated as a currency trade rather than a loan, helped Athens to meet Europe’s deficit rules while continuing to spend beyond its means.
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In dozens of deals across the Continent, banks provided cash upfront in return for government payments in the future, with those liabilities then left off the books. Greece, for example, traded away the rights to airport fees and lottery proceeds in years to come.
Critics say that such deals, because they are not recorded as loans, mislead investors and regulators about the depth of a country’s liabilities.
Pakistan’s erasure of its own muddled history is the subject of Bani Abidi’s witty series of photographs, ‘The Ghost of Mohammad Bin Qasim’. In the nation’s attempt to create an official history, which focuses on Muslims in the subcontinent (rather than Pakistan’s geographical boundaries), the Arab general Bin Qasim (712 AD) was lauded for being the first Muslim to successfully lead a military campaign in India — even though he did little to consolidate his position.
In Abidi’s photographs, a man in Arab dress is shot at different locations in Karachi, including the mausoleum of the nation’s secular founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah. The man is clearly Photoshopped in, deliberately so: he represents the attempt to graft a false history on to Pakistan, linking it to the Wahhabism of Saudi Arabia.
The Boy Who Got Tired of Posing, 2006
A series of fictional photo and video narratives. At the center of each appears the symbol of Mohammad Bin Qasim, as a recurring mythological figure. Playing with the very idea of concocted history, each story lies somewhere between truth and fiction.
The main concern of the people of FATA vis-a-vis Zaid Hamid is his use of a particularly narrow interpretation of Islam that proposes a belligerent agenda for the Pakistan Army and drawing on controversial Islamic literature. Thus the authenticity of the hadiths — sayings of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) — on Ghazwa-e-Hind that he often refers to in terms of the ultimate defeat of the Indians at the hands of the Pakistan Army is highly questionable.
Zaid Hamid claims in his speeches to young people that God determines the destiny of Pakistan. Pakistan will become a grand Caliphate. Pakistan army will cut India down to the size of Sri Lanka. Pakistan will lead the entire Muslim world and its army will be deployed in Palestine, Kashmir, Chechnya and Afghanistan. The corrupt judicial system, consisting of the lawyers and the Supreme Court of Pakistan, will be replaced by an Islamic judicial system that would ensure — Taliban style — speedy and cheap justice. He claims that the current elected set up in Pakistan is implanted by the CIA and prophesies that the current rulers in Pakistan will have their dead bodies hanging on poles in Islamabad, an indirect appreciation of what the Taliban did in Afghanistan with the dead body of Dr Najibullah, the then Afghan president. He openly threatens the nationalists, especially the Pakhtun and Baloch nationalists, for their aspirations. The Taliban government in Afghanistan, he declares, was Pakistan-friendly and condemns its removal by the US in the post-9/11 attack on the country. He glorifies the biggest mass murderer of the Pakhtun — General Zia, the former dictator of Pakistan.
Judging by the obscurantist message that he communicates, Zaid Hamid does not seem to be a new invention of the establishment. He is an addition to the long list of people who have been handpicked to promote an anti-people agenda in the name of religion and hate of India, like the people from the Jamaat-e-Islami. What seems to be new is his apparent ‘tolerance’ of the ‘un-Islamic’ lifestyle of the urban youth and in this context there are some interesting discussions about Zaid Hamid on some blogs and mailing lists. One blogger writes that Zaid Hamid is using a new strategy to communicate the same old conspiracy theories to young people. The strategy is that unlike classical Islamic scholars, joining Zaid Hamid’s group does not necessarily require the youth to shed their sophisticated lifestyle and adjust to hijab, a ban on music and gender segregation. The only thing they have to do is to glorify the Pakistan Army, including its pursuit of strategic depth, and hate Jews, Americans and Indians.
No Time for Bullies: Baboons Retool Their Culture
By NATALIE ANGIER
Published: April 13, 2004
Among a troop of savanna baboons in Kenya, a terrible outbreak of tuberculosis 20 years ago selectively killed off the biggest, nastiest and most despotic males, setting the stage for a social and behavioral transformation unlike any seen in this notoriously truculent primate.
In a study appearing today in the journal PloS Biology (online at www.plosbiology.org), researchers describe the drastic temperamental and tonal shift that occurred in a troop of 62 baboons when its most belligerent members vanished from the scene. The victims were all dominant adult males that had been strong and snarly enough to fight with a neighboring baboon troop over the spoils at a tourist lodge garbage dump, and were exposed there to meat tainted with bovine tuberculosis, which soon killed them. Left behind in the troop, designated the Forest Troop, were the 50 percent of males that had been too subordinate to try dump brawling, as well as all the females and their young. With that change in demographics came a cultural swing toward pacifism, a relaxing of the usually parlous baboon hierarchy, and a willingness to use affection and mutual grooming rather than threats, swipes and bites to foster a patriotic spirit.
Remarkably, the Forest Troop has maintained its genial style over two decades, even though the male survivors of the epidemic have since died or disappeared and been replaced by males from the outside. (As is the case for most primates, baboon females spend their lives in their natal home, while the males leave at puberty to seek their fortunes elsewhere.) The persistence of communal comity suggests that the resident baboons must somehow be instructing the immigrants in the unusual customs of the tribe.
The report also offers real-world proof of a principle first demonstrated in captive populations of monkeys: that with the right upbringing, diplomacy is infectious. Dr. Frans B. M. de Waal, the director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center of Emory University in Atlanta, has shown that if the normally pugilistic rhesus monkeys are reared with the more conciliatory stumptailed monkeys, the rhesus monkeys learn the value of tolerance, peacemaking and mutual hip-hugging.
Summary:
Humans like to think that they are unique, but the study of other primates has called into question the exceptionalism of our species. So what does primatology have to say about war and peace? Contrary to what was believed just a few decades ago, humans are not "killer apes" destined for violent conflict, but can make their own history.
And they seem completely uninterested in such topics [General Relativity, Quantum Field Theory]; they seem to view gauged field theories, not as the theoretical triumph that they or, not as a rich field of ongoing investigation, but as a pesky inconvenience on their way to becoming the next Einstein. There’s no real intellectual curiosity; they just want to be the next Einstein.
There is a concerted effort on by interested third parties to create an impression that resumption of the peace process is ‘inevitable’. It is not. Even the most pacifist of Indian prime ministers have demonstrated a steely resolve on national security issues, such as V.P Singh in 1990 when he threatened to go to war if Pakistan intervened overtly in Kashmir. Similarly, in 1997 IK Gujral did not allow his dovish image to stop him from publicly shooting down a British attempt to mediate on Kashmir. Those who believe that New Delhi can be flattered or badgered into negotiating with a terrorist state only risk damaging their own relations with India. During the first few weeks of the Kargil war, there were the usual calls for restraint from Washington and London. These transformed into pressure on Pakistan only after India made clear that it would not negotiate under threat. Today, a similar message of firmness needs to be sent out.
Failure to do so would encourage the belief currently prevailing within the Pakistan army that its use of terrorists is a viable strategy. India has already made the biggest confidence building measure possible, by not retaliating to a single act of terrorism originating from Pakistan. ISI officials continue to plan terrorist attacks in India, knowing that they will not be targeted for assassination. Until November 2008, New Delhi remained on cordial terms with Islamabad, despite the urban bombing campaign by the so-called ‘Indian Mujahiddin’ (actually Lashkar-e-Toiba by another name). The Mumbai attacks broke this dynamic because Pakistan instead of reciprocating Indian goodwill, chose to ratchet up its proxy war. By sending Pakistani mercenaries to kill Indians under the cover of a non-existent terrorist group called ‘Deccan Mujahiddin’, the ISI overplayed its hand.
Demand uses a three-part formula of search terms, potential ad results and what competitors are doing to feed an algorithm that, with a human assist, comes up with headlines that are full of clickable, salient language that serves as bait for readers and search ads. (News is expensive to produce and not really a part of the formula because the company is looking for durable content, so “How to avoid a tiger attack” will have more value than, say, “Tiger’s not out of the woods, yet.”)David Carr writes that the twenty hours he spent on his NYT article would have earned him the equivalent of a dollar an hour at Demand Media. But with the shrinking print media, there are plenty of writers who have used Demand Media as a lifeline. What is to be seen is whether Demand's business model can last in the long-term, and whether people at some point tune out a dollar an hour content.
The topic is then fed into a central database where freelance writers sign up for the assignment. The articles they write are run through an automated plagiarism checker, an actual copy editor and posted on one of the company’s sites like eHow or LiveStrong.
This time, apart from the Shabab-e-Milli and other such ‘religious’ organisations, there was a sequence of banners on Lahore’s Mall Road carrying pictures of Mian Nawaz Sharif and his brother Mian Shahbaz Sharif. Most of them bore the usual inane versification. One banner that caught my eye read “Hindu bania muzammat se nahin murammat se maney ga” roughly translated as “The Hindu money-lender will not mend his ways through persuasion but will have to be physically fixed”.
It is his Urdu syllabus that I find most dangerous. He has two books for Urdu, one a selection of literature and the other prepared by none other than the Punjab Textbook Board. The latter is compulsory for all children in mainstream school systems. Children in private schools read it partially.
The students are being fed a strange concoction of half-Islam and half-patriotism in the name of Urdu. Once again the Islam part is innocuous; some stories about the life of prophet are actually inspiring. The patriotic stories are scary, to say the least. This is what the Yom-e-Difaa lesson was all about. The way it constructs the ‘enemy’, distorts facts and creates a false sense of superiority is bound to stay in the minds of impressionable young children and turn them into inflexible conservative adults who refuse to move beyond their extreme views.
Well, America is not yet lost. But the Senate is working on it.
But by now, we know how the Obama administration deals with those who would destroy it: it goes straight for the capillaries.
In less than two years, the general has provided the media with a fairly impressive list of promises, assertions, and projections — none of which have more than a tenuous basis in reality.ForeignPolicy.com has a list.
And then there is Shahid Afridi or, to get it correctly, Sahibzada Mohammad Shahid Khan Afridi, him of the team of baboons chattering and jumping about as the Aussies systematically roasted them over large bonfires lit by the baboons themselves. Till mid-Jan this year, the man has played 293 ODIs 26 tests, 57 Twenty20s, is almost 30, if he is to be believed. Yet, in the 5th ODI, in the tense 46th over, he starts to tamper the ball, gnawing at it like baboons do. "I was smelling it," he says later. Oh please, Mr Afridi. He chews at the seam in the middle of a packed Perth ground with dozens of cameras capturing every moment in super slow-mo.
The terrible cricketing crime is seen by millions on TV. When confronted, as he was going to be, the Sahibzada apologises and says he was tampering the ball so that Pakistan could win the face-saving 5th ODI – "just one match," he pleads to Geo. Hello? "All teams do it," the genius next announces. That, of course, makes it right in Afridi's thin book of rules.
The Afridi ball-tampering incident can be traced back to the Pakistan state-sponsored education and socialisation project initiated in the mid-1980s by the military government of General Ziaul Haq. This pattern of education and socialisation lasted into the first decade of this century. State education, the state-media and the state’s reward system shifted the focus of young people from Pakistan as a nation-state, civic education in the context of citizenship, and cultural-religious pluralism to Islam as a transnational identity, religious-Islamic explanation and interpretation of the past and the present, greater attention to conservative Islamic ritualism, global conspiracy against the Muslims and admiration for militancy.
These policies produced a generation whose intellectual and psychological ties are weak with Pakistan as a nation-state and it invariably views the domestic and international processes within religious parameters. The main discourse of this generation is Islamic-conservative, and greater emphasis on public display of religiousness. Several cricketers have become Islamic preachers and there were reports of collective offering of prayers in cricket fields. This disposition has got nothing to do with professionalism and sports discipline.
With such a blinkered disposition, one can engage in offensive activities that cannot be condemned from a purely religious point of view. A ‘victory’ against the non-believers is a desirable objective from personal and collective perspectives. Therefore, the rules of the game and professionalism become secondary.
Afridi comes from an era, a cricketing culture, where ball-tampering is considered a normal cricket activity, the done thing on flat Pakistani pitches - an art form and not a sin. It's been a part of the Pakistan team's standard operating procedure......Calling ball-tampering unlawful and an offence is regrettable. If ball-tampering is being openly admitted by the players, and given that it is difficult to assign reasons for why reverse swing happens (since even tampering is often ineffective in generating reverse swing), shouldn't the authorities stop looking at the practice with suspicion and instead look to bring it into the cricket syllabus so that we can all move on?
There is news coming up in the media that al Qaeda in Waziristan may run away to Yemen in the face of growing drone attacks. The people of Waziristan have expressed deep concern at this news. They do not want al Qaeda to run away from Waziristan. They want al Qaeda along with the Taliban burnt to ashes on the soil of Waziristan through relentless drone attacks. The drone attacks, they believe, are the one and only ‘cure’ for these anti-civilisation creatures and the US must robustly administer them the ‘cure’ until their existence is annihilated from the world. The people of Waziristan, including tribal leaders, women and religious people, asked me to convey in categorical terms to the US the following in my column.
One, your new drone attack strategy is brilliant, i.e. one attack closely followed by another. After the first attack the terrorists cordon off the area and none but the terrorists are allowed on the spot. Another attack at that point kills so many of them. Excellent! Keep it up!
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Some people in Waziristan compare drones with the Quran’s Ababeels — the holy sparrows sent by God to avenge Abraham, the intended conqueror of the Khana Kaaba. Which other Muslim society has likened anything from the US military with a Quranic symbol? Only the Pakhtuns did that so publicly in this time of rising anti-Americanism across the Muslim world! What more does the US want from a Muslim society? Now please go ahead and do the needful as indicated by the people of Waziristan.
India has refrained from using hard power in Afghanistan, and, in many ways, the Indian presence is guaranteed by the US' security role. As soft-power author, Harvard University's Joseph Nye says, "Achieving transformational objectives may require a combination of both hard and soft power.'' Soft power is only credible when it is matched by or surpassed by hard power. India is paying the price, because, beyond a point, roads and dams don't help buy influence. As one top-level Afghan official said, wryly, "We love India, but we fear Pakistan. That is a stronger emotion.'' India's power projection in Afghanistan has been primarily by showing its "goodness'' . Pakistan, on the other hand, negotiates with the world with a gun held to its own head. That, as India has discovered several times in its history, is far more persuasive.
For the moment, Pakistan has the upper hand, because both the UK and US need it more than ever. Pakistan is playing an adroit diplomatic game of chicken with the US - and winning. Islamabad may be hopelessly dependent on Washington's
money, but that doesn't stop it from refusing to give visas to US officials, refusing money that comes with 'conditions'. Pakistan has made it clear it will not stop supporting the Afghan Taliban; there is absolutely no attempt to tackle al Qaida; and Mullah Omar's Quetta Shura functions unimpeded. In short, it holds veto power over whether the Obama surge succeeds in Afghanistan. Washington, said an Indian official scornfully, is "kowtowing to Pakistan just like they did to China."
Harsh perhaps, but this view is prevalent in the upper reaches of the Indian government - to the extent that even the PM is believed to have remarked that if India and Pakistan have another fracas, Washington may not weigh in on India's side.
The Pakistani demand has been succinctly laid out by Munir Akram, one of its top diplomats: "Pakistan's cooperation should be offered only in exchange for tangible and immediate US support for Pakistan's national objectives: an end to Indian-Afghan interference in Baluchistan and FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas); a Kashmir solution; a military balance between Pakistan and India; parity with India on nuclear issues; transfer of equipment and technology for counter-terrorism ; unconditional defense and economic assistance; free trade access.''
With Market Access TTRI (including preferences) rank near the worst at 117th (out of 125), Pakistan’s exports faces much greater barriers than other South Asian economies.
You can see that budget deficits during President Clinton’s eight years averaged 0.8 percent of GDP. Clinton folks will tell you this is because of his brilliant policies, and in particular the 1993 budget law. I think most of it is the result of tech bubble-induced higher capital gains revenues causing total taxes to surge to record levels.and Chait writes:
So, okay. Hennessey discounts low deficits under Clinton because the stock bubble helped cause them. I think there's a lot of truth to that but far less than Hennessey does.
Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) has put an extraordinary "blanket hold" on at least 70 nominations President Obama has sent to the Senate, according to multiple reports this evening. The hold means no nominations can move forward unless Senate Democrats can secure a 60-member cloture vote to break it, or until Shelby lifts the hold.
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And why, pray tell, has Shelby decided to hold several dozen administration nominees hostage? It's not about qualifications, ideology, or party -- it's about pork. The conservative Alabama senator wants some defense earmarks for his state, and until he's satisfied, Shelby apparently won't allow the Senate to vote on just about anyone, including nominees ready to fill positions related to national security.
“I have been disappointed in India not raising a voice about what’s happening in Afghanistan, what a mistake we are probably making,” Pressler, who was in India on a speaking tour, told The Indian Express. “We are creating a big problem for India because at the end of the day India is going to have on its border a highly armed loose canon in Pakistan, a rogue state whose government is not what we espouse or support. A rogue Pakistan on steroids of US money,” he said.
The essence of the monkey trap is its simplicity, which in turn is based on the limited strategic options available to Pakistan and the national character of its elite. Pakistan is caught in a self-destructive cycle with no way out, trapped between rhetoric and reality. It cannot abandon the anti-Indian crusade and Kashmir because too much has been invested into it and without the Indian enemy they have no identity and no method to maintain their rentier control of the Pakistani state. This fundamental basis of Pakistan can be understood within the context of the earlier section.
