I am not really qualified to write an album review, but when it comes to Atif Aslam’s ‘Doorie’ I don’t think it will be very difficult since it’s quite pathetic. I say pathetic because a lot more was expected of him. When I bought my copy of the album I noticed that it had 7 new songs and 25434343 remixes. Well, just 10, but that’s a bit of an overkill as well. I mean no matter how good you think your songs are you can’t put in more than a couple of remixes in an album. I had always had doubts about Atif’s musical talents. He is a very good singer, but as a musician he leaves a lot to be desired.
Continue reading ‘Album Review: Atif Aslam’s Doorie’
Archive for January, 2007
Here is a letter I wrote in Dawn on July 03, 2006. I talk about the Karachi’s government structure due to Musharraf’s devolution plan. At that time I was all praise for the city’s local government structure and how it had progressed in leaps and bounds. However, I stand corrected on that. Even though the government structure (explained breifly below) deserves praise I forgot that any kind of ‘democracy’, local or national, would mirror each other and the elections would always be a fraud. Today, we have in power Mr Mustafa Kamal of the ‘Haqparast’ group aka MQM. 
We all know why he is where he is and the page long newspaper adds and the ridiculous ‘Hamara Karachi Festival’ are a testament to his incompetence.
Mr Cowasjee highlights what is really going on in the city and how the incompetent and corrupt rulers of the city are turning it into a very dangerous place. He talks about the illegal industrial workshops being allowed to operate in the heart of the city, Saddar, turning it into a fire-trap. However, the failure by building authorities to ensure earthquake resistant buildings in a city of 14-15 million people is a disaster waiting to happen if, God forbid, such an event took place.
Way to go, Naimutullah Khan
IT was heartening to see Mr Naimatullah Khan, the former nazim of Karachi, contending for the title of World Mayor 2005. Continue reading ‘Karachi’s local government: A success?’
This article was written a few years ago by Naveed Hasan Khan who works for Azad Foundation, an NGO that does works within Pakistan for Street Children from the street and off the street. It is an interesting read that tells us of yet another group of people in our society left to their own means of survival. Mr Khan does a good job by not only highlighting the crisis, but by also providing recommendations for the worsening situation at hand. Unfortunately, what most people don’t realise is that the ‘Street Children’ are also a part of our country’s future.
Condition of Human Rights in Pakistan with respect to Street Children by Naveed Hasan Khan
Children who live and work on the streets or simply work in commercial areas at a young age, are subjected to gross injustice and are frequently neglected by national law — despite the fact that our own country has ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1990 and played the host for the World Summit on Children.
The UNCRC is a guide both for experienced advocates and for non-specialists in the field regarding rights of children related to food, health education and all forms of life. It explains how to use regional and international treaties and mechanisms for the protection and defense of street children when national law fails. Continue reading ‘Condition of Human Rights in Pakistan with respect to Street Children’
On my first meeting with Ardeshir Cowasjee I was introduced to his dogs. Upon noticing my visible uneasiness he asked me whether I liked dogs. I replied that I wasn’t a big fan of dogs. He asked, ‘So which animals do you like? Humans?’. I replied, ‘I guess’. So he laughed and said, ‘They are the worst animals!’. Later on I laughed at the old, supposedly wise man’s corny joke. However, I am realizing that as corny as it seemed back then there might be a lot of truth in what he said.
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I am sure a lot of you have already seen this picture that appeared on the front page of Dawn (29 December, 2006) and many other national newspapers. I also put up a link to a video about it in my previous post. Shameful, pathetic, sad, embarrassing and a lot of other words are appropriate to describe this picture. The young man shown in this picture, Mohammad Bin Masood, was protesting against the disappearance of his father.
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I met a cousin of mine recently who lives and works in Manhattan, New York. We spoke about her dog. She got him enrolled into a daycare for the time that she was away at work. Over there the dog took the surname of her father as he was referred to as the dogs ‘grandfather’. Apparently, the dog goes for $2,000 vacations to summer camps. He has a professional dogwalker who comes and takes him out for walks twice everyday. She told me how she couldn’t leave him alone for more than a few hours because he gets depressed. I couldn’t help but laugh at how silly it sounded to me. She couldn’t understand the reason behind my sense of amusement as this is all very normal in New York. It definitely is a city of dog lovers.
Continue reading ‘Treat ‘em like dogs’
This is a Reuters video clip about Pakistan’s missing people. What you see in this is extremely shameful. The way these people are treated says a lot about us as a nation.
An interesting read. Mr Muhammad Saleem quetions the validity of effect of Islamic Finance on the world. He questions whether it is taking Muslims, as a community, forward. He compares it to venture capitralism in the West and its many advantages. I really don’t know too much about Islamic Finance apart from the diffrent products to be able to contribute to this. What do you think?
Islamic Finance has much to learn from the west
by Muhammad Saleem
Op-Ed page of the FT on January 19th
Proponents of Islamic finance maintain that as the Koran prohibits interest all financing must be done on a profit and loss sharing basis. In spite of all the lofty rhetoric in practice no more than five per cent of Islamic financing is done this way.
Instead, Islamic banks use a structure called murabaha, or cost plus pre-determined profit, for the vast majority of their finance deals.
Remarkably, the “profit” for an Islamic bank in a murabaha transaction and the interest a conventional bank would have charged on the same transaction happen to be exactly the same. Indeed Islamic banks in determining their “profit” even quote the rate as a margin over Libor or other similar indices!
Continue reading ‘Islamic Finance has much to learn from the west’
I had already put up the link to the Edhi Foundation website where you could nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize a couple of days ago. However, I thought it would be a good idea to put up a post about him just to give the readers an idea of this man’s great achievements and his humble beginnings.
Continue reading ‘Edhi for Nobel Peace Prize 2007′
We have now registered two top level domains, www.micropakistan.org and www.micropakistan.info. Hence, from now on you can use both these addresses to access the blog.
It has come to our attention that Wordpress.com has been banned in Pakistan and that means that the blog cannot be accessed from Pakistan. Once we are able to get a hosting provider to put our blog on it should be freely accessible, but till then there are certain websites that can be used to get around this problem. Now, logically speaking people from Pakistan would not be able to see this post as they have no access to this website so if you know anyone who has not been able to get to the blog please direct them to the following websites.
Here they can access the blog by using proxies. If anyone knows of a better way to go around this stupid ban then please let us know. Thank you!
This document is significant as it illustrates the issues discussed by Mr. Khan during his visit of West Pakistan in 1948. It is unfortunate to see that a year after partition, the issues holding the country back from true progression in the right direction are the same issues that we are still dealing with presently.
Liaquat Ali Khan was the first Prime Minister of Pakistan and the head of the Muslim League, the dominant political party in Pakistan. It almost seems like fate as he issues a warning against fifth columnists active against Pakistan and three years after this visit he was assassinated. It is also interesting to note that he managed to quell the first coup attempt in Pakistan to overthrow his Government by Major General Akbar Khan in the famous or rather infamous Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case 1951, which can be seen as the Army’s first attempt to enter the political arena.
The assassination of Liaquat Ali Khan is definitely a moment to remember in our history. As it not only swelled the political vacuum already present from the Death of the Founder but it left the country’s most important neighboring and domestic issues to catch dust on the shelves.
Please click on the pictures below separately to enlarge. Continue reading ‘Pakistan: Upon Crossing The Rubicon’
Omar Farooq, who is also known as Mirwaiz, is in Pakistan to talk about his latest epiphany. People think that he is the chief priest of Kashmir. That is not true. I am surprised that people call him the chief priest of Kashmir, for there does not exist such a title in Kashmir. Omar Farooq is a priest or a mullah in Srinagar and again, not the Grand Mullah of Kashmir. I am going to call him Mirwaiz in this post. I don’t believe that this title of Mirwaiz amounts to anything substantive, but since he markets himself as Mirwaiz I am compelled to call him that. Mirwaiz has now realised that Kashmir (I am referring to the Indian Kashmir as Kashmir throughout this post) should stay under the sovereignty of India and that the armed struggle in Kashmir, which he supported for sixteen long years, is not going to achieve anything for him. Musharraf, on the other hand, has buried the argument which suggests that Pakistan has a historical claim over Kashmir and hence is willing to concede on the vexed question of Kashmir. Indians like this solution because they are on the winning side and have to make no concessions. Mirwaiz is doing this for his own benefit and so is Musharraf. But what about the Kashmiri people then?
Continue reading ‘Indian controlled Kashmir disagrees with Musharraf’
