Poverty, in my opinion, is the curse that needs to be eradicated from this earth. Poverty is the worst form of oppression, suppression and exploitation. For a poor person it hardly matters what is happening around him. Survival is the only thing that he cares about. Nothing matters to him more than feeding himself and his family everyday. Poverty does not allow him to be part of his civil society, for he has no opportunity to think about the community at large. Poverty strips away a person’s dignity and gradually dehumanises him. Continue reading ‘Poverty: the worst form of oppression, suppression and exploitation’
Archive for June, 2007 Page 2 of 2
This article appeared in the Wall Street Journal. Finally some encouraging news.
Pakistan’s Stock Boom
Rally Rolls On Despite Political WoesPakistani President Pervez Musharraf is caught in a political maelstrom as an election looms and popular criticism of the military-installed leader mounts. Yet Pakistan’s stock market is soaring to record levels.
Continue reading ‘Pakistan’s Stock Boom: Finally some good news’
Imran Khan spoke at the London School of Economics and Political Science today (12 June 2007) to a packed Old Theatre. The event lasted for one and a half hours and Imran gave a hugely captivating speech, which was followed by a long series of questions. Imran came out all guns blazing and the crowd clapped and cheered and laughed all the way through. What was most impressive was his ability to answer questions head on, some unconvincingly, but most very convincingly and intelligently. This was in sharp contrast to Benazir Bhutto’s speech at the LSE when she visibly sidestepped all probing questions about the ‘deal’. There is a difference in their respective posistions. Benazir is looking to come back into power, while Imran has pretty much nothing to lose, but the real difference was in how honestly he answered the questions.
Continue reading ‘Imran Khan at LSE’
A lot of people in Pakistan have been hailing the legal profession as a winner in the current crisis. However, even though the legal profession is considered one of the most educated and honourable professions, it is in dire straits these days. There is no doubt that it is being led by a group of very capable individuals, but unfortunately they have not been able to improve the condition of the courts or the system and it is headed downhill.
Apparently for many years now, someone who can’t get himself enrolled in a medical, engineering, economics or finance program heads towards law. Why? Because the admission standards are terribly low and some say that once enrolled you only need to go again after three years to collect your degree. I wonder about the standard of lawyers produced through such an educational system.
Continue reading ‘Legal profession: Unhealthy indicators’
I got an email recently that talks about the government using covert tactics to pressurise Justice Ramday, who is heading the full bench hearing the CJ’s case. I really can’t confirm how much of this is true, but considering the way things are going, you never know. At the moment there is no way of finding out the veracity of these claims. All I can confirm is that a reference has been filed against certain PIA officials and Cyrus Minwala, general sales manager of Cathay Pacific by NAB.
Conspiracy theories are abound and not all of them are true. However, if this is indeed true…then…well, what can I say. Read below and make up your own mind. Just thought I’d put it for your benefit. What if it really is on to something.
The real inside story of Justice Ramday and the PIA Reference - Email
Has anyone tried to find out why suddenly the NAB has moved a reference against all those PIA executives who leased and purchased aircraft from Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific Airlines several years ago?
Continue reading ‘The real inside story of Justice Ramday and the PIA Reference’
False affidavits filed by Musharraf’s team claims Aitzaz
An analysis of the affidavits on Live with Talat Husain by the famous lawyer/judge/Federal Law Minister Frakhruddin G. Ebrahim. Gives a good explanation of the relevance of these affidavits, which are being given huge importance. However, they don’t have much evidential value without oral testimony.
I got a few myself:
na tera pakistan hai
na mera pakistan hai
yeh uska pakistan hai
jo sadar-e-pakistan hai
and
aao milke sab iss mussalman mulk ke liye insaaf ki dua karain bhagwan se
Referring to Justice Bhagwandas.
Daily Times reports:
ISLAMABAD: With the government taking increasingly stringent measures to gag the media, text messages, popularly known as SMS, critical of President General Pervez Musharraf, the government and its allies have started pouring into the mailboxes of mobile phone users.
Continue reading ‘Anti-Musharraf SMS’ do the rounds’
By Anum Pasha
Imagine – two hearts devoted to love, two souls struggling to make ends meet in the economically abysmal-rut of this country, and amidst this all, the Pakistani law suddenly deciding their doom in jail. This is a three-year imprisonment in the Central Jail and the District Jail Faislabad. Somewhere in the middle of these four-cornered jails, many questions evoke the minds of the imprisoned – Is death better a calamity than the cage of the law? Is a three-year captivity more of a pain than that felt when one’s spirit abandons the corpse? Is severance from the beloved an affair proficient enough for a three-year-long endurance? The tragedy that befell Shumail Raj and Shahzina Tariq’s lives is one which has been reported on by the dailies and hence, I shall not take up more words to recite the nightmare yet again.
Continue reading ‘The National Pride?’
Well, its old news that the government tried to block the launch of Ayesha Siddiqa’s book ‘Military Inc.: Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy
First, here are some details about Dr. Ayesha Siddiqa-Agha.
Her expertise : South Asia, military expenditure, arms control, arms procurement.
Her Brief Bio:
She did her doctorate from King’s College, London in 1996 and has worked on issues varying from military expenditure, defence decision-making, nuclear deterrence, arms procurement, arms production to civil-military relations in South Asia. She is also a Ford Fellow and more recently Pakistan Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars.
Continue reading ‘A full General is worth Rs 500 million+’
Imran Khan will be protesting in front of Downing Street on the 3rd of June and subsequently meeting lawyers in order to figure out how to issue legal proceedings against Altaf Husain. He’s been speaking out quite openly against Altaf Husain and the MQM and what he calls their ‘terrorist tactics’. That led to a ban on him entering Sindh for 30 days and a ban on him leaving Lahore for three days. Right at the bottom of the post you will find a video where Imran takes out all his anger on the enforcement of these two bans.
I have put up some interesting videos following the May 12 incident. All of them feature Imran Khan and Waseem Akhtar, advisor to the Sindh government and a leader of MQM. The Capital Talk videos also feature Mr Munawar Husain who is with the MMA.
Even though Imran once again makes a lot of sense, the comments made by Waseem Akhtar are the most interesting and entertaining. It seems like MQM has put him forward as their public face and there is no doubt that the man loves to talk and argue. His mix of sarcasm and wit make you forget that he is not adressing the questions put forward to him. I can imagine how irritating and frustrating it must be to debate with him, but let there be no doubt that he is a worthy opponent on any talk show. Even Imran seems to be completely overshadowed by him, which is a rarity.
Continue reading ‘Imran Khan vs. Altaf Husain and the MQM’
