Now, I haven't slept all night so I'm pretty wired so please excuse the profanity and random retardation.
First let's discuss Dr. Aafia Siddiqui. A woman who apparently wore a head scarf (oooooh be afraid, she might blow you up with her eyes). I'm reading a (in Daily Times 08/08/2008) an absurd reprint of article published about her in the Daily Times 2004 (the year Bucknell gave me a thumbs up) which honestly reads more like a low budget hollywood flick that obviously would never make it on screen, but then again water world did so I guess anything is possible. The author, a Mr. Khalid Hasan, who needs to take basic math (hint: if you are in the us, they have this show u can appear on - Are you smarter than a 5th grader - u see where I'm going?). Why am I pointing this out? Well he states she is 29 in his article on Nov 11, 2004. Her bday is March 2, 1972. So let's try baby steps...1972 + 30 = 2002 + 2 = 2004. So if her bday is correct and the date the article was published is correct, that makes her 32 when the article was published in 04. Mr Editor at DT needs to be careful editing these little details that apparently people ARE reading. The article goes on to highlight how her hubby, apparently more fundoo than Aafia, threatens to divorce her while she is abt to have their 3rd child, during which her father dies from hypertension causing a heart attack. She has her kid then goes to the US to find a job. The Feds claim she actually endured all the previous trauma to come all the way to the US to open a POBox for mail for some dude named Majid Khan, "a purported" baddy from the Al-Q school of thought. This is not a hit on the author, but a question to the FBI-are you guys on something? I mean, I've studied the funny things that have been cooked up in the past in college (in the US) and this is a potential cherry topping. Let the woman go! It takes five yrs for this to get light from our beloved global media, u obviously let something leak and feel bad and guilty so now you wanna slap some cuffs on her and take her to court for a bank job when she probably didn't even eat the free twinkies at her kids pta meetings.
Let's move on to Mushi-ma-main-man. I gotta say, I have always been a pretty diligent fan (pankha for all you pakkers) of his. I'm not afraid to say it since we are a democracy with free press, or are we? So he came to power by pushing Kadoo Bhaiyya out. Hey, its the law of the jungle, only the tough survive. You don't see the Rhinos filing suit against Simba the Lion, do you? Obviously something went wrong when we assumed to be more evolved than other animals. Did everyone just wake up one day with amnesia? Zardari and Nawaz are impeaching Mush, not some good guys we all love to see like Jan Rambo. These guys are like Mumra and his sidekick from Thundercats. They put on a happy face and its suddenly ok that they are blowing stories abt how bad Mush is? If you want my opinion, if Nawaz was still here instead of M-man, he would be king - the title he was looking for before getting the boot. His support was all the Mullah Members Association (MMA) we all love so, and he wanted Sharia as primary law. Am I the only one who recalls? I was only 18 but maybe its because hadn't started anything. Mush came in, he got Shaukat Aziz to come and do a pro bono gig as PM, got butt-loads of cash into Pakistan (aka FDI or Foreign Direct Investment) and now we have things like Hyatt Regency and Centaurus and Metro and Makro and booming Ibanking by JS et al and a whole host of other things that usually result from economic prosperity. Sure we weren't number one, but these days (a result of smiley and baldy) we are at par with Nigeria and Zimbabwe (who are at something like 1 million % inflation). The US warns people not to travel to Pak. This is a first in a while. Mush made Pak safer, trustworthy, investable (if there is such a word) and now more jobs than before 1998. Kids graduate from the US and come back to find great career opportunities. Rozee.pk becomes a success as a local monster.com, professional competition becomes something become seek, salaries allow people in their mid-twenties to affors their own clothes and phones and dinners with friends (at least those who earn honestly). Things were good. Now we want to pack our bags and get on the next flight to 'anywhere but here' departing asap from all gates.
Without going on too much because my thumbs hurt now and all the text was keyed in on a blackberry curve 8310 from mobilink - reshaping lives with reception all the way up in Santa's nose but none in my living room in ISB, I would like to discuss fuel prices and other things tied to inflation. Yes, its almost the same as putting air in a balloon. What the Fuck! 86 rupees for a litre??? In Saudi, the rate is $.15 or 15 cents and here its $1.22!!!! I know they produce it and all, but aren't we friends with them? Can't they help us cut down our prices just a notch? If not, then isn't the gop supposed to subsidize rather than tax the consumer more and more? So to finish this off, why do we the hard workers suffer when gop officials get unlimited fuel budgets that their spoilt kids are burning away in govt cars on joy rides with their buddies??
Ponder Pakistan, you are deserting your own country for quick gains that won't last your lifetime.
Remember, we don't inherit the world from our parents, we borrow it from our kids.
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S. Zohare Haider
m: +92 300 5 777 222
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www.amaana.com
1 comment:
"Mush came in, he got Shaukat Aziz to come and do a pro bono gig as PM, got butt-loads of cash into Pakistan (aka FDI or Foreign Direct Investment) and now we have things like Hyatt Regency and Centaurus and Metro and Makro and booming Ibanking by JS et al and a whole host of other things that usually result from economic prosperity."
ooooh,... and now would you like to comment about something the rest of the 95% population can care about. Dude, take your head out the Hyatt Regency and look around. Unemployment went up (if you don't fudge the indicators to show otherwise), there are starvation cases in Pakistan (and we used to be very proud that India may be doing better but they have starvation and we don't - hello Mr. Neo-liberal bastard from Citibank). And as far as FDI coming in it was largely driven by selling off state assets (some 500 government units in 8 years?) and driven by consumer driven investment such as, you know, Hyatt, McDonalds etc. Your foreign remittances are up tenfolds compared to 8 years back and guess what - all the foreign money coming in to buy pieces of your country is already in, so from here on out baby its one way traffic on FX – repercussion to come 3 years onwards. Your little boom (so called GDP growth) is mainly fueled through expansion in banking - loans and credit cards landing some 5000 cars or so a month onto Karachi's vast highway network and streets as spacious as those in Zamzama. And of course by the time shit hits the fan as it will progressively do now, the neo-con and his army buddy can blame the democratic setup. Come on dude, how many times do they need to pull this shit off before you see it. BTW yes fuel is up (but still subsidized) but how about a mention of the food prices. Here is some economics for you
http://www.teeth.com.pk/blog/2008/02/10/transcript-of-dr-kaiser-bengalis-lecture-making-sense-of-pakistan-and-its-economy
I have no love for PPP or PML. We all know what they are about. The question is that the alternate is the army. The same army which runs more commercial ventures than probably anyone else around, pay no taxes on them, has zero accountability and transparency and come in each time it views its financial empire under threat (Military Inc. by Ayesha Siddiqa). Democracy is not about just elections. You need democracy to grow strong over time, let institutions which have civil checks and balances develop over time but they keep breaking it over and over. So we end up with a system that army and the landed elite when they are in power can both exploit … and its not like any civilian government has not paid its dues to the army when in power. Their commercial ventures have also prospered under PPP and PML previously. Poor people … definitely not those in the Hyatt..
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