Published November 19, 2008
in KO.
6 views
Atanu Dey has been writing about the importance of education in the third world - it’s basically the only way to to rise out of poverty, a point which Nicholas Kristof made recently:Quick, what’s the source of America’s greatness?Is it a tradition of market-friendly capitalism? The diligence of its people? The cornucopia of natural resources? Great presidents?No, a fair amount of evidence suggests that the crucial factor is our school system — which, for most of our history, was the best in the world but has foundered over the last few decades. Pakistan just turned it’s back on this whole education thing by appointing Senator Mir Hazar Khan Bijarani as Minister for Education. This is someone for who an arrest warrant was issued by the Supreme court of Pakistan, for ordering a family to hand over five minor girls for marriage to a family to compensate for a murder in Jacobabad.
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By Baithak.Net
Published November 5, 2008
in KO.
14 views
The following comments from Reddit sum up the world’s feelings:Dear Rest of The WorldWe didn’t fuck it upSigned,AmericaThe reply:Dear America,Congrats!Regards, Rest of the World
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Published November 2, 2008
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13 views
This book is a must read for countries like Pakistan, which have already gone through multiple rounds of “shock therapy” at the hands of the IMF, and are just about to sign on the dotted line for yet another one. The book doesn’t rail against capitalism, rather it rails against the extreme right-wing ideologues who wormed their way into economic seats of power in the US, and into the IMF and the World Bank. The problem with neoconservatives is that they live in a bubble full of right wing fantasies, and never condensed to step out into the real world and see how far their neo-liberal fantasies had diverged from the real world. What looks good on paper often pans out different in the real world, especially in corrupt societies like Pakistan - and this is one factor which the IMF never seems to account for properly. In a poor country like Pakistan, regressive taxes like Central Excise Duty on services and sales tax on everything (even drinking water!) are highly regressive, and with Pakistan’s highly corrupt taxation system just give more of an incentive to people to stay further out of the tax net. It’s a vicious cycle… but read the book for criticisms of the IMF and their achievements in the developing world.In THE SHOCK DOCTRINE, Naomi Klein explodes the myth that the global free market triumphed democratically. Exposing the thinking, the money trail and the puppet strings behind the world-changing crises and wars of the last four decades, The Shock Doctrine is the gripping story of how America’s “free market” policies have come to dominate the world– through the exploitation of disaster-shocked people and countries. #Pakistan is about to make a deal with the IMF..
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By Baithak.Net
Published October 27, 2008
in KO.
21 views
The Karachi stock exchange crashed all the way from 16000 to 9000 - and in the process bankrupted a lot of stockbrokers and other large players. Taking note of this severe crisis, the govt. rushed in to save the day, for stock brokers don’t loose money in this country! First, the govt. changed the rules of the game - not once, not twice but thrice! In Pakistan, stock brokers make money by borrowing from banks and using that borrowed money to play with the stock market. By law, they have to return that money along with interest in X days, while retaining all the profit. This being Pakistan, now that the value of the stocks bought on borrowed money has fallen below the amount of their loans, the stock brokers have conveniently changed the time they need to pay it back to a full year - and arm twisted the govt. to throw money at the stock market by buying shares at higher than market prices so the stock brokers can cash out and let the govt. bear the losses.Depending on how you add up the various billions the govt. has already thrown at the stockbrokers, the total amount has already reached 150 to 200 billion rupees. The law changes alone are worth many billions - without them the entire stockbroker industry was effectively bankrupt.In a surprise twist to the tale, a few govt. organizations have grown a backbone, and refused to just hand over govt. money over:Four of the federal organizations have expressed their reservations on provision of a fund amounting to Rs20 billion to Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) for pulling the share market out of the prevailing crisis.According to sources, the Federal Government directed the State Life, National Bank, National Investment Trust and Employees Old Age Benefit Institution to extend Rs20 billion to KSE.The federal bodies are of the view that the fund created with the money of the poor, pensioners, insurance holders and others should not be provided to KSE.These bodies have already extended Rs5 billion to KSE in a bid to support the market. Kudos to the above for resisting this blatant transfer of money. In the long run, the stocks might even make money, but pension money should never be gambled, even if there is a good chance of winning.
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Published October 18, 2008
in KO.
15 views
Google: The right information at the right time in the hands of people has enormous power.Despite hundreds of millions of dollars spent each year on providing basic public services like primary education, health, water, and sanitation to poor communities, poverty in much of Sub-Saharan Africa persists. Where does this money go, who gets it, and what are the results of the resources invested? That’s where we find a big black hole of information and a lack of basic accountability. How do inputs (dollars spent) turn into outputs (schools, clinics, and wells), and, more importantly, how do outputs translate into results (literate and healthy children, clean water, etc.)?We simply don’t know the answers to most of these basic questions. But what if we could? What if a mother could find out how much money was budgeted for her daughter’s school each year and how much of it was received? What if she and other parents could report how often teachers are absent from school or whether health clinics have the medicines they are supposed to carry? What if citizens could access and report on basic information to determine value for money as tax payers?The work of The Social Development Network (SODNET) in Kenya is illustrative. They are developing a simple budget-tracking tool that allows citizens to track the allocation, use, and ultimate result of government funds earmarked for infrastructure projects in their districts. The tool is intended to create transparency in the use of tax revenues and answer the simple question: Are resources reaching their intended beneficiaries? Using tools like maps, they are able to overlay information that begins to tell a compelling story.
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Published October 12, 2008
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20 views
Rumors stalk the crumbling land, each one trying to lay claim to a bigger piece of the explanation as to what’s happening in the country.From the rumors it looks like the country has had it. Shaukat Tareen and the State bank governor has flown off to foreign lands to beg for money, a govt. spokesman is on TV claiming that Pakistan is not bankrupt - meaning it is, striking fear left right and center. Some of the rumors stories floating around:The country is bankrupt. This is not a rumor, as the govt. has confirmed it.The rupee is over valued, and despite crashing, the govt. says it’s still overvalued.A number of large corporate groups are near bankruptcyA few of the large stockbrokers are bankruptExports are falling, and thus unemployment is increasingForeign capital is flying out of PakistanYou can’t remit money officially from PakistanMutual funds aren’t letting investors take out moneyWhat’s going to happen? Will the usual bailout show up in time? Of course it will, but in the meantime the country is just about economically dead.
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Published September 29, 2008
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23 views
The BBC reports that Pakistanis flee into Afghanistan:The UN says 20,000 people have fled Pakistan’s tribal area of Bajaur for Afghanistan amid fighting between troops and militants in recent months.The UN’s refugee agency says almost 4,000 families have crossed north-west into Afghanistan’s Kunar province.The army began a sustained campaign against militants in Bajaur nearly two months ago.Some 300,000 others have fled east within Pakistan in recent weeks with many of them living in temporary camps.
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Published September 28, 2008
in KO.
17 views
An article emailed to me by an American friend who spent a couple of years in Karachi. Written before the fall of Musharraf, it’s posted in it’s entirety below, a non-journalistic, bleak look at Pakistan:
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Published September 26, 2008
in KO.
21 views
Interesting book on how business is done in India and China, though not as good as the reviews on Amazon make it out to be. It seems overly directed towards the western reader who doesn’t have much knowledge of the two countries, and hasn’t read much else about them.The basic gist of the book is that India and China have two very different approaches to business, and both countries have to be dealt with very differently.There are lots of examples in the book, but there is where Friedman is better, in his book The World is Flat. Both books have their flaws, but the hundered of examples and anecdotes in both of them make them a worthwhile read.
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Published September 24, 2008
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18 views
Now, you’d be better off buying a copy of Nassim Taleb’s The Black Swan and reading that, but here is the extremely simplified version of one aspect of the giant monolith which was the American financial house of cards:Back in the days, we had these things called banks. They took in money from people, and lent it out to other people, who did something with that money and thus were able to pay it back with interest. Now, even back than, banking wasn’t this simple, but this portion constituted a significant part of what banks did back then. Sure, they bought lots of stuff, and invested all over the place, but as JP Morgan, the most powerful banker ever, famously said, “If you can’t draw it on a napkin with a crayon, don’t buy it”. By and large, besides funding a war here and there, bankers stuck to the basics and made money hand over fist. Till such time they lost it all, which happened periodically, like the great depression in 1939, and Black Monday in 1987.So this is the image which people have of things to this day - that banks take in deposits, give out loans, and make money on the interest paid on loans. Now, sure, banks and the other bank like institutions still do this, but this has been a small part of their business for the last couple of decades now. This is the part which is the toughest for people to grasp - that none of the large American banks are banks in the traditional sense of the word. Here someone might ask, if not banks, than what the hell are they?The plain answer is that no one knows. The short answer is that the American financial system is the greatest pyramid scheme ever, a house of cards stacked so high over the entire world that it’s collapse is going to be wrecking havoc for years to come.
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Published August 30, 2008
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24 views
Today’s doom and gloom newspaper report on Pakistan reminded me of General Napier’s famous quote on the subcontinental custom of burning widows alive with their husband’s body, back when the British banned it:You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.The ban on burning women alive, often against their will, was challenged in both Indian and British courts, and I think General Napeir’s quote best sums up what came of that.A important legal aspect of the Sati law: The law now makes no distinction between passive observers to the act, and active promoters of the event; all are supposed to be held equally culpable.Senator Sardar Israrullah Zehri, along with many other Senators are liable for murder - Sati was abolished in Pakistan back in 1829 under British colonial rule. Burying is not that much different from burning… the Sati laws is still on the books, since we inherited all the old colonial laws, and the Senator should be tried under it.
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Published August 26, 2008
in KO.
23 views
The UK paper Telegraph reports:Mr Zardari, co-chair of the Pakistan People’s Party, was diagnosed with a range of psychiatric illnesses, including dementia, major depressive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.The illnesses were said to be linked to the fact that he has spent 11 of the past 20 years in Pakistani prisons fighting charges of corruption. He claims to have been tortured during his incarceration.In March 2007 New York psychiatrist Philip Saltiel found that Mr Zardari’s time in detention left him with severe “emotional instability”, memory loss and concentration problems, according to court documents seen by the Financial Times.”I do not see any improvement in these issues for at least a year,” he wrote. Neither do we, here in Pakistan. Now the whole world knows what we here in Pakistan have known since the 80’s - that Zardari is insane, and by marriage so was Bhutto.
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Published August 25, 2008
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30 views
A first hand account of Pakistan’s history - Asghar Khan has lived through it all, and has been involved with all the major political and army leaders throughout Pakistan’s history. If not for Bhutto’s rigging and Zial Huq’s coup, Asghar Khan would now be written in the history books. It’s a testament to the threat he posed to the powers that be that despite the impact he had on Pakistani politics, he’s been written out of the official histories of Pakistan, both by Zia and than by Bhutto, who both disliked him intensely - Bhutto tried to kill him, while Zia put him in jail for years.The book is highly readable and very interesting - Asghar Khan speaks of personalities and behind the scenes details which the official histories leave out. Asghar Khan is one of the few honest politicians in Pakistan, and now approaching 90 he doesn’t have much to fear from anyone - the book is a honest overview of how he lived through politics, starting from Partition and ending midway through Musharraf’s reign.
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Published August 13, 2008
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27 views
Interesting article on historical urbanization and the difference b/w European and Arabic cities:Baghdad was a wonder of the world in the year 800 while London was an economic backwater. By 1800, London was the largest city in the world while Arab cities languished. Recent research attributes this ‘trading places’ to institutional differences: Arab cities were tied to the fate of the state while European cities were independent growth poles.Why did the Industrial Revolution begin in northwestern Europe? At the turning of the first millennium, Europe was a backward part of the world economy with low levels of urbanisation and income. But between 1000 and 1800, Europe surged from a backwater of the world economy to its most dynamic region. Understanding this development is a major challenge for economists and economic historians.
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Published August 1, 2008
in KO.
43 views
Kevin Drum calls the ISI the scariest group in the world:I’m not absolutely certain who my choice for scariest group in the world is, but if push came to shove it probably wouldn’t be al-Qaeda. It would be the ISI, Pakistan’s main intelligence service.He’s probably right. The New York Times reporting on the latest to surface about the ISI:American intelligence agencies have concluded that members of Pakistan’s powerful spy service helped plan the deadly July 7 bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, according to United States government officials.The conclusion was based on intercepted communications between Pakistani intelligence officers and militants who carried out the attack, the officials said, providing the clearest evidence to date that Pakistani intelligence officers are actively undermining American efforts to combat militants in the region….The government officials were guarded in describing the new evidence and would not say specifically what kind of assistance the ISI officers provided to the militants. They said that the ISI officers had not been renegades, indicating that their actions might have been authorized by superiors.All this is something Ahmed Rashid has been saying for years, most notably in his last book, Descent into Chaos.
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By Baithak.Net
Published July 15, 2008
in KO.
27 views
A good overview of Pakistan and Afghan history and American involvement - and a very bleak assessment of where they’re headed. The gist of the book is that both Afghanistan and Pakistan are hovering somewhere on the point of no return, descending into chaos and bringing the whole region down with them. It’s very well researched, and the author really knows what he’s talking about - there is a lot more in the book -
It’s a brilliant, encyclopedic summary of the current situation in Pakistan. The book, just like his last book, is extremely timely, as region after region in Pakistan falls to the Taliban, and the government pulls back further and further.
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Published July 2, 2008
in KO.
28 views
Back in the 60’s, no onein Pakistan really thought Pakistan would split into two. Fast forward to the 21st century, and once again a chunk of Pakistan has left the fold. Back in the days, it used to take a formal declaration of independence and a lot of deaths - in today’s modern world it’s pretty much the same, except the declarations are on TV and the internet, and the deaths by decapitation and stoning.The NWFP was never really part of Pakistan from the beginning, and despite official denials all around, for all practical purposes it’s definitely no longer part of Pakistan. It was never governed by Pakistani law anyways, and scraped by on age-old custom, bullets and tribal jirgas. Men were men, sheep were sheep and women and the government stayed far away, out of sight, and if they ever ventured to do anything were slapped back in to submission double quick.
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By Baithak.Net
Published June 28, 2008
in KO.
35 views
Michael Pollan visits Google’s Mountain View, CA, headquarters to discuss his book, “In Defense of Food.”
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Published June 24, 2008
in KO.
25 views
No more democracy. When the Prime Minister keeps referring to an unelected emperor (Zardari) for every single decision of note, there is no democracy, or government for that matter. The current elected govt ran the whole campaign on a single theme - that of restoring the judiciary, and are now trying to convince the country that that promise wasn’t actually promise, it was more of an intention, and even though they won’t actually follow through, the intention will remain!The whole world is watching on in horror, as there is no one at the rickety bus which is Pakistan. The NYTimes very politely puts it: Leadership Void Seen in Pakistan - a few excerpts from the article are below:Pakistan is in a leaderless drift four months after elections, according to Western diplomats and military officials, Pakistani politicians and Afghan officials who are increasingly worried that no one is really in charge.The problem is that local politicians don’t read, so they still don’t know what is going on. Not they they ever know, but these days it’s really gotten ridiculous.
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Published June 22, 2008
in KO.
43 views
Don’t read the reviews. Just read the book. It’s that good.A damn good book, as well as a good history of Zia. Sure it’s fiction, but considering how much of Pakistani history is fictionalized, this is as close as you can get. How did Zia die? Put down all those dusty histories and read this to find out!Highly recommended. Best read after Charlie Wilson’s War, which fills on some of the back story on all the American/Afghan intrigues hinted on in the book.It’s not often a author gets added to my “Must read all his books” list - looking forward to his next one!book reviews from elsewhereAmazon page on the book NYTimes Book Review
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Published June 8, 2008
in KO.
32 views
The first stage is always denial.President says he will not dissolve Parliament, is not ‘an unbalanced person’It’s always good to know that the President is not an unbalanced person, let alone a useless vegetable. #The worrying part is that it’s not just the president who’s a useless vegetable, but the entire parliament, the prime minister especially.While the president goes about on tv declaring his lack of vegetables, the prime minister has come out of the closet and shamelessly parades his vegetable state to anyone who cares - all two of them.Far up, above all the elected crud hanging around in parliament, Zardari is doing something. The President and the Prime Minister can’t even begin to guess what, let alone this weblog.
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By Baithak.Net
Published May 22, 2008
in KO.
36 views
Truth is stranger than fiction - who could have imagined that a country eats it’s young and once their souls and minds are gone it spits out the dried hollowed out husks into government bureaucracies around Pakistan.You walk inside in the valley of the shadow of askew shelves groaning with files, all askew, stuttering fans stirring up yellowing pages under the light of flickering tube lights. People sit around listless, waiting for the next cup of tea and sms message, disturbed now and than by a visitor who mistakenly wanders in trying to get some work done, and sometimes by a peon shuffling around bulging files, in a endless cycle from desk to desk, sometimes only making the journey to the person sharing the same desk, other times all the way outside the room into an adjoining office.
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By Baithak.Net
Published May 18, 2008
in KO.
31 views
The Economist on tourism in developing countries:Emerging economies are suspicious about the developed world telling them to act responsibly. Why shouldn’t they exploit their natural resources? A pristine hard-to-reach beach with a small exclusive hotel may be just what rich Westerners want; local fishermen would prefer new schools for their children. But with tourism, it is not so clear that rapid development really is in the locals’ economic interest. If their government trashes their natural habitat, it is like an investment manager who pays you big dividends out of your capital. The money is good for a while, but you lose in the long term.While Karachi has no tourists per se, this article gets straight to the heart of Karachi’s endless cycles of self destruction. The entire development of Karachi’s coastline is straight out of Jared Diamond’s book Collapse. Hoteliers from around the world have rushed in to take advantage of the city govt. selling away the coastline for a pittance, and now we find ourselves in the enviable position of living in a city by the sea with not a single public beach.There are no more beaches left in Karachi - there are a few pathetic remnants of once beautiful beaches - the rest have all been taken over by the military or sold off to private developers. Needless to say, they’re all walled off - I already wrote about it earlier, but each visit to what’s left of Karachi’s coastline leaves me ever more depressed.
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Published May 7, 2008
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38 views
Pakistan has laughably simple politics. While there is a lot of skulduggery going on in the background, the governing rule is that the flavor of the day, whether an army dictator or elected emperor, is going to do whatever it takes to maintain his iron clad grip on the peacock throne.In a democracy, you need a functioning independent judicial system. A functioning judiciary will take action to right wrongs as per the law, and that’s where the problem lies in Pakistan. Whether elected or brought up through the army ranks, the leader of the country is always on the wrong side of the law, and thus a functioning judiciary is impossible. The judiciary in Pakistan was hanged by Musharraf back in March 2007, and Zardari is exhuming the corpse and sending it before a firing squad to ensure it doesn’t come back to haunt him. In a slight change from the Moguls of old, instead of only killing their entire family to ensure there is no challenger to the throne, these days all and sundry are targeted. Zardari has made numerous promises over the last year to restore the judges, and recently he was asked on TV why he was not honoring his word to do so. His famous reply: “That was a political promise. It has nothing to do with reality”. Time will tell how naked the emperor really is, in this case just a measly 4 days till May 12th, when yet another deadline is due to restore the judges illegally deposed by the old dictator.
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Published May 3, 2008
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50 views
A wonderfully insightful book, strolls though history, academia, psychology, cognitive science, probability theory, philosophy, statistics and more. The back of the book claims that the book “will change the way you look at the world”, and it does.A Black Swan is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: It is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact; and after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable, than it was.Taleb argues that events and life itself are far more random than we perceive them to be - the human brain just isn’t able to cope up with the complexities of the modern world, most of which have sprung up in the last couple of hundred years, while our brains still haven’t evolved much further than the hunter-gatherer stage. This is the most interesting part of the book, where Taleb discusses various studies on how the human brain processes and perceives information, probability and data. We fit explanations to events post-facto - but the world is not so easily squeezable into the theories we built to describe the past and than extrapolate to predict the future. Our brains are wired in a such a way that we construct linear narratives, or theories about events, in an attempt to simplify and understand - but real life is not linear, and these stories about how events happen are too simplified to be of much use when the next Black Swan comes about.
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Published April 26, 2008
in KO.
33 views
Adil Najam wonders if Pakistani’s read? and links to a fascinating article in the newspaper on the number of libraries in Pakistan.Lahore, an ancient city of culture, now has more polo grounds than libraries. Lahore even has more offices for the chief minister (four in all) than libraries. Of course, the Chief Minister needs office space more than our children need libraries.He hasn’t visited Karachi, where far as I know there are no public libraries at all. There is this interesting library run by the Army where you need to be a millionaire in order to join - they require you to first buy a plot of land in a army run housing scheme before borrowing books!Lack of cities aside, Karachi is a tough city to read books. The average new book price is a 1000Rs, and while used books are much cheaper the selection is really limited. Ordering from Amazon is a hit and miss process - if you order by DHL or UPS the books always arrive, but the shipping costs are so high that it’s not worth while, and sometimes they charge duties on books. If you order by regular post, than the books get stolen sometimes, and it takes anywhere from 1 month to a year for the carton to arrive. The locally published books are also very expensive, and there just isn’t enough variety.
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Published April 4, 2008
in KO.
39 views
My MNA has a name, but I have no idea what she stands for, what she does, and how is it that she came to be standing for elections. Now, I can find out what his/her name is, but beyond that there is absolutely no information at all. Come election time, just a month or two before voting takes place candidates suddenly appear from nowhere running for election, and provide zero information about themselves in their entire campaign. What did the MNA accomplish in his/her last stint in office? What about their tax returns, their life, their positions on important issues (besides the rhetoric)?
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Published April 1, 2008
in KO.
50 views
Pakistan is turning out to be a very egalitarian society. Some of the new crop of politicians come from very humble beginnings, indeed. Sure, not all of them started out humble, but all of them have improved in leaps and bounds from their starting point. Not too many countries can boast of that, so here is a listing of our extremely egalitarian politicians:
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Published March 29, 2008
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41 views
…the new PPP government would feel more comfortable with the present Chief Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar instead of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.Translation: Dogar is a priceable commodity, bought and sold as needed by the powers that be. Earlier, he worked for Benazir, than switched to Musharraf, and now that Zardari is the new king of Pakistan, Dogar is busy licking his boots. From his track record, Dogar is not so much a judge, but a trader, better suited to a pan shop than the Supreme Court.The actual Chief Justice, who was just freed from an illegal arrest, is a bonafide judge. Despite every single intelligence agency in Pakistan desperately trying to dig up dirt on him, they have failed to find anything wrong with his tenure as Chief Justice. That in itself is an amazing thing, in a country where all hands are dirty.
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Published March 25, 2008
in KO.
38 views
Another great economics book from Tim Harford, exploring the hidden rationalizations we make during everyday life. “In this deftly reasoned book, Harford argues that life is logical after all. Under the surface of everyday insanity, hidden incentives are at work, and Harford shows these incentives emerging in the most unlikely places.”A great followup to The Undercover Economist. Thomas Schelling, a Nobel prize winning economist on the book: “This is a terrific read. It’s one those books that forever changes the way you look at things. It proves economics is not a subject for dull textbooks; but is really a way of thinking that can shed light on all aspects of life.”A lot of newspaper editorials, opinion pieces and even the reporting consists of the proverbial blind man groping a herd of elephants, trying to figure out why things happen the way they do in Pakistan - Tim Harford lucidly explains that often even the most seemingly irrational acts have a logical explanation.
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Published March 24, 2008
in KO.
45 views
Enter the Prime Minister as the stage hands (& other actors) vigorously motion Musharraf to exit the stage before they throw him out.
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Published March 13, 2008
in KO.
27 views
The book traces Pakistan’s nuclear history, wherein Pakistan with Chinese, Saudi, American and North Korean help (and a whole lot of private contractors) developed numerous types at nuclear weapons and delivery system.The book is really interesting, not because of the exact details of how Pakistan developed the bomb, but the insight it gives on how Pakistan really operates. It was Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto who kicked of Pakistan’s nuclear programme, famously declaring “we will eat grass if we have to, but we will make the bomb”. For the next 20 years this statement was literally and figuratively true - everything took a backseat was tens of billions of dollars were poured into two competing nuclear labs. This is the most depressing account of Pakistani/American political history I’ve read. The old maxim “the end justifies the means” was the one and only motto of the Pakistan Army & the Republican Party, which ran the country for the next 30 years, sucking in practically every dollar of foreign aid and diverting it to nuclear weapons development and regular arms procurement. They had to let parts of the billions of dollars pouring in for the Afghan war though, under American pressure, but development aid money was mostly fully diverted to the bomb.
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Published March 8, 2008
in KO.
50 views
The current fight for the restoration of the judiciary is the single most important issue for Pakistan in my lifetime, perhaps in Pakistan’s entire existence. Pakistan has always had only two pillars of state - the army and the politicians. In a functioning democracy, you have three pillars - the executive, legislative and the judiciary. While we will not be heading towards the regular mode of democracy any time soon, it looks like the restoration of the judges fired by the outgoing dictator will empower them all the way to the third pillar of state.
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Published February 23, 2008
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67 views
Everyone I’ve spoken to, most newspaper reports, international observers, everything points to the fact that rigging did took place.The outgoing government tried every dirty trick in the proverbial book to hang onto power - but the wonderfully heartening news is that the rigging wasn’t enough - the government still got kicked out.The story which is emerging is the age old one, that of the naked Emperor who fools himself into thinking he’s clothed, while the whole world laughs. The dictator was naked, and like the emperor of old, surrounded by tailors and yes man who wouldn’t tell the truth. In other news, the government is busy trying to censor videos of rigging uploaded to Youtube, which show the the government parties busy rigging away. I wrote up my own personal brush with censorship here, and now it seems the govt. has moved on from targeting individual websites to the Moby Dick of the internet, Youtube.
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By Baithak.Net
Published February 19, 2008
in KO.
70 views
It seems like every single political commentator (which these days is most of Pakistan) was wrong about the elections being heavily rigged.To be fair, there was a massive and transparent attempt at rigging by the outgoing government, and it would have been enough if the results had been closer - but the difference is so vast in the actual polling results that the rigging was just not enough! Now, if this was Florida where the state was evenly divided, a little bit of rigging would have done the job, as we saw in the US - but Musharraf’s party underestimated the extent to which they are disliked. Elections are messy in Pakistan - all the parties try to rig the elections in their favour, it’s just that they employ cruder methods than in more developed countries. It seems like everyone was rigging, but it seems to have canceled itself out.One really big change, which no had predicted, let along even thought of, is the level of interest people took in the elections this time. Sure, turnout was low, but many ‘regular’ people volunteered for election watch duty, and besides that, I’ve heard from many polling stations that people just randomly turned up to keep an eye on things, armed with cellphone cameras and the numbers of the local media. Yes, there were a few hundred foreign observers, but there are just too many polling stations - it was the observing of the many thousands of Pakistani’s who just turned up to observe which was key.I didn’t volunteer for elections watch, but the three hours I spent trying to vote I kept snapping pictures of the process - and no one said anything. This in itself is a sea change in Pakistan - just the last elections if you tried to do that you would be beaten up, the camera smashed, and worse.
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Published February 18, 2008
in KO.
58 views
I haven’t written about the ongoing elections in Pakistan, because the whole thing is a bad joke. First. the making of the electoral lists was outsourced to Canada to someone who runs a dating service, and they came up with a atrociously bad system.Secondly, without a functioning judiciary, you can’t have elections - it makes it too easy for the govt. to rig them. It’s a simple matter of self-interest - the govt. is running the elections, and wants to get elected - so it’s blatantly using the entire apparatus of the state to ensure it wins.The voting lists turned out to be as bad as I thought it would - in fact they turned out to be even worse, despite my low expectations. The elections website is completely unusable, and missing a lot of names which were there on the old list. For example, it’s missing the names of my family and many of my relatives - most of which are registered voters.Despite our name not being on the list, I still set out to vote - I spent 3 hours going to all the voting stations near my area, and I wasn’t registered in any of them. I met quite a few people I know, and over 50% of them weren’t on the lists - so we came back vote less.
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Published February 14, 2008
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the TV has let loose the anchors of war on the elections: even mighty Musharraf quakes in his retired general’s boots. Onwards the 18th Feb!
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Published February 12, 2008
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This is the book which every Pakistani politician, columnist, drawing room warrior, TV talking head, the proverbial man on the street, newspaper & TV reporter, and just about everyone else breathing on the streets of Pakistan should read, now, before it’s too late.The lack of economic knowledge, and the number of economic things people get wrong even, even Harvard and Oxford educated politicians, is amazing. Newspapers, and TV especially […]
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Published February 11, 2008
in KO.
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That, more or less, is the short answer to the supposedly incredibly complicated and confusing question of what we humans should eat in order to be maximally healthy. I hate to give the game away right here at the beginning of a whole book devoted to the subject, and I’m tempted to complicate matters in the interest of keeping things going for a couple hundred more pages or so. I’ll try to resist, but will go […]
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Published February 5, 2008
in KO.
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Once again, Murphy the govt. of Pakistan strikes.I had written earlier on how internet censorship works in Pakistan, and it’s useful as a reference.Keeping this eventuality in mind (this is the second time it’s happened now), all my websites are hosted outside Pakistan, so it’s only within Pakistan is there a problem accessing them. There’s a discussion at the Wiredpakistan.com forums about the censorship.Under the recently passed Cyber Crime ordinance, any website, computer, telephone, or just about anything else invented after the Stone Age can be seized without any warrant, and no questions can be asked.For example, I’ve heard from PTA that this website is now blocked - one of their emails is quoted below - and legally speaking I can’t even ask them why and what for they took this step. Though, of course, I’ve shot them off an email asking them to explain.Elections are coming, and as the day approaches, Govt. preparation is getting frantic.
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Published February 4, 2008
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Dawn reports the taxation percentage every year, and each time its shocking:Out of the 45,000 industrial and commercial units registered in Pakistan, only 1,352 major units contributed 94.1 per cent of the total tax collection this year, says the Federal Board of Revenue.That is pretty amazing.They might as well not bother collecting taxes from anyone outside these super tax paying 1,352 companies. All the FBR needs is 1352 employees, one for each company, and a couple of outside auditors. Billions would be saved by firing the tens of thousands of redundant staff, and without having to deal with the tax bogeyman entrepreneurship and small business in Pakistan would soar.
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Published February 3, 2008
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For American assistance to be effective in a large-aid-recipient state such as Pakistan, it must go beyond transactional, quid pro quo deals and address the country’s main drivers of conflict, instability and extremism. Despite more than $10 billion in U.S. assistance since September 11, 2001, distrust, dissatisfaction and unrealistic expectations continue to undermine the official goal of developing a strong, strategic and enduring partnership.Pakistan’s main drivers of conflict, instability and extremism include: a culture of impunity and injustice, discontent in the provinces, ethnic and sectarian tensions, a rapidly growing and urbanizing youth population, and extremist views among traditional allies. Militant groups exploit these underlying conditions to recruit followers on the basis of a narrative of shared suffering and injustice and the failure of the state to provide stability or prosperity. LinkA short summary of the report: America is not getting it’s desired bang for it’s 10 billion plus bucks and they are upset. The reports view of Pakistan is damned bleak.
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Published February 3, 2008
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[…] It apparently seemed like a good idea in the 1990s for the ISI to back militants as a proxy force to compete with India in Kashmir and to exert influence in neighboring Afghanistan. (The United States contributed to the problem in the 1980s when it also funneled funds through ISI to militants fighting Soviet forces in Afghanistan.) Now it is a grave threat to Pakistan. The insurgency recently has begun spilling out of the lawless tribal areas along the Afghan border and into the city of Peshawar.The real inside story of the US funding of the Afghan war is here. […] The Times also reported that the ISI manipulated Pakistan’s last national election. Many Pakistanis already suspected as much and fear it could be repeated in the Feb. 18 parliamentary vote. The only way for Mr. Musharraf to regain any credibility is by ensuring that the election is free and fair.We had fake elections? Someone tell Bush…Jailed activists must be released. Ousted judges must be restored. Journalists must be able to report freely. International monitors must have maximum access to assess the voting. And Mr. Musharraf must work cooperatively with whatever leaders the election produces. The signs aren’t encouraging. Instead, ever more paranoid, he directed his staff to develop a strategy for countering “Western propaganda.” He’s his own worst enemy and increasingly Pakistan’s as well.The New York Times, of course, is one of the key reasons we have such problems in Pakistan, according to no less a authority on propaganda than Musharraf himself. He is well known to not read or even meet people critical of anything he does, so he’s lucky that Bush too doesn’t read the Times (or any other newspaper, for that matter).
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Published February 3, 2008
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Posted at the Emergency Times, and quoted in full below.The Emergency Times is an An Independent Pakistani Student Initiative Against Injustice And Oppression. Providing Regular Updates On The Emergency Situation.
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Published February 3, 2008
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What a day. Panic in the city yet again, with deathly rumours causing a mad dash to close shop and work everywhere and rush back home.
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Published February 3, 2008
in KO.
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News straight out of Orwell’s 1984:To deny hackers any chance of destroying Pakistan’s already tumultuous parliamentary elections, lists with the names of all 80 million eligible Pakistani voters in the Feb. 18 election are being stored behind firewalls on a secure computer system in Canada.In other news, there is no internet. Really. Otherwise why the hell does it matter whether the lists are in Kathmundu or stored in a server in Alaska?”It’s a completely locked system,” said Hayee Bokhari, owner and president of Cronomagic Canada Inc., whose workers stayed at the company’s offices in Montreal over Christmas to complete the biggest Pakistani database every assembled.There is no such thing as a “completely locked system”, especially one on the internet. That is one obvious sign there is something fishy here, besides the fact that Pakistan has been pending elections for months now, and they’re still having to “work over christmas”! Big statements like “biggest Pakistani database ever assembled” are also total bullshit.
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Published February 3, 2008
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Another Eid rolls around, and along with it yet another issue of Newsweek, with yet another interview of Musharraf. Some tidbits:There are no restrictions on the press.A good, solid example of doublespeak.Will the judges [you fired] be restored to their prior positions?No, not at all. What judges? Why should they be restored? New judges are there. They will never be restored.People in the West will have a hard time understanding that.Let them not understand. They should come to Pakistan and understand Pakistan.He doesn’t seem to realize that there are 170 million people already in Pakistan who understand all too well why the judges were fired.
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Published February 3, 2008
in KO.
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One of those rare must read books, the sort which you go out and recommend to people.You could look up the comments on Amazon for a whole lot of reviews, opinion and just plain noise, but better yet, just read it!In short - the world is a lot more random than we perceive it to be, for our brains just aren’t wired to deal with what the world has become - our genes and brain patterns remain stuck in the past while trying to deal with a world which has advanced faster than we have.Risk, probability, literature, how the brain works, wall street - just a few of the many topics the Taleb touches on.
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Published February 3, 2008
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The world has already started publishing profiles of General Kayani - here is a recent one from the New York TimesThe parties already accuse Mr. Musharraf — who is widely unpopular according to public opinion polls — of fixing the elections. If demonstrations erupt, General Kayani will have to decide whether to suppress them. What General Kayani decides will determine who rules Pakistan, according to Pakistani and American analysts. The decision also could affect whether the country descends into even deeper turmoil. What will he do? Will he, or won’t he? In most countries the newspapers print profiles of their political leaders. In Pakistan, the most read profiles are those of our generals. In fact, the newspapers don’t even bother writing much about most of our elected officials, including those in very high up posts like the Chief Ministers of the provinces, or the many MNA’s and Senators. At the most there are short opinion pieces about a few of them, never an actual profile.
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Published February 3, 2008
in KO.
84 views
This is too sad to be true. After finding out that Pakistan has outsourced it’s voting lists to Canada, a little googling on the internet revealed that the the voting system is being prepared by the same guy of a popular online dating and match making system - mehndi.com!It is so appropriate - I mean, if they can do the tough job of finding a suitable partner for millions of people, matching voters to the politicians should be a piece of cake.With all these nifty algorithms at work, the general public won’t even need to go cast their ballot - Musharraf the Canadian computer will just figure out who they want to vote for.As an aside, I still don’t get how the damn system works. After going through the Election Commision’s website, I still can’t see how I go about voting - and there is no link to this Canadian list which supposedly lets you do all sorts of nifty things online. The whole damn thing is so fishy - the ECP has some other voting list a year back which they’ve used to analyze all sorts of useless numbers broken up by province and whatnot, while on the other hand we have this chap in Montreal, Canada racing through the night on Christmas eve preparing some other voting lists.The closer you look at anything the government is up to, the fishier it gets.
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