Troubles facing Pakistan

Sadly, Pakistani establishment lacks credibility among international community and all assurances in being firm against terror will make little difference to it.

Pakistan faces the spread of Taliban and Al Qaeda elements southwards into the settled areas as CIA drones operate in the Tribal Areas. There is insurgency in Balochistan which is steadily killing persons suspected of being against Baloch nationalism. Equally there is the calamity of an earthquake in the province which Pakistan is finding it difficult to tackle. Relations with the US are tense over the drone attacks and Pakistan needs cooperation with its regional neighbours to avoid becoming isolated while its economy needs to be helped out of its current trough of depression. Above all, it needs understanding from India while it stands ready to share intelligence with it on the latest Mumbai bombing.

Recent events have not helped. India has been accusing Pakistan’s intelligence of having attacked the Indian embassy in Kabul with a suicide-bomber while Pakistan has alleged Indian hand in the Balochistan insurgency and even terrorism emanating from the Tribal Areas. This has been a blind continuation of allegations that began in 2001 when the Indian parliament was attacked, triggering Indian troop deployment along the border with Pakistan. This kind of “jurisprudence” is being pulled out again to explain the latest attack. “Analysis” emanating from the West about the Mumbai attack having the signature of Al Qaeda in combination with some Pakistani Islamic group has not helped either.

Pakistan needs to activate friendly diplomacy instead of “replying” to the allegations being made by upset Indians over the media. The past may have been problematic but the present clearly shows both countries afflicted by the same disease. Both need to cooperate and must stop their “proxy” war in Afghanistan. The cue for this must come from the friendly statements made earlier by President Zardari, expressing Pakistan’s willingness to move rapidly on a course of normalisation with India.

Lahore is Lahore.... indeed!

Hats off to Pirzadas for organizing the world's 3rd biggest performing arts festival in Lahore, "the cultural capital of the world's most dangerous country" in such times.

Celebrated British stand-up comedienne Shazia Mirza, whose parents were born in Pakistan, had a packed hall roaring with laughter at her politically incorrect, bawdy lines delivered with deadpan confidence. She has been to Pakistan before, but this was her first time
performing here.

She told IPS she had been apprehensive about coming to Pakistan “given the state it’s in” but all her fears were unfounded. “I was also worried about whether they’d laugh at themselves. I was really surprised. It’s been a fantastic experience.

They understood all the references and laughed and weren’t offended.”

Abdus Salam as child prodigy

Some extracts from biograhpy of Dr. Salam.


At the age of 17, as a student of BA, he wrote his first research paper titled A Problem of Ramanujan, which was published in the college journal Mathematics Student. His classmate Ram Prakash Bambah, later Dr Bambah, recalled that in 1942 when Dr Chawla posed the unsolved problem of the legendary Indian mathematician Sirinavasan Ramanujan regarding four simultaneous equations in the four variables, the 16-year-old Salam solved it in three days, suggesting that ‘the four variables were the roots of a quadratic whose coefficients could be found by solving a cubic’. This, at the age of 16!

Olympian Indicators

Ah!! Olympics and Pakistan. A long road ahead.


It appears that nations of the sub-continent have neither developed an industrial base nor a modern culture. They have been unable to provide necessary services to their citizens as well. India, much touted as an emerging economic giant, has been totally exposed at the Olympics. It has been shown that Indian economic growth is spotty and lacks the vitality of an emerging economic power. It is neither here nor there: it has the ills of both Socialist and Capitalist systems and none of the benefits both types of society offer.

Pakistan’s situation is even worse. It is still stuck in the old feudalistic mode or at least it is still in the grip of feudal culture. A few girls in sleeveless clothes on TV and billboards are not reflective of the prevailing culture. The elites have ignored their own people and have kept all the goodies for themselves.

On top of it, general anarchy, ensuing commercialisation and absence of government writ have made the situation worse. Encroachment of public lands by the needy and the powerful has left no space for young and aspiring athletes to play any kind of game, for pleasure or for professional development. So there are no places for the runners to practice like the Africans. The Pakistani youth has the worst of all worlds. With this backdrop, it should not be surprising that we are nowhere in the world Olympics.

Getting Smarter and Happier

So, another world is possible. There is always a room for improvement. Excerpt from this article:

with the advance of brain scans and increased capability to measure neuron function down to a single cell, I have had to concede that not only can the brain get “smarter and better balanced,” but this process lasts a lifetime. And to put the new findings into greater relevance, the smarter you get the happier you get.

One of the principles of improved brain plasticity, as mentioned in my book entitled The IQ Answer, is that neurons (the brain cells) tend to gravitate toward high activity centers. Much like we develop motor skills to learn to ride a bicycle, the motor cells will accumulate as you build the coordination to keep yourself going. It takes trial-and-error for the brain to coordinate the neurons and accumulate enough for the practice to establish the high level of balancing and muscles to finally build the “package” of neuron connections for bicycling that seems to stay in place for decades.

Demystifying priorities

How setting the wrong priorities haunt/ed Pakistan.

After Kargil, Mr Sharif is a greatly embarrassed man, disenchanted as far as the army is concerned. So is the rest of Pakistan. And Kashmir, the source of all intellectual dislocation in Pakistan, is no longer the jugular vein of Pakistan. We have discovered rather late in the day that it is Karachi that is our jugular vein and that we have been living upside-down all our lives. And that we’d rather protect Karachi from terrorism and provincial sub-nationalism than try and grab Kashmir.

History as we know it

"Tell me what they teach in schools and I will tell you how will country look like tomorrow", Aristotle is reported to have said something to the effect. Rings a bell about the curriculum being taught in Pakistani schools.

An overhaul of the entire curriculum is a prerequisite for any positive change in the Pakistani psyche. Unfortunately, it is reluctantly being done under US pressure, which is leading to misperceptions of its own

Myths of Cuban missile crisis

Some more to that meets the eyes!

The Paradox of Muslim weakness

A well-balanced and well-articulated critique of Islamism.

while talk of Islam’s inroads in Washington, London and Paris may indeed be overblown, the special conditions in the Muslim world ensure that the threat to liberal democracy in Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur and Islamabad is not about to disappear any time soon.

Waiting for "Trickle Down"

Lesser mortals of Pakistan - joining the queue and waiting for "trickle down". Sad!!

Music has no boundaries

So Armenia, Azerbaijan and Israel are now part of Europe. Thanks to Eurovision 2008 Song contest.

Indeed music has no boundaries! I know it no, I know it now!

On another note, it seems Europe's eastern borders are not well-defined. You keep going Eastward and suddenly you come to know that Europe has ended and Asia has started. More a matter of opinion than of fact. :)

The World's Oldest Profession in Pakistan

I have not would love to read Fouzia Saeed's book Taboo. An article in Asia Times sheds some light on dark trade in Pakistan.

Russian physiologist rocks :)

Finally, someone said something in praise of Muslim males. Give this Russian physiologist a medal. :)

Russian physiologist Leonid Kitaev-Smyk has stated that most male diseases are caused by women who adhere to provocative clothes and behaviour. As a result, the Western civilization gradually turns into the society of sexually unsatisfied men and eventually unsuccessful and physically unhealthy men, the scientist considers.

US researchers published results of their 30-year-long work. It suggested that 80 percent of men aged over 60 who died for different reasons had prostate cancer apart from other diseases. Every third American and European male aged over 30 has problems with potency and the prostate gland. The situation is quite different in the Muslim East. Arabs have the lowest rates of prostate cancer. Scientists considered that it depends on climate and meals and studied carefully the Oriental diet and tried to find any food with preventive action. They failed, although the clue is quite obvious.

Former Pakistan Brigadier spills the beans on 1971 war

If there is one institution in Pakistan to which the label "jack of all trades, master of none" aptly fits, that is the "gallant" Pak Army.

“Tanks not supported by Air Force at Longewala”

"Pakistani Army trained Mizo insurgents in East Pakistan: Brigadier Khan

“Unsuccessful coup attempt made to overthrow President Yahya Khan”

The War of Drones

Pakistani nation seems to suffer from Stockholm Syndrome on the issue of suicide bombing. Extract from Pervez Hoodbhoy's article in today's Dawn:


Even with evidence staring them in the face, most Pakistanis seem locked into a state of denial. They refuse to accept the obvious fact that more and more mullahs have created cults around themselves and exercise control over the lives of worshippers. An enabling environment of poverty, deprivation, lack of justice, and extreme differences of wealth is perfect for demagogues.

As the mullah’s indoctrination gains strength, the power to reason weakens. The world of the follower becomes increasingly divided into absolute good and absolute evil. Doubt is replaced by certainty, moral sensibilities are blunted. Reduced to a mere instrument for murder, the human drone is left with no room for useless things such as judgment, doubt, or conscience. As other human beings become mere objects rather than people deserving of love and compassion, the metamorphosis from human to drone becomes complete.

Divine Revelations: Mystery Unfolded

Kudos to Benny Shanon for resolving this mystery. Now I realize why Gods-men forbid drugs. They are wary of losing monopoly over "Divine Revelations". :)



Moses was high on drugs: Israeli researcher

High on Mount Sinai, Moses was on psychedelic drugs when he heard God deliver the Ten Commandments, an Israeli researcher claimed in a study published this week.

Such mind-altering substances formed an integral part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times, Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem wrote in the Time and Mind journal of philosophy.

"As far Moses on Mount Sinai is concerned, it was either a supernatural cosmic event, which I don't believe, or a legend, which I don't believe either, or finally, and this is very probable, an event that joined Moses and the people of Israel under the effect of narcotics," Shanon told Israeli public radio on Tuesday.

Moses was probably also on drugs when he saw the "burning bush," suggested Shanon, who said he himself has dabbled with such substances.

"The Bible says people see sounds, and that is a clasic phenomenon," he said citing the example of religious ceremonies in the Amazon in which drugs are used that induce people to "see music."

He mentioned his own experience when he used ayahuasca, a powerful psychotropic plant, during a religious ceremony in Brazil's Amazon forest in 1991. "I experienced visions that had spiritual-religious connotations," Shanon said.

He said the psychedelic effects of ayahuasca were comparable to those produced by concoctions based on bark of the acacia tree, that is frequently mentioned in the Bible.

The Compleate Women

More power to this endangered species!

Verdict of the People

All this seems too good to be true. I'm personally very excited to see lota-league and mullah-league bite the dust. May be it is just another evidence of his sheer incompetence to produce desired results, or finally His Enlightened Moderation have had an epiphany overnight and he decided to play fair this time. Anyway, the pessimist inside me says expect no miracles, at least in impending future. Let's not forget that turn-out was quite low in the polls and I would be greatly pleased to know that the landslide of PML(N) and PPP does not owe (at least partly) to some behind-the-scene "deal". Both Zardari and Sharif did not contest the polls. After seeing election results, they may order some MNAs of their parties to drop their seats and pave the way for their entry into parliament. Who knows?

Pleas for condemned Saudi 'witch'

And we were under the impression that witch-hunting was the relic of past.

Human Rights Watch has appealed to Saudi Arabia to halt the execution of a woman convicted of witchcraft.

In a letter to King Abdullah, the rights group described the trial and conviction of Fawza Falih as a miscarriage of justice.

The illiterate woman was detained by religious police in 2005 and allegedly beaten and forced to fingerprint a confession that she could not read.

Among her accusers was a man who alleged she made him impotent.

What makes a miracle

Challenging the conventional wisdom about economic boom of India and China!

Anti-Amnesiastic

They could not reduce the burden of body for him but they will hopefully relieve the burden of brains for so many. Here comes a godsend for postgrad students and researchers. :)

Professor Lozano said: "This is the first time that anyone has had electrodes implanted in the brain which have been shown to improve memory. We are driving the activity of the brain by increasing its sensitivity – turning up the volume of the memory circuits. Any event that involves the memory circuits is more likely to be stored and retained."

The discovery had caught him and his team "completely by surprise", Professor Lozano said. They had been operating on the man, who weighed 190kg (30st), to treat his obesity by locating the point in his brain that controls appetite. All other attempts to curb his eating had failed and brain surgery was the last resort.

The treatment for obesity was unsuccessful. But, while the researchers were identifying potential appetite suppressant points in the hypothalamus, the part of the brain associated with hunger, the man suddenly began to say that memory was flooding back.

More About Iranian experience

More leaves out of Iran's books for Pakistani liberals. Another article about Iranian lessons for Pakistani liberals! Nature abhors vacuum and we must be on watch against the twin danger. "Exit strategy" for "Shah of Pakistan" should not have any room for takeover by any "Ayatollah of Pakistan".

The lesson to learn here is that revolutions don’t always behave. They are slave to no one and masters of all. When revolution comes, the people who succeed are normally not the people who believe in all the wonderful things such as human rights and the rule of law. In times of revolution, power flows from the barrel of a gun

Engineers have Terrorist Mindset

Not a news for me, as I have observed this phenomenon for long. Probably this is a sociologist conspiracy to deflect some funds of engineering school to their school. :)

On a serious note, I had this discussion on another list about over-representation of engineers in Islamist or other terrorist movements. To my mind, one plausible explanation is that that applied sciences make people adept at using tools but do little to shake inherited beliefs and prejudices. Natural sciences and liberal arts tend to broaden one's outlook on life and world
and hence, people with these majors are less susceptible to be deluded by extremist causes.

The authors call it a mindset that inclines them to take more extreme conservative and religious positions.

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 authors note that the mindset is universal.

Whether American, Canadian or Islamic, they pointed out that a disproportionate share of engineers seem to have a mindset that makes them open to the quintessential right-wing features of "monoism" (why argue where there is one best solution) and by "simplism" (if only people were rational, remedies would be simple).

Freaking War

War is indeed hell, sometimes not just for the loser.

So what if the war was sold on completely fabricated lies, was supposed to be a cakewalk but has now lasted longer than World War II, has divided the country and made the world hate us, has squandered our (borrowed) resources and broken our military, has brought instability to a volatile and crucial region and allowed a real national antagonist to double its power, has diverted our resources from the still-uncaptured guy who supposedly attacked us on 9/11, has become a factory for producing anti-American terrorists, has wiped out over a million innocent people and turned more than four million into refugees?

Threats and Conspiracies

It's all so obvious and it's all so painful.

While manifestations are diverse, the fundamental issue that plagues Pakistan is the lack of legitimate constitutional rule. This is discernable across the three fault-lines holding the future of the country hostage: the civil-military divide; the centre-province divide; and the extremist-moderate divide. Conversely, it can also be argued that it is actually the entrenched civil-military imbalance that accounts for lack of rule of law within the country, which in turn explains the tussle between the centre and the provinces within the federation and between the moderates and the extremists within the society.

Iranian Lesson for Pakistan

A lesson which Pakistani liberals can ignore only to their detriment!

In 1978, Iran’s liberals were bent on removing the Shah by any means. Instead of creating an atmosphere conducive to an Iranian Gandhi, they unwittingly helped usher into power Ayatollah Khomeini and a theocratic regime less tolerant than the one they helped unseat. Three decades later, millions of chastened Iranians wish they could relive those heady days differently; their Pakistani counterparts would be wise to heed their hindsight.

Charlie Wilson's War

Watched this movie today. It is based on the book with the same name, although some humor has been added for public consumption. Interesting to see a God-fearing party animal (Joanne Herring played by Julia Roberts) motivates a philandering senator (Charlie played by Tom Hanks) to collect funds and weapons (from USA and Israel) for Islamic fundamentalists fighting against godless Communists in Afghanistan. Politics indeed makes strange bellows. Om Puri, an Indian actor, plays the role of Pakistan's ex-president Zia ul Haque. The movie ends with a Charlie's quote:

"These things happened. They were glorious and they changed the world.... and they fucked up the end game".

Repressing Democracy

Simon Jenkin's article about Pakistan:

Backing Musharraf has always seemed "a good idea at the time". The next person to be cursed with Washington's favour appears to be Musharraf's successor as army chief, General Ashfaq Kiyani. However, by opting for the realpolitik of dictatorship the west has not just repressed democracy but aided insurgency and terror. It has yielded no security benefit to anyone. If Pakistan becomes a "failed state", the failure will, in large part, be one of democratic imagination in Washington and London. We simply refuse to practise what we preach.

National Harakiri

A nation on the way to collective harakiri.

The bountiful American largesse to the Pakistani army, the businesses the army runs that sustain the luxurious lifestyles of the elite, can't conceal the fact that most Pakistanis are desperately deprived: not just of shared, public resources, but of a clear answer to a simple question - what is Pakistan for? They may be able to replace the burned buses, the torn bridges, the uprooted railway lines; but a combination of military power, dynastic politics, fervent religious dogma and extreme social inequality are the ingredients only of disintegration. It is sad to see a nation dying; it's an unspeakable tragedy when it is killing itself.

Suicide bombing in Lahore

Today it was Lahore's turn. 23 people dead and more than 70 injured. This cancer of suicide bombing and jihadist violence is not gonna die soon. Combine it with the sheer incompetence and authoritarianism of President-for-life, and there is a disaster ready to explode! Muharram is about to start and more turbulence in the offing!!

Searching for propagandists

Ever wonder why academic research is in tatters in Pakistan? An insight into Pakistan's sponsored academic chairs in some international universities:

The main purpose of these chairs was to encourage the academic circles in these countries to study different aspects of Pakistan and not become a diplomatic outpost.

Now, things have become even worse. At this juncture, all major positions are vacant. This is because the government in Islamabad is no longer able to find safe scholars. Recently, the names of three academics from Quaid-e-Azam University were rejected by the government. On the other hand, the names recommended by Islamabad are not acceptable to the universities because the academics that Pakistan wants to send have no academic expertise and are not relevant. Apparently, one of the names was rejected by Islamabad because the scholar concerned was not approved by the intelligence agencies. Interestingly, the final approval is given by the IB and the ISI. One wonders if the intelligence agencies understand the worth of academic work or even know the definition of intellectualism.

Pakistan - After the Assassination

Pervez Hoodbhoy's interview to an Italian newspaper in the wake of Benazir's assassination. It is indeed disheartening to see that while Pakistani "man on the street" is up in arms against military authoritarianism, he feels shy of condemning theocratic authoritarianism with the same vigor. One can only hope that demise of Musharraf in any near-future does not lead to Iranian-style "revolution" in Pakistan.

Almost everyone holds the government responsible for the assassination. Tragically, suicide bombings are not condemned with any particular vigor. There is no strong reaction against the mullahs, madrassas, and jihadis. Perhaps people are afraid to criticize them because this might be seen as a criticism of Islam. Interestingly, in all the street demonstrations I have gone to after the Bhutto assassinations, there was no call for cracking down on extremists. Yesterday I met the lone taxidriver who thought the Islamists did it. I tipped him well.