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!