Overcoming Learned Helplessness and Apathy

"The shackles of “learned helplessness” can only be broken if all the political parties and intelligentsia join hands to restore rule of democracy and the independence of judiciary."

Are you guys for real?

Hello Duh!

.......... it took two people to write this ?... i am beginning to have serious doubts about lums !

.... i take that back, there are actually three authors! ..... masadi seems to be at work here : "blame must also be shared by the US administration and its Western allies"

....... i guess the US elite has been sleeping with the mothers of our politicians, generals and academics to produce the idiots we see all around us .........

LUMS folks,

am I mistaken or are you guys trying to gain social relevance?

["The main illness of Pakistan is not Islamism, but militarism "]

Actually, it is both. All you can argue about is: which is dominant?

Remove militarism and Pakistan will out-Afghan the Afghans.

Useless LUMS, is this the best you can do? What a waste of time? The only politician that has made a wrong turn is Alt-F and his MQM. The rest of the country is united behind the grass roots movement to get this regime out, including NS. These recent events are just political theater that you are seeing between PPP and PML-NS, namely, pehle aap, pehle aap.

[‘main illness of Pakistan is not Islamism, but militarism’]

Does it matter who came first – the chicken or the egg? The country is the one which ends up becoming omelet. It is not the US support which brings up dictators in Pakistan – the Mushy was very much a fact of life prior to 9/11. The greed of Pakistani politicos and its khakis is not a fault of the US. It is very domestic, it is very endemic and it merely the present day extension of the greed for power of Mahomed Ali Jinnah. The problem with Pakistan is not leaned helplessness – it is the helplessness to learn from repeated mistakes – by the “learned”!

Re: # 2 Lums graduates are asking hundreds of thousand of rupees/ year and employer are happy to have them. Even western compinies consider them as assets. As IIT grads are valued in engg, LUMS grads are equivalent to IIT grad in Engg. Many of teachers at LUMS are foreign trained and worked and just they like to live in pakistan otherwise they will be accepting big jobs from western companies. Aramco recruits many grads from here

Extremism will keep happily marching on, with or without militarism, as long as this endless game of beating around the bush by liberals, like the authors of this article, continues.

They are clueless.

It is a good take and intelligently argued case. There is literature which tries to justify the opposite opinion by actually making the case for US support for autocratic regimes. Farid Zakira’s “Future of Freedom” is the first book which comes to my mind. The central argument is that if democracy is allowed on western pattern it would lead to reign of militant forces through popular forces.
There is apprently some merit in Mr Zakria’s case but if we scrututinize the situation closely, the rise of populist conservatism, i.e. which comes through vote, is it itself a possible outcome (I am stressing the word possible because I believe that complex phenomneon like extremism are an outcome of many interelated and self reinforcing factors) of US support to autocratic and oppressive regimes and its own international policies…
Moreover, the authors of this article are requesting the political parties to actually mobilize common man to rise.. Well there is a debate right on whether all of this is a common man’s problem at all. Mr NFP has raised the stakes by openly mocking those who are talking of things like independent judiciary as drawing room intellectuals suffering from middle class morality and divorced from the reality and hardships which the “un washed” masses face. For the masses the issues are different.
I will say some things here:

1. Independent Judiciary though not of immediate concern to masses or at least percieved as such is nevertheless an extremely important organ for the preservation of the right of recourse to law whenever fundamental rights are usurped. Judical recourse is contigent as it comes into play when actually our rights are violated. Consider a black law such as Hudood ordinance. It potentially affected all women, but its actuall brunt was on those who were actually raped. It was not therefore percieved by large majority of lower class women and their families to be of relevance. In the first place they were not even aware of its existence. It was then neccessarry for the civil society and educated women to actually muster popular support for its repealment by first creating awareness and then going for some kind of political persuation. The point is that certain things whether percieved by a large majority as important or not are nevertheless important and Judicial independence is important following the same argument
2. Secondly, lack of apprent “public protest” should not be used as endorsement for purging judiciary. Particulalrly, when you have actually imposed an emergency and are breaking the lawyers and journalists heads to prevent any kind of collective political protest. The reality is that in a country like Pakistan, at least in recent times, collective political action can be easily subdued through force and by simply house arresting the leaders which are the focal point for launching such agitation. A strange argument was made by citing the presence of millions turning out to support BB on 18th October 2007, as evidence that Judicial independence, NRO etc are not at all worth calling as an issue. Let me assure you that if state wanted, it would have been able to prevent even one tenth of those people from being in Karachi on that fateful day. So these banal comparisons of people turning out to greet BB and not turning out to protest emergency should be avoided as due to emergency and violent tactics used by police, the comparison of the later with the former is not a fair comparison in the first place.
3. I also think that we should grow out of this BB,NS and Musharraf comparisons. I keep on hearing that if not Musharraf who is the alternative. The central argument should have been whether Musharraf’s dictatorship is worth sacrifying your institutions who only recently have started to show some signs of becoming independent. Remember Mr Musharraf, even if he is “necessary” has few years of his “natural” health left. He will be gone but the legacy would be of an extremely weak judiciary which would subsequently be abused by not so “benevolent” dictator or even elected executive.

Trained surrenders - not learned

WAT, Nov 10: Militants took a major, a captain and five soldiers hostage in Kabbal tehsil on Saturday.

A militant commander, Akbar Hussain, who is in charge of the tehsil, said the soldiers were traveling in an army vehicle when they were intercepted at a checkpoint near Kabbal and taken hostage. He said a major, a captain, two lance naiks and three sepoys had been taken hostage.

He said that a secret file and a map marking militants’ positions had been seized from the soldiers and they had been taken to Imam Dheri, the headquarters of Maulana Fazalullah’s movement.

AS the elite of pakistan are discussing the constittution and the chief justice, the pak army is siezing control from the courts. Now one need not worry about the supreme court, the court martials will take care.

The pathetic pakistanis are discussing checks and balances, wake up, stop the pretenses, pakistan is a jihadic army state.

from dawn of today.

Civilians can be court-martialled : Army Act amended



By Nasir Iqbal


ISLAMABAD, Nov 10: The government on Saturday amended the Army Act of 1952 to give wide-ranging powers to the Army to court-martial civilians.

Under the amended act, the Army can now try civilians on charges ranging from treason, sedition and attack on army personnel to “assaulting the president with intent to compel or restrain the exercise of any lawful power” and “giving statements conducive to public mischief”.

T

Stuff happens

Stuff happens

Haq Sahib,
Is it any wonder that the silent majority of Pakistanis doesn't care about this comedy circus?

If we get rid of Mushy the Dick Traitor, we will have a Paki version of Bonnie & Clyde taking turns looting Pakistan.

Bezamir Bhootni - If she and her husband are that corrupt, is it any wonder that most Pakis are basically ignoring her attempt to hijack the Lawyers' campaign.

Is Perv better than the kleptomaniacs?
Why can't Shortcut Aziz mount his own coup?

At least the guy is somewhat better for Pakistan.


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Trail of corruption and kickback charges still in wings for opposition leader


David Pallister
Monday November 12, 2007
The Guardian


Hopes for a third term for Benazir Bhutto, twice kicked out of government for corruption and incompetence, have been thrown into turmoil by the emergency rule. But her ambitions ultimately still depend on whether the amnesty on her corruption charges, granted to her last month by the national reconciliation ordinance, will be upheld in the new supreme court.
Bhutto and her husband, Asif Ali Zardari - nicknamed Mr 10% over alleged extortion - faced eight counts of taking tens of millions of dollars in illegal kickbacks. But whatever decision the court arrives at, the couple also have to contend with money laundering proceedings in Switzerland and Spain, and a civil case in London involving an expensive Surrey mansion.


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As the president's ordinance only deals with offences up to 1999, investigations in Pakistan could continue into allegations that the pair paid about $2m in illegal kickbacks to Saddam Hussein under the oil-for-food programme.
The controversy surrounding Bhutto's financial affairs has been compounded by reports showing she and her family have worldwide assets worth about 90bn Pakistan rupees ($1.5bn). Despite voluminous evidence, some from the British government, the Bhuttos deny all the charges.

The charges

Among the charges in Pakistan are allegations that the Bhuttos skimmed $2m in commissions from a 1990s deal to buy thousands of duty-free Ursus tractors from Poland. The money went into a Swiss bank account. Christine Junod, a Geneva magistrate, says documentary evidence "establishes beyond doubt that these commissions, under the cover of alleged consultancy fees, were meant to remunerate the illicit advantages obtained by Ursus from the Pakistani administration, thanks to the interventions of Asif Zardari".

A second case involves a Dubai-based Pakistani gold bullion dealer who allegedly paid $10m to a Bhutto company in the British Virgin Islands for the exclusive right to import gold, again losing the country millions of dollar in duties. Zardari, who has served six years on corruption charges, is also accused of evading duties on the import of a £55,000 armoured BMW.

A fourth case, involving Swiss banks, is moving towards a trial in Geneva. In this the couple are accused of taking kickbacks for the award of contracts to two Swiss firms employed to stop customs fraud. In 2003 a Swiss magistrate found the couple guilty, sentenced them to six months in prison and ordered them to pay $12m back to the Pakistan government.

The paper trail connecting Benazir Bhutto to the case started with a moment of extravagance. Five years before, she had bought a £117,000 diamond necklace in London; part of that was paid for by one of the Swiss firms identified in the investigation. Lawyers for the Bhuttos challenged the judgment, a move that required the case be reopened. Last month the Swiss authorities said they would go ahead.

Oil-for-food scandal

The authoritative Volker report into the oil-for-food scandal identified the company Petroline FZC as having received oil contracts worth £145m in return for paying illicit surcharges to Iraq of $2m. Pakistan's national accountability bureau has produced documents which show that Bhutto was the company chairwoman. Some of the profits went to firms in Spain, where another criminal investigation into money laundering is still active.

Rockwood House

The Surrey mansion, Rockwood House, was bought in 1995, apparently owned through a chain of firms and trusts, involving addresses in the Isle of Man, Jersey and Liechtenstein. Zardari denied, for eight years, that he was the owner despite instructing a builder with plans for a helipad, nine-hole golf course and polo pony paddock. Crates of valuable artefacts were shipped from Karachi. In 2004, when creditors forced the property into a liquidation sale, the Pakistani government claimed the proceeds. Lawyers for Zardari then appeared, claiming he was the beneficial owner.

The money from the sale is still in the liquidators' bank account, though a high court judge said the Pakistani government had a reasonable case, stating the money came via corruption. The case continues through the courts with Zardari repeatedly claiming to be too ill to mount a rebuttal.

Courtesy, The Guardian, Monday November 12, 2007

salim mian,

.... i feel your pain, but there really are no honest people in pakistan .... even kids in kindergarten are cheating on their nursery rhymes and sums ....

......you will have to choose from the avaiable cast of known thieves, knaves and rascals ..... it is either them or maulvi fazlullah ....... petty crooks or psychopathic killers - take your pick

.... and don't be fooled by these looney lums luminaries - they are a just trying to get their picture taken with imran khan and 'rebelling' against their parents ........ they will quickly fall in line if musharraf threatens to shut down pizza hut and mcdonalds .........