Where Billions Vanish

Re: # 128
"I am of the impression that Masadi sahib was saying just the opposite of what you are imputing to him."

I disagee completely. Pls refer to # 122 again.

His "such equipment" is which I have referred to as "any equipment which bullies think is good for a Physics deptt for dumping purpose"

Viewer,

Re: 127

(so you are saying that it is OK that decision makers and bullies of this ill-fated country should keep on dumping the impoverished Physics departments with any equipment )

I am of the impression that Masadi sahib was saying just the opposite of what you are imputing to him.

(By the way, why the Chowk staff has not yet burnt your “books� and have not yet completely banned you.)

Why shud Masadi sahib be banned. He has as much a right to express his opinion on chowk as we have and maybe he is right and we are wrong.

There is no justification for banning Masadi sahib (or for that matter horsewhipping Tahmed sahib.)

Regards

Re: # 122
"What is the goddamned use of physics departments and PH when neither students nor professors can use such equipment to do research?"

O fool, so you are saying that it is OK that decision makers and bullies of this ill-fated country should keep on dumping the impoverished Physics departments with any equipment which they think is good (possibly for their own bank accounts) and then they start wondering why the students and professor are not able to use that for “research�.

Have these bullies made any prior surveys, studies, or have consulted those students or professors whom are likely to use the equipment?

I am shocked that you are absolutely unable to understand this much reason and claim to have written "books". I think the US did a right thing when they kicked you out from there and dumped you on us. Please refer to the nearest psychiatrist ward.

By the way, why the Chowk staff has not yet burnt your “books� and have not yet completely banned you.

Re: # 122

"the purpose of axe grinding against his colleagues"

So this Maseedi idiot of the highest imaginable order thinks (if he has such capability, which I really doubt he has) that he is not "axe grinding" when he submits his nonsense (mostly consisting of abuse) on this website.

I would request the Chowk staff to please ban this maniac and fool from any interaction on this website.

#122 Posted by masadi on April 29, 2008 5:36:01 am

you think people should stop spending money on science education and spend the money on your specialty, social sciences?

what a loser...

Re: # 121

nkg writes: If the instrument is installed, somehow students will use it ...

Of course this will be case and no one doubts that. If the instrument had come free of cost I will also think the same way.

When you have paid millions from public money you cannot simply say that it will somehow find some use.

The question being raised is that was there a more sensible way to buy a more sensible equipment. A sensible way that does not involve commissions given to the middle men or to the top men. A sensible way that first considers what our students need and whether some reseachers are going to benefit from the equipment.

It seems we are using public money to buy equipment first and then wonder what to do with it.

Re: # 122

maseedi writes: The bigger question you should be asking ...

So a lunatic issues an advice which questions are to be asked. Get lost ...

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Re: # 120
Viewer...

Ans: I am from India. I am not much familar with the culture of higher education ( if anything like that is there) in Pak. If the instrument is installed, somehow students will use it. If students fails to utlize that, then their is some attitude problem within the students. Most of the sophisticated equipments are basically operated by the PG students and reasearch scholoars than the professors.

Re: # 119
Thanks for your information.

I have one further question to anyone who likes to answer:

Refer to Prof. Hoodbhoy "On 8 September 2005 a nation-wide meeting was held in the physics department of Quaid-e-Azam University to look into the possible uses of the Pelletron"

Also refer to Prof. Hoodbhoy "Immediately upon reading Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman’s article (published in Dawn on 25 June 2005), I telephoned him. His answer: Dr. Riazuddin, director of the National Centre for Physics, had approved the machine."

From this it seems to me that:

The purchase had been approved by Dr. Samar Mubarakmand, Dr. Ishfaq Ahmad, Dr. Att ur Rehman , and Prof. Riazuddin many months before nation-wide meeting was held in order to "to look into the possible uses of the Pelletron."

Can one or more of these 4 people explain to this nation of poor and starving people how it makes sense to hold a “nation wide� meeting to find the "possible uses of the Pelletron" after you have already made the decision to purchase this white elephant?

Everyone knows that you can easily bully the participants to endorse whatever decision you have already made.

The whole affair seems as if I live in a mud house and decide to buy a Dyson brand vacuum cleaner and then call a meeting of family & friends and use my resources to bully them to endorse that I have made a right decision and that some good use of the vacuum cleaner will after all be found. Is it difficult to get such an endorsement?

Of course, I will happily do that if:

a) I have a lot of money and don't know what to do with it

b) I am getting commission from making the deal to buy the Dyson vacuum cleaner

c) I am restless to prove to the world that I really want to do substantial and demonstrable things for the cleanliness of my house

Which one or more of the above is really the case will depend on further investigation if it proceeds any further. However, it is my impression that Prof. Riazuddin was unfortunately tricked by the powerful gang of three (Dr. Samar Mubarakmand, Dr. Ishfaq Ahmad, and Dr. Att ur Rehman) just to obtain an endorsement for the purchase of this white elephant.

Viewer:

I think he did warn on Chowk. Read this from his 2005 article.......


PROJECTS GONE ASTRAY

On June 25, 2005 the HEC chairman announced that the Higher Education Commission has sanctioned 180 million rupees ($3 million) for the establishment of a 5 MeV tandem Van de Graaf accelerator to be housed at the National Center for Physics, Quaid-e-Azam University. He described it as a "national facility" that will "accelerate the generation of competent scientific and technical manpower within the country".

For those familiar with the field, this is nonsense. Such Van de Graaf machines were the mainstay of research in physics seventy years ago. They are useless for cutting edge science research today. They are, at best, museum pieces.

The reader, who wishes to see what the developed world is doing with such equipment, should visit the website:
www.its.caltech.edu/~arice/tandem.html. This contains an obituary, written many years ago, at Caltech: "After 38 years of service to the Nuclear Astrophysics and Material Science communities, [Caltech’s tandem Van de Graaf accelerator] facility has closed. Sorry to see the old machines fade away. This one had been very good to us. Not putting it too delicately; the machine was cut up and sold for scrap." That scrap -- or more likely scrap from elsewhere -- is now headed for Quaid-e-Azam University where it will add to other scrap imported over the decades.

Still more inexplicable wastage: the HEC chairman says that another 164 million rupees will be spent on an experimental physics laboratory at QAU.
Alas, no researcher there -- who are my colleagues -- acknowledges being informed, much less consulted on the purpose and nature of the laboratory.

The department’s chairman alone admitted knowledge of the project, but flatly refused to divulge details. A pessimistic conclusion is that, as in the past, these millions will also prove to be highly enriching but not to science in Pakistan.

Much to the dismay of PH/Viewer, ignore #115, I have found a way around the link messup regarding ilogs, the drop down menu above is the key. I am not banned from ilogging...and have recently posted a gallery pic of tahmed and hamidm, their linage trace to the freshly imported one from Afghanistan is yet to be determined

Viewer/PH writes "and arrange burning of whatever you have managed "

Here is PH advocating book burning and censorship, while talking "science". The moron that he is, he doesn't realize what an oxymoron his recommendation is

Re: # 115
Glad to know this and wish that the Chowk staff extends their partial ban to the removal of all of your records and arrange burning of whatever you have managed to publish.

I Have been blocked by Chowk Staff from posting new ilogs or gallery items, when I go to write an ilog it takes me to the list of ilogs, a dead end. This is outrageous, I demand that my right as a member poster here be restored, my articles that were censored released and the section where ilogs are posted opened up for my gems, immediately

Three years after I have been writing these things on Chowk, and at least 8 years after I penned them in my published articles, this Economist merely repeats the same- good to note that people through various avenues are coming to the same logical conclusion:

Rogue Economics
Capitalism's New Reality
Loretta Napoleoni

Rogue Economics offers a fascinating view of how terribly wrong things have gone. Loretta Napoleoni's book is an alarm, warning us to wake up ...more
—John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

Description

Respected economist and syndicated journalist Loretta Napoleoni shows how he world is being reshaped by dark economic forces creating victims out of millions of ordinary people whose lives have become trapped inside a fantasy world of consumerism. The world has become overrun by organizations, both private and public, which have accumulated vast fortunes and enormous political influence by regulating, containing, and manipulating the market to their own advantage. From Eastern Europe’s booming sex trade industry to China’s “online sweatshops,� from al-Qaeda’s underwriters to America’s subprime mortgage lending scandal, Rogue Economics exposes the paradoxical economic connections of the new global marketplace.

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Yesterday I heard her interview on the BBC World Service on my SW radio, she compared the discription to the Matrix- an analogy of global insitutional domination by the US elite that I have been using for a long time now.....