Where Billions Vanish

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.

-----------

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.....

Viewer is deligently reading my posts addressed to PH and replying to them as well. Why are you hiding behind a nick PH, so afraid and humiliated by your pathetic self? Regarding your donkey ride, even in insults you cannot be original and have to copy-paste from your opponents discription. Your donkey ride where the donkey will be freshly imported from Afghanistan, will be a specticle indeed, a donkey with two a-holes...

Re: # 111
Maseedi is a source of entertainment indeed. Are you sure "someone like masadi saab" was not really Maseedi himself? May be you are a little bit forgetful as he had gone through such experiences during his childhood and to which he remains fond of making references. I have already offered him to play the role of donkey and I will mostly happily ride him through the city of Lahore and elsewhere.

Re: # 110

viewri saab, this reminds me of when i was a child saab. someone like masadi saab was on the khota and all the kids were shouting....paaghal...e...oye.

Re: # 107

"The guy needs to be horsewhipped tied to the rear end of a donkey as the kids jeer and hit him with slippers all through Lahore town"

Not sure about PH, but I would certainly enjoy this ride if Maseedi takes the role of donkey.

Re: # 107
Ha Ha this maseedi guy is a good entertainer and I am really not left with a desire anymore to prove that I have nothing to do with Prof. Hoodbhoy. I am just an ordinary reader of his writings like many others. Maseedi, why don't you pick up your phone and ask Prof. Hoodbhoy if he is aware of someone called Viewer.

BTW chowk staff have meticulouly removed the heavy discussion articles in their daily jamadara effort to block dissent.........

Viewer writes "a) Prof. Hoodbhoy should have had reported, at least on Chowk.com"

Chowk is not his official "bitching like a scorned daughter in law" board. The sooner they remove his articles and his sorry a$$ from posting here the better. The guy has no concern about the country which he'd sell to the highest western media bidder, as he does- sometimes just for recognition and fame, for free. The guy needs to be horsewhipped tied to the rear end of a donkey as the kids jeer and hit him with slippers all through Lahore town. Viewer is making a futile attempt to try to prove that he is not PH, the attempt is futile, we all know that PH is Viewer and Viewer is PH, and what a pathetic ability at reasoning he has....

Re: # 104

I partially disagree with this and hold the view that he is also responsible to certain extent because:

a) Prof. Hoodbhoy should have had reported, at least on Chowk.com, about what really happened on 8 September 2005 in the nation-wide meeting.

b) He should have had done this soon afterwards the meeting took place or at least sufficiently sooner to guarantee that it gets noticed by the HEC and the government officials, and also by his readers on Chowk.com, BEFORE a decision of purchase was going to be made. I believe to do this was certainly possible for him.

c) Prof. Hoodbhoy writes:

"But the project’s proponents clearly had something else in mind. And it was not a plan of work. They bussed in supporters from near and far who filled the auditorium. Few had even heard of the Pelletron, but they had
been instructed to shout in its favour and hoot down all who questioned the need to buy one. I had urged at that meeting that the machine could be purchased but only if some clear scientific purposes was identified. This
plea was roundly rejected on grounds that uses would automatically develop once the machine arrives"

This reason for not forcefully putting forward what he thought during the meeting on 8 September 2005 does not appear very much convincing to me, especially in view of the fact that the machine is an accelerator, which seem to be related to his areas of expertise, and that he is associated with the QAU for over thirty years, the place where the machine was going to be installed.

I mean to say is that if he had suspicions whether the machine was going to find use after its installation at the University, where he has had taught for over thirty years, he must have had expressed those more forcefully very soon after the meeting on 8 September 2005 or possibly in early 2006 so that the people in power could have listened to his and Prof. Riazuddin's views before making their decision to purchase.