Cholesterol Say Paak

I don't think Paracha is a Jiyala. He is an independent thinker of great ability.

Yes Mr NFP....
The results of the election are in front of us...
Even in rural areas the people have not considered judicial crisis as "media manufactured".....
Kindly elaborate on this......
And yes this question is also directed to your "fans"....
May be to quote you....
They are also confused with little to no knowledge of geo politics....
Answer jani......

Mr.Paracha is a jiyala just like his father, which of course takes away nothing from the fact that they are both highly intelligent, accomplished men. But a jiyala by defintion is one who can see no wrong when it comes to the PPP and the Bhutto family. I suspect if Benazir had chosen to support the restoration of the deposed judges, Mr.Paracha would have written a different article. She of course could not do so since the brother judges had made some rather unfriendly noises about the NRO.

I entirely agree with one of the charges Paracha makes against the this civil movement i.e. naivety. It is naive to think that a few thousand lawyers, journalists and students will be able to shake of the military-led establishment that has been ruling us for over fifty years now. It is also true that most in this civil movement are from a well-fed, high income minority with little purchase amongst the 'unwashed' masses. So it is futile yes..but valiantly so. It takes courage to offer one's head to the mean end of a police 'danda'.I am surprised that Mr.Paracha cannot appreciate this since I suspect his head was similarly offered during the Zia years..or not? I'd say the least that drawing room commentators like myself can do is doff our hats in respect to what is a brave but hopeless effort.

NFP deserves kudos for this brilliant piece..but he fails to make the point about benazir bhutto..it is equally ironic that she claimed to be against the two percent elite and was herself a feudal princess who cashed her surname..

Re: # 124
I hope Mr NFP does read it and answer it. I have also asked some questions in my post no 6 of this interact thread...
Mr NFP seems determined to ignore us....
But well done....
You do make a strong point.....

Oh Dear, what a shame!
You have no idea Mr.F. Paracha how shoddily you have used your powerful skill of writing. I am not a good writer esp. of English but I know the power of words. If your eyes are 'Nappak' and so creamed up with the left over cholesterol from your satiated stomach that you are unable to see the pain in which the whole nation is right now then the problem lies with you. It’s easy for you to say that this so called movement is by the courtesy of some naïve, hypocrites, confused bourgeois is because you Sir, are certainly not remotely related to these crazy few million fanatics.
You are blessed with such a highest form of intellect that you have lost your insight. You are not part of those few conscientious bourgeois protesting alone in front of Aga’s super market but one of those ‘enlightened moderates’ who prefer to play with semantics while sitting in their luxurious apartments. You make mockery of those ‘paanwaala’ kind of lawyers jumping and crying their hearts out for justice and does not even for one moment acclaim his conviction that not with a penny in his pocket he preferred to be injured by ‘Laathi charge’ or to be put behind bars just for expressing what he think is right.
I was your fan Nadeem F. Paracha when you used to write music reviews in beginning and some times on social issues. I still remember that shocking article about ‘Defense kee Aunties’ you wrote in ‘Mag’ but I feel so bad that our “Highly parhee likhee Writer’s community” is being so reclusive about all this ‘Movement against emergency/Martial Law’. It’s no time to sit back like ‘Nero’ when two of your provinces are smoldered with civil war.
True you can’t see any ‘movement’ like ‘Long Marches’ ‘Jalsa’ ‘Juloss’ because you are a Karachiite and being a Karachiite myself I am fully aware of the fact that ‘wahan chirya bhee per naheen maar saktee’ against that big ethnic party of Karachi, but then also prevailing stillness, uncertainty, discontentment could not remained escape even from your ‘Cholestrol se napaak’ eyes
Though my stomach is full but I am fighting along with the fellow citizens of Balochistan, NWFP, Punjab and Sind to give us equal rights of freedom of expression and equal opportunities to choose our leadership for future of Pakistan. We are struggling for Pakistan integration so no more excuses for America to invade us like ‘Iraq’, in order to save us from ‘Taliban’. We are fighting to get rid of American puppets in government. We are working to form an environment of justice for all, strengthening of institutions based on merit, revival of actual democracy and return of army to their camps.
Whether it is a “deewane ka khwaab” like creation of Pakistan or a sheer idealism, it is happening. We might loose and suffer for ever but at least we will not be ashamed of our selves as we did play our part in making the change which we desperately want and wished for Pakistan.
‘Jis Shaan se koi maqtalmein gaya, who SHAAN hee baqee rehtee hai,
Yeh Jaan to aanee janee hai ,is jaan kee koi baat naheen”.

Nikhat Riaz

It is a play of words. Is it man’ s playful nature? No, likeliest it seems to come out of boredom.as when one gets bored with tv ads,or one wants to start a conversation.speaking without thinking, then comes easy.the words civil, civil society, why not citizens. then i got reminded of the word ‘’regularisation’’,as in illegally constructed structures. most play with words and derive meanings to suit themselves, because english is not our Mother tongue. specially business english, is not our tongue at all. so whose business is regularisation?then it is surprising why a question arises when the group of youths come to see you? the answer is in your article. a cause, any cause, generally speaking is used to put youth on the scene, with self importance, furthering social contacts, getting some work done for cause, for family, friends, acquaintances and community. if community benefits individuals will too. such self important work daily, then go home, no work, and get stomach full, gives sense of fulfillment to ordinary lives.we center around family and food. we love/live to eat and we make our family work to make food the all important central issue; this gives us immediate gratification; this is our society, nowhere in the world you will find such.nice rambling article of yours in these times of tension.

Government Refuses to arrest Imran Khan:

The best laugh I have had in a while.

I have not been able to understand what does the writer mean by 'civil soviety'. Does the article aim to pinpoint hypocrisy in certain people?
Sana Gulraiz

I have not been able to understand what does the writer mean by 'civil soviety'. Does the article aim to pinpoint hypocrisy in certain people?
Sana Gulraiz

Though as an afterthought, I would like to add that I gave up on Marxist ideals after a while of vociferously advocating it for myself-why? Political parties are microcosms of the "mob"-they made me claustrophobic.

Thankyou. Thankyou so much.
I am so glad someone finally says it like it is.
The first thing that interested me when this whole emergency hoo-haa happened, was not dramatic, secreaming crowds of "protestors", but the fact that almost immediately the media, both Pakistani, US and the British(I might absolve the French media of this)drew this terrible picture of how everything was falling apart in the country, how roads were blocked, army personnel was patrolling the roads, barricades were being setup everytwhere and that the hush on the roads was ominous, black and basically worse than post-war Iraq. So I called my sister in Islamabad, and asked her if all of this was true. She said no, just the media blowing it up. I called my father, asked him if it was true in any small sense of the word. He said no, all that was going on was that electronic media had been blocked and some of the protestors were beginning to get arrested(this was towards the start of the emergency). I was fascinated by how everyone on the Western side of the world, was being given this gruesome picture of Pakistan, mostly by Pakistanis who study in the USA and visit Pakistan often, or had studied there and were now in Pakistan. My facebook minifeed(pardon my not-so-humble indulgences in the world of consumer technology) spoke every other second of how the situation was "unbeearable, oppressive, denying all freedom," etc etc. Stock phrases for stock placards. There has been only one article till now, and you might like to read it: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/7090632.stm
Th is a BBC correspondent who was in Pakistan and he sketched a picture of how stupidly wrong it was for anyone in the West to consider Pakistan as "dangerous" as Iraq and how life was absolutely normal.
In fact, if one actually stops and considers for a moment, the print media hasn't been blocked. And if one stops further and thinks about some of the utterly atrocious manhandling of facts that many private channels were indulging in because it gave them higher entertainment value and hence more viewers and hence, like you argue, more advertisements, and hence more m oney, I think it wouldn't have been bad to start some kind of regulatory body anyway to atleast make the channels take some responsibility for the trash that they were spewing out. Because quite honestly, it's all good to harp about "free speech", but when "free speech" on a public channel is a plethora of provocative catch phrases projecting a certain kind of mindset onto people, we might as well pack our bags, renounce any kind of governmental control and join the USA's print media in their unbelievable debachery of facts and substance.

And though I think that the middle class with their confused morality, finally coming onto roads might not be a bad thing, I also think that it is equally transparent, that for most, it's "a la mode". All the cool, pro-democracy people are doing it. Either jump the bandwagon or be off with you. The problem with any kind of mass movement is that the mob doesn't allow any middle ground to take root. I oppose this emergency. I oppose Musharraf's joke of a constitution. I also oppose Benazir Bhutto. I don't need the permission of a mob to do that. I can also do that without holding up a red placard that screams that I am protesting to the world, or at least if I did that, I would want to do that for something more than just being a part of this royal, screaming mass of neo-democratists.(And I think I just made up this word).

Finally, I'm sure everyone found out that our "Saviour of democracy", the Chief Juustice, got awarded HArvard LAw School's "Medal of Freedom". Naturally, the first world did not do its due homework on the third world before dishing out golden glories in the support of their forever-blaring bandwagons for democracy. Harvard Law School, as it announces to the press that its giving the CJ this prestigious "Medal of Freedom", should also announce the names of who it has given this medal to in the past, and the criteria according to which it awards this medal. It might turn out, that Asma Jahingir(of the Asma Jillani Case against Yahya Khan) might turn out a better candidate than our current flag-waver of the "people's cause".


-Saleha Waqar(Saleha.Waqar@Dartmouth.edu)
http://politicsofpakistanandotherstories.blog spot.com/

#113 Kulharee,
I find your behavior to be quite disgusting. At a time when your people are facing annhilation in Pakistan, you should not be going around being yourself and providing ammunition to people who want to lock you up and throw away the key. As Rey Juan Carlos said to Oooogo Chavez ...

Banana republics are controlled, used and abused through dictatorships, that is why with every dictatorship comes a short term boom of dirty money and speculation and consumption- that is no growth, nor any sign of economic development....

cliftonbridge writes "and you are right about inflation but isnt inflation the sign of a growing economy?"

Inflation is no sign of a growing economy when the growth is based on consumption and consumption alone which is accounted for by population increase and the spending of the top 1%, when over 84% of the population is languishing at under $2 a day, and yes in the 1990s, even though we were still under the military gun, regardless of the sham of a free democratic government- none of them were "free", they operated under the military gun, absolute poverty was lower

Zeemax are you the economic pundit here telling impressionable minds that the macro economy was better in the 1990's ? was absolute poverty lower? and you are right about inflation but isnt inflation the sign of a growing economy?

Re Bubbas limp attempt at ethnic slurs - looks like you saved us the effort by dipping your own face in custard pie ...Shame on you! this is no time to go telling pathan jokes (And its not relevent to tell irish or chinese jokes either).