Immigrants All Shankar#90


Sadna is not the only one to get through during pauses at Chowk; some of the others in that privileged group are Fuzair, Feroz Khan, RSiddiqui, temporal, Urstruly and Beena.


BTW, the pauses are getting longer and longer. I wonder if Chowk is facing any serious problems (takeover battles:-)); will anyone from the Staff care to share?

Chowk@Five DRUMZ #85,


whoa, what`s this? what does sadna have that i don`t? i even bought a dress for our impending betrothal.....what the hell am i gonna do with it


shankar bhia,


don`t worry about me, convents are better than men these days ;)

Abr ka Tukra Fuzair#6


````Socialism would work if we could only replicate the price system.``


``I almost fell out of my seat laughing the first time I heard this.``


Don`t laugh. The communists actually tried something like this with a mechanism called ``shadow pricing``. Never worked because, in the absense of real markets, it was simply chasing shadows!


I agree with the rest of your post!

Abr ka Tukra Afaqui sahib

Mera khyal hay keh thori dair ki liyay idhar udhar nikal laiN, patli gali say. YahaN to shaam-e-ghareebaN honay wali hay saalay surkhoN ki ;)

Let the bulbuls have their time of sorrow in peace.

Aa bubul mil kar kariaN Aah o ZariaN
too pukaray haiy gul main pukarooN hay dil.

Drawing Palestine Your Attention Please


The Polar DEW has just warned that


A nuclear rocket strike of


At least one thousand megatons


Has been launched by the enemy


Directly at our major cities.


This announcement will take


Two and a quarter minutes to make,


You therefore have a further


Eight and a quarter minutes


To comply with the shelter


Requirements published in the Civil


Defence Code - section Atomic Attack.


A specially shortened Mass


Will be broadcast at the end


Of this announcement -


Protestant and Jewish services


Will begin simultaneously -


Select your wavelength immediately


According to instructions


In the Defence Code. Do not


Take well-loved pets (including birds)


Into your shelter - they will consume


Fresh air. Leave the old and bed-


ridden, you can do nothing for them.


Remember to press the sealing


Switch when everyone is in


The shelter. Set the radiation


Aerial, turn on the geiger barometer.


Turn off your Television now.


Turn off your radio immediately


The Services end. At the same time


Secure explosion plugs in the ears


Of each member of your family. Take


Down your plasma flasks. Give your children


The pills marked one and two


In the C.D green container, then put


Them to bed. Do not break


The inside airlock seals until


The radiation All Clear shows


(Watch for the cuckoo in your


perspex panel), or your District


Touring Doctor rings your bell.


If before this, your air becomes


Exhousted or if any of your family


In critically injured, administer


The capsules marked `Valley Forge`


(Red Pocket in No. 1 Survival Kit)


For painless death. (Catholics


Will have been instructed by their priests


What to do in this eventuality).


This announcement is ending. Our President


Has already given orders for


Massive retaliation - it will be


Decisive. Some of us may die.


Remember, statistically


It is not likely to be you.


All flags are flying fully dressed


On Government buildings - the sun is shining.


Death is the least we have to fear.


We are all in the hands of God,


Whatever happens happens by His Will.


Now go quickly to your shelters.


-- Peter Porter

Another One Bites The Dust Sorry wrong thread.

Cry, the Beloved Country


An Indian summer


By Edward Luce


Published: July 1 2002 20:59 | Last Updated: July 1 2002 20:59








American diplomacy has averted the imminent threat of war between India and Pakistan. But senior members of the Bush administration know that it is only a matter of time before military tensions flare up again between the two nuclear-armed neighbours.


The prospects of renewed tension were underlined at the weekend with the appointment of L. K Advani as India`s deputy prime minister. Although Mr Advani was already seen as the successor to Atal Behari Vajpayee, the prime minister, his new title is a timely reminder of the hardline, anti-Pakistani elements that surround the ageing - and increasingly frail - prime minister.


``It might be three months, it might be nine months, but we all know that India and Pakistan will go back to the brink again,`` says a senior US official in Washington. ``Maybe next time they will go over the brink.``


Until now, the US has consistently respected India`s adamant refusal of third-party mediation on its core dispute with Pakistan over the divided state of Kashmir. But having sweated through the latest and most intense bout of nuclear brinksmanship, the US and its allies are quietly revising their long-held position.


http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1025534365666&p=1012571727282

A Convert’s Complaint: Analyzing Naipaul’s Views on Islam Romair #48 You are right in saying that there are many talented people in Pakistan who are contributing positively to the country. You are wrong in saying that Prof. Hoodbhoy is not one of them since he is ``just`` a college professor. He is contributing significantly by speaking out on behalf of common sense in Pakistan.

A Convert’s Complaint: Analyzing Naipaul’s Views on Islam kafir khan #41 you write ``He (meaning self) is getting uglier and uglier and uglier and uglier.`` My posts mirror what the poster wrote. You write ugly stuff in your posts, you see ugly stuff reflected in my response. You use chowk as a forum to ridicule or defame any community, you deserve to be ridiculed as an individual. On the other hand, if you write thoughtful and/or well-meaning posts, you see good stuff reflected in my response.

As for insults and/or praise directed towards me personally, rest assured that these mean nothing to me UNLESS I consider these to be a reason to correct something I wrote earlier. Your post provides me with angry abuse, but I do not see anything in it to change what I wrote. It makes no more sense than your Brahman-bashing posts that I took you to task on and which you found so annoying.

A Convert’s Complaint: Analyzing Naipaul’s Views on Islam harimau #234 I dont discuss things with a hindutva rat. I am content to call him a rat, and he can call me swine in return. No problem.

Lessons From the Pearl Murder Shankar #55: The cast system is alive and well in Pakistan. But in the form of a social order, and not in the form of a legally or religiously defined system.

Even the biggest critics of Islam will acknowledge its egalitarian side. Its rules were revolutionary not only for the 7th century, but for the 19th century, as well. Even its rulings on slavery (which in their direct interpretation seem odd now), for its time, were revolutionary. All humans, regardless of race, color, creed etc. are equal in the eyes of God, according to Islam. This concept wasn`t accepted by even the educated West till thirty years ago (civil rights movement); nearly 1400 years after Islam stated them.

Based on that, there is no strict individual based caste-system in Pakistan. There is some that has been inherited from our Indian history, due to which, families do not marry in certain other families. But a person can climb out of that, through financial success (Nawaz Sharif`s father was a laborer in a factory, and was from a lower family; now his kids can marry into any family they want).

However, at a social level, there is a caste sytem in rural Pakistan that, in my opinion, is worse than any caste system that may exist in India. One has to live in those areas to understand it.

The recent gang-rape was carried out in the Muzzafargarh area,

``Now, in our country, good citizens of Pakistan, presumably good Muslims, find pride and amusement in forcefully parading their women naked through jam-packed streets. Meerwalla, near Muzaffargarh (a town which brings to mind Zulfikar Ali Bhutto`s `Loin of the Punjab`, Mustafa Khar, and his dozen wives and Hookah-Master Nasrullah Khan, Benazir Bhutto`s expert on Kashmir affairs) is a sleepy little village in the wilderness with no schools, only mosques. The landholdings of the absentee landlords are large and poverty and misery rife.`` (Cowasjee, Dawn)

As Cowasjee pointed out, Muzzafargarh is the playing fields of our beloved democrats Nawabzada Nasrullah and Khar. Nasrullah, with his Morrocon hat, and hookah-carrying aide, is the head of Pakistan`s current Return to Democray movement. Khar was appointed by Z. Bhutto as the, ``democratically elected`` head of the Punjab province. Khar is the local feudal. He has married seven or eight (or maybe nine) times. His latest wife is in her twenties. Khar`s son threw acid on a girl. All signs of the Pakistani feudal mentality.

The peasants that live on these lands are victims of the biggest caste system in South Asia. Unlike in India, where the Dalits, as a whole, do have political power, these peasants have nothing. There is no way they can vote against their local feudal. One cannot imagine a UP type election result, with peasants winning, occuring in Bhutto`s Larkana or Khar`s Muzaffargarh, etc. These feudals form 62% of the National Assembly, and are at the head of any movement for restoring, ``Democracy.`` They can thus hide their actions under the fake umbrella of elections (which they always win).

The people who carried out these rapes were not even the chief feudals. Just imagine what the chief feudals can, and do, get away with. Added to this is the fact that the chief feudals sit in the, ``democratic`` National Assembly, through their support of Pakistan`s two powerful political parties, PPP and PML.

At the top of this tribal/feudal pyramid sit the Sindhi feudals. And at the top of the Sindhi feduals, sit the Bhuttos.

Interestingly, the kids of these feudals live in upper-class urban areas. They are Ivy league educated, write poetry, participate in NGOs, and are very sophisticated (a la Benazir). But these feudal`s sons and daugthers have built their lives on the hard work of five year old little girls working in the feudal`s heridatory fields. The feudals dispense justice in their own lands, according to their whims and wishes. And we have all now seen the results.

My family comes from a small village in Kashmir. That village has not produced a single prominent politician, national leader, powerful person etc. It has not produced a Bhutto, a Khar, nor a Leghari or Makhdoom. Yet, what to talk of boys, it has now started to produce a string of girls who are college graduates, are in the civil services, going abroad to study, doctors, etc. Infact, it has made so much progress that girls don`t even have to go to the city to get an education. They have enough schools in the local area, and only go to cities for college.

Why? Because there is no single feudal dominating the village or surrounding area. No one controls the poor villagers livelihood. Had there been a Bhutto or a Khar from this village, the girls would still be uneducated, picking fruits in the feudal`s fields.

And I cannot in my wildest imagination, ever think of anyone abducting a village girl there, much less raping one. My village is now decades ahead of all the areas from which all the powerful feudal politicians of Pakistan emerge.

This is exactly why I do not support any of the, ``democratic`` forces that come from feudal Pakistan. This gang rape is a good example of the kind of mentality the powerful in these feudal/tribal areas possess. And getting a Ph.D. from MIT will not change their thinking. This is also why I cannot understand how some educated Pakistanis can support these feudal dominated political leaderships.

What kind of Pakistan will it be if the feudal Bhutto is running the country, and the feudal Khar is running Punjab? Bhuttos and Khars win elections, in their feudal lands, anytime of the day, and twice at night. But does it make any difference if they are, ``democratically`` elected, through free and fair elections? What kind of voting freedom can someone in feudal lands have, when they can just be picked up and gang-raped by, not even the chief feudal, but a stupid panchayat. How can someone dare vote against the feudal, if he/she knows there daughter can be abducted?

Had their been a feudal govt. in Pakistan, democractically elected or not, and one of the feudal kids had raped the girl, I can make a bet, no action would have been taken by the govt.

Next time anyone supports a feudal-led democracy (with the moronic Benazir and Zardari as its head), they should keep in mind what goes on in the feudal lands of the MNAs. This recent case just happened to get reported. Rest assured, every poetry writing feudal daughter and son living in Lahore, discussing, ``women`s rights,`` is living their lives off the uneducated peasant girls getting abducted in daddy`s fiefdoms.

I don`t care how Musharraf does it, and what unorthodox dictatorial measures he takes, including the current Constituional amendments (some of which are completely undemocratic), as long as he completely sidelines the feudals in Pakistan. Whatever one may say about the military, and about urban Pakistan, I cannot imagine this kind of a gang-rape ever being authorized in an Army base, or in an urban slum.

Tattoo diary: Queens, New York Drumz #153 While ganja (a concentrated form of marijuana, as I understand) may well lie beyond the field of right and wrong as you and brother Rumi say, it certainly lies in the middle of the field of bad health. Read, in the name of thy Lord, the following URL and mend thine evil ways, O reckless youth!!

http://www.health.org/reality/

You are better off examining female anatomy with the help of the Playboy Textbook as Zafar suggests. Wont land you in an ER unless you get carried away with your fantasies and sexually assault the vacuum cleaner.

Tattoo diary: Queens, New York Drumz #141 ``Acid victims, rape victims and the like have a right to be upset and sensitive, but not someone who`s caught feelings on an internet message board.``

Good advice.

you continue ``And yes ganja also teaches people how to remain calm and to focus on the present (not carry grudges) and to not center themselves around the opinions of others...``

Really, really bad advice. Same results can be achieved by serenely reflection upon things (if you wish, you can adopt a Buddha pose while serenely reflecting), thus becoming a truly liberated man - free of the need for ganja to be calm and grudge-free and able to tell right from wrong.

Tattoo diary: Queens, New York MT #116 you ask ``Would any chowkie from Pakistan care to explain caste in Pakistan ?``

There are two castes in Pakistan. These are (a) the MT caste and (b) the non-MT (aka the ``FULL``) caste.

The MT caste asks MT questions, i.e. questions that are driven not be a sincere interest in learning but by a sincere interest in putting down other nationalities, communities etc, and passes MT comments. The Full Caste does not ask MT questions or engage in any other such MT rhetoric.

Hope this helps.

Tattoo diary: Queens, New York ylh #113 you write ``... I`d rather save Pakistani Women from getting gang raped than worry about Indian Muslims...``

Well said. I am glad there are people in Pakistan who are speaking out in newspapers and other places against the appalling jirga-sanctioned gang rape (where some of the ``judges`` themselves then proceeded to administer the punishment) and the terrible stone-killing of this poor man because some damned imam ordered it.

These terrible deeds are a result of the evil that has been created in Pakistan through shameless abuse of the name of Islam by Zia who introduced the hadood and blasphemy laws. These evil laws were imposed on Pakistan by a military dictator, and these should be revoked by a military dictator as well. If this is not done, future generations of Pakistanis will look upon these times as the ``dark ages`` in Pakistan, when evil men ruled and raped the country, literally and figuratively.

Sex & The Country tahmad #7: Well said.

It is interesting, that within the South Asian demographic context, I believe, far more South Asians migrate into Pakistan, then Pakistanis migrating into other South Asian countries.