Fields Of Joy Where from faisalabad? and its quite amazing to see someone from this city writing in such a beautiful manner and specially about NWFP...

Mohajirs Are People Too I have been to Karachi only twice, but both times I wished I have a chance to live in this city...the people have a very professional approach towards the task at hand...Karachi is truly the most advanced city in Pakistan...and the economic, intellectual & social contributions of the people of this city to Pakistan are unmatchable with those of any other city of the country...may this city flourish more and more and the people living in this city prosper by the grace of God...

Hijacking of Islam well, the most of the terrorist centres (Pakistani Madrassas, Afghanistan etc) have received cash & arms during 80s from US through intermediary intelligence agencies of the Muslim countries in order to defeat Soviet power. so this whole ``terror`` of today is an outcome of policies of the US & West during cold war.
and sadly the victims are also the ordinary people of Muslim countries

The Barbarians Within The Gates! well, people of Pakistan are religious and this can be the case with most of the countries of the world, populations do have some religion. so the problem is all the corruption, illiteracy wholly known as lack of good governance.
religion is merely a tool used by the military & civillian politicians to rule the country.

Sui Incident: A PR Disaster ````As a bare minimum Mr. Musharraf should have come on the national TV in his uniform and said something like: “Being father of a daughter myself, I can understand, very well, the unbearable agony the victim and his family must be going through. At the moment, I am not in position to have an opinion about the culpability of my officer. I can neither guarantee the innocence of the accused nor am I aware of the grade of his involvement. The crime is however so serious that there is absolutely no room for any leniency. We have taken the person in question in custody. He will remain there until and unless we can either prove him guilty or absolve him of any wrongdoing beyond every reasonable doubt. We will leave no stone unturned to deliver justice – no matter who the perpetrators are. Trust me - I will not let you down. ”

No, no, nothing of the sort, either from the Army House or the Presidency. Gentleman residing over there is perhaps too busy making and breaking political alliances. ‘Unity of command’ and uniform seemingly failed to incite ‘patriotism’ or stimulate ‘conscience’ when it needs. Actually, what really perturbs me is my deep-held belief that Mr. Musharraf as an individual is a benevolent and compassionate guy. He did take proper and personal notice of the gory incident in Meerwala. This time around, his indifference, his silence is perplexing. ````

why musharaf cant come in front of media and say all above things.....
the reason is he himself has taken adopted an illegal way to take hold of the governement ...
general saab talks about enlightened, democaratic and moderate pakistan.. and women of the nation are raped and and the accused are not even taken into police custody...
Mr. President please set an example....

Rolling Stones well
the whole change in civilizations and culture comes with this movement of people from one country to another.
and history proves that immigration a natural phenomenun and it has most of the time given benfits to humankind.
the feelings have been expressed in a nice manner

Goodbye Hollywood, Hello Haalivud? well guys,
this field does have potential
I know a couple of guys who were Computer Science graduates and started working animations & graphics field 3 yrs back. these people are now working for ad agencies & production studios. the reason behind there switch to this field was that they had personal aptitude for designing. According their experience, the job market requires new and professionaly trained people.
So the educational institutions must focus to train students specifically for this field.

Children of Dictatorship well Afiya, u are very right. the basic necessaties must be given to every citizen of the country. the consumerism has increased so is the inflation. the real estate industry is artifially hyped and as a result the rich r getting richer and poor r getting poorer day by day. the middle class is squeezed in between.
just to show how things are going on, i give an example from the city of Faisalabad. This city is a centre for textile industry of Pakistan and there are masses of illiterate men from adjoining areas who work here in the textile mills. these people are now exposed to cable networks which are beaming the ``mujras`` and the masala stuff. the impact is that there is increase in prostitution and sexual abuse ..
there must be some check on the social trends which can only be achieved when literacy is increased in the country. Illiteracy is the BASIC problem of our country and its my point of view that if masses are educated then 50% of problems will die out automatically.

SoulMate my friend u r very true. the universal powers are cruel enough that who you think to be perfect for you does not end up with you.
regards to all
Bilal

Shaukat Aziz’s Speech: Hypocrisy at its Best Infact best thing about this article is its English and use of Latin. the author has highlighted problems and the causes for these problems are wrongly highlighted. the blasphemy law is the core reason behind rampant coruption in the society. Now we cannot expect a prime minister to come forward like Mao and announce some big projects and say that this is going to change the whole socio-economic scenario of a country, even then it took nearly 50 years to achieve the growth experienced by China now. the Pakistani leadership (military or other) needs to follow an indepedent foriegn policy w/out any dictat from US and then there may be some progress.

My Family Reunion well except for the change in the name of city from Lyalpur to Faisalabad all other localities are still same like Gurunankpura, Dhobi Ghat, Gobind Pura and these are now heart of the city of Faisalabad where you still enjoy the morning Nashtas of Nan Chanay, Halwa Puri etc.. Many of the pre-partition era houses still stand but now there have been some replacement by new homes and plazad as this place is now commercialised.
Well it was a nice narrative abt the history of Lyalpur(Faisalabad) and its inhabitanats in 47.

The Unbeatable Weapon well,
the basic point is why on earth America would occupy Iraq (an independent country).
and in a country of 25 million if there are until now 70,000 terrorists dead then i guess the whole population is terrorist. The co-lateral damage is very high in Iraq and things would go to worse side than becoming any better day by day.
Rgds to all.

The 786 Cybercafé on Tariq Road (continued) hey discoverer, give me your e-mail address and i`ll give you the contact of ppl from FAST-Lahore who have worked on computer games.
Regards - Bilal

Maniza Naqvi: Writing for a Cause From where can anybody buy these novels by Maniza Naqvi???

SOFTEC 2004 Dear Amir Bilal,
The point behind your article was to highlight that the dicisions of judges were extremely biased. Well I would like to point a few facts here, if you just look at the history of SOFTEC held in last five years, you will clearly see that students from UET-Lahore, SSUET-Karachi, Lums, etc have also been winning top prizes at softec. I have personally observed that one project was rejected in first round at Softec but it won 3rd prize at NUST; this project was made by FAST-Lahore students. So to imply that the decisions of SOFTEC are biased is totally a fallacy. As well as research is concerned, though not being a theeta of FAST-Lahore, I can proudly claim that FAST-Lahore is the best research centre in CS (language processing & multi-media).
My last words are that atleast SOFTEC gives you and other brilliant students like you to present their work/research in front of government & industry people. Best of luck in next SOFTECs & keep on working hard, you will win someday Inshalla.
Regards - Bilal Altaf

Jehad and The Curriculum This article is timely & based on a good research. Now there are many people inside the country who are aware of the fact that history which is written in Pakistani curiculum is somewhat mis-represented. But this is the problem with many of the countries in the world. Most of the governments try to show history with color of their respective religion, culture or political ideology.