Piece of What? omar qureshi #84 you write ``-- i might be a bit biased perhaps since i am a journalist myself in an english newspaper in pakistan ``

you got that right. Now please sit quietly while I do my tragic act, viz.

Scene 1

Stage design: rocky coastal area, with flashes of lightening and occasional thunder. tahmed321 enters the stage.

tahmed (raising arms to the heavens): Oh Father of All that Is, that Was, that Will Be. Why do these chowk posters speak in generalities??

Lord (to accompaniment of a particularly loud thunder): Silence, thou ignorant knave! Dost thou not know better than to ask such obvious questions!

tahmed: But Lord! Here is the journalist qureshi, of great respectability from the reknowned newspaper Dawn. And he just said ``Indian journalists toe the government line. Pakistani journalists, at least of English newspapers (or which, ahem!, I am one), do not``. What manner of talk is this, Oh Lord?

Lord (in gentler tone): I see what you mean. Here is a secret: I gave up on all you damn South Asians a long time ago. You guys just cant talk straight!

Action To Support Displaced Community in Gujrat busharraf #139 Welcome to this really pathetic board! You are right on the mark in what you write about urstruly and tahafahim.

I also appreciate your kind references towards me, although living up to them is going to require some effort :-).

The April Fool Referendum SameerJB/nasah: I dont see why you are picking on Burki so much. After all, he didnt ask Romair to publish his resume, and in fact he is quite an unassuming individual in real life. You may not consider him the world`s greatest economist, but then economics is a ``dismal science`` for more than one reason: it is harder to predict the impact of economic policies than it is to predict the weather. Today, there is an article by Paul Samuelson in the Washington Post where he claims that the great John Keynes himself was responsible for the widespread inflation that lasted through much of the 20th century in the west until governments got wise and realized that the culprit was Keynes` concept of deficit spending as a means to fight unemployment. So, let us be thankful if once in a while we have a Pakistani minister who leaves his position no richer than when he joined. Even if you believe he isnt the world`s greatest economist as the Field Marshall claims.

Action To Support Displaced Community in Gujrat Prem #86 Great move! You, a hindu yourself, have cutandpaste anti-hindu garbage from Pat Robertson for the reading pleasure of tahafahim, 786786 and urstruly (although the last seems almost sane compared to the other two!).

This will confuse the half-brained hindu-muslim chowk warriors (who sincerely believe they are fighting some epic battle on chowk, when all they are doing is using their anonymity to hurl abuse), and delight the normal people on chowk.

The April Fool Referendum hobbes #226 so you think that Khaled Ahmed has betrayed ``the captive Kashmiri ``. Which captive is this one? The one who lives under a military government that he cannot vote out of power in Pakistan, and where one man advises the nation that HE has chosen to make 29 amendments to the constitution that are geared to consolidate his personal power? Or is this the captive the Kashmiri who lives in a country where the constitution has never been suspended, and prime ministers routinely come and go through a constitutional process?

Who is inside the cage and who is outside? Ask yourself as an honest man. I am a proud and patriotic Pakistani. And that means having the courage to face reality.

The April Fool Referendum hobbes #226 I think the economist put is quite well regarding Musharaff: ``Uneasy lies the head that wears the (stolen) crown.``

Action To Support Displaced Community in Gujrat tahfahim: you write ``[[Bismillah - Ar-Rahmaan - Ar-Raheem La Illaha Illala, Mohammed ur Rasulullah

When we take over your country we will eat you alive and rapeyou and you mothers and sisters, and then we will feed you to the dogs. You are allmaderch0ds, you fuchin bh0n$riwale gandu$.]]``

Banjaraa quotes the above and says:

``Only a cretin like you can place the contents of the first,second and the last line in the same message.Wonder who is squirming here: Allah,His Rasool or the Hindus.``

I agree with Banjaraa.

As for your use of Quranic words along with the filthy language in the of your post: even the most ignorant of mullahs who have no clue about the basic message of the Quran, would not think of using such filthy language when they use Quranic words. This indicates that you are another one of the specimen one sees once in a while on chowk (both among the hindus and among the muslims): the two taka kind that uses their anonymity on chowk to use language that they know would earn them a thrashing in real life.

The April Fool Referendum sac #204 you write ``You are absolutely wrong. The centers of excellence setup by the conqueror of our own people in Risalpur, Quetta and Kakul are known around the world for their brilliant achievements. I mean which other center of learning can boast of so many destroyers of constitutions, world renowned drunkards that put Irishmen to shame and rapists that can go up against the best of the Serbians amongst its alumni?

The lesser mortals are running McDonalds in Freemont using cheap South Indian labor. At least they get to enjoy jacuzzis in their bathrooms knowing little that they are actually bidets.``

I stand corrected. I erred in thinking only intermediate college flunkies went to Risalpur and Kakul. But of course you are right - No university on earth can claim to have produced so many President`s as Kakul. No business school has produced businessmen like Air Marshall Shamim or Admiral Mansour. And, as Romair reminds us, even the lesser lights end up enjoying their hamburgers and hiring South Indians to do their dirty work.

The April Fool Referendum shankar #183 From all indications, that is the way he seems headed. Let us hope it happens sooner rather than later, given the damage these dictators have done to the country in the past.

The April Fool Referendum Romair #181 ``So, yes I did pay my dues. And now it is time to enjoy the Big Macs``

That about sums up the line of thinking of the Pakistani military brass nowadays.

At least you are being candid in the second sentence above. On the first sentence, you are of course wrong. You people never paid any dues - you joined the army since you guys could not get into any professional college given your poor performance in high school and intermediate. So getting your butts frozen in Kashmir was your next best choice.

Action To Support Displaced Community in Gujrat ana #55 Further to my post #58, I see our lab specimen Harimau has jumped to join Urstruly in this howling...As you can see, this strange malady, like malaria, afflicts individuals on both sides of the border.

Here is my prediction: Harimau will now call me a mullah and claim that he is merely responding to insults. Urstruly will try to maintain a dignified silence, realizing that he had accidentally slipped into his ``werewolf mold``.

Now that I have made my prediction: Harimau will now try to come back with some other way of insulting me, just to prove my prediction wrong. Urstruly will probably still maintain a dignified silence.

So...sit back...relax...and observe the specimen (Harimau is a particularly weird one) in question.

Action To Support Displaced Community in Gujrat ana #55 Alas it is a sad sickness that possesses urstruly. It seems to be triggered by a combination of the phases of the moon and some kind of internal circadian rythm. I believe it is the same sickness that is said to change a man into a werewolf and start howling at the moon, only in urstruly the sickness exhibits itself in posts starting with some insulting words like ``Oye hinduo`` and proceeds with, as you say, some unintelligible stuff. This happens to urstruly about once every couple of months, as we long-time posters on chowk know from experience.

A suitable cure has yet to be found for this strange malady.

The April Fool Referendum shammi #140 There are dictatorships and there are dictatorships. China, under Mao-Tse Tung, spread literacy across the nation and got the incubus of the mandarin aristocracy off of the backs of the Chinese. When the socialist model of economic development proved to be a failure, the Chinese were able to switch to the capitalist mode, and to start realizing the potential created through widespread literacy, an energized populace, and large sums of money available to expatriate Chinese who ironically had been driven out in many cases by the communist takeover. Talk about Hegelian synthesis!

Can there be any question that the political structure of communism in China will ``wither away`` (which ironically is the phrase marxists used to routinely apply to capitalist states), and be replaced by a democratic one in due course? It is clearly only a question of time. China seems headed towards becoming one of the healthiest societies in the world in the latter half of this century.

And then, as I said, we have dictatorships. As provided courtesy of our generals, starting from Ayub. These have been disastrous economically, politically and socially, and have brought a proud nation to its knees.

What then is the difference: I believe that while all dictatorships are bad (including Mao`s in China, which caused millions of killings and the madness of the cultural revolution), some are disastrous whereas others leave something positive behind. For the latter to happen, we need the dictator to have some goal that goes beyond extending his stay in power until he is booted out either by the public or by and act of God.

The April Fool Referendum madani #160 You predict 80% landslide for MQM in national elections. Seems to me the MQM did not do well at the local elections in Karachi last year. Why would they do any better in the national elections? (I am asking for my own enlightenment, not being rhetorical).

The April Fool Referendum Romair #121 Interesting stats. For completeness, you may wish to provide stats for some of the missing years, as follows:

1958-1969: 1 zillion BDs, 1 General on top.

1969-1971: 2 rogue pols, 1 General on top.

1978-1988: 1 hanged pol, 1 General on top.

1999-Date: 2 exiled pols, 1 General on top.

The results we have had have been increasingly bad:

The 1958-69 adventure fizzled out following the killing of a dynamic economy, thanks to a vainglorious adventure in Kashmir (complete with inflitrators) in 1965. The public discontent then led to the humiliation of Ayub;

The 1969-71 party ended with the killing of the political entity in 1971;

The next adventure ended with the killing of the soul of Pakistan under Zia through abuse of Islam. And the letting lose of the mullah demon on the hapless people of Afghanistan.

You think the fourth time around will be different? Perhaps you need to consider the point I recently made on another board: the definition of madness is to repeat the same thing and expect different results.

The April Fool Referendum hobbyty #97 So by referring to ``intellectual dishonesty`` I see you think you I am hoist by my own petard. All you have done is provide me the opportunity to use this phrase (``hoist by ...``) AND TO turn around and stick you with the same petard. That is, how can YOU - who have stolen the nick of our beloved Professor Hobbes, providing him the Hobbesian choice of becoming Hobbes or remaining confused by YOU, his imposter - talk about honesty and dishonesty!! If the last sentence is hard to follow, read it again since I am learning from ana the fine art of speaking like Professor Hobbes.