Friday, January 23, 2009

Links For Thursday

Stuff to help you procrastinate:

Hillay Clinton, drawing up on a lifetime of experience of dealing with sleazy men who get off on power, calls Asif Zardari for a chit-chat.

Did the Lahore High Court actually say murder is justified if it's done "to save a woman's honour"?

Great story in the Guardian on the Kaka saga. This is the first paragraph:
From start to finish, the whole process took 34 days. It was 15 December when Manchester City's executive chairman, Garry Cook, first made contact with Milan. "I'll come out with this straight away," he said over the phone to Adriano Galliani, the club's vice-president. "We want your best player and I'm ringing up to see how much you want for him."

Remember how I said the PPP and the PML-Q would form an alliance after the elections last year? What I should have said was: the PPP and the PML-Q will form an alliance in twelve months' time.

I think this statement from Shoaib Malik effectively ends Shoaib Akhtar's international career. Or is that just wishful thinking from me?

I'm sure this clarificatory statement from the British foreign office will please the Indian government.

Speaking of India, a blog post on Freakonomics on why rickshaw drivers behave differently in Mumbai than they do in Delhi.

Good news for Karachiites: a parking plaza is going up in Saddar in a month's time to relieve traffic congestion. Why can't every Pakistani politician be like Mustafa Kamal? Hard-working, industrious, concerned with problems on the ground, willing to do whatever it takes to make his citizens' lives easier. Oh well. At least we have one.

Finally, Chris Matthews apparently embarrassed himself on TV on Inauguration Day. I wouldn't know because I don't really watch news on TV (except for Jon Stewart), but I'll take Slate's word for it.

6 comments:

Atiya Herekar said...

Boy, did the LHC actually say that murder is not a crime? Are you positive because that is HUGE? Fukinaye....someone needs to jump on that and bring it into the media...

Anonymous said...

actually, ahem, i *cough* like *cough* hillary clinton - aswell as zardari, the sound of that alliance sounds positive. plus the clintons and bhutto/zardaris go a long way back. :)

i'm chilled to the bone everytime i hear people, whoever they may be, justify killing women over bullshit things like 'honour'.

Anonymous said...

Oh - I witnessed another Matthews mess up. Chris Matthews was commenting on Hillary Clinton at the National Prayer service talking to a guy in a turban (obviously a Sikh fellow) and commented, "And there's Hillary, look shes actually talking to a Muslim man...or a Hindu man..or.." and then trailed off. I was at work and literally yelled at the screen, "Are you *&%( kidding me?!"

AKS said...

Ahsan, I think we do have another hardworking and industrious politician in Pakistan, his name: Shahbaz Shariff. While his brother may be an Islamist ideologue with grand illusions of absolute power, Shahbaz seems more interested in getting his hands dirty and doing some real work in Punjab.

I may be wrong as I don't know Punjab that well but from what I've seen and what I've heard, he's done a lot of good there. I'm also not convinced that he shares his brothers Islamist tendencies to the same extent.

And while I conceded that its much easier to do things when you are CM of the richest most powerful province, it still takes some doing. A case in point here is the abysmal record of various PPP CMs PMs in Sindh. Upper Sindh in particular should be thriving but it isn't, none of the agriculture revenue it generates is plowed back.

Ahsan said...

Chup:

I love that he didn't get it right on the second attempt either.

AKS:

Fair point. For some reason, Shahbaz Sharif doesn't scare me as much as his nutty brother. Perhaps resident PML-N expert Asad can enlighten us?

Majaz said...

Didn't get to read all the links but the Muhammad Hanif article was brilliant. Pretty much sums up all the craziness that has been religion in South East Asia in the past ten years.