Poll Post
You can comment on the poll here, if you so desire.
Labels:
Wednesday Poll
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
A Conversation With Political Economist/Columnist Mosharraf Zaidi (Part II)
This is the second installment of my two-part conversation with The News columnist Mosharraf Zaidi. Part I, which you can read here, covered education in Pakistan, clientelism, Barack Obama, and Asif Zardari. Part II covers the IMF bailout, Pakistan's political economy, the middle class, and foreign policy.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Ahsan: Let's move from politics to political economy. I read your columns regularly during the run-up to the IMF bailout. You often repeated a variant of this phrase: Pakistan's problem is simply that it spends more than it saves. Can you expound on that?
Mosharraf: Sure. Just to clarify, what I was saying, or should have been saying is that Pakistan spends more money than it has.
I am trying to appeal to your common sense, rather than the idea that economics is a complex black hole that is only comprehensible to supercomputers and bankers that wear better suits than you and know long words that don't mean anything.
So the first thing we do is identify the problem. The problem at that time was (and soon once again, maybe even this year will be) that Pakistan doesn't have any money. Now the thing that makes the need for money urgent is that Pakistan owes "people" (lenders) money. If it doesn't pay back that money according to the agreed schedule, the whole system takes a nosedive, because at that instant, the theory is that nobody would give Pakistan any money in the future. It would have proven to be a bad place to give a loan--having "defaulted" on its obligations.
That's the problem. But the problem is defined on the terms of someone who thinks that the infinite supply of loans to Pakistan is important. Who would think such a thing?
Someone who needs that money. Who needs the money? Let's see.
The biggest chunk of money in the Pakistani budget is for paying back loans, ironically. So of course Pakistan's creditors, those banks, countries and organizations to whom Pakistan already owes money. They need the money to keep flowing in, so it can keep flowing out.
The second biggest chunk of money in the Pakistani budget is for the military. So of course, the military needs the money to keep flowing in.
The third biggest chunk of money in the Pakistani budget, cumulatively, is the cost of running government--salaries, pensions, electricity--the works. So the government and its employees all want the money to keep flowing in.
(Some will argue that without this money, how will the government provide services. Uh, what services?)
Don't forget subsidies like the ones for PIA--which not only makes it a nightmare to travel anywhere, but also charges your children and their children money, so that political parties can firm up votes.
We digress. So essentially, Pakistan's taxpayers are perpetually in debt as a collective, because international bankers need bonuses, generals need tanks, and bureaucrats need a chair to sit on, from where they can make your life miserable.
This is spending more money than you have, and doing it without any real purpose--in a normative sense. Of course Pakistan should default. This is not ideology. Its common sense.
Ahsan: Ok.
How do you feel about Musharraf's economic policies in retrospect? There was significant growth, the middle class boomed, refrigerators and cars were bought, and then the floor came crashing down. First, the global price of oil skyrocketed. Second, the wheels came off politically and militarily, leading to a crisis of confidence. And third, water and energy shortages meant businesses simply couldn't do what they had to.
All that aside, people like Shahid Javed Burki are on record as saying Musharraf's economic policies were, at best, band-aids - and that they were shortsighted and reliant on contingent factors like foreign investment. Do you agree with that assessment?
Mosharraf: I have to admit that I was bullish on the idea that Aziz and Co. were capable of delivering sustained growth in Pakistan--but I was always very worried about the very thin and superficial basis for that growth. Essentially it came from four places. The deregulation of the telecom sector, the innovative enterprise of Pakistan-returns post 9/11, the real estate boom, and the explosive growth in the banking sector. The growth was financed by two external factors: remittances from Pakistanis abroad, and inflows from the US. The US impact is overstated and the remittance impact is understated. Its about 3 to 1 (3 remittance dollars for every one US assistance dollar).
But I think there's a problem of perception in Pakistan that the economic well being of the country is a government domain. It is not. Never can be. The Pakistani private sector is one of the great untold stories of laziness, incompetence, greed and elite capture of state resources. It shoudl be no surprise that the government is always there for the rich--not just generals and fuedal lords and bureaucrats, but also for so-called capitalists. And never there for the foundation of growth, the middle class.
All said and done however, the Musharraf era was transformational in the sense that it creates the momentum for a middle class narrative. This was an unintended consequence of the economic policies pursued during the first decade of this century. The lawyers movement was the first squeak. The real war in Pakistan now is the war on the middle class. If the elite wins it, Pakistan has no hope. But this is not a war that will be lost or won in weeks or months. And the elite hasn't even begun to invest in the weapons that will decide this war. Blogs, social networks and knowledge.
Ahsan: What is the "war on the middle class"? I am completely unfamiliar with this war. To me, there is no middle class in Pakistan - a politically salient one anyway. The relevant political actors are:
1. The military
2. The feudals
3. The faux capitalists/industrialists
4. The bureaucracy
5. The lawyers (since March 2007)
None of those are even remotely middle-class in any common-sense understanding of the term (although the bureaucracy comes close I guess). As for the "biggest war in Pakistan", I would say the following qualify:
1. The state vs. the Taliban
2. The government vs. anti-Americanism/talk shows on TV/the new nationalist right/the old religious right
3. Centralists/Punjab vs. federalists/smaller provinces
4. The fourteen liberals left in the country vs. everybody else (not exactly a fair fight, but neither was the first Gulf War, and we still call that a war, so there).
None of those are defined by class-based cleavages. So I ask again: what is this "war on the middle class" of which you speak?
Mosharraf: I use the term in the most unscientific way possible. And the middle-class is not entirely politically impotent, though I couldnt' agree more that it has a long, long way to go. I should also point out that the right/left construct only exists in books anymore. I mean, really. Have you seen the right? They talk like Che is in the back changing, and that Karl was one of the disciples. The right isn't what it used to be, and neither is the left. Anyway, that's a whole other discussion.
Within Pakistan, I'd say you are middle class if you are not elite, and not poor. Poor is less than 5 dollars a day. Elite is a phone call away from the rule of law. Everything in between is middle class. So the lawyers are middle class, the competent employees at PIA, middle class, the entrepreneurs post Amreeka return, middle class. Incompetent PIA employees who are there because of their politics are elite, or elite-constituency. I keep using PIA because it is such an accessible example.
Issues in Pakistan that are being discussed on blogs like All Things Pakistan, Grand Trunk Road and Five Rupees today are going to occupy the heart of public policy within the next decade. And none of the protagonists of these blogs (or thier readers) qualify as elite, or as poor. I know it won't fly in PolSci 101, but that's cool. No one's looking. There is a small, and increasingly important middle class in Pakistan. And the elite don't like them. They want them to disappear. Immigrate to Australia or Canada in the best case scenario, and actually physically disappear in the worst. Hence the war on the middle class.
Ahsan: We'll simply have to agree to disagree on these definitional issues then. To me, if you have a car and a house in a country where a third of the population (at least) doesn't have clean drinking water and half can't read, you're elite. That means the authors and commenters on Five Rupees and Grand Trunk Road are elite. Can't say anything about All Things Pakistan, because I don't read it.
To be self-referential for a second, I also have to take issue with your statement about the stuff being discussed here forming public policy debates for the next decade. One thing that is really disheartening for me personally is how far out of the mainstream I exist. The fact that I believe in secularism, and rapprochement with India, and political and diplomatic disengagement with the Arab-Israeli dispute, and a woman's right to marry whomever she chooses without threat of violence or even social shunning, means I'm engaging in conversations that public policy simply isn't concerned with. It's not even on their radar. It's a whole different world. The older I get, the more this is rammed into my head.
Have you read Lipstick Jihad? It's actually pretty decent, despite my low expectations going in. Its subtitle is "A Memoir of Growing up Iranian in America and American in Iran". It really captured a lot of my thoughts on the quasi-immigrant experience. I am forever made to feel like an outsider in Pakistan by the Imran Khans and Ayaz Amirs and Talat Hussains and the Urdu op-edders and the America-bashers. My ideas find acceptance nowhere other than my close friends; even much of family thinks of me as some fringe lunatic. And you really should read one or two of the extreme comments we've gotten on this blog.
All this is to say that (a) who you count as middle-class count as elite for me, and (b) that particular section of the elite is about as politically and socially irrelevant to Pakistan's future as Cartman.
Mosharraf: Happy to disagree on the definition, after I point this out. If you're in your car, headed toward your house, and the cops stop you, and decide to search you, harass you and accuse you of things that you haven't done, you're elite if you can shout them down, or call their boss, or their bosses boss. But if you end up at the thaana, with nothing but dad, chaaha and maamoo looking out for you--you are not elite, even by the technical definition. The majority of car owners in Pakistan are helpless sheep. They have no access to justice, if justice decides to miscarriage on them. None. That's not elite. That's developing country middle class. Hope no one is waiting for Henry Ford in the developing world--that paradigm is done and dusted. So too is the chronological fiddelity of that model. The Pakistani middle class will not follow a pre-defined set of parameters as it comes into its own.
On the "mainstream", one thing that I think a lot of privileged middle class young people don't realize is how deep rooted the changes that have taken place in Pakistan really are. I won't go into a list, but some of the fundamental assumptions about Pakistan are actually begging to be corrected. Pakistan is now an urban country, not rural. If there's a half-decent census (not possible in the current atmosphere) you'll see the urban share of the population has gone past 40%. Then consider that the current definitions don't really account for extended metropolises and peri-urban areas. Then consider that if you can get cable, and have a highway nearby (that's virtually all of the Punjab save three to five districts, out of 35) then how "rural" really are you? Point. The mainstream in Pakistan is not what it used to be. Syeda Abida Hussein said horrible things about middle class Pakistanis in an interview with the Wall Street Journal before the election. One generation ago, that was not news. Now it is. She's over as a political entity. Her ilk is near extinction as well. Two more election cycles and all this will be more obvious than it is right now. It might not even take a full ten years.
The things you beleive in are not a unique set of ideas, much as they might seem to be from reading the newspaper and watching television. They are more mainstream than the regressive politics that dominates the national landscape. In part this is because the middle class has yet to "land" it is still circling the airport tentatively. The landing is inevitable because it will run out of fuel--or to translate the metaphor, the middle class will engage politically because it has to, not because of a high minded nobility of ideals. Its engagement alone will transform the mainstream into a place where having radical ideas on either end of the spectrum is recognized as the lifeblood of a dynamic soicety.
If I sound overly optimistic, it is because I am. The lawyers movement was not about the handful of elite-captured politicians who can read poetry. It was about the political activation of a generation. Remember, since the PPP began, and for some, since the PNA, there's been no new political blood in Pakistan. This movement has injected freshness. It won't be pretty, or always rational, or liberal. But it will create the space for those things.
Ahsan: I don't think the lawyers movement was the political activation of a generation. I think it was the social mobilization of a certain professional class around parochial interests which ended up being (mis)appropriated by political opportunists who seized upon an opportunity to use a crisis as a focal point for obviating the difficulties of collective action.
Long marches, shong marches. When Nawaz Sharif starts talking about the independence of the judiciary, and Imran Khan starts talking about freedom and accountability, I know I should probably just go to bed.
Mosharraf: I think if you're expecting teenage students and twenty something lawyers to launch into spectacular careers in politics, then you're expecting too much, too soon. If we aren't prepared for an intergenerational transformation, then we'll keep getting jacked up for the next dynastic fircracker in the geneological arsenal. Gracias, but no gracias.
The lawyers movement represents the activation of a new generation of politicians, if for no other reason, that its the first big movement the country's experienced since the late 1970s. Tommorrow's second tier political leadership is going to have earned its first stripes during this movement. Where I think I am willing to go, in terms of investing hope, is that first-tier leadership as we know it is in its final stages. That the students that marched with the lawyers will not only occupy tommorrow's second-tier leadership, but also the top. So I am saying dynastic politics as we know it will come to an end. When? Not for another 10 to 15 years. But its coming.
Now that doesn't mean that these folks can solve the most urgent problems Pakistan is facing. Not with ambient levels of talent they have at thier disposal. But they can learn. I'll trust a slightly dodgy lawyer over the available options in this country, any day of the week. The lawyer comes from the same place that most people who can read in this country do. Insecurity, unequal access and some semblance of linear reasonability.
Bottom line? Those that have participated in the movement are capable of linear algorithmic processing of data. They can be convinced by reason to do what is reasonable. The current elite does not share those qualities, because it maintains elite status by sustaining irrational allocations of resources and by perpetuating its irrational public discourse.
And let's not forget that the irrational public discourse is too easily projected on only the right-wing. The right wing hasn't had to come up with a new idea for three dacades, at least, because all its work is done for it by so-called seculars and progressives. Remember who the Papa Bhutto was eh? The leading pan-Islamist, nuclear prolierator supreme and the Ahmadi/Qadiani Banner-in-Cheif. Secular? Hey, if you want a cigar and a drink in Pakistan today, you don't need to go to the people's party, you can find it at any party. This isn't 1989.
Of course, I think you're right not to invest too much hope in the other parties. It isn't ideology that does them however, its incompetence. They all have the same ideology. I will say that Khan scares me the most. Fifteen years into politics and he still can't find his way around the bureacracy, the local governments, the nuts and bolts of the thaana and the kutchehri! That's an astoundingly slow learning curve. But hand to him this... he has been able to help define the shape of public discourse--for whatever its worth--from a very miniscule political platform. Ehtesab, the 2 rupee roti, the citizenship/voluntary activity bit. That's all Khan, all day.
Ahsan: I take your point that so-called seculars and progressives do the right's work for them. I've been saying for a few weeks now that there are no true liberals left in Pakistan. The old left has been co-opted by the anti-American/anti-West movement. The avowedly secular parties are more ethno-regional centric in their worldview, and choose not to define themselves on the secular/non secular axis (MQM, ANP). The Army we already know about. And mainstream politicians just find it easier to get their point across if they cloak it in the language of religion and civilizational differences. Being a liberal today in Pakistan is a very lonely occupation.
Let's move on though, and talk a little bit about foreign policy or international affairs. The Obama plan seems to be to push India to make concessions on Kashmir either as a reward for, or a nudge to, Pakistan "doing more" on its western border. As sound as this strategy is, I have my doubts about its efficacy. Indian statesmen weren't born yesterday, and they're not going to let Pakistan essentially get rewarded for supporting militancy for twenty years.
Your thoughts?
Mosharraf: India hasn't had a statesman in the mainstream since Vajpayee. And his statesmanship was throttled by the mullahs in his party. I think we will all miss Vajpayee's relatively moderate brand of Hindutva once we all have to chew on Modi for a the next several years. He's the future of the BJP and he's no statesman. And anyone who thinks Rahul Ghandi is a future stateman should stick to NASCAR. He's a future Prime Minister, sure. But even Nehruvian genius has has its genetic limits.
I think there's too much being read into the newfound congizance of Kashmir as an issue. The strategy is to bleed the pakmil of its appetite for destruction by denying legitimacy to its claims of victimhood--not to reward Pakistan. The real question isn't whether India will play ball. Deep down, India will only be too happy to agree on the LOC as an international border (the US is not going to push it any farther). The real question is whether Pakistan has had enough? My guess is not. The ideological culture of the country and the military won't allow a raindance dance at the LOC as it exists. Of course, luckily for them, the Indian establishment has the same genes. They'll be the ones that get tagged for not wanting any movement. Its a lose-lose for the people. Win-win for the establishments.
Ahsan: I see today that Pakistan has admitted to some part of the Mumbai attacks being planned on its soil. Good times. This about a week after the release of A.Q. Khan (and blaming Bangladesh, don't forget). I feel like the leadership in Pakistan right now is a little schizophrenic - at once bowing to the Ziad Hamid types and bowing to the demands of the Indian government.
Back to the Obama plan: I think it fundamentally fudges the issue of time horizons. Even if everything works perfectly from their point of view (i.e. make Pakistan less afraid of India by getting a deal on Kashmir, and thereby convince Pakistan to do more on the western border), it confuses what is a long term problem with what is an immediate problem. The threat of militancy on the western border is a real and present danger. The potential of Pakistan scaling back its security fears vis-a-vis India is, at best, a medium term proposition (perhaps a decade or two). So the first part of the equation (the final solution--less militancy on the western border) cannot be solved by the second part of the equation (the intervening variable--making kissy face with India).
Mosharraf: Interesting that in the time that we've been having this exchange, as you pointed out, Pakistan finally admitted that there may be Pakistanis in Pakistan who want to do bad things to India. And now, "Sharia" has been "restored" in Swat. I can understand why Pakistan makes so many people, so nervous. I am not so sure however that the elite that has been playing chicken with this country's future for sixty years (and only has some bruises to show for it) quite understands how nervous Pakistan is making a lot of Pakistanis. This is a critical point. The expanded universe of voice in Pakistan--that is people that can shout and make a difference--is big trouble for the elite. Since the elite is not a monolith with a defined hierarchy, their reaction time to this is going to be too slow to matter.
But that's just the hyper-optimist in me. Its ok to be cynical. The real punchline in a world of qazi courts and playing footsie and then making out with the Taliban I suppose is the WTF factor. Why did we put thousands of Pakistani soldiers in body bags, many thousands more poor citizens in graves made of the rubble of thier homes, to eventually surrender to these terrorists who had to be "defeated at all costs"? WTF.
Of course, all this global attention for Pakistan--including Obama's carrot on Kashmir--is a product of the accentuated effects of South Asian dysfunction on the rest of the world. And while the rest of the world has done its part in bringing things here. This mess is our responsibility. For sixty years, power dynamics in Pakistan have changed clothes plenty of time, but never changed at their core. This is a place where the only contract that is consistently enforced is the contract among the elite. Long after American GIs are back in sweet home Alabama, Pakistanis will be left to contend with the same threats to their lives and liberty as they always have. Pakistan was being overrun by illiteracy and the law of the jungle before 9/11, it has been the same since 9/11 and it will be the same after 9/11 slips down the depth chart of defintive global inflection points.
India's best and brightest know this. Which is why they can afford to feed Holbrooke veggie-burgers, extract some H1-B favours, and take the nuclear relationship to the next level, while firmly telling the Americans to kiss thier ass on Kashmir. At this stage, Kashmir looks like it will eventually be resolved in a manner much more Nehru than LeT. It sounds so trite, but it rings so true. Imagine all the schools and bridges that could have been built with the money Pakistan has ploughed into its lack of relationship with India.
Ahsan: On that wistful note, I'd like to thank you for your time, Mosharraf. Keep writing your always-insightful columns.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Ahsan: Let's move from politics to political economy. I read your columns regularly during the run-up to the IMF bailout. You often repeated a variant of this phrase: Pakistan's problem is simply that it spends more than it saves. Can you expound on that?
Mosharraf: Sure. Just to clarify, what I was saying, or should have been saying is that Pakistan spends more money than it has.
I am trying to appeal to your common sense, rather than the idea that economics is a complex black hole that is only comprehensible to supercomputers and bankers that wear better suits than you and know long words that don't mean anything.
So the first thing we do is identify the problem. The problem at that time was (and soon once again, maybe even this year will be) that Pakistan doesn't have any money. Now the thing that makes the need for money urgent is that Pakistan owes "people" (lenders) money. If it doesn't pay back that money according to the agreed schedule, the whole system takes a nosedive, because at that instant, the theory is that nobody would give Pakistan any money in the future. It would have proven to be a bad place to give a loan--having "defaulted" on its obligations.
That's the problem. But the problem is defined on the terms of someone who thinks that the infinite supply of loans to Pakistan is important. Who would think such a thing?
Someone who needs that money. Who needs the money? Let's see.
The biggest chunk of money in the Pakistani budget is for paying back loans, ironically. So of course Pakistan's creditors, those banks, countries and organizations to whom Pakistan already owes money. They need the money to keep flowing in, so it can keep flowing out.
The second biggest chunk of money in the Pakistani budget is for the military. So of course, the military needs the money to keep flowing in.
The third biggest chunk of money in the Pakistani budget, cumulatively, is the cost of running government--salaries, pensions, electricity--the works. So the government and its employees all want the money to keep flowing in.
(Some will argue that without this money, how will the government provide services. Uh, what services?)
Don't forget subsidies like the ones for PIA--which not only makes it a nightmare to travel anywhere, but also charges your children and their children money, so that political parties can firm up votes.
We digress. So essentially, Pakistan's taxpayers are perpetually in debt as a collective, because international bankers need bonuses, generals need tanks, and bureaucrats need a chair to sit on, from where they can make your life miserable.
This is spending more money than you have, and doing it without any real purpose--in a normative sense. Of course Pakistan should default. This is not ideology. Its common sense.
Ahsan: Ok.
How do you feel about Musharraf's economic policies in retrospect? There was significant growth, the middle class boomed, refrigerators and cars were bought, and then the floor came crashing down. First, the global price of oil skyrocketed. Second, the wheels came off politically and militarily, leading to a crisis of confidence. And third, water and energy shortages meant businesses simply couldn't do what they had to.
All that aside, people like Shahid Javed Burki are on record as saying Musharraf's economic policies were, at best, band-aids - and that they were shortsighted and reliant on contingent factors like foreign investment. Do you agree with that assessment?
Mosharraf: I have to admit that I was bullish on the idea that Aziz and Co. were capable of delivering sustained growth in Pakistan--but I was always very worried about the very thin and superficial basis for that growth. Essentially it came from four places. The deregulation of the telecom sector, the innovative enterprise of Pakistan-returns post 9/11, the real estate boom, and the explosive growth in the banking sector. The growth was financed by two external factors: remittances from Pakistanis abroad, and inflows from the US. The US impact is overstated and the remittance impact is understated. Its about 3 to 1 (3 remittance dollars for every one US assistance dollar).
But I think there's a problem of perception in Pakistan that the economic well being of the country is a government domain. It is not. Never can be. The Pakistani private sector is one of the great untold stories of laziness, incompetence, greed and elite capture of state resources. It shoudl be no surprise that the government is always there for the rich--not just generals and fuedal lords and bureaucrats, but also for so-called capitalists. And never there for the foundation of growth, the middle class.
All said and done however, the Musharraf era was transformational in the sense that it creates the momentum for a middle class narrative. This was an unintended consequence of the economic policies pursued during the first decade of this century. The lawyers movement was the first squeak. The real war in Pakistan now is the war on the middle class. If the elite wins it, Pakistan has no hope. But this is not a war that will be lost or won in weeks or months. And the elite hasn't even begun to invest in the weapons that will decide this war. Blogs, social networks and knowledge.
Ahsan: What is the "war on the middle class"? I am completely unfamiliar with this war. To me, there is no middle class in Pakistan - a politically salient one anyway. The relevant political actors are:
1. The military
2. The feudals
3. The faux capitalists/industrialists
4. The bureaucracy
5. The lawyers (since March 2007)
None of those are even remotely middle-class in any common-sense understanding of the term (although the bureaucracy comes close I guess). As for the "biggest war in Pakistan", I would say the following qualify:
1. The state vs. the Taliban
2. The government vs. anti-Americanism/talk shows on TV/the new nationalist right/the old religious right
3. Centralists/Punjab vs. federalists/smaller provinces
4. The fourteen liberals left in the country vs. everybody else (not exactly a fair fight, but neither was the first Gulf War, and we still call that a war, so there).
None of those are defined by class-based cleavages. So I ask again: what is this "war on the middle class" of which you speak?
Mosharraf: I use the term in the most unscientific way possible. And the middle-class is not entirely politically impotent, though I couldnt' agree more that it has a long, long way to go. I should also point out that the right/left construct only exists in books anymore. I mean, really. Have you seen the right? They talk like Che is in the back changing, and that Karl was one of the disciples. The right isn't what it used to be, and neither is the left. Anyway, that's a whole other discussion.
Within Pakistan, I'd say you are middle class if you are not elite, and not poor. Poor is less than 5 dollars a day. Elite is a phone call away from the rule of law. Everything in between is middle class. So the lawyers are middle class, the competent employees at PIA, middle class, the entrepreneurs post Amreeka return, middle class. Incompetent PIA employees who are there because of their politics are elite, or elite-constituency. I keep using PIA because it is such an accessible example.
Issues in Pakistan that are being discussed on blogs like All Things Pakistan, Grand Trunk Road and Five Rupees today are going to occupy the heart of public policy within the next decade. And none of the protagonists of these blogs (or thier readers) qualify as elite, or as poor. I know it won't fly in PolSci 101, but that's cool. No one's looking. There is a small, and increasingly important middle class in Pakistan. And the elite don't like them. They want them to disappear. Immigrate to Australia or Canada in the best case scenario, and actually physically disappear in the worst. Hence the war on the middle class.
Ahsan: We'll simply have to agree to disagree on these definitional issues then. To me, if you have a car and a house in a country where a third of the population (at least) doesn't have clean drinking water and half can't read, you're elite. That means the authors and commenters on Five Rupees and Grand Trunk Road are elite. Can't say anything about All Things Pakistan, because I don't read it.
To be self-referential for a second, I also have to take issue with your statement about the stuff being discussed here forming public policy debates for the next decade. One thing that is really disheartening for me personally is how far out of the mainstream I exist. The fact that I believe in secularism, and rapprochement with India, and political and diplomatic disengagement with the Arab-Israeli dispute, and a woman's right to marry whomever she chooses without threat of violence or even social shunning, means I'm engaging in conversations that public policy simply isn't concerned with. It's not even on their radar. It's a whole different world. The older I get, the more this is rammed into my head.
Have you read Lipstick Jihad? It's actually pretty decent, despite my low expectations going in. Its subtitle is "A Memoir of Growing up Iranian in America and American in Iran". It really captured a lot of my thoughts on the quasi-immigrant experience. I am forever made to feel like an outsider in Pakistan by the Imran Khans and Ayaz Amirs and Talat Hussains and the Urdu op-edders and the America-bashers. My ideas find acceptance nowhere other than my close friends; even much of family thinks of me as some fringe lunatic. And you really should read one or two of the extreme comments we've gotten on this blog.
All this is to say that (a) who you count as middle-class count as elite for me, and (b) that particular section of the elite is about as politically and socially irrelevant to Pakistan's future as Cartman.
Mosharraf: Happy to disagree on the definition, after I point this out. If you're in your car, headed toward your house, and the cops stop you, and decide to search you, harass you and accuse you of things that you haven't done, you're elite if you can shout them down, or call their boss, or their bosses boss. But if you end up at the thaana, with nothing but dad, chaaha and maamoo looking out for you--you are not elite, even by the technical definition. The majority of car owners in Pakistan are helpless sheep. They have no access to justice, if justice decides to miscarriage on them. None. That's not elite. That's developing country middle class. Hope no one is waiting for Henry Ford in the developing world--that paradigm is done and dusted. So too is the chronological fiddelity of that model. The Pakistani middle class will not follow a pre-defined set of parameters as it comes into its own.
On the "mainstream", one thing that I think a lot of privileged middle class young people don't realize is how deep rooted the changes that have taken place in Pakistan really are. I won't go into a list, but some of the fundamental assumptions about Pakistan are actually begging to be corrected. Pakistan is now an urban country, not rural. If there's a half-decent census (not possible in the current atmosphere) you'll see the urban share of the population has gone past 40%. Then consider that the current definitions don't really account for extended metropolises and peri-urban areas. Then consider that if you can get cable, and have a highway nearby (that's virtually all of the Punjab save three to five districts, out of 35) then how "rural" really are you? Point. The mainstream in Pakistan is not what it used to be. Syeda Abida Hussein said horrible things about middle class Pakistanis in an interview with the Wall Street Journal before the election. One generation ago, that was not news. Now it is. She's over as a political entity. Her ilk is near extinction as well. Two more election cycles and all this will be more obvious than it is right now. It might not even take a full ten years.
The things you beleive in are not a unique set of ideas, much as they might seem to be from reading the newspaper and watching television. They are more mainstream than the regressive politics that dominates the national landscape. In part this is because the middle class has yet to "land" it is still circling the airport tentatively. The landing is inevitable because it will run out of fuel--or to translate the metaphor, the middle class will engage politically because it has to, not because of a high minded nobility of ideals. Its engagement alone will transform the mainstream into a place where having radical ideas on either end of the spectrum is recognized as the lifeblood of a dynamic soicety.
If I sound overly optimistic, it is because I am. The lawyers movement was not about the handful of elite-captured politicians who can read poetry. It was about the political activation of a generation. Remember, since the PPP began, and for some, since the PNA, there's been no new political blood in Pakistan. This movement has injected freshness. It won't be pretty, or always rational, or liberal. But it will create the space for those things.
Ahsan: I don't think the lawyers movement was the political activation of a generation. I think it was the social mobilization of a certain professional class around parochial interests which ended up being (mis)appropriated by political opportunists who seized upon an opportunity to use a crisis as a focal point for obviating the difficulties of collective action.
Long marches, shong marches. When Nawaz Sharif starts talking about the independence of the judiciary, and Imran Khan starts talking about freedom and accountability, I know I should probably just go to bed.
Mosharraf: I think if you're expecting teenage students and twenty something lawyers to launch into spectacular careers in politics, then you're expecting too much, too soon. If we aren't prepared for an intergenerational transformation, then we'll keep getting jacked up for the next dynastic fircracker in the geneological arsenal. Gracias, but no gracias.
The lawyers movement represents the activation of a new generation of politicians, if for no other reason, that its the first big movement the country's experienced since the late 1970s. Tommorrow's second tier political leadership is going to have earned its first stripes during this movement. Where I think I am willing to go, in terms of investing hope, is that first-tier leadership as we know it is in its final stages. That the students that marched with the lawyers will not only occupy tommorrow's second-tier leadership, but also the top. So I am saying dynastic politics as we know it will come to an end. When? Not for another 10 to 15 years. But its coming.
Now that doesn't mean that these folks can solve the most urgent problems Pakistan is facing. Not with ambient levels of talent they have at thier disposal. But they can learn. I'll trust a slightly dodgy lawyer over the available options in this country, any day of the week. The lawyer comes from the same place that most people who can read in this country do. Insecurity, unequal access and some semblance of linear reasonability.
Bottom line? Those that have participated in the movement are capable of linear algorithmic processing of data. They can be convinced by reason to do what is reasonable. The current elite does not share those qualities, because it maintains elite status by sustaining irrational allocations of resources and by perpetuating its irrational public discourse.
And let's not forget that the irrational public discourse is too easily projected on only the right-wing. The right wing hasn't had to come up with a new idea for three dacades, at least, because all its work is done for it by so-called seculars and progressives. Remember who the Papa Bhutto was eh? The leading pan-Islamist, nuclear prolierator supreme and the Ahmadi/Qadiani Banner-in-Cheif. Secular? Hey, if you want a cigar and a drink in Pakistan today, you don't need to go to the people's party, you can find it at any party. This isn't 1989.
Of course, I think you're right not to invest too much hope in the other parties. It isn't ideology that does them however, its incompetence. They all have the same ideology. I will say that Khan scares me the most. Fifteen years into politics and he still can't find his way around the bureacracy, the local governments, the nuts and bolts of the thaana and the kutchehri! That's an astoundingly slow learning curve. But hand to him this... he has been able to help define the shape of public discourse--for whatever its worth--from a very miniscule political platform. Ehtesab, the 2 rupee roti, the citizenship/voluntary activity bit. That's all Khan, all day.
Ahsan: I take your point that so-called seculars and progressives do the right's work for them. I've been saying for a few weeks now that there are no true liberals left in Pakistan. The old left has been co-opted by the anti-American/anti-West movement. The avowedly secular parties are more ethno-regional centric in their worldview, and choose not to define themselves on the secular/non secular axis (MQM, ANP). The Army we already know about. And mainstream politicians just find it easier to get their point across if they cloak it in the language of religion and civilizational differences. Being a liberal today in Pakistan is a very lonely occupation.
Let's move on though, and talk a little bit about foreign policy or international affairs. The Obama plan seems to be to push India to make concessions on Kashmir either as a reward for, or a nudge to, Pakistan "doing more" on its western border. As sound as this strategy is, I have my doubts about its efficacy. Indian statesmen weren't born yesterday, and they're not going to let Pakistan essentially get rewarded for supporting militancy for twenty years.
Your thoughts?
Mosharraf: India hasn't had a statesman in the mainstream since Vajpayee. And his statesmanship was throttled by the mullahs in his party. I think we will all miss Vajpayee's relatively moderate brand of Hindutva once we all have to chew on Modi for a the next several years. He's the future of the BJP and he's no statesman. And anyone who thinks Rahul Ghandi is a future stateman should stick to NASCAR. He's a future Prime Minister, sure. But even Nehruvian genius has has its genetic limits.
I think there's too much being read into the newfound congizance of Kashmir as an issue. The strategy is to bleed the pakmil of its appetite for destruction by denying legitimacy to its claims of victimhood--not to reward Pakistan. The real question isn't whether India will play ball. Deep down, India will only be too happy to agree on the LOC as an international border (the US is not going to push it any farther). The real question is whether Pakistan has had enough? My guess is not. The ideological culture of the country and the military won't allow a raindance dance at the LOC as it exists. Of course, luckily for them, the Indian establishment has the same genes. They'll be the ones that get tagged for not wanting any movement. Its a lose-lose for the people. Win-win for the establishments.
Ahsan: I see today that Pakistan has admitted to some part of the Mumbai attacks being planned on its soil. Good times. This about a week after the release of A.Q. Khan (and blaming Bangladesh, don't forget). I feel like the leadership in Pakistan right now is a little schizophrenic - at once bowing to the Ziad Hamid types and bowing to the demands of the Indian government.
Back to the Obama plan: I think it fundamentally fudges the issue of time horizons. Even if everything works perfectly from their point of view (i.e. make Pakistan less afraid of India by getting a deal on Kashmir, and thereby convince Pakistan to do more on the western border), it confuses what is a long term problem with what is an immediate problem. The threat of militancy on the western border is a real and present danger. The potential of Pakistan scaling back its security fears vis-a-vis India is, at best, a medium term proposition (perhaps a decade or two). So the first part of the equation (the final solution--less militancy on the western border) cannot be solved by the second part of the equation (the intervening variable--making kissy face with India).
Mosharraf: Interesting that in the time that we've been having this exchange, as you pointed out, Pakistan finally admitted that there may be Pakistanis in Pakistan who want to do bad things to India. And now, "Sharia" has been "restored" in Swat. I can understand why Pakistan makes so many people, so nervous. I am not so sure however that the elite that has been playing chicken with this country's future for sixty years (and only has some bruises to show for it) quite understands how nervous Pakistan is making a lot of Pakistanis. This is a critical point. The expanded universe of voice in Pakistan--that is people that can shout and make a difference--is big trouble for the elite. Since the elite is not a monolith with a defined hierarchy, their reaction time to this is going to be too slow to matter.
But that's just the hyper-optimist in me. Its ok to be cynical. The real punchline in a world of qazi courts and playing footsie and then making out with the Taliban I suppose is the WTF factor. Why did we put thousands of Pakistani soldiers in body bags, many thousands more poor citizens in graves made of the rubble of thier homes, to eventually surrender to these terrorists who had to be "defeated at all costs"? WTF.
Of course, all this global attention for Pakistan--including Obama's carrot on Kashmir--is a product of the accentuated effects of South Asian dysfunction on the rest of the world. And while the rest of the world has done its part in bringing things here. This mess is our responsibility. For sixty years, power dynamics in Pakistan have changed clothes plenty of time, but never changed at their core. This is a place where the only contract that is consistently enforced is the contract among the elite. Long after American GIs are back in sweet home Alabama, Pakistanis will be left to contend with the same threats to their lives and liberty as they always have. Pakistan was being overrun by illiteracy and the law of the jungle before 9/11, it has been the same since 9/11 and it will be the same after 9/11 slips down the depth chart of defintive global inflection points.
India's best and brightest know this. Which is why they can afford to feed Holbrooke veggie-burgers, extract some H1-B favours, and take the nuclear relationship to the next level, while firmly telling the Americans to kiss thier ass on Kashmir. At this stage, Kashmir looks like it will eventually be resolved in a manner much more Nehru than LeT. It sounds so trite, but it rings so true. Imagine all the schools and bridges that could have been built with the money Pakistan has ploughed into its lack of relationship with India.
Ahsan: On that wistful note, I'd like to thank you for your time, Mosharraf. Keep writing your always-insightful columns.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
A Conversation With Political Economist/Columnist Mosharraf Zaidi (Part I)
Alright, so The News columnist Mosharraf Zaidi and I agreed to have a public conversation on a bunch of issues. Since there were a BUNCH of emails exchanged, I'm dividing the discussion into two parts. The first is on education in Pakistan, clientelism, Barack Obama, and Asif Zardari (and his team). The second, which will be posted tomorrow, is on the IMF bailout, Pakistan's political economy, the middle class in Pakistan, and foreign policy. Without further ado...
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Ahsan: Alright, Mosharraf, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself? Where did you go to school? What do you now other than write columns for The News?
Mosharraf: Thanks Ahsan. The main school in my life was home. My mom, grandfather, uncles--all teachers. I started high school at a Canadian public school, did my O'levels at an Islamabadi private school, and wrapped up with an F.Sc. from a quasi-military college in Islamabad. You can hardly be better prepared to understand why the world doesn't quite work for everybody after that. Yet somehow, the Good Lord decided I wasn't. So I got a Bachlors from LUMS, the first undergrad class there, and a Masters from Baruch College, in New York City.
I have done a fair bit of public policy work in the US and Pakistan. So I spend a lot of time outside of writing on advising donors, governments and nonprofits on what to do, how to pay for it, and how to get it done. None of what I do is rocket science. Its amazing how linear things are not. Or how not-linear, things are.
Ahsan: Let's go back to the education question. You have a highly eclectic educational background, and you obviously have family connections to the world of education. This may be too broad and open-ended a question, but have a dig at it anyway: what are structural factors impeding Pakistan's educational system? Why are institutions of higher education so decrepit? Why do primary and secondary schools - the ones that actually exist - so ill-prepare our youth for being tolerant as well as productive members of society?
Mosharraf: You know this question is so common. As a public policy issue, I've not met an educated Pakistani who doesn't think about this issue on a regular basis. Its amazing then, that as the number of educated Pakistanis increases (pure math, not progress), the condition of the Pakistani education unsystem (its unfair to call it a system) gets worse. There's a lot of questions in there. Let's take them one by one.
Structurally, there are two overwhelming factors that have catalyzed the rot. Money and jobs.
On money, there is simply not enough of it being put into education as a sector by government. It hovers between 2 and 2.5 percent of GDP. Now just to put that into context, consider that New Zealand spends just under 7% of its GDP on education, South Korea, around 5%, and India consistently over 3.5%. If budgets are the surest way of measuring a country's priorities, then its clear that education is simply not a priority for Pakistan.
On jobs, there is, since the 1970s in particular, a committment by the political parties to use the state as the employer of first and last resort. The politics is relatively simple. Someone that knows that the only reason they have a tenured job--be it a driver, a naib qasid or a teacher--is because of the patronage of thier political party, they'll be forever indebted. Political parties then use this debt to resource campaigns and favoruable treatment even outside of campaign cycles. It should not be a surprise that the highest percentrage of employees in the public sector are teachers. I could be wrong, but am quite certain upwards of 80% in all four provinces and the federal government. What does the jobs issue mean? Simply that teaching ability plays almost no role whatsoever in the selection and appointment of teachers. Teaching acheivement plays no role in the promotion of teachers, and teaching potential plays no role in the career growth of a teacher.
Institutes of higher education are a mixed bag. Just as a disclosure, I should point out my involvement in the formation of the HEC and the higher ed reforms of 2002. I was obviously not leading that effort, but I was a key member of the management team for something called the Steering Committee on Higher Education (SCHE), which was tasked with formulating a post UGC world in which the core structural and financial issues of universities would get sorted.
Public universities in Pakistan had been poorly structured at the top. The separation of executive and oversight authorities was just not there. There was no emphasis on research at any university, because teacher incentives were non-existent. The HEC was an attempt to right a lot of wrongs. While I never agreed with the science and engineering skew of the HEC, which was a problem for many eminent members of the SCHE as well, it was the best time in university education in Pakistani history. The teachers' unions, stacked with political operatives at the top and sheep beneath them knew that if the reforms actually worked, they would be out of jobs and young people would actually get a chance to learn and grow -- rather than become bitter and unemployed at the end of thier university experiences.
I can go into a lot of detail on this, but let's leave it at this: As soon as it came into power, the PPP government decided to essentially destroy the HEC. The entire management team was sacked, the Finance Division, which hated handing money to the HEC to begin with, basically has cutoff almost all the funding it had been getting during the Musharra era. Of course, as long as the PPP can hand out a few more jobs, I suppose the price to be paid is small--its just a bunch of lower middle and middle class kids trying to learn afterall.
Ahsan: Well, as Asif Zardari famously said, he "is the expert". How can you quibble with that? So do you think that all political parties generally engage in the same level of clientelism or do you see a distinction between those based on feudal/business interests (the PPP/PML-N) and those that draw their support from urban middle class, relatively educated people (the MQM/JI)?
Mosharraf: Sure. No quibbling with the Mr. President! I think that the MQM and Jamaat have had the luxury of being protected by their limited constituencies. But both have demonstrated the same flashes of clientelism as everyone else. The MQM in particular has learnt, post-Operation Cleanup, that the Muhajir people have no reason to be left off the gravy train of making juice out of the public sector, and the Jamaat learnt during its unexpected rise to the top of the Sarhad heap on the coattails of the JUI (F), that its brand of "honest", middle class mullah deserved some sugar just like everyone else. I think the PML (N) is more urban and less client-patron focused than we think--largely because its power base has dramatically changed--demography, economics and post 9/11 cultural adjustments in the Punjab. And I think the PPP has gotten worse, because it has no Bhutto magic left. All that's left is to give out jobs and favours and hope the love spreads.
Ahsan: Speaking of spreading the love, what are your thoughts/opinions on the Messiah aka Lord Almighty aka Jesus aka the male Oprah aka Obama?
Mosharraf: I think he's the most transcendent and fascinating political talent we've seen. His election is a reminder of the magic of American democracy and renewal. He's more tentative and careful than he needs to be, but he is deeply conscious of who he is, where he's come from and what the stakes are. He's been more tentative than I'd like, especially on consumer behavior. But talking to Al Arabiya before Fox? And speaking directly to Muslims? He's the 21st century president we should have grown up with. America gets it right again. Having said all this, I should point out he's the president of the US, not Pakistan or Palestine. Anyone expecting that he'll cater to constituencies outside those that elected him, are dangerously out of touch with how the world works. If Pakistanis want a solution to Pakistan's issues, they'll need to find thier own Obama.
Ahsan: There are a number of things that drew me to him almost immediately. The first is his obvious intelligence - and intellectual curiosity. David Brooks once made the great point that he has spent almost his entire adult life around three of the top ten universities in the U.S. - Columbia (undergrad), Harvard (law school) and U of C (professor of law). This is reflected in the way he speaks (constant balance of thought) and, as you say, his deep cognizance of who he is and where he comes from. It is also reflected in his ridiculous ability to intersperse the mundane minutiae of daily politics with philosophy. This was probably my favorite passage about him during the election season, also drawn from a Brooks op-ed:
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Ahsan: Alright, Mosharraf, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself? Where did you go to school? What do you now other than write columns for The News?
Mosharraf: Thanks Ahsan. The main school in my life was home. My mom, grandfather, uncles--all teachers. I started high school at a Canadian public school, did my O'levels at an Islamabadi private school, and wrapped up with an F.Sc. from a quasi-military college in Islamabad. You can hardly be better prepared to understand why the world doesn't quite work for everybody after that. Yet somehow, the Good Lord decided I wasn't. So I got a Bachlors from LUMS, the first undergrad class there, and a Masters from Baruch College, in New York City.
I have done a fair bit of public policy work in the US and Pakistan. So I spend a lot of time outside of writing on advising donors, governments and nonprofits on what to do, how to pay for it, and how to get it done. None of what I do is rocket science. Its amazing how linear things are not. Or how not-linear, things are.
Ahsan: Let's go back to the education question. You have a highly eclectic educational background, and you obviously have family connections to the world of education. This may be too broad and open-ended a question, but have a dig at it anyway: what are structural factors impeding Pakistan's educational system? Why are institutions of higher education so decrepit? Why do primary and secondary schools - the ones that actually exist - so ill-prepare our youth for being tolerant as well as productive members of society?
Mosharraf: You know this question is so common. As a public policy issue, I've not met an educated Pakistani who doesn't think about this issue on a regular basis. Its amazing then, that as the number of educated Pakistanis increases (pure math, not progress), the condition of the Pakistani education unsystem (its unfair to call it a system) gets worse. There's a lot of questions in there. Let's take them one by one.
Structurally, there are two overwhelming factors that have catalyzed the rot. Money and jobs.
On money, there is simply not enough of it being put into education as a sector by government. It hovers between 2 and 2.5 percent of GDP. Now just to put that into context, consider that New Zealand spends just under 7% of its GDP on education, South Korea, around 5%, and India consistently over 3.5%. If budgets are the surest way of measuring a country's priorities, then its clear that education is simply not a priority for Pakistan.
On jobs, there is, since the 1970s in particular, a committment by the political parties to use the state as the employer of first and last resort. The politics is relatively simple. Someone that knows that the only reason they have a tenured job--be it a driver, a naib qasid or a teacher--is because of the patronage of thier political party, they'll be forever indebted. Political parties then use this debt to resource campaigns and favoruable treatment even outside of campaign cycles. It should not be a surprise that the highest percentrage of employees in the public sector are teachers. I could be wrong, but am quite certain upwards of 80% in all four provinces and the federal government. What does the jobs issue mean? Simply that teaching ability plays almost no role whatsoever in the selection and appointment of teachers. Teaching acheivement plays no role in the promotion of teachers, and teaching potential plays no role in the career growth of a teacher.
Institutes of higher education are a mixed bag. Just as a disclosure, I should point out my involvement in the formation of the HEC and the higher ed reforms of 2002. I was obviously not leading that effort, but I was a key member of the management team for something called the Steering Committee on Higher Education (SCHE), which was tasked with formulating a post UGC world in which the core structural and financial issues of universities would get sorted.
Public universities in Pakistan had been poorly structured at the top. The separation of executive and oversight authorities was just not there. There was no emphasis on research at any university, because teacher incentives were non-existent. The HEC was an attempt to right a lot of wrongs. While I never agreed with the science and engineering skew of the HEC, which was a problem for many eminent members of the SCHE as well, it was the best time in university education in Pakistani history. The teachers' unions, stacked with political operatives at the top and sheep beneath them knew that if the reforms actually worked, they would be out of jobs and young people would actually get a chance to learn and grow -- rather than become bitter and unemployed at the end of thier university experiences.
I can go into a lot of detail on this, but let's leave it at this: As soon as it came into power, the PPP government decided to essentially destroy the HEC. The entire management team was sacked, the Finance Division, which hated handing money to the HEC to begin with, basically has cutoff almost all the funding it had been getting during the Musharra era. Of course, as long as the PPP can hand out a few more jobs, I suppose the price to be paid is small--its just a bunch of lower middle and middle class kids trying to learn afterall.
Ahsan: Well, as Asif Zardari famously said, he "is the expert". How can you quibble with that? So do you think that all political parties generally engage in the same level of clientelism or do you see a distinction between those based on feudal/business interests (the PPP/PML-N) and those that draw their support from urban middle class, relatively educated people (the MQM/JI)?
Mosharraf: Sure. No quibbling with the Mr. President! I think that the MQM and Jamaat have had the luxury of being protected by their limited constituencies. But both have demonstrated the same flashes of clientelism as everyone else. The MQM in particular has learnt, post-Operation Cleanup, that the Muhajir people have no reason to be left off the gravy train of making juice out of the public sector, and the Jamaat learnt during its unexpected rise to the top of the Sarhad heap on the coattails of the JUI (F), that its brand of "honest", middle class mullah deserved some sugar just like everyone else. I think the PML (N) is more urban and less client-patron focused than we think--largely because its power base has dramatically changed--demography, economics and post 9/11 cultural adjustments in the Punjab. And I think the PPP has gotten worse, because it has no Bhutto magic left. All that's left is to give out jobs and favours and hope the love spreads.
Ahsan: Speaking of spreading the love, what are your thoughts/opinions on the Messiah aka Lord Almighty aka Jesus aka the male Oprah aka Obama?
Mosharraf: I think he's the most transcendent and fascinating political talent we've seen. His election is a reminder of the magic of American democracy and renewal. He's more tentative and careful than he needs to be, but he is deeply conscious of who he is, where he's come from and what the stakes are. He's been more tentative than I'd like, especially on consumer behavior. But talking to Al Arabiya before Fox? And speaking directly to Muslims? He's the 21st century president we should have grown up with. America gets it right again. Having said all this, I should point out he's the president of the US, not Pakistan or Palestine. Anyone expecting that he'll cater to constituencies outside those that elected him, are dangerously out of touch with how the world works. If Pakistanis want a solution to Pakistan's issues, they'll need to find thier own Obama.
Ahsan: There are a number of things that drew me to him almost immediately. The first is his obvious intelligence - and intellectual curiosity. David Brooks once made the great point that he has spent almost his entire adult life around three of the top ten universities in the U.S. - Columbia (undergrad), Harvard (law school) and U of C (professor of law). This is reflected in the way he speaks (constant balance of thought) and, as you say, his deep cognizance of who he is and where he comes from. It is also reflected in his ridiculous ability to intersperse the mundane minutiae of daily politics with philosophy. This was probably my favorite passage about him during the election season, also drawn from a Brooks op-ed:
Yesterday evening I was interviewing Barack Obama and we were talking about effective foreign aid programs in Africa. His voice was measured and fatigued, and he was taking those little pauses candidates take when they're afraid of saying something that might hurt them later on.
Out of the blue I asked, "Have you ever read Reinhold Niebuhr?"
Obama's tone changed. "I love him. He's one of my favorite philosophers."
So I asked, What do you take away from him?
"I take away," Obama answered in a rush of words, "the compelling idea that there's serious evil in the world, and hardship and pain. And we should be humble and modest in our belief we can eliminate those things. But we shouldn't use that as an excuse for cynicism and inaction. I take away ... the sense we have to make these efforts knowing they are hard, and not swinging from naïve idealism to bitter realism."
My first impression was that for a guy who's spent the last few months fund-raising, and who was walking off the Senate floor as he spoke, that's a pretty good off-the-cuff summary of Niebuhr's "The Irony of American History." My second impression is that his campaign is an attempt to thread the Niebuhrian needle, and it's really interesting to watch.
The second thing that drew me to him is related to the first, and that is that no politician I have ever seen or heard privileges "thought" and "science" the way he does. More than anyone I've ever seen, he wants to know what the research suggests. He is ideological to be sure, but he's also an empiricist. As a budding social scientist, I love that about him.
The third thing that drew me to him is his ability to the human Rorschach test: we all project on to him what we would like to. This is the reason he can hang with Jay-Z as comfortably as he can with Tony Blair as comfortably as he can with professors at a conservative law school like U of C as comfortably as he can with black preachers.
But as you say, his tentativeness is worrying. To misappropriate Plato's terminology, I fear he may too much philosopher and not enough king.
Mosharraf: Well the fact there is an imbalance there, is a function I think, of his historic stature. In many ways, it is disabling. There's the old theory about how revolutionaries make for poor governors. Obama is no revolutionary in terms of his individual brilliance (President Josiah Bartlett had a PhD and a Nobel Prize -- sic), nor indeed in terms of his team (mostly borderline neocons in Dem-clothing). He is however revolutionary in that there isn't any demographic in the US today that doesnt look at its young and think, hey, that kid could grow up to be President. I know this is overplayed, but I have Americans in my family that ten years ago said things like voting was not important, who are now registered Democrats. It really is unprecedented.
More than anything else, I try not to let my fascination of the man cloud the lessons available in Obama's story for developing economies and democracies like Pakistan. Grassroots politics, message consistency, not losing your cool--EVER, being comfortable with God, faith and public life, without prosecuting those that don't beleive what you beleive, like you beleive it. There is a lot of wisdom in the little parts of the Obama narrative, without us ever needing to be blinded by the brilliance of the whole package.
Ahsan: Did you think he would get by Clinton? Did you think he would get by the Republican slime-machine?
Mosharraf: I was sure he would blow by Clinton after Maryland. More than SC, I thought Maryland would be the tsunami that put him over the top. And when Richardson endorsed, I thought that was a really big sign that the post-Clinton Dem orthodoxy would just not allow the Clintons back in. I think what he's done to the party, is a story that is lost in the overall context. It is fantastic.
I was less sure about the Republican slime-machine. I mean the repeated references to him being Muslim, and to Bill Ayers for example, were scary. Yet, again, I think history and events conspired in favor of Obama. The cynical choice of Palin was in retrospect, suicidal. Just goes to show there aren't many ladies in the Republican Party, coz if they thought women would vote on the basis of organs and biology--well we all know how it worked out. But even on the map, imagine, Charlie Crist on the ticket, and McCain takes Florida. Tom Ridge on the ticket and he takes Pennsylvania, and Ohio. I mean, even Romney could have delivered a couple of extra states. So I think the electoral college math might have been different in a sense, if the smile machine had just not turned on at all. Most of all, I think I was worried that he'd get wiped out on a terror-event right before the election. This is all after-the-fact analysis though! Who really knows!
Ahsan: The Poli Sci world was basically quite sure about him getting by McCain. The fundamentals of elections too heavily favored the Democrat. I don't know how far along I was with that consensus, but I do remember thinking many times along the campaign: goddamn, this guy's good. He was always on an even keel, kept his message concise and consistent, and didn't let the battle(s) of winning the daily news cycle impinge on the grander war of the election. Hillary and McCain, both of whom have seen and done much more in politics, were basically schooled.
Mosharraf: True. There's a lot to be said for having a PhD in the science of politics! I have to say I was, and continue to be in awe of his temperament. Its superhuman.
Ahsan: Speaking of superhuman, let's talk about Asif Zardari. Put yourself in his shoes for a minute (if you can muster the abilities of self-mutilation). You have no real education. Your last name is not Bhutto. You don't know how to woo and play the media (domestic or foreign). You have no discernible skills, other than the accumulation of masses of wealth.
And yet, you have expertly sidelined opponents both within the party (Amin Fahim) and without (Iftikhar Chaudhry and Nawaz Sharif). You, as basically a no-name feudal, have come to appropriate the language of parliamentary democracy (or Haqqani has done it for you, whatever). Pre 26/11, the Army was, if nothing else, exhibiting patience with you, as was Uncle Sam. You were, in other words, King of the World, and didn't have the foggiest idea of what to do once you got to the top of the hill.
Where do you go from here?
Mosharraf: We underestimate President Zardari. He has demonstrated an instinct for political survival that belies his seeming lack of preparation for the role he is in. Someone pointed out that the President doesn't ever appear on television, doesn't visit any part of the country and is generally invisible. I thought to myself, that's not fear or stupidity. Its genius. Part of the survival of this government is predicated on his not being a major presence. Yet in most of the important areas of business in a PPP government--massive employment programmes, money giveaways like the Benazir Income Support Programme, a bloated bureaucracy--he and the heirs of the Bhutto legacy are the primary beneficiaires. Those jobs that the PPP creates today are worth thier weight in gold, politically.
Let's also remember that while his advisors are not going to win a place on people's Top Friends application in Facebook, they are brilliant employees of the Zardari-Bhutto enterprise. No one knows the systems of government like Salman Faruqi, no one knows the police like Rehman Malik, no one knows the newspapers like Sherry Rehman, no one knows the Pakistan-analyst community in DC like Hussain Haqqani, no one knows muscle in the post modern Punjab like Salman Taseer. Its a dream team man. You don't need to like them, but I guarantee there isnt a better assembly line to serve the Zardari-Bhutto enterprise than these folks. Anyone that can plug into this, in terms of aligned priorities will also benefit from the current dispensation.
As far as where he goes from here, I think, regardless of 26/11, this is not a party with a very long best-before date. The music lowers sometime this year. The lights go off whenever they go off, but there are lots of speedbumps ahead.
UPDATE: You can read part II here.
The second thing that drew me to him is related to the first, and that is that no politician I have ever seen or heard privileges "thought" and "science" the way he does. More than anyone I've ever seen, he wants to know what the research suggests. He is ideological to be sure, but he's also an empiricist. As a budding social scientist, I love that about him.
The third thing that drew me to him is his ability to the human Rorschach test: we all project on to him what we would like to. This is the reason he can hang with Jay-Z as comfortably as he can with Tony Blair as comfortably as he can with professors at a conservative law school like U of C as comfortably as he can with black preachers.
But as you say, his tentativeness is worrying. To misappropriate Plato's terminology, I fear he may too much philosopher and not enough king.
Mosharraf: Well the fact there is an imbalance there, is a function I think, of his historic stature. In many ways, it is disabling. There's the old theory about how revolutionaries make for poor governors. Obama is no revolutionary in terms of his individual brilliance (President Josiah Bartlett had a PhD and a Nobel Prize -- sic), nor indeed in terms of his team (mostly borderline neocons in Dem-clothing). He is however revolutionary in that there isn't any demographic in the US today that doesnt look at its young and think, hey, that kid could grow up to be President. I know this is overplayed, but I have Americans in my family that ten years ago said things like voting was not important, who are now registered Democrats. It really is unprecedented.
More than anything else, I try not to let my fascination of the man cloud the lessons available in Obama's story for developing economies and democracies like Pakistan. Grassroots politics, message consistency, not losing your cool--EVER, being comfortable with God, faith and public life, without prosecuting those that don't beleive what you beleive, like you beleive it. There is a lot of wisdom in the little parts of the Obama narrative, without us ever needing to be blinded by the brilliance of the whole package.
Ahsan: Did you think he would get by Clinton? Did you think he would get by the Republican slime-machine?
Mosharraf: I was sure he would blow by Clinton after Maryland. More than SC, I thought Maryland would be the tsunami that put him over the top. And when Richardson endorsed, I thought that was a really big sign that the post-Clinton Dem orthodoxy would just not allow the Clintons back in. I think what he's done to the party, is a story that is lost in the overall context. It is fantastic.
I was less sure about the Republican slime-machine. I mean the repeated references to him being Muslim, and to Bill Ayers for example, were scary. Yet, again, I think history and events conspired in favor of Obama. The cynical choice of Palin was in retrospect, suicidal. Just goes to show there aren't many ladies in the Republican Party, coz if they thought women would vote on the basis of organs and biology--well we all know how it worked out. But even on the map, imagine, Charlie Crist on the ticket, and McCain takes Florida. Tom Ridge on the ticket and he takes Pennsylvania, and Ohio. I mean, even Romney could have delivered a couple of extra states. So I think the electoral college math might have been different in a sense, if the smile machine had just not turned on at all. Most of all, I think I was worried that he'd get wiped out on a terror-event right before the election. This is all after-the-fact analysis though! Who really knows!
Ahsan: The Poli Sci world was basically quite sure about him getting by McCain. The fundamentals of elections too heavily favored the Democrat. I don't know how far along I was with that consensus, but I do remember thinking many times along the campaign: goddamn, this guy's good. He was always on an even keel, kept his message concise and consistent, and didn't let the battle(s) of winning the daily news cycle impinge on the grander war of the election. Hillary and McCain, both of whom have seen and done much more in politics, were basically schooled.
Mosharraf: True. There's a lot to be said for having a PhD in the science of politics! I have to say I was, and continue to be in awe of his temperament. Its superhuman.
Ahsan: Speaking of superhuman, let's talk about Asif Zardari. Put yourself in his shoes for a minute (if you can muster the abilities of self-mutilation). You have no real education. Your last name is not Bhutto. You don't know how to woo and play the media (domestic or foreign). You have no discernible skills, other than the accumulation of masses of wealth.
And yet, you have expertly sidelined opponents both within the party (Amin Fahim) and without (Iftikhar Chaudhry and Nawaz Sharif). You, as basically a no-name feudal, have come to appropriate the language of parliamentary democracy (or Haqqani has done it for you, whatever). Pre 26/11, the Army was, if nothing else, exhibiting patience with you, as was Uncle Sam. You were, in other words, King of the World, and didn't have the foggiest idea of what to do once you got to the top of the hill.
Where do you go from here?
Mosharraf: We underestimate President Zardari. He has demonstrated an instinct for political survival that belies his seeming lack of preparation for the role he is in. Someone pointed out that the President doesn't ever appear on television, doesn't visit any part of the country and is generally invisible. I thought to myself, that's not fear or stupidity. Its genius. Part of the survival of this government is predicated on his not being a major presence. Yet in most of the important areas of business in a PPP government--massive employment programmes, money giveaways like the Benazir Income Support Programme, a bloated bureaucracy--he and the heirs of the Bhutto legacy are the primary beneficiaires. Those jobs that the PPP creates today are worth thier weight in gold, politically.
Let's also remember that while his advisors are not going to win a place on people's Top Friends application in Facebook, they are brilliant employees of the Zardari-Bhutto enterprise. No one knows the systems of government like Salman Faruqi, no one knows the police like Rehman Malik, no one knows the newspapers like Sherry Rehman, no one knows the Pakistan-analyst community in DC like Hussain Haqqani, no one knows muscle in the post modern Punjab like Salman Taseer. Its a dream team man. You don't need to like them, but I guarantee there isnt a better assembly line to serve the Zardari-Bhutto enterprise than these folks. Anyone that can plug into this, in terms of aligned priorities will also benefit from the current dispensation.
As far as where he goes from here, I think, regardless of 26/11, this is not a party with a very long best-before date. The music lowers sometime this year. The lights go off whenever they go off, but there are lots of speedbumps ahead.
UPDATE: You can read part II here.
Labels:
Pakistan,
U.S. politics and society
Monday, February 16, 2009
Should President Obama Speak With Iran?
Hillary Mann Leverett, a former director for Iran and Persian Gulf Affairs at the U.S. National Security Council, tries to clear American misgivings about speaking with Ahmedinejad in her Foreign Policy article "Think Again: Talking with Iran".
And now for something completely different, read the faux ideologue Christopher Hitchens regurgitate the same old crap that he's been saying for years over at Slate. No analysis, lazy reasoning, copy and paste from old personal articles = Don't Let The Mullahs Run Out The Clock: Obama must talk directly to the Iranian people.
Okay Christopher.
And now for something completely different, read the faux ideologue Christopher Hitchens regurgitate the same old crap that he's been saying for years over at Slate. No analysis, lazy reasoning, copy and paste from old personal articles = Don't Let The Mullahs Run Out The Clock: Obama must talk directly to the Iranian people.
Okay Christopher.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
You Cannot Celebrate Valentine’s Day AND Advocate Taliban Style Sharia
Its official, Channel 5 is the most annoying news channel in Pakistan.
In its 9’o clock news hour, the channel devoted a large part of its time focusing on the Swat operation. Commendable you would've thought, but there was little to no mention of the violence being perpetrated by the Taliban, the focus instead was on the innocent people that have been killed by the army. This is followed by a discussion between the newscaster and reporter wherein the two question the merits and demerits of imposing Shariah to appease the Taliban. The merits: it will stop the violence, we are a Muslim country so Shariah is good; demerits: none.
Therefore according to the channel the only way of stopping the violence is by giving in to the Taliban, and which in any case isn't that bad because there demand isn't that unreasonable.
This is followed up by inane report on Afghanistan in which the channel’s correspondent informs us that there is little change in the US policy in Afghanistan, which is evidenced by the fact that Robert Gates was appointed by George W Bush, and that the US has some 'grand plans' for the region. I stopped listening at this point.
Funnily enough, while the newscaster and various reporters were going on about their thinly veiled support for Shariah and appeasement of the Taliban, dozens of tiny hearts kept exploding from the channel’s logo every thirty seconds; in addition to this, the channel was running a special Valentine ’s Day message ticker.
You can't have the best of all worlds. Pick your friggin side man!
These channels are really pissing me off. Do they not see the irony? I think it’s time that we start holding media barons directly responsible for the views espoused on the channels owned by them. Something’s got to be done to make them realize that this isn’t some fucking game that they can go on playing in lieu of short term profits.
I want to begin with Taher Khan. Pakistan’s most prominent ad-guru and the man behind Interflow and TV One Network. Mr. Khan is by all accounts a liberal man in private and in public and appears to have few sympathies with Islamists, and in fact Taliban style rule would destroy his business empire. And yet the most prominent talk show host on his television channel is a thing called Zaid Hamid.
Mr. Hamid is an engineer who fought as a Mujahideen who has now refashioned himself as a 'defence analyst' and presents the show Brass Tacks; incidentally, Mr. Hamid also runs a think tank by the name of Brass Tacks. In actual fact though, Mr. Hamid is anything but an analyst, he's a hate mongering conspiracy theorist who believes: there is an "American game plan to establish an independent territory in Pakistani tribal areas;" "that Hamid Mir is a CIA spy;" 'that MNCs are deliberately causing famine; 'that by God one day there will be a united South Asian region and its name will be Pakistan and only after Radio Pakistan broadcasts from Delhi will we live in Peace' and of course that the Hindu Zionist network wants to destroy Muslims and anyone who denies this is a Jew / CIA operative / Raw agent / Russian.
A few choice clips:
The best video though on the Zaid Hamid though is this parody from the 4 man show:
I can’t begin to tell you how much this man angers me. And thanks to Taher Khan his ignorance and message of hatred and bigotry is being spread far and wide. He’s a Pakistani version of David Icke, a one time British TV presenter who went cuckoo in the late 980s and started sermonizing about international Zionist conspiracies and what not. However, unlike Zaid Hamid, David Icke didn’t get his own show he lost his TV show and got ridiculed.
Its time we started laughing at the likes of Zaid Hamid on our streets and criticizing the likes of Taher Khan for being so callous and short sighted. Mr. Khan money isn't everything, and don't you have enough of it already?
In its 9’o clock news hour, the channel devoted a large part of its time focusing on the Swat operation. Commendable you would've thought, but there was little to no mention of the violence being perpetrated by the Taliban, the focus instead was on the innocent people that have been killed by the army. This is followed by a discussion between the newscaster and reporter wherein the two question the merits and demerits of imposing Shariah to appease the Taliban. The merits: it will stop the violence, we are a Muslim country so Shariah is good; demerits: none.
Therefore according to the channel the only way of stopping the violence is by giving in to the Taliban, and which in any case isn't that bad because there demand isn't that unreasonable.
This is followed up by inane report on Afghanistan in which the channel’s correspondent informs us that there is little change in the US policy in Afghanistan, which is evidenced by the fact that Robert Gates was appointed by George W Bush, and that the US has some 'grand plans' for the region. I stopped listening at this point.
Funnily enough, while the newscaster and various reporters were going on about their thinly veiled support for Shariah and appeasement of the Taliban, dozens of tiny hearts kept exploding from the channel’s logo every thirty seconds; in addition to this, the channel was running a special Valentine ’s Day message ticker.
You can't have the best of all worlds. Pick your friggin side man!
These channels are really pissing me off. Do they not see the irony? I think it’s time that we start holding media barons directly responsible for the views espoused on the channels owned by them. Something’s got to be done to make them realize that this isn’t some fucking game that they can go on playing in lieu of short term profits.
I want to begin with Taher Khan. Pakistan’s most prominent ad-guru and the man behind Interflow and TV One Network. Mr. Khan is by all accounts a liberal man in private and in public and appears to have few sympathies with Islamists, and in fact Taliban style rule would destroy his business empire. And yet the most prominent talk show host on his television channel is a thing called Zaid Hamid.
Mr. Hamid is an engineer who fought as a Mujahideen who has now refashioned himself as a 'defence analyst' and presents the show Brass Tacks; incidentally, Mr. Hamid also runs a think tank by the name of Brass Tacks. In actual fact though, Mr. Hamid is anything but an analyst, he's a hate mongering conspiracy theorist who believes: there is an "American game plan to establish an independent territory in Pakistani tribal areas;" "that Hamid Mir is a CIA spy;" 'that MNCs are deliberately causing famine; 'that by God one day there will be a united South Asian region and its name will be Pakistan and only after Radio Pakistan broadcasts from Delhi will we live in Peace' and of course that the Hindu Zionist network wants to destroy Muslims and anyone who denies this is a Jew / CIA operative / Raw agent / Russian.
A few choice clips:
The best video though on the Zaid Hamid though is this parody from the 4 man show:
I can’t begin to tell you how much this man angers me. And thanks to Taher Khan his ignorance and message of hatred and bigotry is being spread far and wide. He’s a Pakistani version of David Icke, a one time British TV presenter who went cuckoo in the late 980s and started sermonizing about international Zionist conspiracies and what not. However, unlike Zaid Hamid, David Icke didn’t get his own show he lost his TV show and got ridiculed.
Its time we started laughing at the likes of Zaid Hamid on our streets and criticizing the likes of Taher Khan for being so callous and short sighted. Mr. Khan money isn't everything, and don't you have enough of it already?
Labels:
Minority Reports,
Pakistan
Saturday, February 14, 2009
And You Thought A. Q. Khan Was Bad
A few weeks ago the New York Times Magazine published an article by David E Sanger titled Obama's Worst Pakistan Nightmare which examined the possibility of Pakistan's nuclear weapons falling into the 'wrong' hands.
I’ve been meaning to comment on the article but haven’t had the chance. The article is a must read, I'm reprinting the most troubling, yet hilarious, part of the whole article:
Soon after Kidwai [i.e. Khalid Kidwai, the guardian of Pakistan's nuclear weapons] took office he also faced the case of an eccentric nuclear scientist, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, who helped build gas centrifuges for the Pakistani nuclear program, using blueprints Khan had stolen from the Netherlands. Mahmood then moved on to the country’s next huge project: designing the reactor at Khushab that was to produce the fuel Pakistan needed to move to the next level — a plutonium bomb.
An autodidact intellectual with grand aspirations, Mahmood was fascinated by the links between science and the Koran. He wrote a peculiar treatise arguing that when morals degrade, disaster cannot be far behind. Over time, his colleagues began to wonder if Mahmood was mentally sound. They were half amused and half horrified by his fascination with the role sunspots played in triggering the French and Russian Revolutions, World War II and assorted anticolonial uprisings. “This guy was our ultimate nightmare,” an American intelligence official told me in late 2001, when The New York Times first reported on Mahmood. “He had access to the entire Pakistani program. He knew what he was doing. And he was completely out of his mind.”
While Khan appeared to be in the nuclear-proliferation business chiefly for the money, Mahmood made it clear to friends that his interest was religious: Pakistan’s bomb, he told associates, was “the property of a whole Ummah,” referring to the worldwide Muslim community. He wanted to share it with those who might speed “the end of days” and lead the way for Islam to rise as the dominant religious force in the world.
Eventually Mahmood’s religious intensity, combined with his sympathy for Islamic extremism, scared his colleagues. In 1999, just as Kidwai was beginning to examine the staff of the nuclear enterprise, Mahmood was forced to take an early retirement. At a loss for what to do, Mahmood set up a nonprofit charity, Ummah Tameer-e-Nau, which was ostensibly designed to send relief to fellow Muslims in Afghanistan. In August 2001, as the Sept. 11 plotters were making their last preparations in the United States, Mahmood and one of his colleagues at the charity met with Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, over the course of several days in Afghanistan. There is little doubt that Mahmood talked to the two Qaeda leaders about nuclear weapons, or that Al Qaeda desperately wanted the bomb. George Tenet, the C.I.A. chief, wrote later that intelligence reports of the meeting were “frustratingly vague.” They included an account that there was talk of how to design a simple firing mechanism, and that a senior Qaeda leader displayed a canister that may have contained some nuclear material (though almost certainly not bomb-grade).
I’ve been meaning to comment on the article but haven’t had the chance. The article is a must read, I'm reprinting the most troubling, yet hilarious, part of the whole article:
Soon after Kidwai [i.e. Khalid Kidwai, the guardian of Pakistan's nuclear weapons] took office he also faced the case of an eccentric nuclear scientist, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, who helped build gas centrifuges for the Pakistani nuclear program, using blueprints Khan had stolen from the Netherlands. Mahmood then moved on to the country’s next huge project: designing the reactor at Khushab that was to produce the fuel Pakistan needed to move to the next level — a plutonium bomb.
An autodidact intellectual with grand aspirations, Mahmood was fascinated by the links between science and the Koran. He wrote a peculiar treatise arguing that when morals degrade, disaster cannot be far behind. Over time, his colleagues began to wonder if Mahmood was mentally sound. They were half amused and half horrified by his fascination with the role sunspots played in triggering the French and Russian Revolutions, World War II and assorted anticolonial uprisings. “This guy was our ultimate nightmare,” an American intelligence official told me in late 2001, when The New York Times first reported on Mahmood. “He had access to the entire Pakistani program. He knew what he was doing. And he was completely out of his mind.”
While Khan appeared to be in the nuclear-proliferation business chiefly for the money, Mahmood made it clear to friends that his interest was religious: Pakistan’s bomb, he told associates, was “the property of a whole Ummah,” referring to the worldwide Muslim community. He wanted to share it with those who might speed “the end of days” and lead the way for Islam to rise as the dominant religious force in the world.
Eventually Mahmood’s religious intensity, combined with his sympathy for Islamic extremism, scared his colleagues. In 1999, just as Kidwai was beginning to examine the staff of the nuclear enterprise, Mahmood was forced to take an early retirement. At a loss for what to do, Mahmood set up a nonprofit charity, Ummah Tameer-e-Nau, which was ostensibly designed to send relief to fellow Muslims in Afghanistan. In August 2001, as the Sept. 11 plotters were making their last preparations in the United States, Mahmood and one of his colleagues at the charity met with Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, over the course of several days in Afghanistan. There is little doubt that Mahmood talked to the two Qaeda leaders about nuclear weapons, or that Al Qaeda desperately wanted the bomb. George Tenet, the C.I.A. chief, wrote later that intelligence reports of the meeting were “frustratingly vague.” They included an account that there was talk of how to design a simple firing mechanism, and that a senior Qaeda leader displayed a canister that may have contained some nuclear material (though almost certainly not bomb-grade).
Courtesy of The New York Times
Labels:
Minority Reports,
Pakistan
Friday, February 13, 2009
Lost Season Five: Episode 5
Even though Lost has abandoned the flashback format, this week's Lost episode, 'This Place is Death', maintained a thematic link with the first two seasons of the show. Our destinies, no matter how much the Losties try to change it, cannot be reversed. Everyone who crashed on the island was meant to be on Oceanic 815; Charlotte is meant to return to the island and die, no matter what Daniel does. Only Locke seems to have accepted his destiny and is willing to die to ensure it is fulfilled. But who wants to talk about destiny when there are smoke monsters lurking? On to the hail of bullets.
- Once the time travel plot was introduced, I'd assumed that the sickness Rosseau said had affected her people were nosebleeds. Instead, Smokey kills Nadine and rips off another dude's arm. Did the smoke monster kill everyone in the hole and then appear as them to Rosseau? Or is it able to fuck with people's minds and make them turn against Rosseau? Also, in a nice callback to Rosseau describing the smoke monster as the island's security system, we find out that its guarding the temple. What is the temple? You can bet it's something really important.
- This was a standout episode for Michael Emerson who always seems to hit the right notes as Ben Linus. Completely in keeping with his character, Ben uses Jin's wedding ring to prove that he is alive, exactly the opposite of what Locke intended to do and what Jin wanted him to do. I would love to see how Ben manipulated Locke into giving him the ring.
- At the end of the episode, Ben registers extreme surprise when Desmond shows up and announces that he is there to meet Faraday's mother. Is he surprised because he didn't expect Desmond to know who Mrs Hawking is or does he not know himself that she is Faraday's mother?
- I've really strained my memory to try and remember is Desmond and Ben have ever met before. They might have met at the start of season four, when Ben was being held captive by Jack, before being taken away by Locke. Either way, Desmond has no way of knowing that Ben is out to avenge Alex's murder, probably by targeting Penny. Run, Desmond, run.
- I hope we don't have to wait too long before we find out why all the Oceanic 6 had to return. And I hope it isn't something lame.
- Did Ben screw up when moving the frozen donkey wheel? That seems to be what Christian Shephard suggested. By dislodging the wheel from its axis, Ben seems to have caused the flashes. As crafty an operator as he is, I'm guessing he did it on purpouse because he didn't want any of the Oceanic 6 to leave and this way he could force them to come back. I am a bit confused though. If Locke has set the wheel right, and the flashes will stop, why do the Oceanic 6 still need to come back?
- And who/what exactly is Christian Shephard. Could he be the mysterious, God-like Jacob? After all, his name certainly suggests a Biblical figure.
-Speaking of the Oceanic 6, does Sun's daughter Jeon Yi have to return to the island? She wasn't born on the island but she was concieved there. If the island is a Republican, Ben may have to make a quick detour to South Korea.
- I've left the best for last. Charlotte's revelation that Daniel told her not to come back to the island. Does this mean that Daniel can change the future? My guess is that he will be so consumed by grief that he doesn't accept that he cannot save her. Which brings us back to the theme of destiny and how we, despite all our efforts, will not be able to change it.
- Once the time travel plot was introduced, I'd assumed that the sickness Rosseau said had affected her people were nosebleeds. Instead, Smokey kills Nadine and rips off another dude's arm. Did the smoke monster kill everyone in the hole and then appear as them to Rosseau? Or is it able to fuck with people's minds and make them turn against Rosseau? Also, in a nice callback to Rosseau describing the smoke monster as the island's security system, we find out that its guarding the temple. What is the temple? You can bet it's something really important.
- This was a standout episode for Michael Emerson who always seems to hit the right notes as Ben Linus. Completely in keeping with his character, Ben uses Jin's wedding ring to prove that he is alive, exactly the opposite of what Locke intended to do and what Jin wanted him to do. I would love to see how Ben manipulated Locke into giving him the ring.
- At the end of the episode, Ben registers extreme surprise when Desmond shows up and announces that he is there to meet Faraday's mother. Is he surprised because he didn't expect Desmond to know who Mrs Hawking is or does he not know himself that she is Faraday's mother?
- I've really strained my memory to try and remember is Desmond and Ben have ever met before. They might have met at the start of season four, when Ben was being held captive by Jack, before being taken away by Locke. Either way, Desmond has no way of knowing that Ben is out to avenge Alex's murder, probably by targeting Penny. Run, Desmond, run.
- I hope we don't have to wait too long before we find out why all the Oceanic 6 had to return. And I hope it isn't something lame.
- Did Ben screw up when moving the frozen donkey wheel? That seems to be what Christian Shephard suggested. By dislodging the wheel from its axis, Ben seems to have caused the flashes. As crafty an operator as he is, I'm guessing he did it on purpouse because he didn't want any of the Oceanic 6 to leave and this way he could force them to come back. I am a bit confused though. If Locke has set the wheel right, and the flashes will stop, why do the Oceanic 6 still need to come back?
- And who/what exactly is Christian Shephard. Could he be the mysterious, God-like Jacob? After all, his name certainly suggests a Biblical figure.
-Speaking of the Oceanic 6, does Sun's daughter Jeon Yi have to return to the island? She wasn't born on the island but she was concieved there. If the island is a Republican, Ben may have to make a quick detour to South Korea.
- I've left the best for last. Charlotte's revelation that Daniel told her not to come back to the island. Does this mean that Daniel can change the future? My guess is that he will be so consumed by grief that he doesn't accept that he cannot save her. Which brings us back to the theme of destiny and how we, despite all our efforts, will not be able to change it.
Labels:
Minority Reports,
Miscellaneous
Thursday, February 12, 2009
George Clooney is in Love With Who?
Given that the original source for this information is The National Enquirer, I cannot vouch for its accuracy.
Fatima Bhutto, the fiery poet-journalist niece of slain former Pakistani premier Benazir Bhutto, may be dating Hollywood heartthrob George Clooney...“He’s still out there with his usual assortment of Hollywood eye-candy hanging from his arm. But George insists those days could be coming to an end if Fatima wants to take their relationship to the next level and spend some serious time with him in the US,”
Labels:
Minority Reports,
Pakistan
Mustafa Kamal Does It Like Nobody Else
Inspire people that is, or at least try to do so.
Daily Times reports that on Wednesday, the mayor invited a delegation of students and teachers from the Institute of Business Management (IoBM - which used to be CBM) to his office and spoke to them about issues afflicting the city and what he's doing about it. He gave them a presentation on the city government's master plan and then showed them around the various offices of the CDGK.
This is honestly the first time that I've heard a Pakistani government official inviting university students over and showing them how government really works. Perhaps I'm being unfair and there have been others in the past, maybe some in the present, but surely such instances are rare.
Who knows this trip may inspire a few of these students to make a difference by working in the government? And even if that isn't the case, these students will have a better idea of how government, albeit the city government, really works, which surely is a good thing.
Daily Times reports that on Wednesday, the mayor invited a delegation of students and teachers from the Institute of Business Management (IoBM - which used to be CBM) to his office and spoke to them about issues afflicting the city and what he's doing about it. He gave them a presentation on the city government's master plan and then showed them around the various offices of the CDGK.
This is honestly the first time that I've heard a Pakistani government official inviting university students over and showing them how government really works. Perhaps I'm being unfair and there have been others in the past, maybe some in the present, but surely such instances are rare.
Who knows this trip may inspire a few of these students to make a difference by working in the government? And even if that isn't the case, these students will have a better idea of how government, albeit the city government, really works, which surely is a good thing.
Labels:
Minority Reports,
Pakistan
Excerpt Of The Day
This is from Yasmin Khan's The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan, which I am getting through at the rate of about a chapter every fortnight (not because it's densely written - quite the contrary - but because I do not have time nowadays to read for fun). In this excerpt, she describes the nebulous nature of the demand for Pakistan.
This, of course, is the Ayesha Jalal hypothesis made in the The Sole Spokesman (indeed, Khan footnotes Jalal on this point): that Jinnah would have been quite happy without an independent Pakistan, and that the "demand" for Pakistan was a mere bargaining tool. By the way, a quick side note on Jalal: anyone who can piss off both Indian and Pakistani nationalists to the extent that she did with her work automatically earns my favor. Anyway, Khan goes on in the next paragraph:
Liars! That's not what I learned in Pak Studies for O-Levels!
Anyway, as I've said before, the problem of "welding together diverse constituents" each with diverse interests resulted in Urdu and Islam being used as binding ropes to tie the nation state together. You can judge the efficacy and sageness of such efforts for yourself.
Crucially, though, anti-Congress feeling and heartfelt support for Jinnah and the League did not necessarily translate into support for Pakistan as we know it today with its current borders and boundaries. The Lahore Resolution, passed at the annual Muslim League meeting on 23 March 1940 and identified by Pakistanis as the foundation stone for their state, is not much of a guide. It pinpointed the Muslim desire for a more loosely federated state structure, calling for a collection of independent states with autonomy and sovereignty. There was a lack of knowledge or concern about Pakistan's actual territorial limits. Jinnah himself seems to have prevaricated in his understanding of Pakistan as a separate, sovereign nation state distinct from India. It seems more likely, in the early days of the constitutional negotiations, at least, that he was rallying his supporters to extract the best possible deal from the British for the League, and would have settled for a federal solution if it guaranteed a firm element of deceantralised power in the hands of Muslims.
This, of course, is the Ayesha Jalal hypothesis made in the The Sole Spokesman (indeed, Khan footnotes Jalal on this point): that Jinnah would have been quite happy without an independent Pakistan, and that the "demand" for Pakistan was a mere bargaining tool. By the way, a quick side note on Jalal: anyone who can piss off both Indian and Pakistani nationalists to the extent that she did with her work automatically earns my favor. Anyway, Khan goes on in the next paragraph:
This ambuigity [i.e. that of Pakistan's actual political and territorial status once the British left] was convenient. Jinnah was facing the problem of welding together diverse constituents, many of whom read into the Pakistan demands their own local interpretations or seized upon the League as a vehicle for their own regional campaigns. The issue of territory was repeatedly fudged...Pakistan was an imaginary, nationalistic dream as well as a cold territorial reality.
Liars! That's not what I learned in Pak Studies for O-Levels!
Anyway, as I've said before, the problem of "welding together diverse constituents" each with diverse interests resulted in Urdu and Islam being used as binding ropes to tie the nation state together. You can judge the efficacy and sageness of such efforts for yourself.
Labels:
Item of the day,
Pakistan,
South Asia
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Every Curse Word Ever Uttered On The Sopranos
This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.
Labels:
Miscellaneous
Monday, February 09, 2009
While The Country's Biggest Tourist Attraction Goes Down In Flames
The tourism minister looks towards topless beaches for a solution
A Senate panel has asked the government to send the newly-inducted Tourism Minister, Maulana Attaur Rehman, on a visit to verdant beaches in South France and Switzerland to get innovative ideas of promoting the industry that contributes immensely to Pakistan’s economy...“Sir, you need to immediately visit St-Tropez and beaches in France as Pakistan has coastal areas that could be built on similar lines to attract foreign tourists,” Senator Enver Baig advised the minister. The proposal was readily endorsed by other participants of the meeting held on Wednesday.
Labels:
Minority Reports,
Miscellaneous
Saturday, February 07, 2009
Why Do Veteran Teams Hire Inexperienced Coaches?
This NBA season has seen the decline (and will see the fall) of two of the league's more consistent franchises in the last five years: Phoenix and Detroit. It has been painful to watch on many levels, and for me personally, it has been especially so: Detroit had to start sucking the year AI went there, and Phoenix went from the team everybody loved to watch to a team that's just sort of sad.
While we can say a lot about the trades (Shaq/Marion), draft picks (Darko over Melo/Wade/Bosh) and free agent decisions (letting Joe Johnson go) that have led these two proud franchises to this juncture, I would like to concentrate instead on the coaching hires that were made last summer, with Michael Curry going to Detroit and Terry Porter going to Phoenix.
Both of those decisions reflected a violation of one of NBA's core axioms: thou shalt not hire a young coach to lead a veteran team that has enjoyed success with a former coach. The issue here is simple: the NBA is a player's league, and unless the coach enjoys the players' respect as a coach and as a man (i.e. NOT simply because the coach has the GM's backing, as both Porter and Curry do), he will fail. And because young and inexperienced coaches by definition have enjoyed no prior success, they will not have the players' respect when he gets there.
Recall Shaq's contrasting reactions to when (a) his Lakers hired Phil Jackson and (b) Pat Riley fired Stan Van Gundy and hired himself as Heat coach. When Phil Jackson - then of the mere six rings - came on board, he instantly had Shaq's ear. Why? Simple: he had the rings, and the adulation of Michael and Scottie. Shaq respected Phil Jackson before he even got to the Lakers, which is why their relationship worked. By contrast, recall Shaq's reaction when Riley stabbed Van Gundy in the back. It was something to the effect of "A marquee team needs a marquee coach". Despite the fact that Van Gundy was (and is) a fantastic coach, he simply did not have Shaq's respect. Why not? No rings.
This phenomenon explains some - though by no means all - of the Pistons' and Suns' struggles this year. The Pistons don't play hard for a number of reasons, but one of them is simply the fact that they don't care what Michael Curry says (the way they did when, say, Larry Brown was around). Similarly, you get the feeling the half of the Phoenix team tuned out Terry Porter before Mike D'Antoni even left the building.
The question then becomes: why did the respective GMs of these teams hire these coaches? I understand Steve Kerr's philosophical differences with D'Antoni, and his desire to go in a different direction, but why not hire someone defensively-oriented with a sterling reputation with the NBA's elite, like Jeff Van Gundy or Larry Brown? Why did Joe Dumars go with Curry to coach a team of notoriously hard-headed and stubborn players? It really makes no sense.
While we can say a lot about the trades (Shaq/Marion), draft picks (Darko over Melo/Wade/Bosh) and free agent decisions (letting Joe Johnson go) that have led these two proud franchises to this juncture, I would like to concentrate instead on the coaching hires that were made last summer, with Michael Curry going to Detroit and Terry Porter going to Phoenix.
Both of those decisions reflected a violation of one of NBA's core axioms: thou shalt not hire a young coach to lead a veteran team that has enjoyed success with a former coach. The issue here is simple: the NBA is a player's league, and unless the coach enjoys the players' respect as a coach and as a man (i.e. NOT simply because the coach has the GM's backing, as both Porter and Curry do), he will fail. And because young and inexperienced coaches by definition have enjoyed no prior success, they will not have the players' respect when he gets there.Recall Shaq's contrasting reactions to when (a) his Lakers hired Phil Jackson and (b) Pat Riley fired Stan Van Gundy and hired himself as Heat coach. When Phil Jackson - then of the mere six rings - came on board, he instantly had Shaq's ear. Why? Simple: he had the rings, and the adulation of Michael and Scottie. Shaq respected Phil Jackson before he even got to the Lakers, which is why their relationship worked. By contrast, recall Shaq's reaction when Riley stabbed Van Gundy in the back. It was something to the effect of "A marquee team needs a marquee coach". Despite the fact that Van Gundy was (and is) a fantastic coach, he simply did not have Shaq's respect. Why not? No rings.
This phenomenon explains some - though by no means all - of the Pistons' and Suns' struggles this year. The Pistons don't play hard for a number of reasons, but one of them is simply the fact that they don't care what Michael Curry says (the way they did when, say, Larry Brown was around). Similarly, you get the feeling the half of the Phoenix team tuned out Terry Porter before Mike D'Antoni even left the building.The question then becomes: why did the respective GMs of these teams hire these coaches? I understand Steve Kerr's philosophical differences with D'Antoni, and his desire to go in a different direction, but why not hire someone defensively-oriented with a sterling reputation with the NBA's elite, like Jeff Van Gundy or Larry Brown? Why did Joe Dumars go with Curry to coach a team of notoriously hard-headed and stubborn players? It really makes no sense.
Labels:
Basketball
Blog Recommendation: Shadow Of Sputnik
Slowly but surely, I am convincing all my friends to become bloggers. First it was Farooq and the guy who for some reason is known as JJY. Now it's Lindsey, who some of you regulars may already know. Anyway, she blogs about lobbyists, collective action among today's youth, and elephants.
Check it out.
Check it out.
Labels:
Miscellaneous
Friday, February 06, 2009
Khalid Hasan RIP
It is with profound sadness that I report the passing of Khalid Hasan, one of our finest writers and an unparalleled custodian of our cultural history. Khalid, or Hasan sahib as he was known to those of us much younger than him, was a fabulous conversationalist and one of the funniest men I have ever had the pleasure to meet. He will be sorely missed.
Labels:
Minority Reports,
Pakistan
Let The Games Begin: PPP v MQM
From today's Daily Times:
Sindh Minister for Local Government Agha Siraj Durrani [dodgy, dodgy man] said that the government is considering bifurcating Karachi into six smaller districts [excellent idea, because a city (and only the fraction that isn't in the army, civil aviation authority, port trust's control) is best run with half a dozen people vying for resources] and added that other districts including Hyderabad and Larkana, which the previous government had divided into several districts, will be restored to their original form [doesn't seem like tit for tat in the slightest].
Sindh Minister for Local Government Agha Siraj Durrani [dodgy, dodgy man] said that the government is considering bifurcating Karachi into six smaller districts [excellent idea, because a city (and only the fraction that isn't in the army, civil aviation authority, port trust's control) is best run with half a dozen people vying for resources] and added that other districts including Hyderabad and Larkana, which the previous government had divided into several districts, will be restored to their original form [doesn't seem like tit for tat in the slightest].
Labels:
Minority Reports,
Pakistan
Thursday, February 05, 2009
Lost Season Five: Episode 4
As I was watching 'The Little Prince', the latest episode of Lost, it struck me how much the focus of the show has changed since the first season. Back then, Jack and Kate were the obvious focus of the show, the hero and heroine who would solve all the mysteries, kick the bad guys' asses and finally realize that they love each other. Now, is there anyone who seriously cares what happens to them? If anyone is going to figure out what's going on it's Faraday (introduced in the fourth season), we no longer know if anyone is a bad guy and the only love story anyone is interested in is that of Desmond and Penny (introduced in the first and last episodes of the second season, respectively). The most compelling character is Ben, who was only supposed to be on the show for a four-episode arc as Henry Gale, while episodes centering on Kate tend to drag. Despite her presence, there is still plenty to ponder after 'The Little Prince'.
- For once, the most obvious answer turned out to be the correct one. Despite the fakeout with Claire's mom, it was Ben who had set the lawyers on Kate and Aaron. As an aside, let me state how much I hate the previously on's. By now I can't imagine there is a single Lost viewer left who doesn't intimately know every minor character in the Lost mythology. For someone who just randonly tunes in, a one-minute recap isn't going to help at all. All the recap does is tip me off that Claire's mom is going to reappear.
- We speaculated in the comments last week that the time travel business might finally allow us to see a Rosseau flashback. Awesome though her appearance was, the reintroduction of an undead Jin may just trump that.
- Miles' nosebleed leads Faraday to suspect that he may have been on the island before. Can Miles now be added to the list of those who might be Dr Marvin Candle's baby?
-This is from the obsessives from various Lost forums. Ben's van has Rainier-Canton written on the side, which just happens to be an anagram of reincarnation. More confirmation, I suppose, that Locke isn't really dead. The funeral home in which Locke's body was kept, first shown in the season three finale, was named Hoffs Drawler, which is an anagram for flash forward. So these things actually mean something.
- Who were the guys that shot at the Losties? It seems likely that it happened in the future, as the camp was there but abandoned. Here's a crazy theory. Could it be the Oceanic 6? Or, more likely but far more boring, it could be Widmore's men.
- Watching the scene where Sawyer sees Claire giving birth led to another theory. Remember those whispers we heard in the jungle back in the first season quite regularly and more sporadically since? Wouldn't it be awesome if the whispers are the people time-travelling throughout the island?
- What is going to happen once Locke reaches the Orchid station? Here's my take on it. He's going to turn the wheel and wind up in the present day (the present day for the Oceanic 6, that is). The terrible things that happened after the Oceanic 6 left which, Jack told Ben in the season four finale, is why they must go back, must be the nosebleeds. But I have to admit I have no idea why Locke dies and why he is known as Jeremy Bentham. Episode six of the season is called 'The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham' so not too long now before we get answers.
- Who sent Sun the gun and surviellance photographs and who is she working with? And why does she want to kill Ben? Also, who is trying to capture Sayid? Whoever it is obviously doesn't want to kill him as they keep trying to shoot him with tranquilizers and not bullets.
- For once, the most obvious answer turned out to be the correct one. Despite the fakeout with Claire's mom, it was Ben who had set the lawyers on Kate and Aaron. As an aside, let me state how much I hate the previously on's. By now I can't imagine there is a single Lost viewer left who doesn't intimately know every minor character in the Lost mythology. For someone who just randonly tunes in, a one-minute recap isn't going to help at all. All the recap does is tip me off that Claire's mom is going to reappear.
- We speaculated in the comments last week that the time travel business might finally allow us to see a Rosseau flashback. Awesome though her appearance was, the reintroduction of an undead Jin may just trump that.
- Miles' nosebleed leads Faraday to suspect that he may have been on the island before. Can Miles now be added to the list of those who might be Dr Marvin Candle's baby?
-This is from the obsessives from various Lost forums. Ben's van has Rainier-Canton written on the side, which just happens to be an anagram of reincarnation. More confirmation, I suppose, that Locke isn't really dead. The funeral home in which Locke's body was kept, first shown in the season three finale, was named Hoffs Drawler, which is an anagram for flash forward. So these things actually mean something.
- Who were the guys that shot at the Losties? It seems likely that it happened in the future, as the camp was there but abandoned. Here's a crazy theory. Could it be the Oceanic 6? Or, more likely but far more boring, it could be Widmore's men.
- Watching the scene where Sawyer sees Claire giving birth led to another theory. Remember those whispers we heard in the jungle back in the first season quite regularly and more sporadically since? Wouldn't it be awesome if the whispers are the people time-travelling throughout the island?
- What is going to happen once Locke reaches the Orchid station? Here's my take on it. He's going to turn the wheel and wind up in the present day (the present day for the Oceanic 6, that is). The terrible things that happened after the Oceanic 6 left which, Jack told Ben in the season four finale, is why they must go back, must be the nosebleeds. But I have to admit I have no idea why Locke dies and why he is known as Jeremy Bentham. Episode six of the season is called 'The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham' so not too long now before we get answers.
- Who sent Sun the gun and surviellance photographs and who is she working with? And why does she want to kill Ben? Also, who is trying to capture Sayid? Whoever it is obviously doesn't want to kill him as they keep trying to shoot him with tranquilizers and not bullets.
Labels:
Minority Reports,
Miscellaneous
Passing The Parcel
You remember when you were a kid, and you went to those birthday parties where there were more adults than people your age, and you would end up playing games like passing the parcel because the organizers weren't smart enough to come up with something actually fun? Well, evidently, Pakistan's state apparatus is feeling nostalgic.
Poor Bangladesh. This was their terse response:
Basically, Pakistan saw India's "blame a regional rival that used to be the same country as you" and raised them with "blame a regional rival that used to be same country as you, and with whom you had a brutal civil war". I can't wait to see Bangladesh catching the pillow, and then passing it on to Burma or something. The pillow will keep heading eastward, with either Singapore or Australia being the last ones with it before the music stops.
ISLAMABAD, Feb 4: Pakistani investigators probing into the Mumbai attacks are closing in on a Bangladeshi connection to the terrorist strike and are said to have evidence of not only the involvement of a banned militant organisation, Harkat-ul-Jihad-al Islami, Bangladesh (HuJI-B), but also of its role in planning the attack and training the terrorists.
A reference in this regard is likely to be made in the report of the country’s premier investigation agency, FIA, that will be shared soon with India as findings of preliminary investigations.
Poor Bangladesh. This was their terse response:
Law Minister of Bangladesh Farooq Khan said Pakistan cannot blame us.
“Our land cannot be used against any country,” he asserted.
Basically, Pakistan saw India's "blame a regional rival that used to be the same country as you" and raised them with "blame a regional rival that used to be same country as you, and with whom you had a brutal civil war". I can't wait to see Bangladesh catching the pillow, and then passing it on to Burma or something. The pillow will keep heading eastward, with either Singapore or Australia being the last ones with it before the music stops.
Labels:
South Asia
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
Book Recommendation
I would urge all our readers to buy a copy of Chemical Shifts and Coupling Constants for Silicon-29 (Landolt-Bornstein: Numerical Data and Functional Relationships in Science and Technology - New Series), now available on Amazon for an eminently reasonable price. Be sure to check out the reader reviews of the book.
Thanks to MK for the link.
Thanks to MK for the link.
Labels:
Minority Reports,
Miscellaneous
Meet Dr. A.Q. Khan...Through His Website
Well, well, well. Look what we have here. It appears our favorite nuclear-materials peddler has a website (via ArmsControlWonk). Please check out how his "About" page begins:
As arrow of time moves, the Will of God prevails and is focused on the emergence of humans endowed with exceptional intellectual capabilities and creative abilities. Such are the men who, by their good deeds, fulfill the edict of God, as revealed in the Holy Qurran:"I have created man in the best of forms." (Al Qurran; Surah 95; Ayah 04)
By their deeds and actions such persons, though not prophets, demonstrate that they are an extension of the will of the transcendental. These are the people, who are destined to make history in the elevation of nations. Such is the personality of Dr. Abdul Quadeer Khan, who was born in Bhopal on April 1, 1936, which corresponds to the Hijri era 1355, Thursday 15th Rajab. As the time has unfolded itself, the Godly qualities enshrined in the words "Quadeer" and "Ghafoor", symbolized in the names of Dr. Abdul Quadeer Khan and his father, Mr. Abdul Ghafoor Khan, have raised the Pakistani nation to new heights in high technology.
Not to mention, high fashion.
Labels:
Pakistan
Monday, February 02, 2009
Meet the Women Who Will Defeat the Taliban
Dawn reports:
I have just one question for these women. Did they not consider just asking the guy if he was interested in a menage-e-quad? Most 30-year-old men would kill for the opportunity, particularly in Pakistan.
Three women have been accused of abusing a 30-year-old waiter of an eatery in Clifton.
The victim, Khalil Hussain, son of Hussain Bux, alleged that three women, one of them middle-aged and the others in their early 20s, came to the eatery at Neelam Colony, a locality in the Boat Basin police limits, at around 11.30pm on January 27 and placed an order for food.
He said the middle-aged woman, who was in the driving seat, asked him to get into the car on the pretext that she wanted him to see her residence so that he could deliver the food there.
The man, hailing from Bahawalpur, alleged that on their way the women offered him burfi, a traditional sweet, and he became unconscious after eating it.
He stated to the police that he found himself tied to a bed when he gained consciousness.
The man said the women kept him in their custody for four days and sexually assaulted him several times. He said he was sedated during the captivity and was unable to move his limbs.
I have just one question for these women. Did they not consider just asking the guy if he was interested in a menage-e-quad? Most 30-year-old men would kill for the opportunity, particularly in Pakistan.
Labels:
Minority Reports,
Pakistan
Sunday, February 01, 2009
A Couple Of Quick Thoughts On Nadal-Federer
You know, it takes a special kind of someone to convince someone with thirteen Grand Slam titles, 5 consecutive years with a number one ranking, and an ungodly streak of Grand Slam semis made that they can't win before they even step on the court with you, but that's what Rafa Nadal has done to Roger Federer. I watched the first three sets of the Australian Open final (my body finally gave out at 6:05 a.m.), and the only times when Federer looked like he believed he could win were when Nadal was off his game.
To be clear, this was sort of predictable - I think entire psychology courses at graduate school can be organized around what Nadal did to Federer's mental make up at Wimbledon last year - but seeing it in the flesh was kind of overwhelming in a very sad way. As a big Roger Federer fan, it became clear to me that he would never again beat Rafa Nadal. He might still break Sampras' record of 14 Grand Slams, but he's going to have do it the circuituous way: hope someone else knocks Nadal out, and then take that someone else out (against everyone else on tour, Federer is sublime).
Also, how much do you think Federer is going to think about those six break points in the third set (three at 0-40 at 4-4, then two at 15-40 at 5-5, and then another in the same game after Rafa got it to deuce)? Wait, I think this answers my question:
I'm sorry, I really don't want to beat up on Federer. He's an absolute class act, always has been, is a fantastic ambassador for the spot (along with Rafa, no doubt) and filled me - a Slams-only kind of tennis fan - with absolute joy over the last five years. But while the "who's the greatest of all time" question remains unanswered, I think we can safely say that it's not Federer: he's now lost to his main rival 13 out of 19 times, and in the final of three different Grand Slams, on three different surfaces. That's not GOAT material, I'm afraid.
Photo credit: AFP/William West
To be clear, this was sort of predictable - I think entire psychology courses at graduate school can be organized around what Nadal did to Federer's mental make up at Wimbledon last year - but seeing it in the flesh was kind of overwhelming in a very sad way. As a big Roger Federer fan, it became clear to me that he would never again beat Rafa Nadal. He might still break Sampras' record of 14 Grand Slams, but he's going to have do it the circuituous way: hope someone else knocks Nadal out, and then take that someone else out (against everyone else on tour, Federer is sublime).
Also, how much do you think Federer is going to think about those six break points in the third set (three at 0-40 at 4-4, then two at 15-40 at 5-5, and then another in the same game after Rafa got it to deuce)? Wait, I think this answers my question:
I'm sorry, I really don't want to beat up on Federer. He's an absolute class act, always has been, is a fantastic ambassador for the spot (along with Rafa, no doubt) and filled me - a Slams-only kind of tennis fan - with absolute joy over the last five years. But while the "who's the greatest of all time" question remains unanswered, I think we can safely say that it's not Federer: he's now lost to his main rival 13 out of 19 times, and in the final of three different Grand Slams, on three different surfaces. That's not GOAT material, I'm afraid.
Photo credit: AFP/William West
Labels:
Miscellaneous
Ugh
Kobe Bryant is a Barcelona fan? Why, dear Lord, why?
Seriously, what does this mean for me? Isn't this kind of like a Jewish fan of Schalke 04 discovering that Adolf Hitler supported them?
Ok, ok, maybe it's not that bad, but it's still pretty bad.
Seriously, what does this mean for me? Isn't this kind of like a Jewish fan of Schalke 04 discovering that Adolf Hitler supported them?
Ok, ok, maybe it's not that bad, but it's still pretty bad.
Labels:
Basketball,
Football
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
