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Showing posts from February, 2007

The USA should do more for Pakistan

The USA has very high expectations from Pakistan. It wants it ‘ to do more in Afghanistan ’. But there is are some problems with that. If a First World country, which is also happens to be a super-power with unlimited wealth, resources with ability to manufacture and develop a wide range of land, air and sea weapons including advanced suirvalllance equipment, which it upgrades on a regular basis- cannot manage things in Afghanistan, then how can an undemocratic, dirt poor Third World Country with limited resources be in a position to really be able to have the same impact as the USA in Afghanista? Pakistan has so many problems of its own and now it is required a fight a full scale war and that too by diverting scarce resources away from infrastructure and social uplift projects. The last time Pakistan was used in the previous Afghan War against the Soviet Union, as soon as that war was over – myriad sanctions were imposed by the USA as if all of a sudden Pakistan wa

Russia versus the West again!?

For 17 years Russia was disposing off the empire which was not made by the Communists but by the Czars who preceded them and were overthrown. In this time Russia has been consolidating its economic and military power. During this time it did not concern itself with events beyond its borders. After the house cleaning and everything retrurned to order, Russia is beginning to reassert itself. When US commentator was asked about his comments instead saying something insightful - all he said - to sum up -Russia is being run by gangsters. Now what exactly is that supposed to mean? For any country any other sovereign country a rebel state and its leaders rebel leader. No one accepts any country's independence. Does the US intend to arrest these criminals and super-corrupt people who are running Russia these days, does the US intend to kill them the way they murdered Saddam Hussein? Russia is said to have only a few friends - which the USA hates- China, North Korea and Iran. I

In hindsight

In hindsight, if Pakistan's Communist Party had swept the polll and taken over control of the government wouldPakistan today be less dangerous or more dangerous today? Of course the USA was so extremely against Communism that the polls were scrapped and General Ayub Khan took over in 1958. He eliminated all the members and communist party and its leaders. Had Communism been allowed to prevail, then the communist party would have eliminated feudalism, tribalisma and the fanatical mullahs(who a re a cause of so much trouble these days). Communist Pakistan would probably moved ahead economically. There would have been mass literacy and universal healhcare. But this was not to be what resulted is a country by miliatry dictators and their agents. As time showed communism was not something permanent. The Cold War official came to an end in 1990 so the communists in Pakistan would have been elected out of office and the country would have moved and developed to a new phase of its d

Gun-running in wars

It is the history of the USA, when it intervenes with its forces - it never ever encounters a standing army - its soldiers end up fighting up the people of those countries who are spread out and for all practical purposes invisibles. Since it is so frustrating to be 'all dressed up and nowhere to go', US propagand leaders devote their time trying to dehumanise those people by giving them labels uch as Commies or Viet-Cong essentially all of whom were the people of Vietnam. In Iraq they are called Insurgents and in Afghanistan they are called Taliban. No country can ever combat the US armed forces head-on – so other tactics are used which drags wars on to uncounted years. The people who benefit from are international gun-runners. They supply weapons to anyone. These gun-runners fuel the war, their source of weapons and ammunition can be any country in the world. Just because Iranian made bombs have been found in Iraq does not necessarily mean that Iran has anything

'General Musharraf is the greatest ally of the US against terrorism'

I was watching a local private TV channel, which should be independent of state control. This channel in its news bulletin had no relevant news - but what startled me was three US officals said the same thing 'General Musharraf is the US' greatest ally against terrorism'. What is that supposed to mean exactly? Should it not have been said in the news item that Pakistan is the US' greatest ally against terrorism. Considering the material which was given to the newscaster he simply repeated 'General Musharraf is the US' greatest ally against terrorism, which could possibly mean that the US officals have something seriously against Pakistan and only care about their puppet General Musharraf and no one else. ---- Since the military regime reliases it is not possible to successfully block the Internet, peope have to pay more for unhindered acces. One company Cybernet is very officious about this - it wants the identity card of the people who subscribe to this

Escaping the dry zone

The ban on alcohol has been a tremendous loss to the country in several ways. People here are just as fond of drinking just as people anyone else in the world. When the ban on booze was imposed in 1977, the people who enjoyed having peg or two after a days work were deprived of their pleasure. The revenue generated by the sale of liquor was tremendous, by banning liquor this revenue dried up it went upto countless millions of rupees in today' terms it could several billion rupees annually. The people who had accepted liquor as their part of their life could not afford the smuggled liquor - many of them choosed to migrate to any place where theycould lead the life that they were accustomed to. Many of them were businessmen who preferred to take their business to some otther country. Many talented people which included artitst, authors, singers, musicians decided to migrate - the pleasure of drinking was something they missed dearly. The country has lost these people and in the