Madspeak

It is wonderful if one could park ones car ( motorcycle) without someone claiming a part of the road as their own. These are: Managers of banks Cigarette (and other junk) sellers Tea shops Fruit juice sellers Milk shop owners All these get away with this because they bribe all those responsible for enforcing he law and this does not mean jus the police. The stalls usually next to the pavement where cars are parked, or on the pavements - so that people have to abandon the pavement and walk on the road and risk getting hit by any vehicle. Other than the danger of getting hit by a vehicle the danger is also of falling into uncovered manhole, because drug addicts steal the lids which they sell in order to support drug addiction - that is the most common story - it could very well be that in order to give the contract to supply manhole lids, the previous lids are removed and declared stolen. A contractor supplies manholes and gives a huge bribe to the people who approve the contract - anyth

It could be a strange beginning to an idea - Julius Caesar was a military officer a general in the Roman army. His actions were based on political decisions made in the Roman Senate. Plans of for the conquest of specific territories were debated and finalised in the Roman Senate. The annexation of territories were planned and were given a specific time frame. Caesar captured Gaul on the orders of the Senate. The conquest of Egypt perhaps already was already in place. Though Caesar had carried out a coup and made the Senate subservient to his will, the mission to occupy Egypt had to be done because of a prior Senate decree. But after the military took over the affairs of Rome, the Roman empire stopped expanding, because one military dictator after another, proclaiming themselves Caesars were not really interested in expanding the empire. If the Julius Caesar had not staged his coup and the military was never involved in politics – it could very well be that Romans would have been able

In 1958 the people of former East Pakistan now independent Bangladesh - protested against Urdu and wanted Bengali to be the 'national language' - perhaps nowhere in the world has ever heard of rioting and demonstrations over the issue of language and nothing else. That is a lot of water under the bridge now - Bangladesh exists, Bengali is the national language, though the truth is everyone prefers to speak Urdu - it is the language of South Asia. There may be a few places where Urdu is not understood or not spoken at a;;. So many people regardless of rank and status would rather speak in Urdu then in Bengali. They all know that language issue was for political reasons and nothing else. The language of the government prior to British rule was Persian - Urdu was the language of the common people. During the British Raj, English was the language of the government, Urdu remained the language of the common people - Urdu did not discriminate between religions, everyone spoke it. Af

The new selected prime minister by the military has over 32 ministers in his cabinet. A minister for every single task whether it requires a great deal of expertise and or it is downright menial. Ministers get all the privileges which mean they have mansions, ten chauffeur driven cars, free petrol, free electricity, free water, and free gas. It does not matter that the rest of the people in the country are suffering due inflation and paying inflated electricity and telephone bills. The salaries of these ministers will be millions of rupees. 75% of these ministers are retired silly high ranking military officers, during their working years they were completely incompetent and as cabinet ministers they will be much worse, they would be positively rabid – because throughout their working lives they learnt only one thing how to bark orders. The rest of the ministers comprised of former bureaucrats and failed politicians who could never dream of being a cabinet minister. had there been a

Karachi has been the target of a number of terrorists attacks - there are of several type - there are those amongst religious sects the Shias and the Sunnis, there are factions between both Shia and Sunni groups. They primarily attack eachother's mosques or assassinate eachother's leaders. Then of course there is the international 'War on Terror' - the result is some terrorists slip into the city and try to attack the consulates of the countries forming the coalition forces in Afghanistan or those who are in some way affiliated or sympathetic to the cause. The residences and offices are targetted - but these are scattered all over the city. Immediately after an attack has taken place, then all traffic on that road is stopped indefinitely - causing unnecessary traffic jams elsewhere. Things have come to such a state that many major roads cannot be used and alternative ones have to be used - this is time consuming and extremely irritating. Most Karachites are seeing

As can be expected from a fanatical regime, which is bent on denying everyone here the least amount of freedom - the Internet like all other media is very closely monitored, filtered and websites which people use to visit on a regular basis are now are blocked - a message called 'time out error 110', which is a way of saying 'don't ever visit this website again'. Instead of lowering charges and providing good services, the state owned telephone company PTCL is making it increasingly impossible to surf the Internet. In a population of 150 million people only 6 per cent people use the Internet - whereas in more properous countries up to 40 per cent of the entire population uses the Internet. Internet access is doomed, because the network of telephone lines does not exist, besides the majority of the people do not know how to use computers leave alone surf the Internet. The use of computers and the surfing of the Internet is a previlege not something which everyo

One would have expected - that when former USA president Bill Clinton was here, his 'address to the nation' would have been in a friendlier manner, But such was not the case. Instead the manner he presented himself, on our state-owned TV was no different from any other of the countless tin-pot dictators who have been running our country. Clinton was unsmiling - he looked very stern and he spoke very harshly, which was downright obnoxious. Of course Clinton was not here to win votes, had that been the case, the manner he made his speech would have been much more pleasant, He was thumping the desk whenever he made a point - no one actually remembers all that he had said; the details are fuzzy now. Few things cannot be forgotten he said Pakistan is a pariah nation and needed to be warned of dire consequences. As if the lowest forms of life on the planet is a Pakistani. Clinton instead of presenting a pleasant demeanour and a diplomatic one, he was extremely ferocious and just as