Do you have a lot to say and a knack for writing?

Do you wish you had a blog but don’t want to go through the hassle of administering one?

Do you want to try your hand at blogging without the pressure of having to write every day?

Join Skippydoodle’s blog as an author and let’s get out of the poorhouse together!

Rules:

1.  You only write when you want to.  If you get busy, bored or just disappear for a few weeks so be it.  This is for fun and to share information, not to create an unpaid obligation or any kind of pressure.

2.  You must be able to write well.  You don’t need to be a professional journalist, but proper grammar and the ability to clearly convey your thoughts is a must.  Clever is good too.

3.  When you recommend a site or provide a link you must be willing to verify it first.  The link must be legitimate, delivers what it promises, has a decent privacy policy and doesn’t waste people’s time, build false hopes or fill their inboxes with crap.

Skippydoodle needs authors in the following areas:

• Adventures in Freebies – The Internet is packed with claims of freebies, but the vast majority are scams, phishing sites or just lame.  I have found one or two sites which I rely on to find free samples.  They are generally limited to consumer products and I would like to find someone who is passionate about all kinds of free stuff and teaching others how to find free stuff as well.

• Adventures in Sweepstakes – Sweepstakes are a new hobby of mine.  Like free stuff it is easy to end up at a scam site which takes your info. or spams you.    I need someone who is also passionate about winning free stuff in sweepstakes and contests and who can write about it, dig up some terrific sweepstakes and talk about building and tweaking a winning sweepstakes strategy.

• Adventures in Coupons – Oh, my favorite.  In figuring out the whole coupon thing I have spent hours on sites wasting my time with bogus web sites that want to sell you something or get you to click through their referral links.  I want good, solid, informative posts on how to use coupons to save the most and to get free or almost free stuff and where to get those coupons.  Are you that person?

• Adventures with Online Surveys – I have spent the past week trying to find legitimate market research companies that pay its participants.  Instead, I find a lot of data mining, scams and pay-to read nonsense.  I have found a few legitimate companies, but I have yet to be paid.  Do you get paid?  Have you figured it out?  We need someone who can report their experiences in detail.  How much have you earned from each company?  How long did it take you?  How should someone get started?

Co-Site Administrator Wanted:

Oh, yeah and Skippydoodle needs a patient co-administrator to teach her how to do this WordPress thing.  I am old.  45 years old (not in dog years either) and I haven’t touched any kind of web design in nearly 10 years.  Yeah, I know a lot has changed … that is why I need your help.

In January, I hope to add a forum so that people can compare notes, warn against scams and help each other wade through all the crap in search of real free stuff, bargains and money saving/making ideas.

I don’t want a free substitute administrator, it’s worse:  I want a teacher and techie contact to help me time by pointing me in the right direction and may be do a little coding if I get so frustrated that I’m on the verge of tears.   Currently, I am working on this as a free blog to get the hang of the WordPress basics.  Sometime before the first of the year I should be ready to transfer to a paid server, throw up a few ads and hopefully at least recoup the cost of the hosting (a little more wouldn’t suck either).

If you are interested in one of these non paying, glamorous opportunities, please contact me on Twitter (http://twitter.com/Skippydoodle1), or on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/SkippyDoodles).

By: Ahmed Rashid

Switch on any of the dozens of satellite news channels now available in Pakistan.

You will be bombarded with talk show hosts who are mostly obsessed with demonising the elected government, trying to convince viewers of global conspiracies against Pakistan led by India and the United States or insisting that the recent campaign of suicide bomb blasts around the country is being orchestrated by foreigners rather than local militants.

Viewers may well ask where is the passionate debate about the real issues that people face – the crumbling economy, joblessness, the rising cost of living, crime and the lack of investment in health and education or settling the long-running insurgency in Balochistan province.

The answer is nowhere.

One notable channel which also owns newspapers has taken it upon itself to topple the elected government.

Another insists that it will never air anything that is sympathetic to India, while all of them bring on pundits – often retired hardline diplomats, bureaucrats or retired Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) officers who sport Taliban-style beards and give viewers loud, angry crash courses in anti-Westernism and anti-Indianism, thereby reinforcing views already held by many.

Collapse of confidence

Pakistan is going through a multi-dimensional series of crises and a collapse of public confidence in the state.

Suicide bombers strike almost daily and the economic meltdown just seems to get worse.

But this is rarely apparent in the media, bar a handful of liberal commentators who try and give a more balanced and intellectual understanding by pulling all the problems together.

The media debate ‘misses real Pakistani life’

The explosion in TV channels in Urdu, English and regional languages has brought to the fore large numbers of largely untrained, semi-educated and unworldly TV talk show hosts and journalists who deem it necessary to win viewership at a time of an acute advertising crunch, by being more outrageous and sensational than the next channel.

On any given issue the public barely learns anything new nor is it presented with all sides of the argument.

Every talk show host seems to have his own agenda and his guests reflect that agenda rather than offer alternative policies.

Recently, one senior retired army officer claimed that Hakimullah Mehsud – the leader of the Pakistani Taliban which is fighting the army in South Waziristan and has killed hundreds in daily suicide bombings in the past five weeks – had been whisked to safety in a US helicopter to the American-run Bagram airbase in Afghanistan.

In other words the Pakistani Taliban are American stooges, even as the same pundits admit that US-fired drone missiles are targeting the Pakistani Taliban in Waziristan.

These are just the kind of blatantly contradictory and nut-case conspiracy theories that get enormous traction on TV channels and in the media – especially when voiced by such senior former officials.

The explosion in civil society and pro-democracy movements that brought the former military regime of President Pervez Musharraf to its knees over two years has become divided, dissipated and confused about its aims and intentions.

Troops and militants are fighting in South Waziristan

Even when such activists do appear on TV, their voices are drowned out by the conspiracy theorists who insist that every one of Pakistan’s ills are there because of interference by the US, India, Israel and Afghanistan.

The army has not helped by constantly insisting that the vicious Pakistani Taliban campaign to topple the state and install an Islamic emirate is not a local campaign waged by dozens of extremist groups, some of whom were trained by the military in the 1990s, but the result of foreign conspiracies.

Economic crisis

Such statements by the military hardly do justice to the hundreds of young soldiers who are laying down their lives to fight the Taliban extremists.

Nor has the elected government of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) tried to alter the balance, as it is mired in ineffective governance and widespread corruption while failing to tackle the economic recession, that is admittedly partly beyond its control.

Moreover the PPP has no talking pundits, sympathetic talk show hosts or a half decent media management campaign to refute the lies and innuendo that much of the media is now spewing out.

At present, the principal obsession is when and how President Asif Ali Zardari will be replaced or sacked, although there is no apparent constitutional course available to get rid of him except for a military coup, which is unlikely.

The campaign waged by some politicians and parts of the media – with underlying pressure from the army – is all about trying to build public opinion to make Mr Zardari’s tenure untenable.

Pakistan is caught in a spiral of violence

Nobody discusses the failure of the education system that is now turning out hundreds of suicide bombers, rather than doctors and engineers.

Or the collapsing and corrupt national health system that forces the poorest to seek expensive private medical treatment, or the explosion in crime or suicides by failed farmers and workers who have lost their jobs.

Pakistan cannot tackle its real problems unless the country’s leaders – military and civilian – first admit that much of the present crisis is a result of long-standing mistakes, the lack of democracy, the failure to strengthen civic institutions and the lack of investment in public services like education, even as there continues to be a massive investment in nuclear weapons and the military.

Pakistan’s crisis must first be acknowledged by officialdom and the media before solutions can be found.

The alternative is a continuation of the present paralysis where people are left confused, demoralised and angry.

1. Vintage/Retro designs

Oh my gosh… this ’style’ has been “Hot” since the start of the year… With Vintage labels like Graphic 45 leading the way it’s hard not to love this vintage styled products. With offerings from Cosmo Cricket, Making Memories,  Tim Holtz/Ranger distressing products, Jenni Bowlin, Websters Pages, K & Company, Prima, Buzz and Bloom (retro embellishments) – there’s a huge range to choose from!

Above: “Mistletoe & Co” Pink Paislee.

Above: “Monstrosity” Sassafras Lass.

Above: “Evergreen icons” K & Company.

Above: “Merry and Bright” We R Memory Keepers.

2. Fabric.

Buzz and Bloom won an CHA Innovations award for their cord & denim embellishmnets. Now we’re seeing more a more fabric hitting our scrapbook stores!

Above: “Pop Art Dots” & “Wham bang ouch” cord, Buzz and Blomom

Above: Prima Fabric words, Prima

4. Distressing/painting/mixed media:

With mists popular right now, so are Tim Holtz’s distress inks and crackle paint. There seems to be more and more people trying out mixed media right now too.

5. Manufacturers selling direct to the public online:

Scrapbooking product direct to your door from the manufacturer! Woah – this is fantastic for US customers, but it’s hard for us Aussies with international shipping costs being so high. So why not go in with a few mates and buy up big while the Aussie dollar is good?

Making Memories are selling a selection of old and new lines online, Hambly also have a lot of discounted old lines (sold in ‘kits’) along with more popular lines, Jenni Bowlin has a store called JBS Mercantile with monthly kits a ‘general store’ with Jenni Bowlin products, a ’boutique’ with one-of-a-kind vintage items,  Kaisercraft also have an ‘Outlet Online’ store that sells a limited range of products (at the moment kits).

1. Craft magazines having the ’same’ contributors:

The same names appear in every issue… while it’s great to see the occassional familar face, and type of scrapbooking you love – it does get a bit old… Bring in new fresh faces, photos and layouts please!

2. Hall of fame/Masters type competitions:

Now this isn’t an attack against those who have/will make it into these “lists”…..I just think these type of competitions are a breeding ground for bitchy behaviour, unsavoury attitudes and bring the scrapbooking industry into disrepute (based on what I have observed in the past).  Controversy has surrounded previous competitions like CK’s ‘Hall of Fame’ contest in 2007, where a winner was named after not following the ‘rules’.

Much ballyhooed satellite navigation system suffers technical setbacks and paucity of devices. Who will guide Father Frost?

By Julia Ioffe, contributor

Glonass staffers hope to compete with GPS. Photo: Glonass.

Late last month Moscow celebrated the birthday of Father Frost, the Russian iteration of Santa Claus, with a new-fangled announcement: Father Frost’s retinue would move through the holiday skies aided by Glonass, the Russian answer to GPS.

Eagerly waiting children could track his movement online, while he could simultaneously improve his gift-giving efficiency. “Now Father Frost can be sure,” his press release said. “He can monitor his helpers through the Internet, even when he himself leaves for another city.”

It is unclear, however, how well Glonass will be able to aid Team Frost. The Glonass network (much like America’s Global Positioning System, a Cold War defense and missile-tracking system that was eventually opened to civilian use) was envisioned as an equal competitor to its U.S. counterpart.

But Glossnass recently has suffered some technical setbacks.

Here’s why: For complete coverage of the earth’s surface, Glonass, which stands for Global Navigation Satellite System, requires 24 satellites evenly distributed among three orbital planes. This includes three in-orbit spares – one per plane – in case anything goes wrong.

Russian “birds” fall flat

Currently, however, there are only 19 in orbit and just 15 of them are operational. (Three broke down just around the time of the war in Ossetia, in 2008, and, last week, the Russian space agency announced it was taking yet another satellite out of commission for technical reasons.) And because 18 operational satellites are needed for 100% coverage of Russian territory, the current Glonass configuration falls just short of that milestone, too, providing spotty coverage even at home. Coverage around the world is still more fractured and unreliable.

This, of course, makes it hard for Glonass to compete with the GPS system, which is fully operational and has nearly spotless coverage almost everywhere in the world.

In the system’s early years — when the Soviet space mission and the Cold War arms race were in full throttle — almost 50 satellites of various quality and life-span were lobbed into space. By the time the Soviet Union collapsed, however, there were still only 12 functional satellites in orbit.

The system was briefly operational in the mid-1990s, but quickly fell into disrepair as the Russian economy spun out of control and budget revenues plummeted. Meanwhile, the GPS system, developed for American military use, was made available to the public free of charge in 1993, without any major setbacks.

Then in 2001, a young and energetic new president, Vladimir Putin, sought to revive Glonass.

Putin’s pet project?

The project’s rebirth came just as the consumer GPS market was taking off and was tinged with both geopolitical and nationalistic considerations, not all of which made sense. On one hand, it was perfectly rational for Russia to not want to rely on the United States – an wary ally at best — for its military navigation systems.

And Russia was not the only country trying to wean itself off its American satellite dependency. At the time, China and Europe were working on similar GPS analogs. Europe later froze the development of its system, Galileo, because it didn’t seem profitable, but China and Russia, two countries capable of pouring vast sums of money into giant state ventures, plowed ahead.

Putin made Glonass his pet project, insisting that he wanted a system that could compete with GPS on an equal footing. For this he brought out the big guns. Legislative projects were launched that would require all government vehicles to have Glonass compatible systems.  Parliament proposed tariffs on imports of GPS devices to encourage Glonass’s development at home.

And, in the oil-boom years, money was no object: The Kremlin allocated almost half a billion dollars to Glonass in 2006-2007, and, in 2008, Putin pledged even more. That year, he alloted an additional $2.6 billion, promising two big three-satellite launches in September and December 2009.

And then reality intervened.

In addition to those dud satellites whirling around space, the three satellites scheduled to be launched in September were found to have an unspecified “malfunction.” Still, Putin, now prime minister, came out on September 28 and publicly charged one of his deputies to make sure all six made it into space “by the end of this year.” But, less than a month later, the three satellites scheduled to be launched in December went back to the manufacturer. It is now December, and not one of the six satellites scheduled to be launched before the new year will make it up there on time.

And so Glonass hobbles on with 15 satellites, a full nine satellites short of the number needed for 100% worldwide coverage. This, of course, has forced a subtle shift in the Kremlin’s rhetoric. While Putin and current President Dmitry Medvedev continue to insist on an impeccable satellite navigation system in the near future, the point now, they say, is to compliment, rather than compete with, the GPS system. Two systems, they argue, are better than one. “Undoubtedly, GPS provides much better service,” says Sergey Filipov, a spokesman for Sitronics, which partners with the government in developing microchips for Glonass-reading devices. “We’re not trying to compete. The thinking is that it should be a double system.”

Experts suggest that this is in fact the case: the more satellites are in view of a navigation device equipped to read both GPS and Glonass signals, the more accurately it can pinpoint location and avoid blocks like trees or skyscrapers.

And Russia’s navigation project received a shot in the arm recently when India joined the project and agreed to pay for one satellite launch.

Where are the cool phones and gadgets?

But Glonass still faces an uphill battle. Not only are there too few satellites to provide reliable service, but Glonass devices are still in the earliest stages of development. In a country full of the most elaborately conspicuous cell phones, there are no mobile devices with Glonass readers.

The Glonass handheld market is equally underdeveloped.  They are not user-friendly, and are bulky and far more expensive than their GPS counterparts.

Nor are foreign satellite navigation companies jumping into the Glonass market. Some make specialized agricultural equipment that can read both GPS and Glonass signals, but Garmin, (GRMN) the largest producer of consumer GPS devices, still does not make a dual-signal device. “Since Glonass isn’t fully functional yet, it’s too early to say if our current production handhelds will be compatible,” says a company spokesman. (Garmin controls some 60% of the North American market.)

“Will the system be realized, or not? That’s the big question,” says Anna Lepetukhina, a technology analyst with Troika Dialog. “Sooner or later, we’ll see it used more in the military-industrial sector. Will we see a large consumer market for Glonass? Probably not.”

But this has not stopped Putin from trumpeting whatever small successes Glonass offers. According to one of Putin’s deputies, Glonass has made police work easier and has even helped Russian police departments save on gas because police chiefs can keep a close eye on their ranks. Now, Putin joked, officers “have to visit their girlfriends on the bus now and not in official cars.”

One of the sad legacies of the housing and mortgage securitization bubble and the subsequent collapse of the economy over the past two years is the virtual devastation of working-class neighborhoods throughout the United States.  Thousands of homes sit vacant and deteriorating after foreclosure or are listed for sale at a price half or less than their value just 18 months ago.

Foreclosures aren’t hitting just the working class, but The New York Times reports that workers in the manufacturing and distribution sectors were keeping up mortgage payments until they found themselves unemployed and unable to pay for their homes, complicating efforts to stem foreclosures.

Even as the Treasury Department appears poised today to announce efforts to force more banks to modify loans, increasing evidence suggests that the federal government’s efforts are floundering.

Rather than focusing their efforts on the complicated Homeowner Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), or on bailing out banks in the hope that they will loan more money to homeowners and small businesses, federal policymakers can accomplish more  for those facing foreclosure, not to mention their neighbors and American taxpayers, by making relatively modest changes to the business practices of the Federal Housing Administration and HUD.

The story of an Ohio worker and homeowner illustrates how the federal government is missing easy opportunities to play a meaningful role in reducing the impact of the foreclosure crisis and the recession on real people.

In 2007, Bob was employed by DHL as a driver earning over $20 per hour. He bought a modest house in a middle-class suburb of Cleveland for a fair market price of $90,000 to live in with his son.  When DHL shut down its U.S. operations in 2008, Bob, along with thousands of others nationally, was laid off.

Meanwhile, back on Bob’s street, for sale signs proliferated and one of six homes in his community is in foreclosure.  As a result, the market value of Bob’s home has dropped to less than half of what he paid for it.

Bob and his son were able to survive on his unemployment benefits but couldn’t pay the monthly mortgage.  Bob recently took a job with FedEx paying less than half of what he earned at DHL and less than his unemployment benefits, because he simply couldn’t stand “not working any more.”

His mortgage, which was insured by the FHA, is being foreclosed. With the costs of foreclosure and 18 months of late fees included, the lender claims to be owed $120,000 on a house optimistically worth $50,000.

Bob requested that his foreclosure case be sent to mediation, and he provided the lender with extensive documentation of his income and expenses and the current value of his home during the course of those negotiations. The loan servicer has refused to agree to a modification of the terms that makes any sense to Bob. They are completely unwilling to consider any modification that reduces the principal balance at all, let alone bring the figure anywhere close to the current value of the home.

Bob does not qualify for the H.A.M.P program, the centerpiece of the Obama Administration’s effort to assist homeowners in default and foreclosure, because his loan (like the loans of most people in foreclosure) is more than one year behind. That program actually pays cash to lenders and mortgage services who agree to modify loans.

During the course of the negotiations it became increasingly clear that the lender or loan servicers have no incentive to enter into any kind of meaningful modification.

Why?

Because after foreclosure, FHA stands ready to pay the lender 100 percent of its loss on the loan, including the cost of foreclosure. If the lender were to agree to modify the loan, it would be paid far less.

Here is the outrage. If the lender proceeds to foreclosure, Bob and his son will be thrown out of their home and the lender will be made whole at the cost to FHA — and ultimately the taxpayers — of $80,000 or more.

This scenario is repeating itself in mortgage foreclosure cases throughout the country, putting the solvency of the FHA at risk while throwing thousands of working people out of their homes. The New York Times recently reported that FHA itself might be in need of an infusion of cash.

If FHA were included in the negotiation and would agree to pay lenders some amount –say half of what they are likely to lose, $40,000 — to allow the principal to be reduced, Bob could refinance at competitive interest rates and stay in his home, the federal Ggvernment and ultimately the taxpayers would save $40,000, and the lender would have an interest-paying borrower (who can afford the lower payment) and earn profits from the interest.

Everybody wins under this scenario.

Another problem that could be fixed by a more realistic approach by HUD and the FHA was detailed in a recent Cleveland Plain Dealer Story about problems created by HUD’s failure to demolish or fix homes they own (mostly as a result of FHA insured foreclosures) in greater Cleveland.  Dilapidated houses drive down housing values for entire neighborhoods.  Making it tougher for guys like Bob to sell or refinance their homes and making community problems worse. Local communities are struggling to maintain housing stock in aging neighborhoods, and HUD’s failure as a homeowner has devastating effects on entire communities.

The Federal Government has a chance to raise the bar for responsible homeownership, yet instead they appear to be lowering it. HUD should be a model community citizen, collaborating with local housing officials on neighborhood wide efforts to improve home values.  The agency should hire local consultants or even contract with local governments and empower them to make quick and honest assessments of the likelihood of selling any particular piece of real estate with an eye toward the best community use for the property.  For houses that will not realistically sell in a reasonable timeframe, HUD should require that the houses be demolished within 30 days.

Increasing evidence suggests that the new programs being created by Congress and the Obama administration are not having a significant impact on the foreclosure problem. Only 1711 homeowners nationally had completed a modification by September 1, 2009 under the HAMP Program.

Bob’s story suggests that a better approach may be to find ways to make the existing machinery of the federal government’s mortgage programs work in the interests of homeowners and taxpayers.

Marc Dann

Marc Dann is a Cleveland lawyer who represents homeowners in foreclosure.

Performance work from contributor Stacey Ho:

- from XPACE website

What is being served in each of our contributors’ households for the big meal? Well, turkey is fairly common but the other dishes are wide ranging. Here’s a preview peek into the various Thanksgiving menus.

Lauren Baratz-Logsted: I don’t have a menu, since I’ve never cooked a T’giving dinner in my life, nor would the world want me to. We’ll go to my brother’s. There will be a turkey and traditional meal which will be a challenge for me since I went vegan six months ago. So I’ll modify my diet for the day, just so I won’t make everyone else crazy. I still won’t eat the meat, but I’ll eat the things that have dairy in it. It’s either that or only have wine and salad, which would be fine with me but not so fine with everyone else when I get drunk too early and get the bedspins.

Lindsay Champion: I’m going to my aunt’s house for a late Thanksgiving on Saturday. I think the menu is a traditional turkey and yams type deal, but they are Italian so I think there is going to be a big pot of pasta as well!

Pete Croatto: Roasted turkey with gravy and stuffing, mashed potatoes, string beans, crescent rolls, and for dessert, if I’m not too uncomfortable, pumpkin bread and coffee. This might be difficult to predict seeing how I don’t know the line up of pies at this point.

Nicki Leone: Roasted turkey with herbed cornbread stuffing and cider gravy; roasted beet salad with oranges and beet greens; Brussels sprouts with buttered pecans; confetti wild rice salad with walnuts, dried cranberries and tarragon; homemade sourdough bread; curried sweet potato soup; honey-pumpkin pie; caramel apple pie with vanilla ice cream.

David Mitchell: Sushi (vegetarian and smoked salmon); roast turkey;  gravy; penne with Fontina and mascarpone; whipped sweet potatoes’ roast green beans; steamed broccoli; buttermilk rolls; cranberry sauce; pumpkin pie; blueberry ginger buckle; assorted pastries and cookies There are only four of us at our Thanksgiving table and it is a challenge to serve. I do not eat red meat or poultry. My elder son will not eat any vegetables. My wife and younger son will eat everything but my wife will eat only a small volume of food.

Lev Raphael: We’re dining à deux because it’s our 25th anniversary and we wanted the time alone. We’re seeing family and friends on other days this coming week. The menu is simple: filets mignons Bordelaise with Brussels sprouts au gratin and a bottle of Pauillac. Dessert will be a local vanilla Gelato.

Lauren Roberts: Assorted olives; roasted turkey with herb gravy and bread, onion, & apple stuffing; homemade cranberry sauce; green salad; steamed green beans with sage butter; fresh rolls; mashed potatoes; pumpkin pie with whipped cream.

By: Tariq Ali

Suicide bombings, death, destruction and carnage on a monumental scale. Murder and mayhem across the length and breadth of the country with no sign of let up or relief. Senior army officers targeted in broad daylight in the heart of the federal capital.The audacity, vicious nature and cruelty of the onslaught increasing with each passing day. Is this the Muslim homeland envisaged by the founding fathers? Certainly not! Jinnah’s vision of his creation was negated and nullified with the adoption of the Objectives Resolution shortly after his death in 1949.

Who can deny the immortal words of our Quaid-i-Azam, when he made it crystal clear on 11th of August 1947 “You may belong to any religion, caste or creed that has nothing to do with the business of state” and again in February 1948 when he reiterated “Pakistan is not going to be a theocratic state to be ruled by priests with a divine mission. We have many non-Muslims-Hindus, Christians and Parsis – but they are all Pakistanis. They will enjoy the same rights and privileges as any other citizens and will play their rightful part in the affairs of Pakistan.” Contrary to all the advice of the Quaid, sixty two years later we are being told that Pakistan is to be a theocracy governed by the madrassa elite on a utopian concept that they call the Nizam-l-Sharia as dictated by the likes of Sufi Mohammed and his numerous supporters and sympathizers in the country. Today we are held in the vicious grip of religious bigotry, and the country has been held hostage by the forces of religious intolerance, fanaticism and obscurantism.

What exactly did the “Sole Spokesman” of the Muslims of the sub-continent want for the country he created after tremendous sacrifice and struggle? An interesting consequence of the deliberate state-organized campaign of misinformation and disinformation was that Our younger generation and ordinary Pakistanis were bombarded with the false propaganda that Jinnah was in fact in favor of a theocracy! Many of Jinnah’s quotations and speeches denouncing the concept of a theocratic state had been very cleverly distorted or concealed from the public during the Zia regime. Vile dictator, that Zia was, even had the audacity to change the famous motto of Jinnah from “Unity, Faith, and Discipline” to “Faith, Unity and Discipline” Any student of our freedom movement cannot deny the fact that Jinnah had envisioned Pakistan as a secular but Muslim majority country.

All the frontline leaders of the freedom movement were British educated secular Muslims. Jinnah, Liaquat, Nazim-ud-Din, Suhrwardy, Bogra, Raja Sahab Mehmudabad, Qazi Isa, Khaliq-uz-zaman and many more who were in the vanguard of the freedom movement never ever mentioned or even hinted that Pakistan is going to be theocracy to be ruled by the Mullahs. Fundamentalist Muslim leaders of the era were staunchly opposed to the concept of Pakistan. Deobandi scholars and leaders of the Jamat-i-Islami went to the extent of giving the title of Kafir-i-Azam to the Quaid-i-Azam. Religious forces opposed Jinnah and his colleagues they fought tooth and nail to prevent the establishment of Pakistan yet today they want to own this country and impose their own brand of Sharia and enslave this country in the cruel grip of a religious dictatorship.

No Muslim can deny the supremacy of the Quran and Sunnah but let us not forget that the people of Pakistan have been fooled and taken for a ride many a times in the past, in the name of religion. Bhutto made use of the slogan of Islamic Socialism and General Zia-ul-Haque hoodwinked the people with his personal brand of Pristine Islam in order to prolong his questionable dictatorship. Now we have the creeping menace of the Taliban tightening their grip on the country with each passing day. Our leaders need to be reminded that the immediate threat to the very existence of our country is from the religious fanatics and all patriotic forces need to unite to combat this approaching horror. Those of our leaders who intentionally or unintentionally are aiding and abetting the Taliban need a refresher course in recent history. They need to be reminded that since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in 1996 (ironically with the blessings of the Pakistani establishment) they became a potent and lethal threat to women, democracy, tolerance, education and human rights. They have now extended their cruel and insidious tentacles into Pakistan. They have mercilessly slaughtered people opposed to their version of Islam. Turned the fair valley of Swat into a living hell. Women and journalists have borne the brunt of their oppressive and brutal rule. Simply announcing the rule of Sharia will not bring about any miracles. Different Islamic sects have their own version of Sharia. What version are these Islamic zealots proposing to impose upon us?

Time is here for all patriotic forces to band together and demand the return of Jinnah’s Pakistan. This country has to be rescued from the insidious conspiracy of trying to turn this state into a land of religious bigotry and fanaticism. Jinnah’s Pakistan is a country full of hope, optimism, and security. It is the land of our dreams. Jinnah’s Pakistan was created to enable all its citizens to live in peace, harmony and religious tolerance. Jinnah struggled to protect and nurture the cultural values of the Muslims of the sub-continent and not for imported values of an archaic and alien Arabic culture. Jinnah’s Pakistan was created to protect the lives, properties and culture of the Muslims. Jinnah dedicated his life for the preservation of equal rights of men and women, so that they could live in a land free of prejudice and discrimination. Jinnah’s Pakistan was not created to be a safe haven for terrorists. Never in his wildest dreams did the father of the nation thought of creating “Strategic assets” that have now became strategic liabilities or rather strategic horrors.

Pakistani society of today is in desperate need of social justice and elimination of corruption. A modern, progressive, vibrant and welfare society is one which allows the individual to breathe, develops its human resources, lays emphasis on morality and ethics, stresses the importance of education and removes the impediments to individual progress and prosperity. This was the dream and objective of the Quaid-i-Azam. He wanted Pakistan to be developed as a modern, progressive, secular democracy adhering to the principles of fairplay and social justice. Unfortunately immediately after the demise of Mohammed Ali Jinnah Pakistan became a victim of intolerant and fundamentalist religious forces who disowned the principles of secular democracy. Our very own religious fanatics misinterpreted secularism as a principle that was opposed to religion. They very conveniently forgot that it defined the separation of the state and religion but fully respected and protected the freedom to practice one’s beliefs. Our National leaders and those in authority need to wake up and realize the gravity of the situation and save this country from becoming another failed state ending up on the dust heap of history.

If Pakistan has to survive it just cannot do without upholding the lofty principles and guidelines provided to us by that giant of an intellectual, a great visionary and our founding father Quaid-i-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah. The need of the hour is that every Pakistani should demand: I want Jinnah’s Pakistan!

By: Kamran Shafi

In view of the fact that the cardinal sin of the federal government to try and put the ISI under civilian control is cited as a reason behind all the obituaries presently being written about the imminent fall of a) just the president; b) all the major politicians; and c) the whole shoot, I’ve been trolling through the Internet to see how just many of the world’s top intelligence services are headed by serving military (in Pakistan’s case, read ‘army’) officers.

And how many are appointed by the army chief. Consider what I’ve come up with.

Except for two retired army officers in the early days, one a lieutenant colonel the other a major general, all the DGs of MI5, the “United Kingdom’s internal counter-intelligence and security agency were civil servants. The director-general reports to the home secretary, although the Security Service is not formally part of the home office”, and through him to the prime minister.“The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), colloquially known as MI6 is the United Kingdom’s external intelligence agency. Under the direction of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), it works alongside the Security Service (MI5), Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and the defence intelligence staff (DIS).” Except for one naval captain, an admiral, a lieutenant colonel and a major general in the very early days, all of them retired, every single chief of this agency has been a ‘bloody civilian’, some from within its own ranks, others from the civil service. The present director is Britain’s former ambassador to the United Nations. The director reports to the chief cabinet secretary and through him to the prime minister.

Directors of Mossad, the dreaded Israeli intelligence agency which seems to be running rings (if reports in our conservative press and on our fire-breathing TV channels are to be believed) around our very own Mother of All Agencies, has been headed mostly by retired military officials (remember please that military service is compulsory in Israel) but also by ‘bloody civilians’. Mossad’s director is appointed by the prime minister and reports directly to him.

The director of the Central Intelligence Agency reports to the director of national intelligence (DNI), who in turn reports to the White House. The director is appointed by the president after recommendation from the DNI, and must be confirmed by a majority vote of the Senate. While there is no statutory provision which specifically excludes active military personnel from being nominated for the position, most directors have been civilians.

Barring Gen Reinhard Gehlen who set up the German intelligence agency Abteilung Fremde Heere Ost to principally keep an eye on the Russian easternfront during the Second World War, the present federal intelligence service, Bundesnachrichtendienst(BND), has always been headed by civilian public officials, notably by civil servant, lawyer and politician of the liberal Free Democratic Party, Klaus Kinkel who rose to be Germany’s federal minister of justice (1991–1992), foreign minister (1992–1998) and vice chancellor of Germany (1993–1998).

Next door in India all directors of RAW have been civilians, either civil servants or policemen or officials from within its own ranks. While the director RAW, also known as ‘Secretary (R)’, is under the direct command of the prime minister, he reports on an administrative basis to the cabinet secretary. However, on a daily basis ‘Secretary (R)’ reports to the national security adviser to the prime minister.

RAW too, if the press and TV channels are to be taken seriously, is running rings around us in close collaboration with Mossad.

So then, why is it that only in our country, our intelligence service is the fief of the army, and only of the army? Surely there are competent people other than generals who could well head the organisation and be a credit to it? I mean if all of the world’s leading agencies can be headed by civilians why not our ISI?

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, what is known as the ‘Ghairat Lobby’ has taken yet another drubbing with the most recent report of the LA Times to the effect that ever since 9/11 fully one-third of the CIA’s budget has been diverted to the ISI. It also reminds us brutally what the Commando has already told us in his ‘book’ (stand up, Humayun Gohar): that the ISI sold people, some surely terrorists some very surely innocent, to the Americans for cash payments as low as $5000 a go, and as high as millions of dollars for those who had huge head moneys on offer for their capture/death.

It also tells us that the CIA money was in addition to the $15bn that poured into the country during the Commando’s dictatorship. In the words of the LA Times the ISI, “had also collected tens of millions of dollars through a classified CIA programme that pays for the capture or killing of wanted militants, a clandestine counterpart to the rewards publicly offered by the State Department”. Will the Ghairat Lobby please sit up and take note, and understand that such reports make its ghairatmand stand on the Kerry-Lugar Law all the more ludicrous and hypocritical.

Let me here once more caution the leaders of the major political parties, the PML-N and the PPP: please close ranks and collectively beat back the ongoing assault on democracy by the establishment. Our country simply cannot take another extra-legal intervention (I did not say martial law) to remove any one individual, or two, from the scene. To President Zardari let me say, yet again: do not prevaricate, act now on the Charter of Democracy; break away from the too-clever-by-half -self-servers that you have surrounded yourself with.

To Mr Nawaz Sharif, this: Asif Zardari is not the only target of the establishment, he is only the first. You are next. Consider: if there is an anti-AZ story on one page, there is an anti-NS story on another page of the same newspaper on the same day. The Internet is full of planted stories on both the large political parties; stories that desperately try to turn lay people away from electoral politics. Be prepared for more dirt.

United you politicians will stand, divided you will fall.

P.S. The Balochistan High Court has ordered Musharraf to appear before it in the case of Nawab Akbar Bugti’s murder. How come there is no further reporting on this earth-shaking event, weeks down the line, as if it never happened?

By: Adam B. Ellick

While Pakistani journalists, playwrights and even moderate Islamic clerics have boldly condemned the Taliban, the nation’s pop music stars have yet to sing out against the group, which continues to claim responsibility for daily bombings.

The violence has no shortage of victims in addition to the dead: more than three million people have become refugees, and more than 200 schools for girls have been destroyed. And the musicians I spoke to have suffered as well, which makes it all the more surprising that they are reluctant to criticize the militants.Pakistani pop musicians once had two main ways to make money: live concerts and corporate sponsorships. But because of deteriorating security in the last two years, the concert scene — and the revenue that comes with it — has all but vanished.

Musicians are now relegated to televised performances. But in a nation where the West is often the villain, television stations and big businesses have little economic or political incentive to put their name on a musician with an anti-Taliban platform.

Check out the video Tuning Out the Taliban

The result is a surge of bubble-gum stars who have become increasingly politicized. Some are churning out ambiguous, cheery lyrics urging their young fans to act against the nation’s woes. Others simply vilify the United States.

This video shows how many young Pakistanis have a different perspective on the problems in their homeland.

In a post on The Lede blog in September Robert Mackey took a look at Pakistan’s rock scene and the growing trend of musicians addressing political issues in their music.

Sherry Linkon’s two recent blogs react to a new study that found working-class students (defined by parents’ income and education) are less likely to graduate from a “working-class college or university” than from elite, more selective schools (defined by selectivity).  As someone who took seven years at four different universities to get a bachelor’s degree and who subsequently spent three decades teaching undergraduate working adults at a “working-class university,” this probably doesn’t concern me as much as it should.  The causal weight Sherry gives to what she fears is our “low expectations” of working-class students and a “dumbing down” of the curriculum concerns me more.

Both the study and Sherry have good reasons for this concern, but my fear is that it plays into a larger dialogue that I’m convinced is mostly negative for both students and faculty at colleges and universities with large numbers of students from working-class families.

“Dumbing down” is an ugly phrase, but I’m pretty sure I do it if you compare my teaching to what goes on at elite universities.  For example, many of my students are poor (and slow) readers, so I assign shorter readings and spend more time than I should in breaking readings down into their parts for discussion and, indeed, in requiring students to pay a lot of attention to how the organization of a piece of writing affects its meaning.  This means I do not cover content they should be learning.  Likewise, far too many students can’t work percentages or do other arithmetic that are about equally important to dealing with academic facts and figures as they are in daily life. Teaching arithmetic is not something our (or, so I’m told, any university) math department is willing to do.  So in many of my classes, I take time away from other things to drill students on working percentages.

Likewise, I’m not as interested in “challenging” my students with “more demanding” material as I am in trying to engage and sustain their interest in whatever we’re studying and their commitment to improving their reading, writing, thinking, and communicating skills.  This is based on a pedagogy of taking students where they are and doing what I can to help them improve.  This – merely sustained interest and improvement — is surely a low expectation, but I’m convinced it serves most of my students well.

Sherry’s notion that creating “a stronger atmosphere of achievement” might better serve working-class students could work for the higher-achievers who may find our curriculum not challenging enough to keep them intellectually engaged.  But it could also turn away the vast majority of middling students who already often feel disrespected as well as disabled in college classrooms, while actively pushing out the most poorly prepared who are also the most difficult to teach.

Like most teachers, I suspect, I have always aimed at teaching the middle because it’s the largest group of students, while paying more individual attention to the most poorly prepared.  Though I’ve had unusual circumstances (teaching general education seminars to adults), I have never felt guilty about cheating the high-achievers in my classes.  For one thing, they’re more capable of learning on their own.  For another, they often take a leadership role in class, others look to them for help, and they generally elevate the level of discussion (and learning) regardless of what I do.  As a rule, I need them more than they need me.

For the great middle group, however, I think it is important to clearly understand that our task is different from that of the elite schools.  I reject the notion that “workforce preparation” is not “true education.”  The overwhelming majority of students in my classes are there because they want higher-paying, more secure, less dangerous and/or demeaning jobs.  To get and keep those they’re going to need to greatly improve a whole set of reading, writing, thinking and communicating skills that are characteristically “middle class” in our society, but which are of some universal value as well – even if often overestimated by us highly educated folks.

Raising expectations may be a good idea in many instances, but to foster a “stronger atmosphere of achievement” would be to heighten the already heavily middle-class cultural atmosphere of higher education as a whole.  Because of tenure and other protections for academic freedom (now eroding), university faculty and our middle-class professionalism have an unusual degree of autonomy from ruling-class and managerial oversight.  All universities, partly as a result, tend to be hyper-middle class in our ethos and culture – a culture that, as Sherry says, “emphasizes individual success and competition,” a more meritocratic place than most, and one that values individual achievement above all else.  Indeed, for a working-class student a university is where one is socialized into the values, the ways of thinking and behaving of “the educated middle class.”

Barbara Jensen, Annette Lareau, and others have argued that there is a distinctly different working-class culture, one that is much less achievement-oriented, more bonded to people and places, and one that often sees middle-class ways as lacking in “personal integrity and sincerity and [having] poor interpersonal relations,” as Michele Lamont has found.  If this is true, and I believe it is, then the college experience for working-class students is inevitably a clash of cultures in a way it can never be for middle-class students.  Heightening that clash could be good for some of our students, but it would be bad for more.  What’s more, it would be bad for most faculty, I think, because it would make it harder for us to value and learn from the good things in working-class culture.  It would make our classrooms more adversarial than they are now, and over time it would likely lead to the kind of middle-class self-righteousness I associate with wannabe second-tier universities.

For me, being a “working-class university” is an aspiration.  You shouldn’t get that designation simply by having a large proportion of first-generation college students or by having more faculty and administrators from working-class backgrounds, or even by providing a supportive environment for working-class students.  These are necessary but not sufficient conditions.  To earn that title, a working-class university must be a place where working-class and middle-class cultures meet to feed and water each other, a place where certain middle-class skills are effectively taught along with some manners and mores, but where students are not required to abandon the entirety of their culture (often including their existing network of family and friends) in order to get a better job.  A working-class university should also be one that, both in its classrooms and in its relation with the larger community, should be actively engaged in building solidarity with the two-thirds of American workers who do not now and never will have a bachelor’s degree.  Once that part of the working class has steadily improving standards of living, more secure jobs and incomes, there may be less need for workforce preparation and more room for “true education.”  Until that time, Youngstown State seems to many of us one the few places that is consciously living that aspiration.  My hunch is that creating “a stronger atmosphere of achievement” would undermine that.

Jack Metzgar

La rete ci continua a sorprendere.

Non solo ci ha permesso, grazie al passaparola online, di diffondere questo progetto ormai in tutta Italia (mancano solo le isole, ma so che si parla di Cowo anche lì), ora ci arrivano anche dei regali.

E’ un graditissimo dono di un amico del Cowo, infatti, la Google map dei Cowo Italiani.

Grazie Mauro, grazie Ariadicrisi.it!

Hi folks!

Once again we’ve had some of the greatest photography contributed to the FMPB Flickr group!

This week the image in the segment is from one of my favorite fields of photography: sports portraiture!

All the way from Eugene, Oregon, this is “Kevin” by photographer Zach Ancell!

© Zach Ancell

As you can see Zach is an absolute magician with small strobes. In this image, he achieved an admirable balance, not blowing out the rim lights while not dropping the shadows either. From a technical standpoint alone, this is already a masterpiece, but that would be omitting the graphical elements which add another huge load of impact. I for one love the very minimalistic color scheme as well as the very strong and straightforward composition. It shows strength and defiance which is the key to great sports photography! Thanks so much for sharing this Zach!

By the way, Zach is quite a busy sports snapper and this is by far not his only image of that caliber. I therefore strongly recommend anyone should take a look at his website and check out his portfolio and follow his adventures on his blog, all of which you can find at : www.zachancell.com

Zach also shares a lot of his work on Flickr at: flickr.com/photos/zachancell

You should definitely take a look at that!

Do you like this image as much as I do? Well, your image can be up there too! Here’s how it works:

1. Upload your image to flickr.

2. Enter your image into the FMPB flickr group. (find it here!)

3. Put in whatever you’d like to say about your picture as a description, or send it to fredmancosu@gmail.com with a link to the picture.

I think I can speak for all the viewers when I say that we’re thrilled to have Zach’s work up here this week and we’d love to see yours in near future!

Coming up next on FMPB, the weekly portrait and more, so stay tuned!

By: Nadeem F. Paracha

The day after the terrible terrorist attack at Islamabad’s Islamic University that took the lives of eight innocent students, certain TV news channels ran a footage of a dozen or so angered students of the university pelting stones. The first question that popped up in my mind after watching the spectacle was, what on earth were these understandably enraged young men throwing their stones at?

So I waited for the TV cameras to pan towards the direction where the stones were landing. But that did not happen. It seemed as if the students were pelting stones just for the heck of it.

So I called a fellow journalist friend who was covering the story for a local TV channel and asked him about the protest. He told me the students were pelting stones at a handful of cops. Now, why in God’s good name would one throw stones at cops after being attacked by demented men who call themselves the Taliban?

The very next day another protest took place outside the attacked University in which the students, both male and female, were holding banners that said: ‘Kerry-Lugar Bill namanzoor!’ (Kerry-Lugar Bill Not Acceptable).

I could barely stop myself from bursting into a short sharp fit of manic laughter. It was unbelievable. Or was it, really?Here we have a university that was attacked by a psychotic suicide bomber who slaughtered and injured dozens of students so he could get his share of hooris in Paradise. The attack was then proudly owned by the Tekrik-e-Taliban Pakistan. And in its wake, we saw enraged students protesting against the Kerry-Lugar act? What a response!

What did the Kerry-Lugar act have to do with the suicide attack? Wasn’t this remarkably idiotic ‘protest rally’ by the students actually an insult to those who were so mercilessly slaughtered by holy barbarians?

But then, some would suggest that in a society like Pakistan, such idiosyncrasies should be swallowed as a norm. And I agree. What else can one expect from a society living in a curiously delusional state of denial, gleefully mistaking it as ‘patriotism’ and ‘concern.’ It seems no amount of proof will ever be enough to dent Pakistanis’ resolve to defend the unsubstantiated, wild theories that they so dearly hold in their rapidly shrinking heads.

Take for instance the recent case of a famous TV anchorman who visited a devastated area in Peshawar that was bombed by a remote-controlled car bomb. He talked to about 10 people at the scene. More than half of the folks interviewed spouted out those squarely unproven and thoroughly clichéd tirades about RAW/CIA/Mossad being the ‘real perpetrators’ and that ‘no Muslim is capable of inflicting such acts of barbarity.’

A friend of mine who was also watching this hapless exhibition of the usual top-of-mind nonsense suddenly announced that he wanted to jump in, hold these men by the arms, and shake them violently so they could be ‘awoken from their dreadful sleepwalking state.’

Pakistanis routinely continue to deny the fact that the monsters who are behind all the faithful barbarism that is cutting this country into bits are the mutant product of what our governments, military, intelligence agencies, and society as a whole have been up to in the past 30 years or so.

Well, this is exactly what happens to a society that responds so enthusiastically to all the major symptoms of fascist thought. Symptoms such as powerful and continuing nationalism; disdain for the recognition of human rights; identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause; supremacy of the military; obsession with national security; the intertwining of religion and government; disdain for intellectuals and the arts; an obsession with crime and punishment, etc.

Have not the bulk of Pakistanis willingly allowed themselves to be captured in all the macho and paranoid trappings of the above-mentioned symptoms of collective psychosis. It clearly smacks of a society that has been ripening and readying itself for an all-round fascist scenario.

This is the scenario some among us are really talking about when they speak of ‘imposing the system of the Khulfa Rashideen’ or shariah, or whatever profound buzzwords adopted to explain Pakistan’s march towards a wonderful society of equality and justice? Words that mean absolutely nothing, or systems and theories either based on ancient musings of tribal societies or on glorified myths of bravado.

I felt bad for the few bystanders at that Peshawar bombing site who kept contradicting their more gung-ho contemporaries by reminding them that for months the shopkeepers where receiving threatening letters from the Taliban warning them that they should stop selling products for women and ban the entry of women in the area.

One shop-owner who said he lost more than millions of rupees worth of goods in the blast was slightly taken aback when the anchor asked him who he thought was behind the bomb attack. For a few seconds he looked curiously at the anchor’s face, as if wondering why would a major TV news channel be asking a question whose answer was so obvious. ‘What do you mean, who was responsible?’ he asked. ‘The Taliban, of course!’

Fasi Zaka wrote a scathing piece on the floozy response of some students who chanted slogans against the Kerry-Lugar Bill outside the freshly bombed Islamic University. He was battered with hate mail, even from those who did agree with him that it were the Taliban who bombed the unfortunate university. But these folks turned out to be even worse than the deniers. They are apologists of all the mayhem that takes place in the name of Islam in this country.

Every time the barbarians set themselves off taking innocent men, women, and children with them, these apologists suddenly emerge to write letters to newspapers and try to dominate internet forums explaining the intricate ‘socio-economic problems’ that are turning men into terrorists. Or worse – as is expected from reactionary news reporters like Ansar Abbasi – they will start giving details about the infidel targets that the terrorists were really after at the place of the attack.

Zaka told me that he got letters suggesting that the Taliban attacked the canteen of the Islamic University because ‘women students were not behaving and dressing according to Islam.’ The state under Ziaul Haq had the Hudood Ordinance for such ‘loose women,’ but now the Taliban have bombs for them. And mind you, those who were trying to justify the bombing in this respect at the University were ‘educated’ young men and even women.

Recently, we also heard about a hijab-clad female student at the prestigious and ‘liberal’ Lahore University of Management Sciences, who bagged her 15 minutes of fame by capturing images through her mobile phone of students indulging in ‘immoral activities’ on campus. Of course, the same lady’s ‘concern’ and righteousness ends at becoming a self-appointed paparazzi for the reactionaries, whereas it was young women (in hijabs) and men with beards who died so senselessly at the Islamabad Islamic University campus.

Pathetic, indeed.

By: Murtaza Razvi

Paki is a Paki no matter where and what. Those complaining of racism abroad should also look at the way they’re treated at home. Please get it right: it is not always your colour or, of late, religion that may be responsible for the way you’re treated by goras and Arabs alike; it is the Pakistani identity. Those who are known to have little respect at home can lay claim to even less while in foreign lands. Forget the Pakistani police and the humiliation that comes with any interaction with them. Forget also the government officials at Nadra or the passport office who fleece the public. The going rate for ‘accepting’ your claimed bona fides at Nadra and the passport offices start from as low as Rs 50 and go as high as Rs 30,000. The former in case there is nothing wrong with your papers, the latter when you have forged papers.

Intimidation and the risk of running into trouble emerge every step of the way: from booking a train ticket, which now requires an ID card, to boarding an international flight. Past the immigration counter and before entering the departure lounge sit the FIA sleuths who, if you look uneducated, will pull you aside for whatever little you can spare to fill their pockets, even though you have officially been given the exit clearance by an immigration officer who has duly stamped your passport.

Recently, the corporate sector too has joined the official intimidation brigade. It now treats its ‘patrons’ and customers with no less contempt. The reason: perhaps the absence of a regime that guards you against the misuse of any personal, proprietary information that nobody knows exactly who can or cannot have access to. Starting from lucky draw schemes to acquiring a phone connection or getting a phone company or a bank to effect an address change, for instance, you are ‘required’ (says who and under what law?) to submit a copy of your identity card, and often your salary slip or income certificate. Why?

The practice is rampant, and so is the abuse that comes with it. Because of giving my ID card copies at every level, I discovered that I had eight cell phone connections when only one was actually genuinely mine. The onus was on me to correct the records, or else criminal proceedings could well be started against me in case a cell phone number was unknowingly issued in my name and used for subversive activities. And guess what? To correct the records, I had yet to give another copy of the ID card, with no guarantee whatsoever that it will not be abused again by someone in the same cell phone company, which had issued eight SIM cards in my name when I had only sought one. In any other country this could start a class action lawsuit against the alleged violator.

The problem with the ID card is that the identity number assigned to you immediately gives the asking authority or business access to your credit history, which is classified information in any civilised country, and there are rules and laws that govern who – and for what exact purpose – can have access to such personal information. We either have no privacy rules or they are flouted.

Once a bank or a cell phone company has your ID card number, an unscrupulous employee can open floodgates of intimidation and nuisance for you. You are profiled in their records, or in a crook employee’s personal database, according to your income and age. The list is then up for grabs by other businesses that will bombard you with their selling pitches and unsolicited offers. You can be offered a credit card, an additional cell phone number, a personal loan… the list goes on.

Why? Because having your ID card number they have already accessed your credit history and you seem a good catch. Lesser evils entail sharing your mobile numbers or bank account details with relatively smaller businesses, including travel agents, electronics, and real estate dealers.

In a nutshell, having an identity in Pakistan means an end to your privacy. Does it have to be this bad?

Certainly not. Other countries use a personal social security number or a national tax number instead for specific tasks, and much more discreetly. That number is not to be given out at the drop of a hat and is as secret as your personal identification number (PIN).

The national database needs to be made more secure and those requiring access to it to check the bona fides of a given citizen must come under greater checks and balances to avoid breach of a citizen’s privacy, and to ensure that one’s self-respect and integrity are not hurt in any manner.

Corporate entities and businesses must not require the submission of identity cards when soliciting applications for taking part in any redemption schemes or consumer incentives. Only the winners claiming the wins could be required to prove their identity when filing a claim. Then, the winners’ ID card numbers must not be printed with their names and addresses in newspaper advertisements, for they can be traced back to phone numbers and bank accounts.

It’s not that things cannot be fixed. It only took a State Bank directive to the banks, requiring all banks to collect utility bills that corrected the headache the bill paying was not until too long ago. Another case in point also relates to the State Bank. Arrogant bank clerks who refused to take sullied bank notes were made to post a sign at every branch that now says that the legal tender in any form is acceptable and can be exchanged for clean bank notes.

Since such matters of public interest are seldom taken up in parliament, one only hopes a higher court will take notice of such breaches of privacy of the ordinary citizen by government agencies and private businesses alike.

e.g.
“hahahahahahahahahahaha Yhh all the Yr 7s in mah school bag is bigger dan dem n den the yr 8s (mii yr) have sum tiiniiiii bags that we cnt fit jack into”

The correct way to say this would be

“Haha, yeah all of the Year 7s at my school have bags bigger than themselves! The year 8s (my year group) have tiny bags that we can’t fit anything into”

Read this section again “Yhh all the Yr 7s in mah school bag” Sorry, I didn’t realize you kept Year 7s in your school bag! I didn’t realize that they were THAT small!

Sorry for this rant, but people who can’t be bothered to even make their sentences sound correct really annoy me.