I have this simple almost childish trust and believe in this country and its people,that we will rise out of all our problems however long or hard the road is,we will survive and we will as a nation become what we were supposed to be,become and realize the dream that Iqbal had for us.

That we will live up to the name and not let the sacrifice of so many before 1947 and every man woman and child who has lost his life defending this country either in a war or in some other attack.That we will be able to look them in the eye then shy away when we see them.

One thing i would like to see change is that we somehow forget that this country isnt just about Muslims and that minorities live here too and they are as much Pakistani as anyone of us and have as much stake and say over this land then any of us.Dont forget they will be by your side ready to die when the time comes,because that craze the pagal pan the jazba to do or die doesnt come from being a Muslim,it comes from being a Pakistani,its in our blood Christian,Hindu or Muslim if you are a Pakistani you have it in you.Its just about when you realize that you have the power.

I love this country,i would die for it and when the time comes if it so happens then i will and ill have  a smile on my face.

I am a Pakistani first!!

253

“At the moment what stands between the English and either left or right authoritarianism is tradition, an independent judiciary, and the goodwill of the ruling party. We are effectively Weimar, with all the legal framework any future government will need to turn us at will either into Nazi Germany or the GDR.

We just have to hope that the wrong people don’t get elected. If they do, its all over.” – Budenny

Full thread at /.

It was quite a sight watching Laal ( a ‘revolutionary pop band’), being scrutinised by some three dozen young men and women on a TV channel this year on Pakistan Day.

The band is being aggressively promoted by the said TV channel — a channel which ever since the start of the Lawyers Movement in late 2007, has sprinkled itself with revolutionary confetti, cleverly treating the concept of revolution as a highly saleable software in times of socio-economic and political crises.

Of course, never is this revolution clearly defined. Instead it usually stumbles out from our TV screens as a cathartic (but highly convoluted) concoction of liberal democracy, socialism, nationalism, patriotism and religion.

Since the programme featuring Laal was live, the channel seems to have been caught unawares, believing in its own assumption that the middle-class urban youth of Pakistan too are a reflection of what the channel has been dishing out in the name radicalism and reform.

Laal mean well though, and I particularly want to single out their lead vocalist, Shahram Azhar, who seems to be a genuine, sensitive talent. However, thanks to the purely media-constructed notions of the current ‘revolutionary’ zeitgeist in the nation’s youth, I’m sure the band too were taken aback by the reception they got on that show.

Not that they were jeered — far from it, because their unplugged performance was rather marvellous — but the questions that they were asked by the audience betrayed what the electronic media has been spouting regarding middle-class youth in Pakistan.

It is a devastating case of naivety to believe (or worse, propagate), that middle-class Pakistani youth have rediscovered the revolutionary, democratic and progressive spirit that it demonstrated from the 1950s till about the mid-1980s.

The truth is, this spirit, if it really has made some sort of a comeback, seems to be confined to assorted fringe clusters, but they are noticed because to most TV channels they are saleable images.

But then these days anything is saleable if it is continuously bombarded in the mainstream media, from pop bands to whole movements. The question is, are these clusters capable of altering minds and opinions?

No is the answer if their propagated ideas are secular, especially in the political context. But yes would be the reply if the offered ideas in anyway are associated with religion.

That said the 23rd March show was a stark reminder of the above notion. The bulk of the young audience didn’t seem all that impressed by Laal’s ‘Marxist leanings’, and many of them actually suggested that good old fashioned inscrutable mantra and rhetoric of following the holy scripture.

The point is, the fringe clusters who were proudly exhibited by many TV channels during the two-year-long Lawyers Movement — passionately spouting slogans, songs and speeches about democracy, justice, free media and revolution — I’m afraid they do not mirror the spirit of today’s middle-class Pakistani youth.

I mean, coming back to that Pakistan Day show, it was naïve of the channel to believe that the audience on that show will wholeheartedly consume and appreciate Laal’s nostalgic penchant for harking back to a past dotted by such fantastic protest poets like Habib Jalib and Faiz Ahmed Faiz.

How can you expect this generation to give a hoot about Marxism, Jalib, liberalism and progressive notions of art and politics, when much of their ideas of political, economic and religious history come from hate-mongers, paranoid conspiracy theorists and at times, outright frauds, whom they see every single day on one channel or the other posing as televangelists and ‘security experts’?

Most of these kids have little or no idea about who Jalib or Faiz or Marx or Lincoln or Kennedy were. They don’t want to hark back to that; instead, they’d rather hark back to that ‘glorious age of faith’ which, in actuality, is a cleverly implanted memory in the minds of us Muslims.

Why Marx, why Laal (red), why music? The questions kept coming from the audience.

They just couldn’t intellectually comprehend a group of ‘protesters’ who (1) weren’t emotionally combusting about PPP, MQM and Lal Masjid like Imran Khan; or (2) spouting out loud long nothings like talk-show hosts, or (3) weren’t implicating the Jews, RAW, Americans and malevolent jinns in the political and economic crimes against Pakistan, the self-claimed bastion of Islam.

How can they, when most young men and women today are getting their political and historical answers from religious and political cranks!

It is a flawed assumption on part of the electronic media to think that today’s young people will be able to grasp the more liberal and progressive notions of protest.

Because on the other side of the coin are these very channels who have already captured (and arrested) this generation’s intellect with irresponsible televangelism and political programming.

Jalib is nothing but a ghostly caricature to most young people today. They’d rather debate and look out for the dreadful al-dajjal.

Translation:

I said this to him
These hundred million
Are the epitome of ignorance
Their conscience has gone to sleep
Every ray of hope
Is lost in the darkness
This news is true
They are the living dead
Completely mindless
A disease of life
And you hold in your hands
The cure for their ills

You are the light of God
Wisdom and knowledge personified
The nation is with you
It is only through your grace
That the nation can be saved
You are the light of a new morning
After you there is only night
The few who speak out
Are all mischief makers
You should tear out their tongues
You should throttle their throats

Those proud of their eloquence
Their tongues are completely silent
There is calm in the land
There is an unexampled difference
Between yesterday and today
Only at their own expense
Are people in prison, under your rule

China
China is our friend
We’d give our lives for her
But the system that they have
Steer well clear of that
From far away say “salaam”
These hundred million asses
That are named the masses
Could surely never become rulers
You are the truth; they’re an illusion
My prayer is that
You remain President forever

Time for a change

Not the whole article but just the bits i feel are important or what i have been thinking of over the last few days,and sadly the people who are on the streets today have forgotten.

The head of state has been busy appointing judges, all of his choice, to further the subservience of the judiciary to the state. He, at least, has seldom made noises about his desire to have an independent judiciary, whether by oversight or merely because he thinks it would be redundant. On the other hand, we have the Mian of Raiwind, formerly of Lahore, now trumpeting his overwhelming desire for an independent judiciary and his avowal to never surrender until he has put back on the judicial benches those judges dismissed by Musharraf when he lost what was left of his mind on Nov 3, 2007.

The reality is that neither man can tolerate an independent judiciary, as to do so would be quite contrary to their respective political natures. Such has been the case with all those in the top notch for over five decades. Nawaz Sharif’s 1997 physical assault upon the Supreme Court cannot be forgotten or forgiven, as cannot his earlier wish to imprison a sitting chief justice of Pakistan for one night so as to impress upon him who was the boss-man calling the shots. His principled and moral stand, as he terms it, has to be highly suspect.

As husband of the prime minister Asif Ali Zardari is on record as having offered a Supreme Court justice the office of chief justice of Pakistan providing he handed over an undated letter of resignation.

Its funny,we have a memory similar to that of a goldfish.I wonder what others think of all this mess.I feel that Asif nor Nawaz will be able to handle a free judiciary,your thoughts?

China aims to silence reform call

China’s economy has liberalised, but its political system has not

Chinese lawyers, dissidents and academics who signed a document calling for political reform are being harassed by the authorities.

Signatories to the Charter 08 document have been detained, questioned by the police and put under pressure at work.

The charter calls for a radical overhaul of China’s political system by introducing elections, a new constitution and an independent judiciary.

Despite 30 years of economic reforms, China’s political system has hardly changed in that time.

And the authorities’ reaction to this latest call for reform suggests the country’s leaders still have no appetite for political reforms.

House arrest

Charter 08 was published last month on the 60th anniversary of the promulgation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

December also marked three decades since China began reforms that have transformed the economy and the country’s fortunes.

But even before the document was published, the police started visiting some of the 300 or so original signatories.

Writer and dissident Liu Xiaobo is believed to be under a form of house arrest at an undisclosed location in Beijing.

CHARTER 08 New constitution Legislative democracy Judicial independence Freedom to assemble

The authorities have yet to state publicly why the 53-year-old has been detained.

He is believed to be the only signatory being held by the police, but others have experienced other kinds of harassment.

Police went to journalist Li Datong’s work unit to look for him. He was not there, but now he knows the authorities are watching him.

Shanghai lawyer Zheng Enchong has been taken in for questioning four times since the document was published.

Speaking out

Li Boguang, another lawyer, was invited to meet with a Chinese security official at a Beijing coffee shop, where for more than an hour he had to explain why he had added his name to the charter.

“The official didn’t say anything. He just listened to my reason and then left. This is how they operate,” he said.

I am willing to pay any price for this Xu Youyu, Charter 08 signatory

China usually metes out severe treatment to anyone who criticises the system, but Mr Li said he still thinks it was right to sign the charter.

“Change requires ordinary citizens, particularly intellectuals, to speak out. This will slowly influence the government,” he said.

Another signatory, academic Xu Youyu, experienced a different kind of pressure.

Mr Xu, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, was told by his boss that signing the document broke Chinese laws.

“I told him that was nonsense. That’s absolutely not the case,” the expert in Western philosophy told us.

Liu Xiaobo is in detention at an undisclosed location

He was then asked to retract his signature, which he refused to do. “I am willing to pay any price for this,” he added – even going to prison.

Mr Xu has also been told that he will not now be allowed to write the forward to the book of a colleague.

“The publishers received an order from the centre saying that everybody who signed their name to the charter had lost their qualification to publish any article or any book,” he said.

The document that appears to be causing so much concern among senior Chinese leaders is one of the most important published in several years.

It was based on Charter 77, which in 1977 called for respect for human and civil rights in what was then Czechoslovakia.

Property rights

Charter 08 says the Chinese government’s approach to modernisation has been “disastrous”.

It “deprives humans of their rights, corrodes human nature, and destroys human dignity,” the document says.

It calls for a political system that guarantees human rights, freedom of expression and protection for private property.

It has also stirred interest abroad. Several Nobel laureates, among others, have written to Chinese President Hu Jintao asking him to release Liu Xiaobo.

China’s leaders are saying little about Charter 08 – or the detention of Mr Liu.

But President Hu made it clear in a speech to mark the 30th anniversary of the country’s reforms that China would not adopt Western-style democracy.

Willy Lam, of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said China’s leaders are nervous about calls for political change.

This nervousness has increased with the country’s economic problems, which could create a restless population receptive to calls for political change.

Mr Liu’s detention is a case of “killing the chicken to scare the monkey”, according to Mr Lam.

This is a Chinese idiom that suggests making an example of one person to keep others in line.

In Chicago, Obama is holding a rally downtown after the polls close on Tuesday night and Mayor Daley believes that up to a million people could flood the city’s streets. All police leave has been canceled and off-duty firefighters have been told to keep their kit ready at home. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/obama/chi-obama-rally-qanov02,0,5894064.story   In Augusta, Georgia reports are of Officers Gearing up with riot training http://chronicle.augusta.com/stories/102808/met_481157.shtml while Detroit and Los Angeles were also deploying extra police out of concern for the potentially heightened emotions raised by this election.

This historic presidential contest will feature either America’s first black President or first female Vice President. Iraqi’s went to the polls in the face of real threats, I don’t think Americans will.  Clearly though, the unspoken concern among some is that a surprise Obama loss could lead to suspicion of foul play and violence could ensue in cities with large “black populations based on previous riots in urban areas.”  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riot.  “So let me get this straight: No matter what happens, we should expect blacks to riot. If this isn’t racist, then call me David Duke in a sundress.”  http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,443958,00.html

We’ve seen ”emergency-preparedness” steps taken in Denver before the DNC and at every campaign rally Obama and McCain have attended and nothing major has happened.  We’ve  prepared for Y2K and nothing happened.  In case all hell breaks loose, we will be duly prepared in major cities and do not forget that the Army’s Brigade Homeland Tour of U.S. Combat troops have been repatriated from Iraq to help with any civil unrest.  

The Army force on active duty on U.S. Soil operates under U.S. Norther Commands Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, high Yeild Explosives unit (CBRNE)- The Consequence Management Response Force or CCMRF is commonly referred to as “sea-smurf”. http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/09/army_homeland_090708w/ The force was fully activated October 1st, 2008 in a response to the controversial John Warner Defense Appropriations Act http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h109-5122.  The title of the law the “Insurrection Act” has been renamed, “Enforcement of Laws to Restore Public Order”  http://www.bordc.org/threats/hr5122.php giving power to the President to invoke martial law.  Public Law 109-364, (H.R.5122) http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=MOR20061029&articleId=3618.  Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 “the power of the country” prohibited a president from using the military for police actions in the United States until now.  http://ahrcanum.wordpress.com/2008/10/01/posse-comitatus-act/  Way, way and I mean way, on the fringe is the theory that Delta Forces and Sea-Smurf will operate like Hitler’s SS Gestapo at the start of German socialism. 

.S. Army Field Manual 19-15, Civil Disturbances, 1985, is the current doctrinal reference on civil disturbances. Most tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTP) addressed in this manual were developed from experiences gained during domestic riots in the 1960s. There is no Army doctrine on the use of non-lethal weapons and munitions. http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/call/call_00-7_ch1.htm.  Some rioters have become quite sophisticated at understanding and withstanding the tactics used by police.  Manuals for successful rioting are available on the Internet and encourage rioters to get the press involved, as there is more safety with the cameras rolling.  The National Lawyers Guild has produced a 31 page document called “Legal Observer Training Manual. http://www.nlg.org/resources/LO_Manual.pdf 

President Roosevelt once said, “In politics there are no accidents.  If it happens you can bet it was planned that way.” I hardly think people will take to the streets, nor will the service of the Army, The National Guard, or riot troops be necessary.  We are a patient people and have endured two years of campaigning with no unrest.  Election Day occurs on a school and work night with honest to God people who have to get up and go to work, and many of McCain supporters will be sleeping well before the results are in.   No matter who wins, I believe in widespread respect for the law and while I encourage you to vote McCain, my prediction is that nothing will happen.  That’s my theory anyways.

God Bless America.

ISLAMABAD: Deposed chief justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry has said the country is passing through a sensitive phase where the innocents were being killed, highlighting the need of an independent judiciary.

In his letter to all the bars of the country, Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry wrote the struggle of the nation, especially that of the lawyers, for democracy and the judiciary has registered a respectful chapter in the history.

While greeting the lawyers and the nation on Eid, the deposed chief justice wrote dictatorship has died owing to the efforts of the lawyers and democracy was entering a new phase, adding the situation has changed a lot.

“Though the lawyers’ movement was yet to bear fruits but in the presence of brave knights like the lawyers no one under the sun could stop the imminent triumph from being blessed on us,” reads the letter, adding: “Your objectives are just, therefore, I believe that despite hardships and hurdles the victory would be yours because the flags of the righteous and just people never bow.”

He wished all the lawyers’ community and the nation with Eid greetings and prayed that may God save Pakistan from all harms. The deposed chief justice will offer his Eid prayers at the Faisal Mosque, Islamabad. He was unable to offer the last Eid prayer, as he was under detention along with his family. ]]>