The blog of the traveller, observer and writer, Woz.
Happiness is the man with rhythm. Copyright © 2003-2021, Woz

Monday, December 31, 2007

Happy New Year

What a way to usher in the new year - riots and killings in Pakistan & Kenya. Meanwhile, on that other planet that is Larkana, Bilawal - BB's son - becomes leader of the PPP, but while he finishes his studies (he's only 19, UK-educated, knows little of Pakistan and is too young to contest an election) his daddy - 'Mr. Ten Percent', will mind the shop. Does this sound smelly to anyone else? I'd rather Aitzaz Ahsan became PPP leader, but as he has clean hands and appears competent, he's the last guy to get the job, as both politicians and the military would be troubled by him.

While the noise continues, one of the world's greatest humanitarians continues his mission - Abdul Sattar Edhi.

Here is an interesting piece about the battle for the soul of Pakistan from the National Geographic. Please check out the tabs on the left hand side and look at the photo gallery and read the field notes.

Here's an excerpt from the piece about Edhi sahib:

But it is a measure of the country's underlying goodness, and a sign of hope, that 60 years after independence the most revered figure in Pakistan is not a mullah or a sports hero, but a 79-year-old man who routinely washes dried blood off dead bodies and fishes his clothes from a donation barrel. Abdul Sattar Edhi began serving his fellow citizens a few years after the founding of Pakistan, when he opened a free clinic in Karachi. Later he bought a dented Hillman station wagon, its blue paint peeling, and turned it into Pakistan's first private ambulance. He shuttled poor people to medical care and collected the bodies of the city's homeless from the gutters, washed them, and gave them a proper burial. "I felt it was my duty as a human being," he says, recalling the revulsion he learned to overcome. "It was obvious the government wasn't going to do it." Decades later, that hasn't changed. While the military accounts for a quarter of the national budget, less than 3 percent is spent on education, health, and public welfare. And so Edhi still tends to Pakistan's dirty work, body by body. His one-man charity is now an acclaimed international foundation. His single, beat-up old station wagon has grown into a fleet of 1,380 little white ambulances positioned across Pakistan, tended by thousands of volunteers. They are usually first to arrive on the scene of any tragedy. In May 2002, when police found the remains of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter murdered in Karachi, it was Edhi who gently collected the body parts, all ten, and took Daniel Pearl to the morgue........."I'm a Muslim," says Edhi, "but my true religion is human rights."

Right, back to my studies, and then some hobo funk at TNH.

Sunday, December 30, 2007

Of ruling elites...

William Dalrymple & Tariq Ali on BB's legacy.

Q: why didn't Asif Ali Zardari agree to a post-mortem of his wife's body?

Q: why did she only come back to Pakistan after an eight year+ exile when Musharraf agreed to drop charges against her? The country was in trouble long before that, yet she made no attempt to return.

...tangentially reminds me of an encounter I had in Central London some years back with a young man in his late 20s. A UK-born Pakistani from a feudal family. He told me how he was considering entering the parliamentary elections in Pakistan. I asked him for which party. He told me that it would be any party that gave him a seat, and that he was relying on his family connections. He then went on to tell me how he was going to spend the next day celebrating Eid and going to the mosque, all the while dripping his whisky over my shoes. Prick.

Thursday, December 27, 2007

Bye Bye, BB

So Benazir has been murdered. Let's take a look at the situation back in the old country.

She was an avowed democrat, her daddy's girl (although he foolishly got caught rigging an election he would have won if he hadn't interefered). Whilst in power, she was a supporter of the Taleban (on the misguided notion of 'strategic depth') and mismanaged the economy; out of power, she was implicated in various corruption cases outside of Pakistan; was married to a man nicknamed as 'Mr. 10%' for his role in securing a slice of lucrative deals, and implicated in the extra-judicial murder of her brother Murtaza, outside his house, while she was Prime Minister (just ask Murtaza's daughter).

Her murder will scare off that other standard-bearer for corruption and incompetence, Nawaz Sharif. This sad event may well strengthen Musharraf's hand with foreign powers (not that they care a jot about Pakistanis), although he is no democrat. Musharraf may well be honest, but he is tainted by his authoritarian tendancies, and more so by his political associates and corrupt underlings (military intelligence - ISI - doesn't appear to be under anyone's control). Not for nothing was former PM Shaukut Aziz known as 'Short Cut' for his approach to privatisations.

Strangely, she was murdered in Rawalpindi, one of the larger cities in Punjab Province - not a particularly religious place by any means - and the army's headquarter's. There's a strong message being sent in the choice of target and venue.

Nawaz Sharif will continue to boycott the elections - mainly because he can't win them, and with BB now dead, an election could potentially see her PPP win on a wave of sympathy.

I would love to see the current political class swept away, but not like this, and not to be replaced by their relatives.

Education. Civic responsibility. Anti-corruption. Democracy can only flourish with a few good examples, and there's nobody there to lead the way.

As you read the obituaries, listen to the tributes, take care to note party/tribal/familial affiliations and see how many real, everyday Pakistani's (not on the gravy train) miss her, i.e. those not bribed with free rice as all political actors are prone to doing near an election.

Beware people playing to the camera.

Pakistan is in the grip of a political class that acts like a bunch of feudal landlords, dishes out patronage & punishment and has the dubious distinction of being both corrupt and incompetent. With an environment like that and 'friends' like the USA, of course people will sadly be turned towards religious extremism - which is no solution either.

Monday, December 24, 2007

On being a Lahori

Saskia Sassen in OpenDemocracy on my family's home city of Lahore.

'The Generational Divide in Copyright Morality'

Oops. Perhaps I should dump those shares in DRM companies...

Sunday, December 23, 2007

Worth a read from the LRB

John Lanchester on Cityphilia.

Monday, December 17, 2007

'Very good if you need to write on paper'

This Amazon review cracked me up. Others are here.

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Belgium

The country that gave us Leonidas chocolates, Jacques Brel, Herge and the films 'Ultranova', 'Man Bites Dog' & 'Aaltra' is having a few little problems with its government, in that it doesn't really have one. I doubt that it will break up and merge into the Netherlands, Germany & France - why would they want the burden?

That got me to thinking about bad ol' King Leopold II and his Congo misadventure. That thought in turn took me to Mark Twain's 'King Leopold's Soliloquy'.

Listening to: all sorts of stuff on Pandora

Pakistan

It breaks my heart to see what the troubles in Pakistan are doing to my parents and others of their generation, who went through the bloody partition on both sides of the divide. I have been involved in several discussions recently about the current political stalemate - with Musharraf going for the 'Zia option', i.e. stay in power as long as you can to avoid assassination. Benazir is fated as a champion of democracy although it was her government that officially recognised the Taleban (not to mention her goverment's gross incompetence and the various cases around the World concerning corruption that she and her husband are personally implicated in, and not to forget the suspicious death of her brother Murtaza) and the less said about the Sharif brothers, the better.

Also, as the constitution forbids a prime minister to seek a third term, both Benazir Bhutto & Nawaz Sharif should be barred from contesting any future election.

Meanwhile, several Western governments play favourites under the cover of sham democracy, providing ammunition to many extremists who insist that democracy is a bad thing. Whether it is a Western power or the Pakistani elite, the people of Pakistan are treated as pawns - and worse still, as fools.

Tariq Ali has written a very good summary in the most recent edition of the London Review of Books. Check out the comments of Mohammed Hanif, head of the BBC's Urdu Service.

On bullshit

Reading an old article in Management Today by Chris Bones, I saw reference to a paper by Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Princeton, Harry Frankfurt, on bullshit. I later found a paper in a similar vein by one of my heroes, the late Professor Neil Postman (author of 'Amusing Ourselves to Death'), concerning bullshit and crap detection, which was delivered at a teaching convention in 1969.

Enjoy.

Arise, Wozzy!

After two APAC tours, an MBA assignment, a WW sales meeting, a splendid weekend with Dom, Da Bomb and Raffi & a residential MBA workshop, I was fit to collapse by last Wednesday. So I did. The last few days have seen me rack up an impressive amount of snooze hours. But as my osteopath remarked, 'close, but no cigar'. I am still cream crackered. Good job I missed the company party and opted out of a large bar tab (free bar was restricted this year), an expensive night's accomodation and a slavering monster looking at me like I am a small tub of choccie mousse. Hmmm....there's a poem there.

What else? Well, I haven't written anything since I finished a short story under a pseudonym. Lots of ideas, but no time and little energy to find the time, although I should enter some of the back catalogue into a few comps.

The London Street Brasserie confirmed its status as the best place for a friday night nosh-up in Reading town centre (thanks Hawkes - and also for the Nags Head in Russell Street).

My weekend with Dom & Da Bomb was exquisite. The house looks great and my, baby Raffi is going to be tall! I would have taken some snaps of her, but while I remembered the camera, I didn't want to disturb her with the intensity of the flash.

Listening to: 'The Blue Yusef Lateef' and 'Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus'

Reading: 'The House that Trane Built: the Story of Impulse Records' by Ashley Kahn

Working on: personal development, HB36 stylee

Saturday, December 01, 2007

'Love in the Time of Cholera'

It's one of my favourite books. The long-awaited film adaptation has arrived, and it sucks. Oh dear (thanks to Rosely).