activism

got an article in my inbox suggesting the need for something called the global civil society to catch up with the secret global government if it wants to successfully counter extraordinary rendition.

it also talked about intelligence agencies being accountable - to whom, it wasn’t clear.

seemed like a lot of wishful thinking...

But then again, I’m not particularly fond of the American bases in Pasni, Jacobabad, etc. - nor of the idea, even the suggestion, that intelligence agencies (Pakistani or otherwise) routinely process the photos of all those leaving and entering the country.

National interest? Whose nation? That of a deluded illusionist so tired of spinning his web of deceit that the mere effort of speaking to a women’s conference seems too much of a burden, too far removed as it is from the world he swims in. The real world. The world in which he or his government, or at least his favoured, earn dollars for (sur)rendering citizens to foreign governments. It’s as if he has trouble remembering his lines these days - too confusing, perhaps no longer worth the effort.

Yesterday, at the Alhamra Hall 2, Tina Sani invoked the first performance of "Hum Daykhein Gey" in 1986. She recalled how the indignant hall-wallahs turned out the lights in an attempt to stifle the public performance of Faiz’s most potent song of protest. How they failed, how the crowd reacted, their spirit of rebellion. I wondered how people like Arfa Syeda Zehra, or F.S. Aijazuddin (quoted as examples of smart people who know the score, not as liberals or idealists... the latter labels are harder to ascribe/decide/defend/live up to) could help noticing the supreme irony: the function, arranged by the National Commission on the Status of Women, was essentially government-sanctioned, the government being an extra-constitutional military dictatorship with a funny sort of parliament and an even funnier election warm-up.

It has taken the military danda for the watered-down women protection bill to be passed. Does that mean we can’t do without it? Then again, who is this ’we’ I so conveniently pick up to serve my interests?

Most likely, I’m too naive and ill-informed to pass such facile judgments. Leastways, I hope so.