A Friend of Feudalism

madani saab,

listen to the news, nawaz is back, exiled again, and see what the courts have to say. In a failed state, nothing matters, only the gun, and mushy have them, the jihadis have them and they make the rules.
videostaores will continue to be attacked, barber shops will be burnt. All of you will be in the standard jihadic uniform, the only entertainment will be the killings, and the book.

Ahmed madani sahib,

You never fail to bring a smile on my face. Keep it coming. By the way has the Prince already landed?

Regards

Re: # 144 Mujumdorbhai... forget about past watch future prince and princess of reformed peace and democracy are flying to capital and soon Signature of antifudalism Altafbhai may also join. These are all good omens and harbinger of coming good things. India seems has become unstable and GOI is going for new election.

Manto mian,

(May I suggest that the followers of someone like racist casteist hindu fascist bigot Gandhi who believed black people were subhuman, Indians were of superior "Indo-germanic stock", caste was the natural organisation of humanity and then women ought to stay indoors have no locus standi claiming other movements to b racist.)

Each and every person who follows MKG need not necessarily believe each and every thing that MKG said and did.

Regards

Re: # 141

May I suggest that the followers of someone like racist casteist hindu fascist bigot Gandhi who believed black people were subhuman, Indians were of superior "Indo-germanic stock", caste was the natural organisation of humanity and then women ought to stay indoors have no locus standi claiming other movements to b racist.

Bulleya writes "why do you need to resort to abuse to attempt to make a point......i have never figured this out about people....."

That is because you have not figured yourself out yet, you accuse me of being untruthful about your cheerleading prior to the Afghan invasion and I reproduce your quotes, that is what prompted my "abuse". But instead of taking those and saying you changed your mind, it was the passion of the moment you resort to more untruths by trying to imply that you never supported US action even when you wanted to wear the "uniform" to support the US action together with the Pakistan Army.

Now I know people sway with the wind, some change their views (not the timeline of your views)others are just hypocrites, I think you are in the former and not the latter- tahmed is the hypocrite

#139 Sir Tauheed

There is no Indian here that I see justifying or even condoning casteism – which is against the laws in India.

Virtually all Pakistanis here are VERY BUSY trying to either justify the creation of that epitome of Muslim racism called Pakistan – or, like you, are busy trying to be wishy-washy about it.

The facts in the matter are simple. The US declaration of independence says that “all men are created equal�!

If you believe in that – the corollary is also simple – being a Muslim does not give you or anyone else any extra rights – so Muslims do not have any God-given rights for an extra weight in political matters – which was that vamp Jinnah’s demand and “justification� for creating that basket of Muslim racism called PakistaN!

Every creature here that shies away from that simple fact is a bigoted closet racist and identifies with the Jinnah which – at a deeper level, is not much different from identifying with OBL!

so capt clueless says he was against the invasion of afghanistan...despite people posting his own comments from that time?

why, pray tell, didn't he have "no invasion of afghanistan" printed on his t-shirts instead of a paki flag?

Also, some people could always go back and post what he said about mushy..he was bragging to indians how mushy was some sort of a hero in the eyes of the US junta and how he was invited to camp david...

bj#138 "Here are a few simple common-sense statements that EVERY Pakistani needs drilled in his or her head!...All individuals are to be treated as equal."

Glad to see you Indians (Brahmin and Untouchables alike) are - already understand the evils of a caste-based society - already there and so you can teach muslims the goodness in egalitarianism.

Here are a few simple common-sense statements that EVERY Pakistani needs drilled in his or her head!

All individuals are to be treated as equal. All men and women are to be treated on the basis of one individual equals one vote.

Using one set of rules for Muslims and another for others is just another form of racism. Accept its legitimacy - and you have automatically legitimized the basics of racism.

The creation of Pakistan was a blatant case of Islamic racism! It also was the clear case of successful Islamic terrorism - the first of its kind in the subcontinent which set an example for the later generations of Islamic terrorists that would follow all over the world.

It paved the way for blatant discrimination against other "minorities" (some of whom keep shouting - "Hey, we are Muslims" - to no avail!)

William could have written a better article than this one.

Ras

kaalchakra #132: "After Musharraf the Great, there was a that all rounder cricketer phase - aurangzeb khan or vilaayat khan, or whatever his name is, leading a party called Intihayee-Saaf. Is he still the knight in shining armor?"

an odd question...pls feel free to contact me directly if you need a reply......

actually, i still support musharraf, like i always did, i.e. if the other option is bb or ns (or qazi hussein or fazl ur rahman)......this has always been my argument.......i think he was a better option than these three or four......and still do.....though his stock has gone down.....

as for, the party i support politically, it has always been tehrik-e-insaaf.......and still is.....and i still support imran khan as the candidate for pm.....always did....

outside of this party, i have supported aitezaz ahsan from ppp (assuming ppp happens to get in power, though i don't support ppp as a party, if it has a feudal leadership).....i have gotten to know some more politicians....i think gilani would make a good pm also.....

......i have always though an mqm without its current leadership, which breaks out of its ethnic roots and spreads out into pakistan, as a middle class party would be a good phenomenon.....though the chances of it spreading out are reducing.......maybe if imran khan's court case against altaf hussein is successful......

....to simplify....

1. i support musharraf if other options are bb, ns
2. i support imran khan if all options are available
3. if other options than bb, ns, become available, from other parties (as is now becoming the case), then i would support them, and would think it is time for musharraf to pack up.......

in addition, i have always stated that lawyers and media are two groups, which have a chance to oppose the govt....i supported ns's ouster through the supreme court, rather than through the army.......

in general, all surveys indicate that pakistanis' first priorities are economic growth/jobs and security.....and i would support anyone who increases the chance of the above happening.....

hopefully that makes it clear......if not, do contact me and i can provide further details...i can explain to you, via email, also.......

masadi# "With a maturity of a 5 year old retard"

why do you need to resort to abuse to attempt to make a point......i have never figured this out about people.....why can't they stay calm and make a point....people starting abusing, when they have lost an argument and have no other option left.....people who can make an argument, do not need to rely on abuse....

i have given you three pieces of articles published on this site, which i authored to present a point, which covered opposition to us invasion of afghanistan and iraq......there are hundreds of replies, by me, on this subject......there are hundreds of arguments i had with people on this site, on that.....

in fact, you are the first one who has stated that i supported these wars.....i find it odd....either you are wrong or the tens of other people are wrong......

pls read the folowing and let me know what they mean to you:

"To me, this war will be no different than Osama Bin Laden’s terrorist attacks. Killing innocent human beings ruthlessly or subtly is one and the same thing."

"So, if your hands are tied and you are down on your knees
It seems as though troubles will never cease; Remember
"They can bomb the world to pieces
But they can't bomb it into peace"

"This reduces the whole world to the law of the jungle, and the survival of the militarily fittest"

now what do these direct comments mean to you....pls explain (hopefully without abusive text; though you are welcome to abuse, if you cannot control it)....

masadi #: "Absolutely not, implicit in your recommendation article, that the US "should" have done such and so is the assumption that it was an "option"- what I have written and how you have turned face is 100% true poetry or not,"

you are an amazing guy......i have printed two articles and a piece of poetry authored by me, against us actions....and you are still not admitting your mistake.....truly amazing....

the fact that i left the usa, never to return, should be enough of an indication......

you have come up with some strange implication and have attempted to state that it is, "implicit."......basically what i have written explicitly is not what you want to look at.......you want to attach, on your own, implicit idea to me......

this is truly a strange site.....i spent years arguing with hamidm2 on why the us invastions were wrong.....and now masadi is completely sure i supported it.....

all my articles on this site are on books, poetry, culture etc.....the only ones i have written on politics, explicitly (not implicit in any manner) but explicitly against usa invasions.....

you need to learn to admit your mistakes......specially when facts are expressed openly to you........following is somethign else i wrote in my article regarding a us invastion (this time in iraq) - once again explicitly, i.e. the text is staring you in your face:

"I wholeheartedly oppose this brewing war. I feel the USA will unnecessarily invade a country. It will kill innocent people and create chaos in the region, not to help the local people, but for its own interests. I oppose this war, to the extent of considering it a crime against humanity – a self-serving attack by an aggressive nation against an innocent nation which has never attacked it. To me, this war will be no different than Osama Bin Laden’s terrorist attacks. Killing innocent human beings ruthlessly or subtly is one and the same thing. "

let's stick to explicits and not your implicit imagination.......now do tell me where i supported the us wars....

Kaal,

Hmmm, I think the cricketer it is for Romair sahib.

Regards

# 131

..."has graduated from his Field Marshall aka Captain Clueless days"

for information only, majumdar, what is the latest status? After Musharraf the Great, there was a that all rounder cricketer phase - aurangzeb khan or vilaayat khan, or whatever his name is, leading a party called Intihayee-Saaf. Is he still the knight in shining armor?

Masadi sahib,

It takes a lot to change your views when you are not young any more. Romair sahib has learnt a lot over the past few years and has graduated from his Field Marshall aka Captain Clueless days. I wish I could say that about every chowkie. Some of them are still stuck up in 7th century Arabia.

Regards

masadi nails capt clueless..

America was getting ready to bomb Afghanistan and this fool was rejoicing for the prospects this would have for Pakistan and now like a damn (liar) coward instead of acknowledging it he denies it:

====

#44 Posted by Romair on September 17, 2001 2:42:50 am
IMPORTANT:

---------

Advice to all Pakistanis, Indians, Sri Lankans, Arabs and Muslims in general, in the USA: If you want to feel safe and not have anyone attack you on the street, wear a shirt with a Pakistani flag on it.
------------

With a maturity of a 5 year old retard

In #127 read "does that mean that the opposes or supports the war?"

as

"does that mean that he opposes or supports the war?

----

To that I want to add that if any of you have difficulty answering that question tear up your High School Certificates and any other useless pieces of paper thereafter...

Cheerleader Romair:

---------

#145 Posted by AlephNull on September 4, 2007 3:41:58 pm
From Romair’s post:
…

I do know the PAF is on alert. I think the US C-141s are going to start rolling in soon. I have a feeling the Pakistani pilots and army will assist and guide the US into Afghanistan, if it decides to carry out an invasion (even though the Pakistani govt. won`t admit it openly). There is no way the US soldiers can carry it out on their own. They don`t have the intelligence, they don`t know the terrain, can`t speak the language. Infact, they can barely pronouce the names of the cities.

I`ve trained with the Pakistanis, with Middle Easterners and with Americans. I will take the Pakistani soldier over any other soldier anyday (any soldier except for an Afghan soldier, that is).

Man, this is getting interesting. Information Technology suc/ */s as a profession. No glory. I wanna go back and put on the uniform.

--------------------

Now if America is going to invade, Pakistan's military is going to assist and Romair wants to put on the Uniform, does that mean that the opposes or supports the war?

bulleya writes "i don't think usa wanted to do the right thing.....i never said that...pls point out where i said it.....your argument has been discredited and now you are trying to come up with reasons to justify your mistake,"

Absolutely not, implicit in your recommendation article, that the US "should" have done such and so is the assumption that it was an "option"- what I have written and how you have turned face is 100% true poetry or not, when you rally behind the benefits the Afghan war would cause Pakistan, and I have read those quotes that somebody produced (before you wrote this article), you are tacitly supporting the invasion. Liar.

Re #94, can someone please explain to me what exactly is wahabism? This is a serious question.

masadi #115: "There is an assumption in your "thinking" that assumes that the US wanted to do the right thing but chose the wrong option, that is why the need for this "moralizing" advice."

i don't think usa wanted to do the right thing.....i never said that...pls point out where i said it.....your argument has been discredited and now you are trying to come up with reasons to justify your mistake, rather than accepting it.....

following was your original statement: "Further regarding the Afghan invasion post 9/11 you were rejoicing over the prospects that presented for Pakistan"

it should be obvious from my article as well as my actions, that i was opposed to the usa attacking afghanistan.....i felt the need to write an article on it......i actually left the country, and only return on visits.....

following is another article i wrote against the usa's invasion of iraq, titled, "Three arguments against a war," http://www.chowk.com/articles/5979

.....in fact, during my rather poetic days, a few years ago, when i was regularly submitting poetry on Chowk, i even wrote poetry against it, titled, "Falcons Hearth"

"Gather 'round people, lend me your ear
Open your minds and all will be clear
Burn down the flags that you hold so dear
Raise your voice; there is nothing to fear

"Speak! for your lips are free," as a bird
Speak! if you don't, you'll never be heard
Speak! and speak, till you can speak no more
Speak! till your words knock on God's own door

If you cannot speak, talk through your eyes
Wipe off your tears and hold your head high
'Tis where you finish, not where you begin
"For the loser now, will be later to win"

Not only thy neighbour, love all men, alike
"Don't break people's heart, 'tis where God resides;" But
If ever attacked in the day or the night
Stand up and fight!; you must stand up and fight

"The jackal's wedding," under the desert palms
Their neo-con killers, our own Uncle Toms
No friends of yours and no friends of mine
Go! spit in their beer and piss in their wine

"The moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on"
Our troubles will pass, a new day will dawn
The sun and the moon are at His command
"As-shams-u wal qamaru bay-husbaan"

"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust"
Return to our Lord, someday, we must; But,
To the day of your death, from the day of your birth
"Live like a falcon, in the mountain's hearth"

So, if your hands are tied and you are down on your knees
It seems as though troubles will never cease; Remember
"They can bomb the world to pieces
But they can't bomb it into peace"

not exactly Faiz, but hopefully this will convince you to accept your error....i have presented two articles, and one piece of poetry, which totally obliterates your allegation....

..if you still won't accept your mistake, then i will have to elevate you to one level above hamidm2 mian - at the moment he was on the top of my list of chowk interactors, who can see no wrong in his views..........



you need to learn to accept your errors.....

Oops sorry multiple posts.

Regards

Masadi sahib,

(My posts contain those expletives only for those that deserve them)

You described someone as being red-a****. Since that remark was "deserved" as per your own statement (not Mr. Stanley Wolpert's or Mr. HM Seervai's but your own) do I take it that you observe the posteriors of all chowkies? Didn't know that you had somewhat queer preferences.

Regards

Masadi sahib,

(My posts contain those expletives only for those that deserve them)

You described someone as being red-a****. Since that remark was "deserved" as per your own statement (not Mr. Stanley Wolpert's or Mr. HM Seervai's but your own) do I take it that you observe the posteriors of all chowkies? Didn't know that you had somewhat queer preferences.

Regards

Masadi sahib,

(My posts contain those expletives only for those that deserve them)

You described someone as being red-a****. Since that remark was "deserved" as per your own statement (not Mr. Stanley Wolpert's or Mr. HM Seervai's but your own) do I take it that you observe the posteriors of all chowkies? Didn't know that you had somewhat queer preferences.

Regards

VRV writes "Btw, I don agree with Asadi calling u a 'red assed baboon'."

That was an expletive I borrowed from thinkingstorm in his interact on the Manto ilog, it referred to his thinking ability and had nothing to do with the graphics or the color....The guy is a criminal and a fool, the way he presents evidence and accusitions without a shread of honesty is stupendous to say the least

VRV,

You have the right to your opinion. I just think it is wrong and you haven't produced anything to back up your assertions or those of Masadi.

#98 Posted by MantoLives on September 6, 2007 10:35:00 am

Asadi indeed summarized our history in one sentence. It's amazing.

I dont agree with u even a wee bit. If u dont know or dont WANT to know, Jinnah fought for ALL Indian Muslims, not just the Muslims in West Punjab or the Muslims of NW India.

Btw, I dont like to speculate abt what'd have happened to the ppls of NW India, had there been no Pakistan. It's futile & I dont agree with ur analyses on the subject.

Btw, I don agree with Asadi calling u a 'red assed baboon'.

Urstryly writes "Your discourse cannot be cassified as an "argument". It usually starts with phrases like "you red assed baboons", "you dimwits", and "you morons", "

Oversimplification which means you are seeking excuses and lies like the lies on how you suffer living overseas in the US of A but would like to return to your homeland that doesn't offer you a livelihood. My posts contain those expletives only for those that deserve them because of the way they are being deceptive with their posts like Manto. Since you haven't been able to make me lose one single argument and we have had many, then your psychoanalysis about me is similar Mullah BS, and since I have never been married how can I be going through a divorce? I am very pleasant to be around, and very polite I might add but I don't like the company of "fat ass" mullahs that have invented a profession contrary to the Quran and are involved in making a haraam livelihood as they sell the words of Allah for a miserable price...

bulleya wrote "....highlighted the fact that USA should have exhausted all international legal options, before moving troops......"

You mean a golden opportunity presents itself to the US elite to start another "war with no end", to summarily execute peace, justified by its 9/11 hurt so it came with no public disapproval, and you say they should go legal? Which world were you living in back then? There is an assumption in your "thinking" that assumes that the US wanted to do the right thing but chose the wrong option, that is why the need for this "moralizing" advice.

Re: # 112

Your discourse cannot be cassified as an "argument". It usually starts with phrases like "you red assed baboons", "you dimwits", and "you morons", which only means that either you are having a bitter divorce or you are scared shitless of losing an argument. Why do you have to yell and insult people if you have substance or even an argument. If screaming had made a substantial argument then all books written in bold, underlined and capital letters would have been blockbuster timeless classics. I don't think you are a very pleasant person to be around and I do not think one can even slightly benefit from your company or discourse.

It was essential to kick out Hindus and Sikhs from
what was to become Pakistan.
With them around, Muslims had no chance except in
political field, like bhumiputras of Malaysia.
In all most of the spheres, Hindus and Sikhs would
have dominated, at least in matters where cerebral
matter matters.
So that was the plan all along and it worked.
If Pakistani Muslims had wisdom to woo them and
pursuade them to stay, Pakistan would have or
would have been on the way to become like Malaysia
instead of on the way to become like Afghanistan.

Urstruly writes "I think Masadi is devoid on both accounts, sincerity and presentation. "

Regarding substance, none of you mullahs from the high priest the Khota (Bakri Omar) to the low down jihadists have been able to counter what I say directly from the Quran, if I am so devoid of substance then you should be able to blow me away in argument but not one of you has been able to. Regarding presentation, I would take mine any day over the burping sermons of some mullah high on halva

Just one point I want to make clear to this "red assed baboon" Manto when he claims that I "excuse" the Bengal massacre, I never "excused" the massacre of Bengalis, it is just that the Army action that resulted in that has not ZAB but Yahya, the war criminal to blame. Bhutto was not the military commander in cheif to be giving orders and tactics to the military, it was Yahya's military. Now please clarify to me how talks between Yahya and ZAB amount to ZAB's point by point instruction on how to militarily suppress the Bengali vote? ZAB had nothing to do with the massacre and you do not have any proof , non existant talks behind closed doors do not constitute proof. ZAB the democrat, the Muslim, the friend of the poor and the downtrodden was willing to negotiate to sit as a minority but not under a plan that would cause another "bangladesh" in three of the four provinces down the road and that even if this trap that was being set by the military would be allowed to go on. That is my point of view and it is supported by the facts which are not in a "secret meeting" in some hidden room in Larkana but out in the open subject to analysis.

#107 Posted by bulleya on September 6, 2007 12:31:09 pm


following is from an article i wrote on this site: http://www.chowk.com/articles/5335


That article was written in 2002, long after the t-shirt with paki flag days were over and the canine status of pureland was becoming increasingly obvious..

in any case, the article was titled india's lose lose scenario...turns out, it was a win-win for india...so you're wrong there too..

you're acting like bill o'reilly who gets all worked up when people quote HIM.

O this was good indeed; want to share it again.


Once when Sardar Ataullah Mengal, NawaB amir Muohammed Khan ( then Gov. west Pak) & Ayub ( Pres. ) were together discussing some matter. When Mengal raised his voice high & chided Ayub, Kalabagh requested him to exercise restraint to which Mengal, aghast said to Kalabagh iright in front of Ayub: " Nawab sahib, this guy is a naukar, he is on wages, how can you ever compare him to you & I"

The worst thing that has happened to both India & Pakistan is this transplanted system of "democracy" & the dissolution of States. Hyderbad Bhopal Rampur have yet been not replaced even to their 10% level in all spheres of activities. The Great Mughals did not interfere in the Panchayat system & never ever disturbed the ground-roots of all culture & tradition

i think one needs to separate the rhetoric/manifesto etc. of ppp from the people running it.....

i think ppp has one of the better, if not best manifestos for pakistan....i actually agree with much of bhutto's rhetoric....the older i get, the more socialist i am becoming.....

......however, rhetoric is just that.....rhetoric......what the ppp has actually done is the total opposite of what it preaches.....it is ruled by the chief feudal family of pakistan, which runs it like a family fiefdom.....feudals will never support the common man....the businessman may support the common man, the army may, the ngo's may, the maulvi may, but never the feudal.....

the best thing that can happen now is for the law for not allowing three time pm to stay.......this may open up an opportunity for someone else to lead ppp as pm....

though i don't think bb is going to give an opportunity to people like aitezaz ahsan....she will stick with incompetent folks like ameen fahim.....

ppp without its top feudals would be a good prospect for pakistan.....

masadi #: Further regarding the Afghan invasion post 9/11 you were rejoicing over the prospects that presented for Pakistan"

hmm......another pakistani gentleman forced to quote arjun....we pakistanis are totally screwed now.....

i actually opposed the afghanistan invasion....in fact i moved out of the usa, and gave up an opportunity for a us passport, as i disagreed with us foreign policy....all of this is far too well documented....

following is from an article i wrote on this site: http://www.chowk.com/articles/5335

"When the United States of America was laying down its plans to attack Afghanistan, a small group of people, including the author, highlighted the fact that USA should have exhausted all international legal options, before moving troops......

This reduces the whole world to the law of the jungle, and the survival of the militarily fittest...This has made the world a more dangerous place, and will further increase every country’s desire to acquire more weaponry, both conventional and nuclear."

as i said earlier, please take it easy on the rhetoric and stick with facts......the above should highlight your incorrect rhetoric.....

there is nothing wrong with liking bhutto......however, supporting a feudal, who kept his family feudal, totally contradicts you sociological stands.....feudals are at the opposite extreme of the common man.....it doesn't matter what commentary they use......there can be no socialism in a country, as long as its land is owned by feudals and they are its prime minsiters........

jiss kaith sae dehqaan ko muyyassar na ho rozi
uss kaith kae har khosho-e-gandum ko jala do

one would think you would be burning bhutto's kaiths, not supporting him.......

104:
You said it man...
helps reminding us all once in a while of the Hikayaat-i-Saadi: the treasure house of wisdom found no where else in the world.

The wisdom of Sa'adi... he was the sage for all ages.

Re: # 101

There is a short story by Sheikh Saadi's in his book Gulstan that fits perfectly well on Masadi. Sheikh writes that once upon a time there was a Mo'azan (prayer caller) who was a very devout Muslim. He would get up early in the morning, rain or shine, climb up the minaret and call for prayers. The only problem was that he had the most terrible voice imaginable. Everybody in the town despised his call for prayers but nobody would dare tell him because of his devotion and sincere adherence to the religion.

One day this Moa'zan, who was so convinced of the beauty of his voice decided to go on a missionary trip to convert people into islam. He happened upon a distant town whose people had never heard about Islam. It was night time already when people received him as a traveller and offered him an abode for the night. They asked him about the purpose of his trip. He told them about the name of One Lord and that he had come to their town to introduce people to their salvation. People heard him intently and then since it was getting late at night everybody left him to get some rest.

Next morning, early as usual this Moa'zan woke up and climbed the roof of his room and started calling for the prayer in his horrible voice. No living beings in that town had ever heard such a horrible noise before; the small children started crying, the men and women who were sleeping in their beds comfortably fell down on the floor, cows and horses fled barns and stables, dogs started howling, and hens abandoned the eggs they were hatching. Everybody was dazed and confused about that horrible noise until they found out that it was the stranger whom they had received yesterday. They asked Moa'zan about the reason for making such a horrible ruckus in the wee hours of the night. The Moa'zan replied that he was only calling the people to the Good Lord so that they could have their salvation. The people said, if this is the way you call people to your Lord then thank you very much; we have no intention to know about your Lord.

MORAL: Devotion and sincerity in faith is not enough but presentation is also important when you reach out to the people.

I think Masadi is devoid on both accounts, sincerity and presentation.

For the sake of historical accuracy ... one must be clear that the steel mill in Karachi was conceptualised in 1968 (when Bhutto was no longer in the government) and an agreement to this effect was concluded with the USSR in January 1971.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto laid the foundation stone in 1973 pursuant to this agreement and had little to do with it per se.. though it is understandable that Bhutto tried to spin it as his achievement.

Personalities like ZaB, MAJ, or MKG can be and are discussed ad-nauseum here & elsewhere but one thing that truly makes the all great is:

None of them Khaa Paisaa of the qaum or awaam.

All of their other "mistakes" "sins" or "crimes" can be mootpoints but nothing fresh is being discussed here except
one's own predujices under the cover of who has a bigger hard disc of clutter.

Masadi says that Urstruly is depending on "he said she said".

But Masadi doesn't even have that ...does he? Other than blind ignorance and a small mind resembling that of "Shah Dola da chuha" he has been unable to provide any real basis for his adulation for Zulfikar Ali Bhutto...

How unfortunate is Bhutto to have won an admirer like Masadi who has turned Bhutto-admirers and Bhutto-sympathizers into Bhutto-haters. People who can't agree on anything... people like Urstruly, Bulleya, myself, rozaiba ... are unanimous on this one point. Indeed this is the kind of consensus that might one day help Pakistan rid itself of third rate feudal politicians (or as Dalrymple calls it "Elective feudalism") that masquerades as some sort of democracy ... and bring forth politicians on all sides in the mould of Mahomed Ali Jinnah.

Re: # 97

I don't need a sermon on democracy. When is the last time party elections were held with in PPP. Isn't it a fact that ZAB's wife became the dejure party leader after ZAB's demise and after her, BB became a lifetime party leader. WTF does the word "lifetime' mean. It means there won't be any elections for PPP leadership unless BB dies. If this is the kind of democracy you are peddling then stay with in your business territory i.e. poor illetrate masses who can be bought with the promise of a loaf of bread. Try to look outside from the well that you have started to assume to be the whole universe. The choking hold of your inferiority complex and inherent prejudices have turned you into a small minded Shah Dollah's rat.

that should read "undergraduate economic work" ... Masadi's that is.

Saima Shah,

That is an excellent post. Everyone should read it.

VRV,

Only someone like you can find absolute garbage by an irrational maniac like the self-proclaimed Howard Zinn and Chomsky rolled into one Masadi "golden words". Those who know history however have a different point of view.

The truth is the exact opposite. Had Pakistan not come into existence ... Muslims of this region i.e. Pakistan would have remained entrenched in farming and soldiering. It was the rigors of having a state and running it that forced Pakistanis to abandon traditional professions and opt for banking, commerce, medicine, trading etc.... thus quite contrary to Masadi's claims... Jinnah actually was responsible for bringing very real and actual social progress to a people who were otherwise closed up and were fast becoming dinosaurs... had there been no Pakistan... this region would have become the subcontinental backwater and producer of raw materials... just compare the capital flow and industrialisation right up to 1947.... and then afterwards... Pakistan region went virtually started from zero.

The reason why there was feudal structure more entrenched in this region was because this region was used by the British for recruiting which they did through local alliances.... the most developed of the west Pakistani province was Punjab which was a regulated province... i.e. British ruled through deputy commissioners instead of elected representatives.

Everything has its time ... and in my view atleast Muslims like me would have been stuck in the vicious downward spiral of agricultural prices... Masadi probably doesn't know - despite his so called undergraduate economic prices- that agricultural prices have been declining the world over.

Ofcourse the downside of this was that people like Masadi- who probably would have not ended as even a clerk in United India- also managed to get an education and got to go to America. This is clearly the biggest misfortune of partition.


Masadi mian,

In Masadi's bizarro world Jinnah who worked his way through sheer hard work and ability from a humble background is some how a feudal-facilitator but the feudal Bhutto- whose party today remains the bastion of feudal aristocracy- is a lower class hero.

He blames Jinnah for the half a million (by the most liberal estimates the death toll ranged from 250 000- 587 000) deaths at partition because Jinnah had asked for Pakistan and that warranted violence against Muslims... but forgives Bhutto for advising and planning the massacre of hapless Bengali people (because like Jinnah, Mujeeb too had asked for an independent country and hence according to Masadi ... the onus should lie on Mujeeb)


Claiming something without giving any evidence is not cutting it. It smacks of Masadi's ignorance of not just Jinnah but of Gandhi and Bhutto as well. I seriously suggest Madadi hit those books before making such outrageously inaccurate statements which cannot be defended on the basis of history.

As for the Raja of Larkana... Bhutto's continuing tragedy was lack of scruples ... instead of trying to be some sort of a Napoleon meets Gemal Abdel Nasser holding a Pakistani flag... had he followed the man (Mahomed Ali Jinnah) he admired but did not have the integrity or character to emulate and who he defended more vociferously than I ever have (heck had he been around you would be calling him the "high priest of Church of MAJ" as well) ...

But somewhere along the way... Bhutto decided Jinnah's law abiding constitutional ways were too cumbersome for him to fulfill his ambition of becoming a third world Napoleon ... that having scruples and being honest like Jinnah was uncool... that Pakistan was Bhutto's personal fiefdom... that he could fool the people and play with the ignorance and foolishness... that instead of solving the basic issues and fulfilling the many promises he made to the people... he would do better by holding the Islamic Summit Conference and giving false hopes to an already demoralised people.... that if nothing else worked, it would be great to ditch the Ahmadis in the name of Islam.... that if that didn't appease the Mullahs... there would always be something more he could do to appease the Mullahs.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was basically an insecure people. As per Rafi Raza... Bhutto's "phenomenal election victory" in 1970 was engineered by the Pakistan Army to offset the Awami League-National Awami Party alliance...

On this website we have often done the exercise of what would happened if Nehru had not vetoed the Cabinet Mission Plan in 1946... it is about time we consider what would have happened if Bhutto-Yahya coterie had accepted Mujib's 6 points...

My guess is that Pakistan would still be united... albeit as a confederation ... and military rule would have ended with Yahya Khan. This is precisely why the Army had to let East Pakistan go.

Re #96 Little wonder that Mullah Naseruddin picks on "he said, she said" tales. I have read the ZABs letter to his daughter from jail and nowhere is it mentioned that she should be head of PPP because she is his daughter, he gives her advice about affairs not about how to gather power, Minister of Youth Affairs is not Prime Minister. I fail to see mention of "family" and "succession" in any of the speeches of ZAB. Monarchial succession in our society unfortunately is used as mechanism to coopt democratic movements like that of ZAB, the Fatima Jinnah alliance used it and the PPP used it but ZAB cannot be blamed for it. How many times and in how many countries have the mullahs sided with the colonialists to do away with the voice of the people? It is true that he set up the Steel Mills instead of setting up Halva factories for you guys but that's no reason to invent excuses to deny the difference he made as an individual at the grassroots, rural, poor sections of Pakistani society.

Re: # 89

"If you can show that ZAB wanted PPP to be a family affair that he took action to ensure it would be a family affair then you might have a point about inconsistency and I will duly condemn the man for doing so "

ZAB did try to make PPP his personal affair. Raja Anwer, who is a well known columnist claims that ZAB asked him personally to take BB under his wings and train for the post of Minister of Youth Affiars. Raja Anwar was a political activist and student leader from Gujjar Khan, who arose to become ZAB's adviser on student and labour affairs from 1974 to 1977. During Zia era he was exiled when terrorists of Pak People's Party hijacked a pakistani plane and demanded the release of PPP political prisoners. Raja is a die hard PPP worker to this date.

ZAB himself, in one of his books (probably If I Am Assassinated) described BB as the tru heiress of his political legacy rather than his sons or any other political worker.

During last days of his rule when he was negotiating the re-election with opposition, BB was present in most of the meetings. This fact is also documented by die hards like author Saleem Ahmad and Raja Anwer.

saima, coming to terms with TNT was the biggest struggle for me too. Personally I simply gave up and accepted it as a fact of life. Like water fiding its own level, irrespective of people's preferences.

There seem to be too many issues mixed up in TNT - fear, hatred, supremacist ideology, dogma, pride, idealism, utopianism, ignorance, selfishness, greed, envy, jealousy, ambition, progressivism, self-sufficiency, whatever you want to include in order to exclude.

I think there were lots of people with lots of different interpretations (as happens invariably in any interpretationist situation). So it may not be very useful to wonder what this or that person thought. These ideas spread rapdily through huge populations, and those populations acted - each individual for a different reason (interpretation, perhaps), but ultimately toward the same practical goal.

I don't think that thinking will or can ever go away. It is too deep rooted because it is NOT one thing or two things. You can pull out one root, but a hundred other roots remain. That is also the reason why it first spread like wildfire. It had too many hooks.

So, IMHO, the only way forward is to accept it, and try to make a better world assuming that it will always be there underground a lot more than above ground, and while one of its hooks may be cut off, a hundred others will remain, ready to welcome the masses.

Re: # 29
Jayp, I wondered for the longest time, if the TNT is at heart hatred and concluded not. The TNT was fear, fear of losing a certain way of life, fear of the 'other' who seemed to be siding with the British rather than not. Unfortunately, that fear was not addressed by the politicians of the time and a meaningful solution was not presented--tehre are many reasons, british parliamentary democracy relies on nations and homogienity, with roots in autocracy. In that context, the TNT made sense. However, later on, the influence of Wahabism, and the desire for purity has led to great tragedy. The only way out of the minimimalist/pure Islam was hypocricy--say one thing, do another. That is how Saudi Arabia manages its many contradictions, through lies. Pakistani society is complex, it does not lend itself to easy comparisons, or easy solutions. For a few decades the lies that governed life allowed people to embrace modernity and at the same time oppress the masses. An elite emerged that prescribed Islam for the masses and America for themselves.

I'd like to say that Pakistanis by and large do not hate India, China or any nation. If anything they want the same status and progress as these nations, however their prescription is a pure Islam that further tightens the noose around their neck. You'd say, well why don't they change that?

It is easier said than done, it took many many decades for the wahabi ideology to reach critical mass, it will take a lot of time for enlightened Islam as well. In the meanwhile, Muslims live with a lot of conflict and grief, trying to deal with all this.

Masadi:

Do not listen to Manto, Bulleya, HP and all these folks.

You are a phenomenal character. Anyone who can compare himself to Noam Chomsky and Ann Coulter in the same post has to be one of a kind. This has never been done before.

#86 Posted by MantoLives on September 6, 2007 4:29:56 am


it goes without saying that the death toll at partition was much lower than the death toll in 1971.


but according to you, the paki army only whacked a dozen or so people in 71..and most of them were indian agents anyway...

#89 Posted by masadi on September 6, 2007 5:56:30 am


for starters, i never supported the afghan invasion.



masadi dude...capt clueless was practically wearing a cheerleaders uniform(albeit with a paki flag on it) and waving his pom-poms cheering the invasion of afghanistan...check out aleph null's post on the rawalpindi thread..he re-posted capt clueless' post from that time...

that was the time after 9/11 when he thought pakiland would have a seat at the dinner table with uncle sam instead of being treated like a female of the canine species and left in the yard..the neighbor's yard...

now while i think you're full of it, you've had consistent beliefs and have stuck by them..however wrong said beliefs might have been IMO...capt clueless is a BS artist with a difference..he spins a yarn and he's the only one who falls for it...

In #89 read "Things are that black and white as you would like them to be, just repeating your question again and again proves NOTHING"

as "Things aren't that black and white as you would like them to be, just repeating your question again and again proves NOTHING"

Bulleya writes "you need to calm down a bit, and look at what you are stating......i have already showed on so many items on which you are inconsistent......for starters, i never supported the afghan invasion.....in fact, i wrote an article against it on this site"

You haven't shown a single inconsistency. If you can show that ZAB wanted PPP to be a family affair that he took action to ensure it would be a family affair then you might have a point about inconsistency and I will duly condemn the man for doing so but what you are showing is what happened to the party AFTER ZAB, for which he certainly cannot be held responsible Now when I have said that I have nothing to do with the PPP or who is ruling it or who the leadership is I am concerned with the anamoly of ZAB in these discussion you say it is "inconsistency" that is BS. Further regarding the Afghan invasion post 9/11 you were rejoicing over the prospects that presented for Pakistan, many have caught you with your pants down in this case and in the case of supporting Musharraf, maybe your friend Arjun can repost what you wrote in you usual clueless manner.

Then he writes "could he, not have agreed to form the oppossition in a govt. and allowed mujeeb to run the country, based on the wishes of the common man of pakistan.........

landowners and political parties headed by landowners will never have the common man's agenda as a priority......."

I have already made over a dozen posts on that and why it was not tenable and even pasted ZABs own explanation for it. Things are that black and white as you would like them to be, just repeating your question again and again proves NOTHING. Try to understand the answer and refute it rather than repost it as a similar question.

Then he writes "- another form of elitism, is family dominance of institutions, politics, etc........surely, you cannot deny that bhutto's politics are dominated by his family......"

I deny it completely, there was nothing in ZAB's politics that was about his family, in order to use his name to coopt the socialist agenda his family name and members have been are are being used, that is not his fault, I have already stated this multiple times yet once again you merely restate your original question as if you have proved something. NOT SO.

Then he writes "- bhutto did not introduce socialism.....he introduced crony socialism......which destroyed the common man as it made him poorer"

BS, nationalism might make the GNP pie smaller but it surely increases the share of it going to the common man, similar nonsense has been spewed by the bourgeoisie that ran away from Cuba. What has all the privitization and dirty money flowing in done for Pakistan? It takes time to build a base, nationalization of industry and land reforms are steps number ONE and he undertook them both, making it LAW of the LAND, that itself regardless of how much success he had in implementation says a lot about why I support him in these efforts. Finally he had to do a lot of balancing as he himself claims and blames himself for seeking that but did he really have much choice? The way he was killed proves that he didn't. Finally what he did with his own wealth and family and so on are downright Ad Hominem argument with which I am not concerned, and reflect the "mullah intellect" of how they judge the expediency of a ruler.

Then he ends with ".....your criteria is rhetoric and not facts......"

BS again, not empty rhetoric but rhetoric that makes the public come out and become conscious, that was what I support, the public was woken up, supported him based on greater feelings of worth they developed for themselves, saw themselves not as peons of the West or the feudals but people in their own right. Is that too hard for you to understand in your wheelings and dealings and how to make a quick buck? You have not produced a single fact except repeat your nonsense allegations about the PPP party structure being a family affair when the ZAB had nothing to do with that...

The greatest facilitator of the feudals and the colonials was MAJ who using the excuse of Muslims of India, using them as scapegoats and killing over a million of them, worked to protect the landed aristocracy of West Pakistan from the rural uprisings in India that were capitalized by Gandhi. ZAB was the one that challenged those feudal elite for the first time ever representing the rural masses.


GOLDEN WORDS EVER WRITTEN ON CHOWK.

#85 Tazeen regarding the appointment of Zia those are chances that a weak political institution head has to take when the military has a long tradition of interference in political affairs. No matter who was chosen the results would have been much the same the real players in the power state wanted a change and they wanted to make an example of someone who was getting too independant and big for his boots..

#86 Manto; The greatest facilitator of the feudals and the colonials was MAJ who using the excuse of Muslims of India, using them as scapegoats and killing over a million of them, worked to protect the landed aristocracy of West Pakistan from the rural uprisings in India that were capitalized by Gandhi. ZAB was the one that challenged those feudal elite for the first time ever representing the rural masses.

So according to Masadi a leader like Bhutto who does not respect a simple law like traffic lights is perfectly alright. Let us forget that he has failed to answer why people like Wali Khan and Maududi supported Fatima Jinnah... if it was a simple case of monarchial succession.

As for who caused what deaths... it is very hard to actually blame the one person who went around protecting people in Karachi and Hyderabad for the communal violence in 1947... it goes without saying that the death toll at partition was much lower than the death toll in 1971. And it might just be that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto planned and executed the whole thing.

Let us read what HP wrote:

The army too felt that the time has come to get rid of East Pakistan as Mujib's six points would have destroyed the army rule in Pakistan for good. Bhutto did support the army and I think it was Bhutto who actually planned how the whole thing would work. Gen. yahya spend days in Larkana in early 1971 consulting with Bhutto over these issues and when they came out of those meetings, east Pakistan's fate was sealed.


Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's rule was reactionary and he laid the foundation for what Zia ul Haq did later on. In many ways these two men weakened Pakistan more than anyone else.

As the English phrase goes, 'Handsome is what handsome does," and what ZAB did to Pakistan was not handsome at all. In my opinion, his greatest sin was making Zia his chief of army staff, because Bhutto, with his "GREAT" intellect, thought Zia to be least threatening of all the generals. He just thought about saving his own ass and did not care about either merit or seniority of other generals. We all know how it ended. Bhutto, in some ways, is responsible for all the fiasco Zia created. No other person in the 60 years history of Pakistan can be attributed to muck up the society for such a long time, we are still reaping the 'benefits' of Zia's legacy which ranges from communal and secterial violence to klashinikov culture to drugs to human traffic and what not. So in a way, it was Bhutto who introduced this deadliest of all viruses to Pakistani establishment.
We are honoured to have had such a great 'people's' leader

masadi #: "but because he invoked principles of socialism, something that the people of Pakistan and all poor and toiling masses of the third world demand and desire. "

yes, he did state them and then fully violated them......could he not of implemented land reforms, at least, in his own family lands......could he not have removed his own family from the hierarchy of his party....could he not have built a party around the common man and not around the feudal elites......ppp is, still, the last bastion of the feudal politic in pakistan.....it is the only mainstream political party in pakistan, headed by a feudal......

could he, not have agreed to form the oppossition in a govt. and allowed mujeeb to run the country, based on the wishes of the common man of pakistan.........

landowners and political parties headed by landowners will never have the common man's agenda as a priority.......they may talk about it to get the common man's votes, but the moment they implement it, they will lose their landholdings and importance......

masadi #78: "I challenge you to show me one inconsistency unlike you who was rallying behind Musharraf and the Afghan invasion and now does a turnaround..."

you need to calm down a bit, and look at what you are stating......i have already showed on so many items on which you are inconsistent......for starters, i never supported the afghan invasion.....in fact, i wrote an article against it on this site......this is the first point on which you are inconsistent.....like this, you are inconsistent on many points......

- you are pushing the rights of the common man, yet you associate yourself with an individual, who discarded the wishes of the common man of more than 50% of the country......this is an inconsistency...

- the most elitist figures in the world, historically, are landowners.....it is only when the power of the landowner was broken, all over the world, that the common man gained some ground....bhutto was an out and out feudal, who represented the feudal class, through and through, and his family still represents them......it doesn't matter what he said......you need to look at who he was and what he represented......this is an inconsistency......

- another form of elitism, is family dominance of institutions, politics, etc........surely, you cannot deny that bhutto's politics are dominated by his family......can you name any other political party in pakistan, which has only had one family running it......i challenge you to name one that has had a change of leadership and it never moved outside one family.....and that too a feudal family...all other parties have had, at least, some movement outside families........this is the height of elitism.......and another inconsistency

- bhutto did not introduce socialism.....he introduced crony socialism......which destroyed the common man as it made him poorer......did the banks become more accessible to the common man because they were nationalised.....did the education system become better for the common man, because it went through crony nationalism........so on and so forth......the common man was lucky that the middle east opened up during that time, other wise he would have starved.....

did bhutto get rid of the feudalistic structure of his party.....how many common men, have reached the top of his party......bhuttos (zulfiqar, nusrat, mumtaz, benazir, murtaza), khar, jatoi, gilani, makhdoom fahim, faisal hayat, abida hussain, etc. look like common men/women to you....even the urban class includes people like aitezaz ashan etc..certainly not common men.......most of all, did bhutto even get rid of the feudalistic structure of his own family.....

so you support a feudal man, born with a silver spoon in his mouth, who studied in a country you despise, who ran a family-owned party, with its own security force, whose party's top hierarchy were (and still are) all elitists, who sidelined the views of over 50% of the common men of a country, resulting in a break-up of a country, and who ran a govt. which reduced opportunities for common man.......apparently, you support him because he made exciting speeches about roti, kapra aur makaan......

.....your criteria is rhetoric and not facts......

amazing!! there is nothing wrong with supporting bhutto......but, then you lose the right to the sociological views, you keep presenting.......in fact, the views you are presenting are the ones bhutto presented.....unfortunately, it was only a presentation......his actions were contradictory to his views.......

Masadi sahib,

May I know what exactly ZA Bhoot acheived in his tenure in power apart from declaring Ahmedis as non-Muslims? He sc***** up the economy thru his nationalisation programme and all that while his so-called land reforms remained on paper. His slogan of Roti Kapda and Makaan was just like him, plain sham.

Regards

Regards

I know that many of you here like Manto are reading challenged, they think reading is about copy pasting and personal attacks of the Ad Hominem kind, so for their benefit let me help you with the quote from ZAB that I reproduced below.

The guy is staring death in the face in his miserable cell and he writes the part reproduced below about the common man, the proletariat, the worker. Now what kind of trickery is he after invoking the common man when the class he derails in the same quote, the one that will not accept any equitable solution till it is overthorwn completely, has just put him in the gallows to get rid of him? Please explain this to me Bulleya and Manto. You cannot because you know the man tried, tried and failed while becomming the most popular leader in Pakistan's history among the common man not because of the family he belonged to or the brand of clothing he wore, but because he invoked principles of socialism, something that the people of Pakistan and all poor and toiling masses of the third world demand and desire. That is what true democracy is about not the BS of the MAJ. End of story. Not interested in any more discussions about ZAB, the guy is dead, and gone, he left a great mark on Pakistan and great hope for the world's poor in their struggle against the elite, for which Allah will surely reward him regardless of what the sobs say.

ZAB in If I am Assassinated

"If I were assassinated" in which he drew the lessons from the experiencie. He said: "I am suffering this ordeal partly because I sought an honourable and equitable middle way between conflicting interests, in order to harmonise the disjointed structure of our society. It seems that the lesson of this coup d'Etat is that a middle way, a modus vivendi, a compromise is a utopian dream. The coup demonstrates that the class struggle is irreconcilable and that it must result in the victory of one class over the other. Obviously, whatever the temporary set backs, the struggle can lead only to the victory of one class, the proletariat."

Manto writes "Just then, the driver stopped the car as one of the traffic lights on Murree Road turned red. Having heard me seconds before, he (Bhutto) told the driver, ‘Drive on, no one can stop me!’ This was the difference"

Pakistani scholarship at its best, Ad Hominem and he said she said and "look at his morals" while claiming to be "better than thou". Is that all you can muster fool?
One causes the death of over a million and relegates hundreds of millions to reactionary discrimination and misery, the other goes directly to the people, listens to them and tries to consolidate the resources of this nation for its people. The difference is crystal clear, ZAB anyday!

bulleya writes "masadi #: i am afraid you are changing the rules as your arguments change......you need to make up your mind on what you stand for:"

Nonsense, not changed or being inconsistent in one thing. I challenge you to show me one inconsistency unlike you who was rallying behind Musharraf and the Afghan invasion and now does a turnaround...

Then he writes "how did bhutto make the plight of the common man his issue, other than simply making speeches about it.....he certainly wasn't too concerned about the plight of the common man in east pakistan...i hope you agree with this....."

You make the plight of the common man an issue when you visit every single village in Punjab and listen to the people, you make it a plight when you not only talk the socialism talk but implement it. You make the plight of the common man an issue when you try to get rid of the foreign BS that is keeping your people down. You take care of the people when you try to fix foreign issues that are bleeding the nation, you make the poor a priority when you raise the independance issue on the international forum and represent the poor....not to mention the land reform that was extremely hard to pass in a feudal country, going against the elite that hated the man....catch my drift? Only a fool would stretch himself to the East and fail miserably, but that is no reason to assert that he wasnt concerned with the plight of the common man in the East, if he wasnt he wouldn't have set Mujib free, if he wasn't he wouldn't have jumped the ocean to represent the poor in Africa....you don't have a foot to stand upon Army supporter...

Then he writes "why is this not your concern?...."

It is not my concern because I am not a PPP supporter, I support the efforts of the ZAB alone in trying to mainstream democracy and people power in this country.That he was setting up a monarchial system is your whim. He failed to implement the socialism that he wanted and the democracy that he wanted, after achieving much, the military coopted what little achievement were made. The BB was part of that cooptation, why should I support her? I do not. Bhutto was not an angel or a magician, I am not presenting him as such. He talked the talk of the global poor and he walked the walk in that direction as well. In the Pakistan political scence he was a maverick who went against the structures of Power, in whatever ineffective way but go against them he did, go agaisnt the imperialists he did, and he was punished for that. It would be injustice to take that away from him. In fact his case is the only case that gives me some hope for this nation. MAJ and his church are part of the same game the colonials have been playing with us for centuries, do not think of someone who has managed to push through the corridors of power with direct appeals to the people who loved him, in an environment like Pakistan, to race through reforms, it is a small incremental process unless there is a revolution, and there was no revolution though the catastrophie of 1971 offered him an open window in which to achieve much and he did...

The High Priest of the Church of MAJ responds with the same old bs, he throws a name out but does not show how that "name" disputes even a single one of the indusputed facts that I presented. Those facts aren't in the ancient history, they are well known from PRIMARY documents, from newspapers and papers that are widely available. They are no secret and he repeats his bs about Fatima Jinnah. She LOST, people wanted to capitalize on the entire industry of legitimization of the Jinnah that the creation of Pakistan produced, as monarchial succession, they failed, that is all and that was it...

masadi #: i am afraid you are changing the rules as your arguments change......you need to make up your mind on what you stand for:

"...The fact that ZAB made the plight of the common man and the integrity of this nation state his main campaign issue in the elections, and mainstreamed the people as powerful says a lot about his great leadership...."

how did bhutto make the plight of the common man his issue, other than simply making speeches about it.....he certainly wasn't too concerned about the plight of the common man in east pakistan...i hope you agree with this.....

now, in west pakistan, what was his concern?......did he do anything to remove the plight of the common name.....did he remove feudalism; what to talk of the whole country, did he even remove it in his own family?......

".....That is not my concern, my concern was with the people's agenda of the ZAB, not the cooptation of his party by the elites thereafter....."

why is this not your concern?....it is your concern when it comes to usa and to fatima jinnah and to your general concepts of sociology.....but when it comes to bhutto, it is not your concern!!.......

i am not talking of the, "cooptation" of bhutto's party by elites....i am talking about him and his family......his personal views.....the whole party is a single family elitist party...that family is the bhutto family.......how much more elitist can anyone be, then to put one's own personal relatives as the heads of one's own party, which by the way is based totally on feudalism......

.....a feudal family, heading a political party in a third world country is the ultimate peak of elitism.....bhutto founded all of this.....on top of this, bhutto took out the one major awami movement that was about to occur in east pakistan........he did so with the assistance of the military......

there is absolutely nothing more elitist, personally, or publicly than what bhutto did and represented.......this elitism is what you are always arguing against......yet when it comes to bhutto, your argument and principle makes a 180 degree turn.......

you need to look at the actions of people and not the words they speak.......bhutto, in his words, represented what you say......in his actions, and personal life, he represented exactly what u oppose.......

Majumdar,

In my view most heterodox communities of a mainstream orthodoxy tend to be far ahead of the mainstream.

I wish that close to the the end of his life... MAJ would have chosen his clients wisely... because a man is known by the company he keeps.

Manto mian,

It was quite unfortunate for us Hanuds/Injuns that MAJ (pbuh) was born in a Gujarati Muslim baniya household and MKG in a Gujarati Hindu baniya one. It wud have been much better if the roles had been reversed. In any case, MAJ was far ahead of his times for the IM community of that era.

Regards

Also:

"In the subcontinent, very few leaders emerged from the underprivileged background. The rare ones, who emerge from the poverty, ended up becoming avatars. Both Jinnah and Gandhi were of a lower middleclass background. Similarly Mujib, too was from a similar lower middleclass background."

Mahomed Ali Jinnah was son of a khoja merchant- who was not very wealthy but not very poor either. By definition he was certainly middle class.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was the son of a Diwan (a minister of sorts) of a Princely state and was born in wealth... though he was by caste the same as Mahomed Ali Jinnah ... and was certainly not a feudal.

I don't know about Mujeeb's early origisn except the oft repeated claim that he used to cycle from town to town following Mahomed Ali Jinnah during the Pakistan movement.

I think Sardar Patel was the politician who emerged from truly humble background but I might be wrong.

Re: # 66

HP writes:

Bhutto did support the army and I think it was Bhutto who actually planned how the whole thing would work. Gen. yahya spend days in Larkana in early 1971 consulting with Bhutto over these issues and when they came out of those meetings, east Pakistan's fate was sealed.

So in other words Bhutto was the military establishment's B-Team.

Rafi Raza - Bhutto's confidant- claims in his book on Bhutto that Bhutto confessed to Rafi Raza that the military regime under Yahya had rigged the elections in West Pakistan to get Bhutto a mandate to offset the Awami League-National Awami Party alliance.

Pakistan would have been better off with six points. And remember this whole idea of Bangladesh as part of Pakistan resulted from Congress' refusal in 1947 to entertain a United Bengal with Sarat Bose, Suhrawardy and Jinnah had agreed to.

Masadi mian,

"Not disputed by a single historian"

Read "Zulfi Bhutto of Pakistan" by Stanley Wolpert. Let us just say your "facts" are not even considered facts. Since you've not quoted any historian per se... I think your claim- as with most of your "scholarship" is sham.

You still haven't explained why was it that people like Wali Khan - son of Ghaffar Khan- put their faith in Fatima Jinnah despite being Jinnah's doughtiest opponents? So much for your monarchial succession theory. It was because they realised that only Fatima Jinnah had the popular appeal (because she was the sister of Quaid-e-Azam) and integrity required for the job...

Ironic that of all the politicians you blame the one man - Jinnah- who did not create a political dynasty for "monarchial succession" ... just because a wide range of political leaders chose his sister.

Meanwhile Raja Dahir of Larkana... the avid law breaker Mr. Bhutto... self styled Napoleon Bonaparte of Pakistan is some sort of a "democrat" and a "populist". The only thing Zulfikar Ali Bhutto tried to be was Machiavelli's prince... and failed miserably at that because Zia-ul-Haq proved to be even more unscrupulous and dishonest than ZAB.



The slippery pole of Pakistan's decline in the calibre of leadership is perhaps most aptly captured in Gul Hassan's memoirs:

Whenever he could, the Quaid-e-Azam, accompanied by Miss Jinnah, would drive out to Malir in the evening. This was his only relaxation. I always took a spare car, in which Inspector (later SP) FD Hansotia of the police rode behind us. He was permanently assigned to protect the Quaid-e-Azam. There was no other escort. It seems strange when I compare those days with what happens now, when the escort of any dignitary is as menacing as the advance guard of an armoured division, if not more dangerous. On one of these drives, the rail crossing at Malir was shut and our car stopped. I looked around and saw that the train was some distance away, so I went to the gatekeeper and asked him to let us go through, of course telling him who was in the car. He obliged, I returned to my seat next to the driver, Aziz, and told him to move on. He answered that the Quaid-e-Azam had told him to stay put. Just then the Governor-General told me to go and tell the gatekeeper to close the gate. I did as I was bid and resumed my seat. He then said, ‘Gul, do you know why I told the driver not to move the car?’ I replied, ‘No sir’. He said the reason was simple: ‘If I do not obey the law, how should I expect others to do so?’ This brief statement affected me greately. Though the Head of State, he considered himself as bound by law as any other citizen. Such a demonstration is only possible by men who are truly great.

Years later, I was driving with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to the Chinese Ambassador’s residence for dinner, a day prior to our trip to Beijing in 1971. Bhutto had won the elections in West Pakistan and Yahya Khan deputed him to go to China as the head of a delegation of which I was a member. He asked me to tell him what had impressed me most during my stay with the Quaid-e-Azam. I told him this story. Just then, the driver stopped the car as one of the traffic lights on Murree Road turned red. Having heard me seconds before, he (Bhutto) told the driver, ‘Drive on, no one can stop me!’ This was the difference. The one who had given us Pakistan was law-abiding; the other, who held no office then, was above the law! And he would, when he assumed office, be more disdainful of any such curbs." (Memoirs, by Lt. General Gul Hasan, Oxford, Karachi, 1993, pp. 75-76).

HP Sain,

Were the 6 Points incompatible with the Lahore Resolution? In my (based on limited knowledge) opinion, not? Would like to have your opinion on this.

Regards

HP writes "However, The Six points program of Mujib was not to keep Pakistan united. It was a program which would have eventually led to the separation of east Pakistan in a few years down the line."

And the eventual seperation of NWFP, Baluchistan and maybe even Sind, facilitated by India; or at the very least a military coup in short succession that would have undone the whole process. Am I wrong?

To be very factual the mizaj of whatever we call Pakistan..& we always consider Pakistan which is a couple of big cities where such fancy subjects as "democracy" are an issue.

The NWFP , when not interfered by western brainwashing aka "education", is the true democractic traditions of Jirgas & solving their problems in their own cultural & traditional ways.

The "feudals" so much maligned have their own system & are no more uglier than the Commissioned officers & Civil Servants, in fact worse because they are not on "welfare"..meaning barking at taxpayers expense. Somehow we equate theater performance and role-playing as a westerner as "progress" ( ritual) ..just as we count savaab as so many times for this or that ritual (like roza ). We are shameless & unabashed "deal-makers". The nanga-pUn going ons in Islamabad, Dubai , Ryadh and London at present is a mirror-image of us....the laughing stock of the world....the self-delusioned "urban" "middle-class" [code words for english speaking, suit wearing, amreeka-palats]

Once when Sardar Ataullah Mengal, NawaB amir Muohammed Khan ( then Gov. west Pak) & Ayub ( Pres. ) were together discussing some matter. When Mengal raised his voice high & chided Ayub, Kalabagh requested him to exercise restraint to which Mengal, aghast said to Kalabagh iright in front of Ayub: " Nawab sahib, this guy is a naukar, he is on wages, how can you ever compare him to you & I"

The worst thing that has happened to both India & Pakistan is this transplanted system of "democracy" & the dissolution of States. Hyderbad Bhopal Rampur have yet been not replaced even to their 10% level in all spheres of activities. The Great Mughals did not interfere in the Panchayat system & never ever disturbed the ground-roots of all culture & tradition

Bulleya writes "- bhutto's party is the biggest dynastic family party in the history of pakistan....it is the only party in pakistan's history, which has only had one family ruling over it......there is no other political party in pakistan that falls under this category...... "

That is not my concern, my concern was with the people's agenda of the ZAB, not the cooptation of his party by the elites thereafter. Unlike Manto's support of Fatima Jinnah because of MAJ, I do not support the BB because of ZAB. Making the "awam" conscious is a credit that goes to ZAB moreso than anyone else in the history of this country, a consciousness that was deviod of religious (like MAJ) or ethinic (Like Mujib) pretensions...

I have discussed this in the past and I have no intention to revisit that in details. However, The Six points program of Mujib was not to keep Pakistan united. It was a program which would have eventually led to the separation of east Pakistan in a few years down the line.

The politicians, who knew some thing about politics in Pakistan, were well aware of that and Bhutto was no simpleton. The army too felt that the time has come to get rid of East Pakistan as Mujib's six points would have destroyed the army rule in Pakistan for good.

Bhutto did support the army and I think it was Bhutto who actually planned how the whole thing would work. Gen. yahya spend days in Larkana in early 1971 consulting with Bhutto over these issues and when they came out of those meetings, east Pakistan's fate was sealed.

Basically, the army was responsible for making the final call. And the day the army action started in East Pakistan, it was clear that there was no going back.
Like many other politicians, Bhutto was opportunistic and had a better grasp of politics in Pakistan than anyone else in generations.

I would like to remind people that Bhutto never campaigned in East Pakistan and Mujib did not campaign in west Pakistan seriously.( Mujib came to Sindh to campaign for his Sindhi friend Qazi Issa of Nawabshah).

So both Bhutto and Mujib knew from the very beginning what is in store.

#61 Posted by bulleya
“the actual winner of the elections was mujeeb....had mujeeb been allowed to form the govt. as per the constitution, it would have been the awami revolution, you have been mentioning......�

Please don’t take it personally but I might add here for your knowledge that there was no constitution in Pakistan at that time. The 1970 elections were held for the constitution making body or Aien Saaz Assembly. So the question was never about “had mujeeb been allowed to form the govt. as per the constitution� because there was no constitution.

In the subcontinent, very few leaders emerged from the underprivileged background. The rare ones, who emerge from the poverty, ended up becoming avatars. Both Jinnah and Gandhi were of a lower middleclass background. Similarly Mujib, too was from a similar lower middleclass background.

True, Bhutto was from a privileged family but he was able to figure out what works. He used to wear Silk Shalwar Kamiz in the poorest neighborhoods and the people still loved him.

That speaks a little bit about the culture we have in the subcontinent. If you are a man of power, money or come from a known family, the society will respect you. Now in India after multiple cycles of elections, people have just ran out of enough Khandani people to represent them.

As some sane Indians would point out that the malaise is still not completely out of circulation in India. The Nehru family still holds people breathless. Coupled with Indian disease of always admiring the white man and women, we have a new breed of Nehru/Gandhi plus a half white ruling the roost in India. However, I must qualify that by saying that those starry eyed Indians are dwindling in numbers. Some thing a democracy even as fake as Indian democracy can do.

The Bhuttos would not have been a factor in Pakistan by now, if we had couple of good elections and the erstwhile army had allowed these cretins to finish their terms. People in Pakistan would have booted them out a long time ago.

Bulleya writes "- bhutto was a product of the true elite of pakistan, from multiple directions......he was the son of a major feudal, who was involved in politics......this alone separates him from the awam"

Wrong and myopic. The fact that Bhutto walked the corridors of elite structures in Pakistan and then turned challenged them says quite a bit in favor of what I wrote about him than what you write (btw you are acting as an apologist for the military, that has facilitated feudal rule and imperialism in this country, and you have supported Musharraf and now are doing a 180)

The fact that ZAB made the plight of the common man and the integrity of this nation state his main campaign issue in the elections, and mainstreamed the people as powerful says a lot about his great leadership. Mujib on the other hand was running not on a people's platform but on ethnic seperation and justice issues much like the MAJ. Why the people's message of empowerment didn't lead to ZAB's majority in NWFP, and Baluchistan have to do with the history of that area and the tenuous relationship with the center. He was not a miracle worker though the problems that he solved in a short period of time were akin to miracles. That he infused the spirit of democracy in this nation and took the plight of the poor toiling masses not only on the domestic scene but on the international scene and challenged the neo colonials is an achievement that no army dictator rat has ever accomplished in this country.

Regarding the other torture and civil rights allegations, these are claims of political opponents in a country based on whose setup and power struggles no politics can be crystal clean and smooth. The way that he was killed further shows how "pro-elite" he was as you claim. The claims about the 1970 elections have been answered quite thoroughly, I am not going to keep repeating them. Neither you nor the High Priestess of the Church of MAJ have been able to answer them in either of your posts...Produce ONE person in Pakistan's history that has done comparable work for either the common man and his image on the domestic and international scence and gone against the elite as much as Bhutto did and then we can talk. There is no one else, if everyone else is eliminated and he emerges at the top in confrontation and he does then I don't even have to say a word but am proven

bulleya:

The east Pakistan separation plan was set in motion right when Ayub Khan took over as C-in-C. Jinnah detested the man & Ayub knew it. Ayub had always been asking how to get rid of these dark, small, high IQ pesky men who were a kabaab meiN huDDee in his dreams to become the next Shahenshah a la Iran. There are reports of he even conferring with some of his close friends about such a plan.



The Bengalis, from Maulvi Tamizzuddin, Fazle-Haque, Suhrwardi maulvi Fareed -ul Haque and Maulana Bhashani were some of the great Bengalis who represented the total oppopsite of the values of W. Pakistan , especially the ever-compromising & "chaddho-mattee-pao" mauj-karo law-toaro Panjab

Just think about it:

Mahatma & three Gandhis die violently, Liaquat dies violently, Bhutto dies violently, Mujib dies violently , Zia dies Violently.

The big question is would we have not killed Jinnah as well..
or maybe he was really killed thru crass "negligence".

Romair sahib

R#61

Very well said, sir.

Manto mian,

(I think it is about time the Pakistan People's Party got over the Bhutto personality cult which has dwarfed its political evolution and maturity. )

If India' example is anything to go by, it is not happening. INC has not outgrown the Gandhi-Nehru dynasty and the dynastic cult has engulfed the so-called socialist and regional parties as well. Only cadre based parties like BJP and CPM dont have a dynastic principle and neither does BSP (possibly only becuase its leaders till date- Kashiram and Maya were unmarried).

I am afraid in ur case that only leaves the MMA as non-dynastic entity. Not a very happy picture I guess.

Regards

masadi #: you are taking a one-sided view of bhutto.....which is your option.....but there were other parts of his decisions, which are facts that you are ignoring:

- bhutto was a product of the true elite of pakistan, from multiple directions......he was the son of a major feudal, who was involved in politics......this alone separates him from the awam......in addition, he was the product of the military regime of ayub khan.....much like zia elevated nawaz, ayub elevated bhutto....this further separates him from the awam......there was, thus, nothing awami about him...

- bhutto did not sweep pakistan in elections....he did not, even sweep west pakistan.....he only swept the punjab, where he had an outright majority.....in sind he had a majority.....what about east pakistan, nwfp and baluchistan....

- the actual winner of the elections was mujeeb....had mujeeb been allowed to form the govt. as per the constitution, it would have been the awami revolution, you have been mentioning......bengalis were not fedual......mujeeb truly had an awami base, as east pakistan was the only place, where such a base could have been obtained......bhutto, actually, colluded with the army again, and sidelined this awami base, thereby, ensuring that the feudal and army generals remained in power......this was, infact, the one time, a true people's movement could have occurred in pakistan....which is, what i assume you are interested in......

- bhutto never broke the hold of the feudal.....in fact, he strengthened it......the feudal still runs pakistan.....and the feudal is the biggest suppressor of the common man.....the army, the businessman, etc. cannot suppress the common man, in its constituency, like the feudal can

- bhutto's party is the biggest dynastic family party in the history of pakistan....it is the only party in pakistan's history, which has only had one family ruling over it......there is no other political party in pakistan that falls under this category......

Masadi sahib,

#31

(The division was not only total between East and West, regarding people's opinion, one person ran on the 6 point plan that he wanted to implement country-wide)

There have been many Indian political parties which have started off with similar agendas, Akali Dal (Anandpur Sahib resolution) being just one of them. But practical realpolitik forces them to modify their stands, now SAD is no less or no more “anti-national� than INC or BJP. I will not get into the merits of the 6-point agneda but assuming that it is anti-national or unpatriotic in a way to begin with, there is a distinct possibility that responsibility would have made him more realistic. In any case, no harm would have been done had ZAB simply allowed him to assume office. At best, Pakistan wud have become a democracy. At worst, Mujib’shenanigans wud have caused a split (which anyway happened) at least Pakistan would not have been tainted with the charge of having caused a genocide of its own people

(The other difference that you are overlooking in your comparison with India, is that in between the North and South of India there isn't "enemy territory")

You have referred to the geographical peculiarity of Pakistan vis-à-vis India. Have you thought that in context of the aforesaid peculiarity that the 6-point agenda may not have been a flawed one to begin with?

“Try and argue with these facts now fool.....�

Okhla sahib, Masadi sahib has been given a badge of honour which till now only belonged to a select few- YLH, Tahmed sahib, Hamid mian, yourself to name a few. I am truly honoured.

And of course Masadi sahib, you are silent to his other karnamas- like his torturing of political opponents, genocide in B’stan/NWFP, gagging of opposition open threats to political opponent incl. The Leader of Opposition, the fact that this family remains one of the biggest feduals, his treatment of Ahmedis. Do argue these facts, O Wise One.

(Finally, you have conveniently overlooked the FACT that Bhutto was willing to compromise and he only asked for a delay of 120 days)

I have not overlooked anything. ZA Bhoot asked for 120 days so that he could arrange for armed forces to create a genocide in Dhaka. Meanwhile he could threaten to break the legs of any W Pak legislator who wud attend the NA.

#54

(You do it because you are the high priest (priestess) of the now routed Church of the MAJ.)

I am afraid that the so-called Church you are referring to (a Church whose creed is summed up that in that famous 8/11 speech that Manto mian keeps referring to) is gaining more and more adherents around the globe. That citizenship and faith do not intersect. And its founder who has long been villified unfairly (no mean amount because of his depiction in the movie Gandhi) is now getting more and more his just dues thanks to the efforts of people like YLH- I am sure you would have read by now that the guy has a 97% approval rating in Pak and as much as 46% in India (a country which he allegedly broke up) and mind you this 46% happened without Mohar, Muthu and I voting.

Regards

Masadi,

On the "poor nighbour" board you hurled invectives at Walter Russell Mead. On many boards you have abused Manto, Hamid, Tahmed, Anil, Okhla, Jayp, borivli, iron, dost etc.

You appear to have a foolish belief about some non-existent overwhelming intellectual superiority. You refer to others as "morons", "dimwits", "sons of bitches", "fata$$ slobs", "brains the size of a rat's fart", "idiots","peons of the west", "bhaands" etc. These others are all decent thinking individuals well respected in their place of work/residence. Unlike you Masadi who has been unceremoniously kicked out of the University/country.

Just because Chowk gives you some freedom of expression you go around misusing and abusing it to the extreme. No one cares for your bullshyte notions of conspiracy theories by evil elite. Go back to Lulu.com.

The period of ZAB was disaster in economic terms for Pakistan even though it had massive inflow of aid from arabs and iran, nationalisation of industry and banks set the country back decades, banks have only just recovered from mismanagement and corruption. The demagogues of the third world like Nasser, bhutto were good at playing the politics of envy and jealousy, but the facts are they failed miserably to give their people better standard of living, compare that with dr mahathir of Malaysia he cooperated with the west, eliminated poverty and Malaysia is on the threshold of joining the first world.

As the tory party used to say the definition of a commie is he has fukk all and he wants everybody to have same.

Manto writes "Today Bhutto's shadow keeps people like Aitzaz Ahsan and Raza Rabbani, both infinitely more talented than any of the Bhuttos, from coming in the forefront and playing their part."

Education alone is not what "leadership" is about. I read Bhuttos books and find shortcoming in them but does that take leadership away from him. No way. Those people you talk about are pygmies compared to ZAB, they don't come forward because they don't have his leadership, they don't have his charisma, they don't have his courage, they don't have his conviction, and finally they don't have the support of the people through sheer hard work that he had...We don't need more of the MAJ BS that has dragged this nation down from its inception or celebrities like Imran who will be crucified by the elite due to their immaturity and lack of leadership, we need someone like the ZAB, who combines my thesis on the global situation with the oratory and leadership skills of the ZAB....then Pakistan can rock and roll....

Borivili express writes "Masadi one can come to US without money as well on a scholarship,"

Scholarship recipients are not even a fraction of a percent of this country's expats, and not even if you live across the border in Mexico can you make it in safely to the US without significant funds....Ghetto living is much harder both physically and psychologically than living outside your country of origin, Urstruly was busy making the common excuse of "toiling" and "suffering"- when he damn well knows he wont come back to settle in Pakistan even with a million dollars stuffed in his pants...

borivili express writes "i think you should build a qibla for your cult in Larkana."

Unlike you, I don't worship people, only Allah. I respect the man for one reason alone, that he was the voice of the poor masses of not only Pakistan but the world and for the first time in this nation he taught them the lessons of democracy, damaged if not broke the temples of the elite and shook the pillars of the power states and the power elite, for the purpose of which he lost his life. That and that alone to which history has borne witness regardless of what the High Priest of the Church of MAJ says, the other things like Gibraltar and what not are, as HP said correctly footnotes in history books. He left his mark as a friend of humanity on the global scene of the 20th century and no son of a bitch can take that away from him

Trying to evade all the historical FACTS that I presented. What a cheap excuse Manto Answer them you fool if you can, but you cannot so you do this nonsense number.

Fact: Fatima Jinnah was chosen because of MAJ (monarchial succession)- you don't disagree

Fact: The people rejected Fatima Jinnah, you claim Bhutto rigged the elections but provide zero proof, and you have none.

Fact: There were no direct elections so who would have won or not one cannot be debated as fact

In the 1970 election Bhutto for the first time ever in Pakistan carried the mandate of the people of the West, winning an overwhelming majority. For the reasons I have suggested which I recently (after I suggested them) discovered in his own words from his letter to his daughter (once again thanks for pointing me to the site bhutto.org which has the pdf of much of his work):

(quote, ZAB's words)"After years of suppression, once the flood gates were opened,
there was nobody capable of closing them without a catastrophe.
Mujib-ur-Rehman felt that “enough was enough�. He campaigned on
the manifesto of his famous Six-points which meant autonomy of
confederal character. On this battle cry he swept the polls in East
Pakistan. Our party obtained an overwhelming majority in Sindh and
Punjab to become the majority party in West Pakistan. We made it
plain to Mujib-ur-Rehman that we would not only be happy but
honoured to sit in the Opposition but in a federal structure. If it were
to be a confederation, both wings of the confederation would have to
participate in Government. It was a very simple and unassailable
proposition. If Mujib-ur-Rehman compromised his Six-points to the
extent of having a federal structure, he was welcome to form the
Federal Government. If he did not budge an inch and was determined
to create a confederation, he could not govern the confederation to
the exclusion of the majority party from the other wing. Mujib-ur-
Rehman would not budge an inch of Six-points. He adopted a “take it
or leave it� attitude. There was a genuine deadlock. General Yahya
Khan thought that the deadlock came to him as the opportunity of a
life time for self-perpetuation. He sought to break the deadlock by
military action. His military action unaccompanied by any sensible
political cover, created a pretext for India to march into East Pakistan
in November 1971. By 16th December 1971, Dacca fell to the Indian
Army, along with ninety thousand prisoners of war from West
Pakistan.
I was at the United Nations at the time making a desperate
attempt to save the impossible situation. When General Yahya Khan
surveyed the wreckage and was convinced that all was lost, that the
likelihood was that nothing could be regained, that the probability was
My Dearest Daughter Copyright © www.bhutto.org 41
that what little was left stood endangered, he sent a special
aeroplane for me to return to Pakistan. With blood-shot eyes and with
brandy beside him. Yahya Khan told me at 10:30 a.m. on the morning
of 20th December, 1971, that he had failed miserably and that I
should assume charge of an assundered Pakistan as I alone was
capable of saving what was left of the country. In those ominous
circumstances I was sworn in as the President of Pakistan
"(end quote)

Fact: Bhutto did not lay the foundation of what Zia built upon later, in fact the conspiracy in the name of Islam was hatched by the US and its occupation force long before. Bhutto tried adjustments to counter that for the sake of the people.

Fact: The Gibralter incursion was long after the Indian incursion at the Rann of Kutch, the incursion that Bhutto supported might have led to war across the International Border due to Indian belligerance but in his arguments that narrators say convince Ayub- the decision was his- ZAB told him that it would remain isolated in the Kashmir area. That he was brave and unafraid of the cutting off of US army aid to Pakistan says quite a bit against your "Islamic insurgency for the Americans".

Fact: Bhutto made peace with the neighbours and unaligned from the US. Your history of the Daoud and the Afghanistan situation is completely skewed. Pakistan/Afghanistan relations were at a sore point due to the Pustunistan issue, which was single handedly resolved with the proposed recognition of the Durand Line and peace in 1976, now before this when the so called "Islamic Insurgency" was pushed out by Daouds forces they sought refuge in Pakistan and being the enemies of the enemy who has set up camps to train Baluchi insurgents in Kandahar, Bhutto naturally welcomed them, but there was no training and arming and indoctrination of the Zia kind, backed by the Americans. In fact America was not interested in Daoud because he had gone to them with a begging bowl again and again and they had turned him away which forced him to go to the Russians.

Let me copy paste his own words

"In those ominous
circumstances I was sworn in as the President of Pakistan
I got moving energetically on all fronts. Among the first tasks I
turned to was Constitution-making with a democratic consenus on the
vexation question of autonomy. I revamped the economy. I
introduced fundamental social and economic reforms. I settled the
Bangladesh problem by recognition. I concluded the Simla
Agreement with India without any secret clause or understanding and
got over five thousand square miles territory in Sindh and the Punjab
back to Pakistan. I got the release of ninety thousand prisoners of
war in honour and without the threatened war trials. I held the Islamic
Summit Conference in Lahore. I got America to lift the arms embargo.
I modernized the armed forces. I put the country back on the track.
The recovery was spectacular. My greatest satisfaction lay in giving
the country an all-party constitution by democratic means. The
Constitution of 1973 was the first unanimously-approved constitution
by a democratic assembly to bless Pakistan with a fundamental
framework based on Islam, democracy and autonomy. It was the
voice of the people of the four provinces of Pakistan articulated in a
constitutional document by their chosen leaders. Autonomy, which
had defied solution for over a generation and which had been the
bane of the politics of the Sub-continent from time immemorial, was
at long last settled to the satisfaction of the people and their chosen
representatives. I experienced the kind of joy, the thrill of happiness
which brings tears to the eyes."

Fact: You cannot base your "facts" on the claims of his political opponents without a single shread of evidence. The guy might have made mistakes but those mistakes are pea size compared to what he was able to achieve both nationally and internationally. You have achieved nothing and so can copy-paste and "talk big" like the MAJ who was single handedly responsible for over a million deaths due to his shenanigans.

By the way, don't run away like a damn coward, what I had posted before were REAL facts, not disputed by a single historian, and you evaded EVERY single one, unlike me, who has addressed and has been addressing every one of your lying claims that are not based on historical facts but are your skewed interpretations that don't bear any relationship with the facts. You do it because you are the high priest (priestess) of the now routed Church of the MAJ.

US: Pakistanis are struggling behind their Chief Justice for free and fair elections? Agreed, and we hope General Mush will do this.

Saudis: General Mush want to keep Nawaz Sharif out so he can make a mockery of the forthcoming elections? No problem: Saudis 'ask Sharif not to return' http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6979252.stm

Something to think about for Pakistanis to reflect upon.

Vis a vis the article.. what Pakistan needs is more of the urbanite non-feudal educated politicians like Mahomed Ali Jinnah or a refined version of Imran Khan or Aitzaz Ahsan (Aitzaz Ahsan's might have some agrarian land in Gujrat but he has made his fortune at law and is very much in the Jinnah mould).

I think it is about time the Pakistan People's Party got over the Bhutto personality cult which has dwarfed its political evolution and maturity. It is this cult that is both its greatest fortune and misfortune. Today Bhutto's shadow keeps people like Aitzaz Ahsan and Raza Rabbani, both infinitely more talented than any of the Bhuttos, from coming in the forefront and playing their part.

"They are similarly "not sure" if Noam Chomsky, Michael Parenti or similar authors would "sell" so they reject them as well"

and

"Masadi books, five years after publication now rank higher on amazon time and again than Ann Coulter's books just one year after publication..."


Wow!!!

Re: # 39

Yawn... Masadi you know so little about Bhutto. Forget anyone else.

Now the real facts:

FACT: Fatima Jinnah was the consensus candidate of COP. COP included people like Wali Khan, Bhashani and Maududi who had no love for Quaid-e-Azam but knew it was Jinnah alone who resonated with the people.

FACT: ZAB was the architect of the election fraud of 1965. He was election manager of Ayub Khan- the imperialist Military dictator. He chose to be the B-Team of the dictator in order to fool the people.

FACT: Fatima Jinnah secured support in both East and West. Despite massive rigging by Ayub and Zulfi Bhutto... she managed to carry 30 000 Basic Democrats out of 80 000. According to most historians she would have won a direct election.

FACT: Bhutto refused to accept the mandate of the people in 1970 election. Bhutto, instead of siding with the democratic forces, hobbed knobbed with military in 1971 and was Army's frontman in the West.

FACT: Right or wrong Bhutto laid the foundation for what Zia-ul-Haq later built. His 1973 constitution played on Islamic sensibilities. He also played politics with the Ahmadi community and its status. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto carried out a series of "Islamic" reforms in order to protect his government - the result of rigged elections of 1977- before falling prey to his own doing.

FACT: ZAB was the genius behind Operation Gibralter which led to a full fledge war between Pakistan and India in 1965. ZAB had no small role in the events of 1971. He did not want peace with Pakistan's neighbors. He also started the Islamist insurgency in Afghanistan at America's behest.

FACT: ZAB's government presided over one of the worst military operations in Balochistan which was as bad if not worse than Musharraf's military operation today.

FACT: That Don Bhutto got his political opponents tortured, jailed and even murdered is one thing. He even got people like J A Rahim abducted in the middle of the night, beaten, abused and humiliated.

FACT: ZAB created the FSF which was a lot like the Gestapo. Bhutto was probably a fascist at heart.

FACT: Bhutto the genius also re-organised the intelligence services and created a politically-oriented ISI which to this day continues to haunt Pakistan's politics...


I could go on... but I'll leave it here for now.

Masadi one can come to US without money as well on a scholarship, but that aside you are most welcome to your worship of bhooto and his cult, since you said he has achieved only what prophets have achieved before in world history. I think you have the same view of our beloved prophets as the hindus on this site, but like them u can never convince us muslims of your version of the facts.

i think you should build a qibla for your cult in Larkana.
Adios

Re: # 46

Your post proves the reason why Holy Prophet (pbuh) has explicitly forbidden Muslims to be "presumptuous" about their brethern.

For your information, I do not have US citizenship or even a green card and I never applied for either. I am not at liberty to discuss my expatriate status with you at a public forum, but your basic presumptions about me are wrong.

Re: # 43

Your basic assumption that "I was unable to make a living in Pakistan" is incorrect. First of all I had a previliged and affluent childhood. I wouldn't say that we were rich but my mother always taught us to look at the people who were below us and were less fortunate than us. So I can say that we were better than millions in pakistan. In Pakistan I never faced joblessness. I started suppoting myself right after matriculation by tutoring my juniors; a practice that continued many years afterward. I was able to find my first professional job without any sifaarish 6 months prior to my final results were out in university. And since grade 8 I have been a scholrship student throughout.

But as far as making a rizq-e-halal living is concerned, I would have been driving BMW right in Pakistan had I made a compromise. Sure there must be avenues open for rizq-e-halal still in Pakistan I got tired of the struggle of getting up every morning preparing for the little battles to stay on righteous path. I had professional ambitions and dreams and that corruption and malaise was only slowing me down.

urstruly #42: "Not a day goes by in the life of an expatriate when ......burden our dharti maaN with our corpses after death. Please accuse us of anything but with the accusation of ripping Pakistan off."

.....i did not say expatriates, i said, "all of us on chowk" have ripped off pakistan......if any poor country has a small rich elite, it is a pretty good sign that this elite has ripped off the poor.....

however, i must comment on your commentary....i have seen you interacting on this site, for well over six years or so.....this would apply that in this time, you must have obtained either a usa green card or citizenship....one cannot stay longer than six years on a work visa.....this would mean you must have, deliberately, applied to the usa for this....they did not, themselves, offer it to you.....you must have taken an oath that you will be loyal to the usa and will support it.......

you are thus living off the usa's bread crumbs.....however, at the same time, you are its biggest critic.....in addition, you keep indulging in revolutionary rhetoric about pakistan, yet have yet to move to pakistan......you keep talking about rizq-e-halal......yet you live in dar-ul-kufr to use your methodology.....

during this time, i have moved out of the usa....in fact i have actually moved out of the west altogether.....i am now working in pakistan and countries around it.......

......how is it that i am able to earn rizq-e-halal outside the usa, and can work in pakistan etc......while you cannot?.......why is it that can criticize the usa without any moral contradictions, as i am not on its bread crumbs, yet you cannot........why is that i can say i am actually doing something for pakistan, and thus not have to rely on nonsensical patriotic rhetoric.......while you cannot....

i think you need to face the facts......you have divorced the ugly wife for a prettier one.....you are enjoying life with the prettier one.......why are you now, bent upon, speaking up for the woman you divorced......and that too, with so much rhetoric......

........i think hypocricy is the biggest problem of pakistan......and you would be on the top of this list in that category, on this site, in my opinion......i don't mean this in an abusive sense.......i am simply describing a fact......

just live in usa and enjoy it......nothing wrong with that.....no need to attempt to lahu lagay kae shaheedoon mein shamil hona......

there is nothing stopping you from returning to you dharti maan, other than your greed and hypocricy........once again, not trying to be abusive.......just describing a fact...

Re: # 44

oops! He is not eligible under Shariah as he is not from Quraysh (as far as I know). Let me check...

:D

Well, can you think of anyone else? There IS Hazrat Qibla Pir Sayyid Naseeruddin Naseer Shah Sahib Golravi but Hazrat Sahib, although from the Ahlul Bayt, is not interested in politics prefering to teach, help his mureeds with spiritual progress and write poetry.

Tahir ul Qadri sahib to become Caliph of Pakistan!

Urstruly writes "Most of us will die here in these cold, bland and strange lands like perfect strangers. Most of us will not even burden our dharti maaN with our corpses after death."

Urstruly mian please dont lie so shamelessly. If you were unable to make a living in Pakistan how did you manage to show the US authorities that you had enough funds to finance your education or travel. Only the quite privilaged compared to the rest of the population make it abroad and you all keep staying there because you have become used to it, it comforts you, and even when you don't have to work for a living and can live like kings here, you prefer not to return. You send pennies back and the US transnationals here make every penny of that back up by exploiting our cheap labor and then sending the profits abroad, not to mention that what you send is a tiny fraction of a tiny fraction , i.e. what the US gets to keep of your surplus, what the corporation you work for keeps and what you keep to take care of your mortgages and car loans and what not. Nostalgia about the homeland is ok but staying here is the real challenge which none of you have the balls to face, it is not easy, adjustment is not easy, the traffic on the streets, the poverty and the noise and the pollution is not easy. Compared to this, escape is quite easy. Compared to the expats who have the ba@@s to come back home, you all are cowards...Hamid predicts I will join your ranks soon

Re: # 36

"all of us on chowk have taken the best out of pakistan......we have lifestyles equivalent to the upper middle class of first world countries......it has been good to us.......in a sense, collectively, we are the ones who have ripped off the poor in pakistan........"

Speak for yourself, since you have spend some time in military. No expatriate Pakistani has every ripped off Pakistan, instead they have given back to Pakistan to the extent that could not even be dreamt living in Pakistan. It is 4 millions expats who genrate and send billions of dollars every month to Pakistan without benefitting from any services that state of Pakistan offers to its citizens.

Having said that, please keep in mind that, as Islamic republic of pakistan it was the responsibility of the people at leadership level to provide opprtunities to the citizens of Pakistan to earn Rizq-e-Halal in their own country. But the corrupt oppressive class has established a system of organized corruption instead where it is almost impossible to make a rizq-e-halal living.

Not a day goes by in the life of an expatriate when the thought of dusty roads of his home country doesn't cross his mind. Most of us will die here in these cold, bland and strange lands like perfect strangers. Most of us will not even burden our dharti maaN with our corpses after death. Please accuse us of anything but with the accusation of ripping Pakistan off.

Mitti ki muhabbat mein hum ashufta saron nain
Woh Qarz bhi utaray hain jo wajib nahin the

Ha ha now he invents BS names, how low can people stoop. You can "expose" me all you want, my thoughts are open books, and they will only benefit the people. As for your lies that you invent, they only disgrace you and show the sorry state of your "intellect", if the stinking nerve that describes your insect brain can be described as such. As for John Winters , lol, he told me that he is fast on your tracks and your return to your homeland is a few weeks away.....

Masadi you fool,

Only you can believe the BS that you spew.

John Winters of the US INS (Immigration & Naturalization Service) has told everybody about how you wept and begged for a second chance to stay in the US.

Diane from the Graduate School has also told everybody about how all your attempts to get an extension failed miserably.

Now that you are back in Pakistan, please please try to contribute positively to the nation building process. Stop imagining. Stop bullshitting. Stop calling others "morons' & "dimwits". Do something creative for a change.

You stand thoroughly exposed Masadi..

Fact: Okhla is lying
Fact: Masadi chose to leave the US to help the poor masses in Pakistan and look after family

Fact: Masadi never had a permanent university job in the US and so the "extension" issue never arose

Fact: Masadi was called by his ex-professor to teach at the university because he was top of his graduating class

Fact: Masadi was rejected by corporate publishers because they said they weren't sure these books would sell. They are similarly "not sure" if Noam Chomsky, Michael Parenti or similar authors would "sell" so they reject them as well

Fact: Masadi decided to publish with "on demand" publishers who have no such sales criteria. Masadi books, five years after publication now rank higher on amazon time and again than Ann Coulter's books just one year after publication...

Fact: Masadi received offers from ALL Pakistani colleges he applied to, never has Masadi been in so much demand both by business schools and public universities

Fact: Lulu.com doesn't charge a "fee" to publish "on demand".

Fact: Supporters of the US elite, their "peons" that have ensured that the vast majority of humanity's suffering is legitimized by bells and whistles and images of dance and drink are surely dimwits .

Fact: The world is fast coming to a realization of the shenanigans of the US elite, they themselves will take care of A-holes like Okhla and other peons of the West .

Fact : Masadi was kicked out of US.
Fact: Masadi begged for an extension but was denied on merit.
Fact: Masadi was rejected by all mainline publishers.
Fact: Lulu.com agreed to publish Masadi papers, for a fee.
Fact: All Pakistan colleges/schools refused to hire Masadi.
Fact: Chowk rejected six of Masadi articles.
Fact: Masadi believes the rest of the world consists of "dimwits" who are peons of the West.

Fact: Mad mullahs like Masadi shall soon be eliminated.

Re #34 Manto

Fact: Fatima Jinnah was pushed up to run because she was MAJ's sister (monarchial succession not people power)

Fact: ZAB had nothing to do with the "alleged" rigging of either the Fatima Jinnah or the 1977 elections. Those are unproven, BS allegations.

Fact: Fatima Jinnah didn't have popular public support. Even the MAJ connection couldn't make her win, and she didn't know how to run a campaign

Fact: Bhutto was the very first populist leader of West Pakistan, because of him people developed a sense of self-worth and speaking for their rights

Fact: The people love ZAB, the standard of living of the poor is on the rise, Pakistan is unaligned from the major powers under him, land reform after much power play by the thugs is finally under way in a very meaningful way. The Third world looks upto ZAB as leader. The West shudders when he speaks

Fact: ZAB is butchered by a military dictator who then completely makes Pakistan a whore of the West and brings his so called "Islamism" and drugs and terrorism to Pakistan by fighting a proxy cold war with the Soviets on America's behalf

Fact: ZAB made peace with neighbours, and started alliances with Iran, Turkey and the greater ME. This made the West pee in their pants.

Fact: If ZAB was not butchered, Pakistan would be well ahead of South Korea in development and its people would be happier and healthier, poverty would be lower

Of course Manto is High Priest (or Priestess) of the Church of MAJ and so will turn facts upside down to extract stupendous conclusions from his "you know where". Best to ignore his BS and claims of grand scholarship which would neatly fit in the "penny compartment" of any 28 inch waist jeans- you know the pocket on top of the pocket for your change? Yeah that penny compartment....

SaimaShah #: "Pakistan is the most dangerous place on Earth right now. Is anybody listening? Alas, no. They are too busy defending their mediocrity.?"

...just out of curiousity, are you willing to walk the walk and put your money where your mouth is?.....that is a question i think every pakistani should be asked.....

all of us on chowk have taken the best out of pakistan......we have lifestyles equivalent to the upper middle class of first world countries......it has been good to us.......in a sense, collectively, we are the ones who have ripped off the poor in pakistan........

....what can you do to improve the place......or are you simply a critic......by, "you," i dont' mean just you, i mean everyone (including you).....

everytime i am in and out of pakistan, i get a strange feeling of a combination of hope and desparation.....i was with a client in islamabad/rawalpindi, when i heard about the blast....in such a situation, should one pack up one's bags and never visit the place again, and simply show one's loyalty through a website, ala urstruly, hamidm (and perhaps you also)......or should one do more to assist in economic progress to ensure that such blasts do not happen again.......

if one has divorced one's ugly wife, and moved on to a prettier one, then what is the point of trying to sympathesize with the ugly wife's problems?

..are you willing to move to pakistan and contribute your skills to solve the problem, and move it from being the most unsafe place in the world, to the second most unsafe place?.......if not, then do you still have the right to complain?

Nothing much new in this article, though I agree with his description of the cause of the Pakistani political scene, the lack of a muscular middle class, except for the so-called muhajir. A visitor to Pakistan cannot but wonder at the low ratio of scooter-motorcycles and even buses to cars or of the poor condition of railway/bus stations to airports.

Fatima Jinnah leads a popular broad based people's movement and almost brings the dictator down.... she unites East and West Pakistan on one platform. That is "monarchial" succession according to Masadi.

Then you have Zulfikar Ali Bhutto- a toady feudal from rural larkana... who bends over backwards to rig the elections of Ayub Khan... helps the dictator "win"... and later Mr. Bhutto refuses to accept the decision of Pakistan's majority in 1970... destroys the little popular base he has in the 1970s... develops a fascist force called FSF and rigs the 1977 elections and he is some sort of a democrat. Brilliant.

Saima shah writes "The common guy would be the saddest person to see the stability and freedom that came with Musharraf's government go"

Which freedom are you talking about? The freedom to go hungry while repatriation by TNCs go up by 900%? Or the freedom that comes from not being able to buy equal amount of rations you were the previous month? Or the freedom that comes from dying an early death (over 50K or more do) due to sky rocketing pollution? The common man has suffered under Musharraf immensely while the rich have become richer and due to his economic policies the country has been sold at pennies to the dollar with runaway inflation. That more than the bells and whistles of "free media",(how many can afford TV sets or cable for that matter) or the expensive skimpy and luxury goods that flood the market? Don't be taken in by this BS distraction, you are smarter than that. It was a sorry excuse for defending an anti-people pro-imperialist dictator...

Regarding the 6 point plan you cannot survive as a nation-state in the Pakistan context with a weak center and state autonomy given the neighbourhood. That was just a trick to get India into Pakistani affairs, now I am against what MAJ did, he weakened the Muslims of India and sold out to the colonials but I'm equally against the dirty-play by India, and ZAB was the main if not the ONLY factor that the West survived as Pakistan, otherwise thanks to the MAJ and the damage already done, Pakistan and the Muslims of Pakistan would now enter the union as third-rate members. What is done was done, it was evil but it cannot be undone after the history that has passed. Mujib was part of that effort, and the ZAB was very far-sighted in what he did....I don't blame him one single bit

Majumdar writes "What decision, what honour? The free and fair elections, the only one so far were held by Gen. Yahya Khan. Had ZAB been an honourable man he would have allowed Mujib to take power himself."

Wrong Answer. It is not as simple as that. The division was not only total between East and West, regarding people's opinion, one person ran on the 6 point plan that he wanted to implement country-wide, and he ran on ethnic boundary building (like the MAJ and the partition). The other difference that you are overlooking in your comparison with India, is that in between the North and South of India there isn't "enemy territory" who want to play on ethnic division to do away with a nation state. On the other hand you have ZAB who ran on social justice and people power issues, not on ethnic division. Further he knew that the local elite and the military would never stand for the "free and fair" though devoid of any context elections were Mujib to be allowed free reign.

Finally, you have conveniently overlooked the FACT that Bhutto was willing to compromise and he only asked for a delay of 120 days, the Mujib man wasn't willing to negotiate at all because the ethnic power of number ONLY was on his side. This is neither the purpose of democracy nor how it can be made viable in the East/West Pakistan context. The civil war was started by Mujib, helped by India, Fukced up by Yahya (the war criminal), while the country was saved by ZAB.

Try and argue with these facts now fool.....

#21 Posted by VRV on September 4, 2007 7:19:55 pm

this's i/o this's not

saima,

In global terms, teh stability that mushy offered is not sustainable, simply because pakistan has so many jihadis and they are being pumped out to support taliban in afghanistan. Mushy had to take on the tribals, because of the historic factors, essentially TNT. Blaming the US for jihadis is simply wrong, the US came in when the society was filled with the hatred created by TNT, and now without govt and the US support, it is sustained by what you call as the common guys of pakistan. They are the ones supporting the madrassas, they are the ones donating money to the collection boxes in every mosque.

Hatred is endemic to pak society, it is created on hate, the TNT.

William Dalrymple needs to take some much deserved break from his idiotic writings.

Much bigger things are at stake here, feudalism for whatever its drawbacks is very much part of Pakistan that the author has failed to understand. BB is by no stretch of imagination a feudal as defined by the indigenous feudals. She may behave like a feudal, but then again who doesnt in Pakistan when given the opportunity, take any army general for example.

Issue here is of restoring some balance in Pakistani politics, for too long the religious right has completely monopolized political and social debate, secularists or liberals have either been hounded out or silenced. Musharraf made some timid attempts in restoring the balance but now needs to pass the responsibility to a political party with national stature. The only political party with such credentials is PPP and the Bhuttos are an integral part of that political setup.

Having said that, those opposed to such changes will use everything in their armour including suicide belts and ethnic propaganda. Success or failure of this change will require resolve, patience and sacrifice from all liberal minded political parties, failure is not an option.

For that matter Pakistanis are equally un interested by Nawaz Sharif. If you ask me, the whole controversy over Musharraf is media generated placed by the super elites who couldn't get power in the current scheme of things. The common guy would be the saddest person to see the stability and freedom that came with Musharraf's government go. Sadly, Pakistan has two spectres to fight against. One is Islamism--the influence of tribal Islam is hard to fight for most people because for the last several centuries Muslims have not had an open dialogue WITHOUT violence to reflect on what Islam really means to them. In that void, tribal Islam is becoming more powerful. The second is unequal distribution of wealth because of the way the country has pursued modernization and industrialization. These are separate issues, but because of the difficulty that Muslims have (after centuries of not thinking in specific and concrete terms) in constructing arguments, they have been mixed into an abstract fight for identity and Godhood. Pakistan is the most dangerous place on Earth right now. Is anybody listening? Alas, no. They are too busy defending their mediocrity.

Actually, that's not really true. Pakistanis aren't afraid of her 'westernization' because Madam neither speaks Urdu or English very well. Pakistanis are stunned by her incredible stupidity and lack of sincerity towards the common man. The fact that her husband is the greediest man on Earth, is also a factor. But the biggest disappointment is her sheer incompetence. Ms Bhutto is no where near the calibre of her father and alas, she has no principles of ANY sort. That speaks louder than any veneer of sophistication.

Masadi sahib,

(Bhutto saved democracy in Pakistan in 1970 by his decision, and he restored Mujib to his rightful position like an honorable man.)

What decision, what honour? The free and fair elections, the only one so far were held by Gen. Yahya Khan. Had ZAB been an honourable man he would have allowed Mujib to take power himself.

(it was setup for failure if the East was allowed to rule the West, because the entire setup was non viable, and it was not really any win because the PPP and the Awami League had not a single seat to contest in the East.)

A similar thing happened in India in 1977. The JP won a clear majority of 295 seats (out of 542) but barring 1 each and every seat came from North of the Vindhyas, while th INC got 158 seats almost entirely South of the Vindhyas but no one argued that JP had to share power with INC or that troops had to crush the JP in North.

After the elections, it was a well-known fact that ZAB used inflammatory language like “Idhar Hum, Udhar Tum� and threats to break the legs of every legislator who attended the NA to break up Pakistan. His behaviour never changed after he became the PM. He ruthlessly muzzled dissent, in bhari sabha (ie. in National Assembly) he threatened to kill the Leader of Opposition, he had a leading JI leader and his son tortured and sodomised (if my recollection is correct) and blatantly rigged the 1977 elections apart from torturing and incarcerating dissident members of his own party.

And for all his so-called love of socialism his family remains to the date, one of the largest landowners of Pakistan. The whole of PPP has always been dominated by feudals. So much for land reforms.

And what about the blatant pandering to Islamicists- declaration of Friday as the sabbath, hypocritcial Prohibition, declaration of Ahmedis as non-Muslims, the retrogessive aspects of the 1973 Constituion as my friend YLH keeps digging up from time to time.

(Yahya was a war criminal, he should have been hung at the very least.... )

So why wasn’t he? Cudn’t ZAB do that.

And who asked him to make an idiot like Zia ( a person who was once deemed unfit for promotion to Brigadier) as the COAS superseding senior officers.

Regards

Pakistanis should place their money on Imran Khan, he seems more sincere then the others

“Benazir's brother Murtaza…….in a hail of police bullets, yards from his front door. Many pointed the finger of suspicion at Benazir, and her husband was later charged with complicity in the murder.�


I will refrain from commenting on this article. This guy has read 20 articles in Pakistani papers and has put together this article of no use and thinks of himself as some kind of a scholar.

He is parroting the army line that Benazir is responsible for her Brother’s murder. What a silly thing to say.

“She speaks English fluently as it is her first language.�

Her mother was Iranian and her father was raised in Bombay so he, too, barely spoke any Sindhi until he lived in Larkana in the 50s.

She has a horrible Sindhi and persian mixed English accent. She probably spoke some Sindhi with her servants in Karachi. At home, the Bhuttos used to speak English.

Maybe we should invite the Narayan Murthy and Azim Premji pair from India to handle Pakistan politics for some time. They would concentrate on technology/economy and also curb the overwhelming interference of the military in civil affairs. Premji can be the prime minister and Murthy can be the President. And no, the suggestion is not as outrageoous as it sounds. These guys would gain immediate trust from US and India. They would cause strengthening of democratic insstitutions. They would not indulge in corruption and loot. BB & NS on the other hand would only act on predictable lines with "Twenty percent" etc.

I got this idea when I read about someone pining for a "noble Sayyid" or "any decent Arab" as a leader for Pakistan.

Give it a thought folks.

For a momnet we must forget that this's not written by William Dalrymple but by a reporter.

Benazeer is a democrat in London and Washington but not in Karachi. Period.

When I recollect the mega articles in British press abt her property dealings and export of antiques from Pakistan, the feeling is anything but shame.

I still wonder why - forget abt Pak awaam - even Musharraf is enamoured of her as the saviour and the face of democracy in Pakistan?? Why not Ms. X or Mr. X from the existing un-evicted Pakistanis as the 'leader' or a potential PM?

Re: # 17 Please to not bunch up mr. Altafbhai with bunch of thugs BB, president and NS , Altafbhai never takes goes to usa begging. Above three should consult pakistani people than USA foreign minister and its disgusting when USA elites give little favor they look likes dog and dog gets happy and wags his tail happily when american elites throw discarded bone.

Re: # 15 Mr. Boraville Express.... I suggest you leave fued over ZAB it past its history. You shed your prejudice and forget about Masadi. You just read his book and think for few months, it takes time to read but take time and think. I feel YOU HAVE NOT READ AT ALL. Will you be honest enough to do that then start writing against thinking by Mr. Masadi.
This same suggestion to that hateful "Okha" man who is throwing wrong criticism. This is suggestion only and not advice.
Both of you before picking up poisoned pen against his thinking please read then you can do for you atleast tried to learn.
Good morning. Hope this terrorist type activities will be soon history/

Re: # 4 Romair you have written right and I second you. General is better than BB. NS is out as Saudi rulers has asked to refrain from entering. Now BB as Pm and Gen. as president who will be in commanding in position. Some body shall have full responsibility and accountability. Specially when war on "terror" can not be controlled by BB, army will ignore and look for Army chief who will carry american war on pakistani people and pakistani soil and invincibility of army is being shttered will be for long time ( emperor has no cloth siruation). I hope you will read book by Mr. M.A.Asadi , I found verey didectic.

If BB n nawaz n Altaf bhai are the only so-called saviors of Pakistan...then God may have mercy on us! I agree with William Dalrymple that Pakistan needs fresh blood from the educated middle class since the policies and interests of the feudal lords will never change.

Bhutto saved democracy in Pakistan in 1970 by his decision, and he restored Mujib to his rightful position like an honorable man. The Elections were held because of the resignation of Ayub caused in the major part by people power in the West as a direct result of Bhutto. If a powerful dictator could be removed the lesser one could not do anything else but hold elections.That is what the truth is about the entire 1970 election episode, it was setup for failure if the East was allowed to rule the West, because the entire setup was non viable, and it was not really any win because the PPP and the Awami League had not a single seat to contest in the East. Democracy in the West was rescued by the foresight of one man, from falling victim to the designes of those that wanted ethnic strife to harm the nation, and keep it deadlocked, ZAB broke out of that deadlock, out of the deadlock with India and with Afghanistan and out of the muck of the US. Yahya was a war criminal, he should have been hung at the very least....

masadi you are calling a guy who pushed for mujib's imprisonment as a democrat and then jailed the same yahya who gave into the pressure, did bhooto conduct the elections of 1970 or yahya? in which mind you bhutoo with his 80 odd legislators would never have become PM

brivili writes "Also have you read how he behaved the night he was to be hanged?"

Yes I have read your allegations and your dimwitted reading of history, they are nothing but slander. The guy took on the major powers, woke up the people of a nation, was recognized on the global forums as a voice of the powerless masses in the "Third World". He understood that keeping both Pakistan and India bleeding over Kashmir was colonialists wet dream of controlling us both, that a non-viable "patch up democracy" of the East/West would never work and would never be allowed by the ruling institution and the "outside" powers. He worked to infuse democracy into a used, raped and abused nation and he achieved much. He never asked the Zia ul Fcuk for clemency and knew the fate that awaited him. If he was so afraid of death as you allege, he would never have taken on the major powers but cringed and crawled infront of them like all the military dictators from Ayub to the current rat. That is the level of his great leadership.

His daughter is a sell out who is wheeling and dealing with her father's killers, the US elite and their occupation force in Pakistan...

Let me try a "Manto" and copy-paste stuff:

"During his student days, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had acquired an anti-Imperialist view of the world. He was a firm believer in economic self reliance and political independence themes he expounded in his famous book "Myth of Independence". Bhutto's finest hour came in the reconstruction of Pakistan after the traumatic dismemberment of Pakistan upon the fall of Dhaka on 16th December, 1971. He successfully put the derailed nation back on the track by rebuilding national institutions. His lasting achievement was the unanimous adoption of the Constitution in 1973. He established the Pakistan Steel Mills, Heavy Mechanical Complex Taxila, Port Qasim Authority, Quaid-e-Azam University, Allama Iqbal Open University, Karachi Nuclear Power Plant; thus, fortifying the prosperity, integrity and security of Pakistan. Using his experience as Foreign Minister, Bhutto cemented Pakistan's relation with Afro-Asian and Islamic countries and by 1976 had emerged as the Leader of the Third World. As an author, he brilliantly advocated the cause of hewers of wood and drawers of water of the Third World.....

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto has earned a place in the pantheon of leaders from the Third World who earned everlasting fame in the struggle against colonialism and imperialism. He had the privilege of interacting with many of those leaders who played a great role in the epic struggle for national independence in the 20th Century including Mao Tse Tung, Ahmed Soekarno, Chou-en Lai, Jawaharlal Nehru Gamal Abdel Nasser and Salvador Allende. During the period between the end of the Second World War and the end of the Cold War, the world was divided into two blocks: The Capitalist West and the Socialist East. All these leaders aspired to aspects of a socialist pattern of economy. Bhutto shared their faith in a leading role for the public sector as an instrument of self-reliance.



President of Allende of Chile and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto of Pakistan pursued socialist democratic policies in countries long dominated by the military, and thus, were overthrown in the same year - 1977 by the collaborators of the Neo-Imperialists, killed at the behest of the Military Juntas of Pinochet and Zia and followed by long spells of repressive Military regimes which did not retreat until the Cold War drew to an end.

The key factor in the over throw of Bhutto was Pakistan's nuclear capability. The Karachi Nuclear Power Plant was inaugurated by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto as President of Pakistan at the end of 1972 but long before, as Minister for Fuel, Power and National Resources, he has played a key role in setting up of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission. The Kahuta facility was also established by Bhutto.



Bhutto's foundation of the PPP was a setback for the reactionary forces in a country long dominated by the Right. The slogan of "Food, Shelter and Clothing" shifted the focus of Pakistan politics from theological to economic issues. This focus has never shifted back. Bhutto nationalised the commanding heights of the economy; another blow to the capitalist West. During his tenure there was a massive transfer of resources towards the dominant rural economy by setting higher prices for agricultural products.

-----------------


See Manto, my fingers possess the same "copy paste" skills too

thinkingstorm: I am not sticking out for BB. I don't support BB, I detest her, where did you get that from? I do support ZAB, and that is about it where it comes to Pakistani leaders. I am not for dictatorship as borivili is, in all his libelous slander against the one great leader this nation has seen...

--------------------------------

Masadi
Are you saying that bhooto never pressurised Yahya to jail Mujib? and that it was not yahya but bhooto who conducted the election of 70 in which mujib won the majority? if yahya wanted to supress Mujib why did he allow Mujib to win such a big majority, why did yahya infact remove parity between the wings and why did he break west pakistan unit into provinces?

also are you also denying that bhooto was involved in 1965? and that he joined hands against Ayub to kick him when he was down? as he did with Yahya and Mujib?

Also have you read how he behaved the night he was to be hanged?

Masadi you are only fooling yourself bhooto was doing this not for democracy or common man

masadi-

Congrats first of all on your books, and the kickass quote from Howard Zinn.

However, please don't stick up for BB. She has very little to do with her father's ideology and principles.

And anyway, we should not propogate family based "elected" monarchy.

biggest failure Mushy and Pak awaam had is the failure to come up with an alternative to BB and Sharif. Musharraf delcared these 2 defunct and criminals..everyone agreed and kicked them out. Musharraf did not let a real political figure come out in the absence of BB and NS.. or is it that Pak politicians have gotten so used to getting to the top with army help that no one tries on its own? if that is the case they should give army a permamnent role in governance and forget about democracy.

#5, I am not parroting dadajaan, you are on the other hand parroting the mullahs (and their American backers) and their failed attempt to turn the people of Pakistan against ZAB leading upto 1977. When that failed, when this BS failed, they had to resort to a barbaric hanging. Regarding Mujib, read my answer to Manto in the previous interacts. Bhutto didn't fool Ayub, Ayub tried to fool the nation and failed...Manuvering over who the General in charge has to be, is always a delicate act especially with a foreign occupation force that is power hungry to service outside masters. The charge of "murder" was never proven against him, he was not power drunk but knew his worth because he had the backing of the people, and foreign observers including the ex US AG, Ramsey Clark found the evidence against him, what you say "he signed" (seems like you are drunk) totally lacking and the "witnesses" coached and incoherent. Yahya was a war criminal, imprisonment was justified. You are a damn fool repeating the same BS of the enemies of Pakistan in order to discredit the only true people's leader we ever had, and you do it with the hatred that emanates from an RSS member faking being a Pakistani

also though bhooto had been favored by Ayub when demonstrations began against Ayub bhooto also went against him, bhooto was only for himself he didnot know the spelling of democracy.

read the account of his hanging he went shiverring, infact he refused to get up from the cot and acted as if he was ill, he had to be lifted by Jawans to the noose, read the acount yourself he was peeing in his pants

"but after 1971 when he released Mujib and Bhootoo came to power in he west he immediately imprisioned Yahya himself!!

should be "but after 1971 when YAHYA released Mujib and Bhootoo came to power in he west he immediately imprisioned Yahya himself!!"

Masadi

You just parrot what you learnt from dadajaan, read History your hero Bhooto was the one who fooled Ayub and then messed up 1965 else Kashmir would be free today. He forced Yahya to imprison Mujib which led to the split of the country because bhooto knew that with 88 legislators he could never defeat 160 odd bengalis, Yahya was the one who conducted fair elections for the first time in Pakistan which should have made Mujib PM but Bhooto didnt want democracy when it went against him, but after 1971 when he released Mujib and Bhootoo came to power in he west he immediately imprisioned Yahya himself!!

Bhooto chose Zia over 7 senior generals, because Zia was the most low profile, he used to insult Zia infront of people, he was so drunk with power that he actually gave an order in writing to liquidate his oponent that his how he was indicted.

his torture of his oppnents was legendary as was his womanising read Durrani's account of how Khar used to act as Bhooto's pimp.

if pakistan is going to end up bb and ns, then i would have to say musharraf is still better......though he has over-stayed his welcome by 5 years, and hence needs to go also....

if, however, someone other than these two, even if that someone is from their own parties, can emerge and become and pm and president, then that must be supported.....

.....i think pakistan can continue its economic growth, with any leadership, as long as it is not massively corrupt....the media and judiciary is now evolving as a check and balance mechanism......

......however, ns and bb will be massively corrupt again......

aitezaz ahsan as pm and imran khan as president still remain my choices........and bb, ns, and musharraf and altaf bhai retire......

Re #1, Shut up Okhla.

A very weak article, in which the author does not have a clue about either the origin of the non-democratic tradition in Pakistan (the colonial history and MAJ), nor of why the West is "interested" in the BB, and it certainly isn't because of her English nanny! What is even more atrocious in this article is that he passes over the entier ZAB era and how democracy and people power was injected into the nation going against the tide of the local and the higher (US) elite, as well as the military due to the work of ONE man, alright! What does that say? It says that there is hope for the restructuring of the Pakistan political scene, and restructuring will not happen through dictatorship of the military kind regardless of the short term "competence" of the dictator, it will not happen through buying corrupt leaders that are palatable to the West, no these things have ruined this country. The Church of the MAJ is dead and buried now, change in this country will occur through the conscious people of Pakistan and an emerging charismatic leader....that leader will certainly not be Mullah Omar or the High Priest of the MAJ, he will resemble the ZAB more...

The CIA and the US elite are to blame....
Ask Masadi.