The Dirty Tricks Brigade Tries to Spoil a Party

#138 Posted by tahmed32,

Not at all Sir. Please continue! As long as you can STFU this fake bismillah.

#134 rf: i see your brave attempt at civilized speech was short lived. but keep trying..if at first you dont succeed, try, try again...

PS: and i see that you refuse to believe that someone can be driven not by narrow-minded ethnic loyalties but by the broader interests of a peaceful, progressive, democratic Pakistan. That is fine with me. it just makes it pointless to carry on any interaction on chowk - since I consider chowk interactions to be a form of communication among people, not ammunition that you fire at one another. so you decide if you want to have a friendly interaction, or you want to continue throw unprovoked but hollow "word-brickbats" at me.

Good day to all. Today brings more New Year cheer to Chowkies

Another nail in the coffin of the corpse of Pakistan:

Army 'flees second Pakistan fort' (BBC)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/world/south_asia/7193281.stm

What' s up, Fuzair and Tahmed32? I see you refer to these nasties as 'terrorists'! Whoa! What's going on? Aren't these the same fellas you used to call 'freedom fighters' in days past?

Also, Tahmed32, weren't you caught gloating about Paki military prowess and how the nukes can flatten Delhi and all? Gloat all you want, my friend!

I knew that it will bite you in your rear end, and it has!

#135 zeemax: are you trying to stop my right to free speech on chowk too? :-)

rf #133 I am glad to see myself reclassified from a bad person to "dear". I hope we can continue this tone, even when we differ.

Your point about p. elahi is reasonable, I will grant you. He is as much in it for himself as musharraf is, and therefore just as guilty of neglect. Nevertheless, he remains small fry like the rest of Musharraf's minions, and the buck stops with Musharraf.

As for sikh and hindu temples - i beg to disagree there. The fact is that the sikh gurdwara - visited for decades by sikh pilgrims from india - is alive and well in the heart of Lahore. While no doubt there are other temples in decay - but there has been no wilful destruction of temples (with the brief and shameful exception of the post-Babri mosque destruction of temples) in Pakistan anymore than there has been in India (where, e.g., my brother saw the muslim mosque in the now all-Sikh ancestral village of ours still standing, albeit in the same level of neglect as many hindu temples in Pakistan).

Keeping in line with tahmed32 rich tradition of posting irrelevant articles, this may be of interest.......

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4182151.stm

{Pakista n risks new battlefront

.....And it is these people who have decided to take on what they call "Punjabi domination". The army is generally seen as a Punjabi-dominated institution in Pakistan's smaller provinces.

Way back in the mid-1970s, an armed uprising in Balochistan was brutally quelled by the army with help from the Iranian military. Some 30 years later, many fear that the province seems poised to repeat its past.}

#132 Posted by tahmed32,

I was just talking about celebrating Lahore. You can spare the speech :)

Re: # 132

{and now that NS is standing up for Pakistan, I support him on it.}

Cut the crap old man, we all know your underlying generosity to these thugs lies in your Punjabi chauvinism.

Re: # 129

Dear tahmed32,

It seems Musharraf is also responsible for the forced migration of non-Muslims from Lahore? By the way, Ex-Chief Minister of Punjab Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi, comes from the proud state of Gujrat. Had you any sense, fairness and objectivity you would have not jumped to this irrational conclusion.

{From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Before partition of India in 1947, Lahore was a cosmopolitan city with Hindu, Sikh and Jain residents. There were many temples in Lahore.

In 1941, 36% of the population of Lahore was Hindu, Sikh or Jain[1]. A few hundred Hindus are still reported to be living in Lahore.

None of the temples in Lahore are now in worship.}

#131 zeemax: ..and that merely proves I am an equal opportunity observer and not driven by ideology of any kind. :-)

ZAB messed the Pakistan economy by nationalizing it, and Sharif Bros were trying to mess up the political structure the way Musharraf has done. And I was - and remain - right in critizing them for it. and now that NS is standing up for Pakistan, I support him on it.

#129 Posted by tahmed32,

You cry rivers about Lahore (even though your pessimism is misplaced) and still abuse the two people who celebrated Lahore as no one did since the Raj. ZAB and Sharif Brothers.

urstruly: you say Sindhis have always been ruled by feudals, and that justifies their being ruled by mqm (which, btw, is a criminal party with murderers of May 14 roaming free, and thus not in the same league as any political party even a feudal one).

Spoken like a true fascist - a fascist is a fascist, whether he is a religious fascist or an ethnic one.

Another article - this one providing clear indication of musharraf's ethnic bent of mind (and why mqm-ites are falling over one another to abuse anyone who dares challenge his illegal rule on chowk and to demonstrate their spite against Pakistanis who dont happen to be "urdu-speaking"):

Here in the city of Kim, Pakistan's magnificent history is being left to rot
Simon Jenkins in Lahore
Friday January 11, 2008
The Guardian

Excerpts:

Musharraf has allowed one of the wonders of Asia to disintegrate...Poor Lahore. Yesterday this jewelled city of the Raj was hit by a suicide bomber...While the historic cities of Pakistan's great rival, India, soar up the league table of celebrity, nothing better displays Pakistan's current misery than the state of Lahore, joint capital of many an Indian empire and of British Punjab. Splendid Victorian palaces still line the boulevards of the Mall: the high court, the governor's house, the general post office, the government college and Lahore's museum, Kim's "Wonder House"...In no other world city have I seen so much magnificence so neglected...Limited preservation is being done on Lahore fort and Shah Jahan's exquisite Shalimar Garden in the suburbs. ...Yesterday's blast at the high court followed persistent attempts by the government to demolish the building, despite its handsome moulded brick walls and terracotta, marble and teak inside. The authorities also tried to demolish old Tollington market on the Mall. Looking like an East Anglian railway station, it was saved by public outcry and is now a thriving art centre.

Such carelessness is not for want of help. The World Bank offered $10m to restore the old city, which the authorities used to pay for drains. A so-called Sustainable Development Walled City project has hired offices and bureaucrats, but seems to have lost the will to conserve anything. Nobody is trying to stop a hotel company from buying up a street of havelis and demolishing them - houses that in Marrakech would be worth millions and might one day be so in Lahore. There is no protection for these structures, and if there were a well-placed bribe would negate it....

Pakistan used to pride itself on its cities being cleaner and more modern than India's. This is no longer so. While Islamabad seeks to create a past for itself, Lahore's past is collapsing around it...
The reason is rule by distant dictator. Some dictators take pride in their past, eager to make their mark on the nation's narrative. This was true of the Shah of Persia and even of Saddam Hussein. It is sad that present-day Pakistan, once a prized province of India's Mauryan, Mughal and British empires, should not only have cut itself off from that narrative but find itself at the mercy of an insecure and philistine soldier, for 10 years the puppet of London and Washington.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,2239021,00.htm l

The fact of the matter is that MQM is a relatively new feudal party among the 200+ existing ones in Pakistan. I think sindhis have to just suck this fact up now. And I don't understand what difference does this make to an ordinary sindhi anyway. They have been living under one feudal lord or the other since eons until to this day. and they want to continue living as such for the next forseeable future. So why not one more. There is an urdu proverb for that too, which is, jaisa munh waisi chupair".

Re: # 103 Salim Chauhan:

Did you say?,"... If you PPP goons don't change your murderous, destructive, and hateful ways, you may soon see a big billboard on the Super Highway and National Highway - SINDHI NA KHAPAN...."

I never reallized fires of ethnic rivalries can be fanned to such an extent and so easily that Pakistan will fall apart if stability is not restored by SOMEONE and if all Pakistanis do not HUG each other.

If not there will only by national self mutilation! This is a disaster recipe! Then the whole region in and also around Pakistan will be destabilized.

Kamath

I think this article written by the Indian editor of India Express is a must-read, particularly by members of the "dirty tricks brigade" and other supporters of military rule in Pakistan.

Moral of the story: Democracy wins, dictatorship loses.

Extracts:
Junta versus Janata
BY SHEKHAR GUPTA
Khaleej Times, 9 January 2008

...an almighty (lately, former) general who has the power to declare and suspend emergency in televised speeches, the power to make 36 (or thereabouts) amendments in his “constitution� at a Press conference, and whose ability to take the biggest decisions on the spot is the envy, often, of the Indian politician, and has been a cause for admiration among India's chattering classes.

...And then came Shaukat Aziz, on secondment from Citibank. So smart, articulate, in his smartly cut suits, blah, blah and blah. And what kind of people did we have holding the same job in India? Gowda, who slept in Parliament. Vajpayee, who never seems to answer any question. Gujral who only uttered diplomatic platitudes that meant nothing. And Narasimha Rao, who mostly pretended he had not even heard the question.

...How have the relative fortunes of the two competing kinds of leaderships and nations under their charge evolved over these seven years? Musharraf now looks bumbling and unconvincing, an international joke, a pitiable, forlorn figure, hated by his countrymen, distrusted by the world and mentioned dismissively even by Barack Obama. Shaukat Aziz has disappeared from the scene, even losing out to an ordinary mortal - coincidentally from India - for the top job in his alma mater, Citi. Their country is a mess, their own army, for the first time, is seeing its credibility, power, its pre-eminent position in Pakistan's society and power structure questioned. Its political class is decimated, its institutions fatally wounded. How do people as proud as the Pakistanis feel when their dictator offers to salvage his credibility by summoning the Scotland Yard to investigate the assassination of their most prominent political leader? Nobody believes their election commission's intentions, motives or judgment in postponing their election.

Vajpayee, on the other hand, sits at home, having lost power in an election, not in the pink of health, but satisfied at the way his country is moving. His successor, from the opposite side of the political fence, even comes to wish him on his birthday.

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?section=opinion&xfile= data/opinion/2008/january/opinion_january35.xml