The Riverbank

re hamid_81 #62:

Dude: Get a chill pill. Having a sense of humor is obviously not on the menu at Temple.

Your thesis about the superiority of the west is not going to win you the Nobel prize. Put yourself in the shoes of someone living lets say in the year 800 AD. At the time, the Muslim hordes were on a roll and the whole discovered world was ripe for the picking. The Muslim armies were knocking at the doors of Vienna and the French empire-the epicenters of the Western civilization today. It all fell apart in a few hundred years.

Who knows what will happen even in the next 50 years. The forces of migration will change America and other western nations in ways we can`t imagine. Whether western ideals of democracy and tolerance be able to tame the masses or as post Sept 11th events show, some of their limits will be breached...who knows?

Talking strictly about Pakistan, I couldn`t agree more with you that the future is dark. But would I go as far as to declare a victory for the west as Fukuyama predicts in `End of History`, I don`t think so. Western ideals are winning becuase they have been flexible enough to accomodate the changing times. Will they continue to remain flexible in the face of new obstacles? I hope so but are there any guarantees, I am afraid not.

later

-sac

Sac:

I can take reform school. It is people like you who should be sent there with me. People like you have brought Pakistan to this stage where it is all down hill from now and people like you will be the reason it is going to get destroyed. Try to understand the truth. The west is better and there is nothing you can do about it. Pakistan is a third world country with no future if it stays the same way it is now. The west is controlling the whole world. It gives food to Pakistanis. We eat what they give us. Think rationally. I think people like you are just going to sit on your butts and see Pakistan going down the drain, while people like me would be the ones actually doing something. And yes! Motherland will have to wait. Motherland will always wait but in vain. I don`t think any Pakistani who is earning good and have a peaceful and nice life would ever opt to come to a third world, messy country like Pakistan. We have been losers, we are losers and we will be losers only because people like you don`t have the power to undersatand and analyse the truth and ruffle your feathers at the slightest hint of criticism. But trust me you are the one who is one of the losers. The west is one of the winners.

May be there is a lesson for Chowkies here,NEVER DISCUSS RELIGION SERIOUSLY & BE CARRIED AWAY EMOTIONALLY IN IT !!!

Not only that pplz still believe in after life but going to heaven hopefully .

Heaven-or-hell argument ends with shotgun slaying



An argument over who was going to heaven and who was going to hell ended with one Texas man shooting another to death with a shotgun, police said Monday.

The man charged in the slaying is a corrections officer.

Johnny Joslin, 20, was allegedly shot by Clayton Frank Stoker, 21, on Sunday. The two had spent Saturday night bar hopping with two other men in Fort Worth, about 40 miles (65 kilometers) northeast of Godley.

Johnson County Sheriff Bob Alford said a witness who was the designated driver for the group told police the four men were sitting at a table outside a trailer park after their night on the town and began arguing about religion.

The talk became heated when the subject turned to who would go to heaven and who would go to hell.

Stoker said he would settle the argument and went into a house and returned with a shotgun, which he loaded and placed in his mouth, Alford said the witness reported.

``The victim Joslin then took the gun out of Stoker`s mouth, saying, `If you have to shoot somebody, shoot me,``` Alford said, citing the witness report.

The shotgun went off, hitting Joslin in the chest and killing him.

Stoker, a Johnson County corrections officer, has been arrested and charged with first-degree murder, Alford said.

07/30/2002 06:45

© Copyright Cable News Network LP, LLLP. All rights reserved. The information contained In this news report may not be published, broadcast or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of Cable News Network LP, LLLP.

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Hamid_81 # 50

``We live on IMF.``

Army lives on IMF, we just pay the loan with intrest.

Regards.

hamid_81 # 50

``We live on IMF.``

Army lives on IMF, we just pay the loan with intrest.

Regards.

Folks, stop beating up on poor developing countries for a change. This is funny and sad at the same time.

* * * * * * * * * *

Can you imagine working for a company that has a little more than 500 employees and has the following statistics:

* 29 have been accused of spousal abuse

* 7 have been arrested for fraud

* 19 have been accused of writing bad checks

* 117 have directly or indirectly bankrupted at least 2 businesses

* 3 have done time for assault

* 71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit

* 14 have been arrested on drug-related charges

* 8 have been arrested for shoplifting

* 21 are currently defendants in lawsuits

* 84 have been arrested for drunk driving in the last year

Can you guess which organization this is?

Give up yet?

It`s the 535 members of the United States Congress. The same group of idiots that crank out hundreds of new laws each year designed to keep the rest of us in line.

* * * * * * * * *

Amazing thing is that through system of checks and balances, USA still is the best place to live and thrive.

Nagnatheshwar,

You`re right. More than pulmonologists or nephrologists we need competent primary care physicians, both to deal with the commoner problems as well as to filter out those patients who really need specialist physicians. It`s heartbreaking having a hematologist (consultation fees; 700 rupees) treat an iron-deficiency anemia that a GP could have dealt with just as well for less than half the cost. (We do clinics at one of the Edhi Centres in Karachi where patients pay 10 rupees for both the consult and their drugs, provided the pharmacy stocks them, which they do half the time.)

Unfortunately though, community medicine seems to be looked down upon as a career choice for most young doctors. I`m sure there are many reasons for this and they differ from person to person. One reason could be that the specialities are seen as being more intensive, exciting work (cardiology with its angiographies and angioplasties, figures highly among career choices) as compared to the domesticated, plain-jane variety of medicine that family practise advocates.

Stuka:

My sarcasm may have been a little colored by your defence of the army elsewhere. Maybe it was a little too harsh. My apologies. BTW you are not the only offspring of a fauji on chowk ;)

I agree that there is a vast difference in the material well being of army families from both sides of the divide. Come to think of it I don`t ever recall meeting a spoiled brat from India with martial lineage. Like most Indian students they are highly motivated, self-made individuals. We on the other hand seem to have quite a few ``princes`` in every college town. It would be an instructive exercise to calculate how much the Pakistani army contributes to the well being of the US college industry by sending its sons (and lately daughters) to learn the latest in terms of numberless bank accounts and offshore shell companies!!

Ansari/ana:

I second your thoughts. My intention was to point out the uphill task a nation faces when it loses its most driven and ambitious citizens. All men(and women) unfortunately are not created equal.

anNy:

Hamid desperately needs reform school. Maybe the motherland can wait :)

Most of the Pakistanis writing on Chowk, with their professional green cards, graduated from these same schools and systems, that Mahmood seems fed up with.

People complain a lot about the quality of Pakistani universities. I suppose a lot of that is true. The reasons could be many.

However, in my opinion, the actual problem (at least in my profession) is the quantity, more than the quality. Why do I say that?

If one does a rough analysis of Pakistani IT people in Silicon Valley, or Pakistani doctors in the US, I think one would reach the following result:

Nearly all of them received their Bachelors level education in Pakistan. And nearly all of them have a higher education degree, from the USA. And nearly all of them are well-employed and highly successful.

The profile of the average Pakistani IT professional in Silicon Valley, seems to be, that he is middle class to perhaps slightly upper middle class (I see very few burgers and rich individuals from Defence etc., who make it in the US IT sector, on their own), a male, from Karachi, and more than likely a graduate of NED. And he will spend a lot of time complaining about the lack of quality of facilities etc. at NED.

Yet the interesting factor is that despite these lack of facilities, literally every NED grad. I see here has an MS from the US, and is doing well (please visit www.koshish.org ; a site set up by NED grads). He must have learnt something at NED (even with no classes, and no electricity etc.). It cannot all of have been just his intelligence and hardwork.

So, if through some magical event, NED level universities, can produce students who can get an MS from the US, at the drop of hat, and write super-sophisticated software, and compete well with students from any university in the world (I do a lot of hiring, so I know), then a long of string of NEDs across Pakistan would multiply those students. They won`t be able to speak English, with an accent, like many of the feudal kids or even the LUMS kids, but I am sure they will know their stuff, even if they learnt it on 386 machines in a lab where the fans don`t work.

We would hear a lot of complains from critics (many of them legitimate), but the fact of the matter is that while the quality maybe bad, it is still good enough to produce hundreds to thousands of successful professionals. It is the quantity of these professionals that needs to be increased, as well as the ability of the Pakistani economy to absorb these qualified kids.

Currently the only institutions in Pakistan that seem to be producing, regularly, IT folk, that make it to the USA, that I know of are: NED, UET, FAST, NUST, GIKI, LUMS. On a smaller scale, KU, PU, Hamdard, QAU, SZABIST.

So the whole country has only six departments which are producing good IT folk regularly (either due to the high standards of the universities, like NUST, GIKI or LUMS, or due to the high standards of the students like NED).

Compare this to the long list of medical colleges that produce students that get international level degrees (KE, Aga Khan, Dow, Rawalpindi, Army Medical, Abbotabad, Illama Iqbal, Fatima Jinnah, Khyber etc.)

Moral of the story, specifically for IT: Quality of the graduates produced from the major recognized public universities is good even though quality of the facilities maybe bad to very bad. Quantity needs to be increased a great deal, as well as the ability of the economy to absorb them.

P.S. Is it true that KU has the largest student body in Pakistan, and it now has more girl students than boys. And that the number of girls in Pakistan`s medical college is higher than the number of boys (someone told me KE or Dow is now 70% girls).

#: 40

Ansari

Sac,

``When 98% of the graduating class of Agha Khan Medical college(the college that attracts the brightest kids) ends up in the United States who is going to take care of the motherland?``



Ansari

In India also there are villages & small towns without allopathic Doctors ,but there are well established Post Graduate courses & teachings in Engineering & Medicine which is essential to receive back western trained professionals.

What can a pulmonologist or nephrologist or haemotologist do without teaching Post graduate M.D. M.S. institutions in Pakistan......

You need family practioneer /G.P. for which more m,edical college seats is the answer & for specialist tertiary care you need Foreign trained but you dont have the ``receptacles`` so to say to receive them

``Well, FCUK YOU, India...keep your Goddamned sanctimonious virtue & shove it where the sun dont shine... The happiest day in my life was when I took the US citizenship oath..``

Thanks for being so honest. Now at least we can understand where you`re coming from, when you your ``holier than thou`` posts about what India should do. You see, the deifference between you and I is obvious in the sense that you confuse the country with the establishment. I think that`s why you`re okay with seeing thousands of Indian soldiers die every year, and yet are sanctimonious about the country`s options to actually do something about it.

tahmed321, ``From all indications, Pakistan`s best days have yet to come.``

only if we weed out the fanatic mullahs, no country can strive and prosper under the shadow of religious extremism....only if we learn to assimiliate ourselves within the dynamic and progressive global culture.

even in the US, many Pakistanis lose themselves in their little circles and cliques and subsequently diminish their influence, no matter how educated they may be.

just look at Chowk, except for maybe Dr. Hoodhboy, how many Pakistani writers here have you seen writing about matters other than the same old sob story `my poor country` bull$hit and cryptic nonsense, especially lately?

we need to get over this defensive pseudo-patriotic attitude and we need to get over the `i`m in denial so i`ll talk about bullshit` attitudes. i`ve taken part in it too and have realized it`s worth nothing.

Mr.Shankar,

I am happy that you agree with what I have written. The same conditions exist in Pakistan. The son of the soil gets everything. And the INTRUDERS get nothing. And I am one of the INTRUDERS. The outcast. Although I belong to family which has money, but still, going to a government office and asking them to make me DOMICILE, would ashame me , because the person, sitting over there would ask me whether I am from one of the four provinces, or not. When my answer would be NO, he would look at me with disgust and hatred. Long Live the people`s democracy in Pakistan!

I would like to ask Mr.Romair to plzz tell me where he found grammatical mistakes in my article. I would love to correct myself.And yes I am being showered with stinky rose petal showing me the attitude of Pakistanis, which they have at the slightest note of criticism. We should all learn to realize our mistakes, and also realize that we are a third world country, barely able to keep up it`s head out of western loans. The west has been providing for us. We live on IMF. And still don`t realize that we are the ones who need to change and we are the ones who are wrong. We have to prove ourselves and by criticising and telling people that Pakistan is one of the most modern countries in the world we have gone nowhere and we will go nowhere. Keep up the same attitude guys and soon we will loose whatever little we have. For Good!

H

anNy #30 Good to learn that KU has improved so much past few years. One can say a glass is half full, and so make it a little easier to add more to it. Or one can say about the same glass that it is half empty, and so become a cynic.

While Pakistan has its problems, it also has lots of strengths that we tend to ignore. The most striking being perhaps the resourceful, hard working, down to earth population with a strong base of values. And among our middle and upper classes we have some of the most dedicated, intelligent and socially aware people I have ever come across. From all indications, Pakistan`s best days have yet to come.

urstruly #38 ``The size of bureaucracy in Pak is approximately 130-140 thousand. `` The figure is over 1 million, counting federal, provincial, local bureaucracies. And another half-million in uniform. Plus ever increasing hordes of pensioners. All on the back of shirtless, sweaty farm workers, and a tiny handful of entrepreneurs and knowledge workers. And what does the citizen get in return: a constant threat to life, limb and property due to internal and external insecurities caused by dysfunctional policies by those at the top of the bureaucracy and corrupt implementation by those at the bottom.

There is ample room for cutting government down to size so it starts functioning for the benefit of society: (a) To start, take out the provincial level (since cross-district issues are best dealt at the national level anyway, and of course there will be howls from the provincial politicians and bureaucrats who will have to find a socially useful means to earn an income in the real world), and you eliminate a vast chunk of duplicate adminstrative work. (b) Get rid of entire ministries in areas where the government has no business anyway (the religious ministry, e.g.). Also get rid of duplicate shariah courts and so forth. Not one man should earn his living by pretending to be a Muttawa. (c) Of what remains, focus government functions to strictly regulatory and oversight functions in others (education), and eliminate unnecessary , since potential for streamlining is vast in what remains. Redirect foreign and military policy to neutralize India, and the need for a vast military bureaucracy is gone.