How real is your politik? MNI Masadi sahib,
It must be annoying to still have to point out that trickle-down is a a bloody farce that never happens -- or at least won't happen unless there are structures to facilitate it (corporation taxation, and public sector expansion). If it works at all in free market economies, it's because, well, they aren't. If the U.S. economy still works at all, its because it's still got aspects of social welfare, despite 8 years of efforts to obliterate them. That, and the fact that it's an economy that reaped the benefits of large scale PUBLIC investment in education and Science R&D in the first place.

India is starting to reap those rewards. Pakistan will have little to reap, of course.

Re Working to live and living to work, yaar, no economy will thrive without SOME degree of incentive that comes from private enterprise. If you have an example to counter this, I'd like to know of it. Clearly we need proper mixed economies, the ratio of the constituents dictated by the income disparities prevalent.

School Days Hey Fouz, Thanks for taking the time to respond.
89, eh? And you hung out a lot at the basketball court? Something you mention about break-dance music there suggest you might have been at the sleepover (at the very court) organized by the then bb coach, JN. That was '88 or '89.
I think the best bb player to have come out from St. Pat's a certain Mike Turner, was in your batch. If so, and if you'd like to hook up with him, I'd be happy to liaise.

For what it's worth, a second reading of your piece, and of your interact, has prompted me to try to step back a little and consider that I was perhaps a bit harsh on the ol' alma mater. Incidentally, I don't speak without a certain degree of expertise on conditions at St Pats, having dedicated 18 years trying to improve things. I should add that for most of that time, I was supported by the very able, enlightened principal. Alas things have gone steeply downhill since his retirement in 99.

Celebrating 61 Years of Broken Dreams AHC, Thanks you for this information.

School Days tAhmed, are you sure BB went to Jennings?? I'm pretty sure she did her O's from that other -- perhaps the doyen -- wanna-be-Western-but-really-just-colonial-ass-wipe institution, CJM.

School Days tAhmed, Another honorable (and much honored, by these idiotic ass-licking, power-worshipping idiots who run St. Pat's and similar "missionary" schools here, was Jam Sadiq Ali, for whom the red carpet was rolled out back in the nineties even as he went about doing his badmaashi as Provincial chief.

You are so right about the lack of anything resembling good teachers at St Pat's. Okay, correction .. SHORTAGE of them-- they were certainly a few standout individuals, exemplifying the spirit of scholarship and/or love of teaching that the writer greatly exaggerates in the article. But yes, by and large there was, and continues to be a horrible lack of professionalism and anything approaching students' rights (starting with the right to be seen as a person!) in many of these schools with hallowed traditions and legendary reputation.

In any half-modern, more humane society, half the staff (and three quarters of the admin) would be booked for child abuse and probably sentenced to long terms of psychotherapy.

School Days Wow, FK Khan, what a great set of reminisces and hindsight analyses! Your writing style is enviable - almost Dickensian at times. I'd trade every one of my three or four cherishable memories from my ten sordid years at that
school just for your ability to recall minutiae and all that that recollection evokes. Great job there!

From some of the events you mention, I figure you were roughly a contemporary -- passed out in the mid-80's. Which year exactly, if you don't mind my asking?

I'm tempted to say that you give St Pat's a whole lot more credit than it is due, but then, that would be arrogant on my part, so I won't. I would, however, like to know if you've considered that most of the growing up experiences you so wonderfully describe, and credit to the culture of your alma mater, might have taken place in just about any school your had the fortune of misfortune to attend-- minus the occassional religious dilemma you were faced with by virtue of St Pat's being parochial. Well...?

Well, will get back with some thoughts on your menacingly though-and-memory provoking piece later...

Here's a parting name to ..er.. chew on: Joseph's (not Michael's) :-0

rgds,
PM

Muslims in America truth100:

I'm sure masadi sahib will get back to you once he's unbanned but I thought I'd take the liberty of stating what I think he meant when he wrote that "the actions of a establishment/military controlled Pakistan cannot be equated with the actions of Pakistanis."

In 'actions', he must have included motives, and therein lies the difference. Besides, while the masses may actually have believed the Islam khatrein meiN canard, I'm sure the guys pulling the strings didn't.

Muslims in America re. majmumdar #163

"Bit pressed for time but we can discuss #159 later possibly over email."

No, No! Please exchange whatever you have to (minus bodily fluids) right here. It's interesting!

Muslims in America This from an editorial in yesterday's Dawn. it should put to rest any silly ideas about the War on Terrorism being about stamping out extremism (except, of course, the extremism of the U.S./Iraeli war machines).

http://www.dawn.com/2008/07/03/ed.htm#5

Because the rise of Al Qaeda coincides with the above-mentioned development in the world’s economic history, and because it has been used as the pretext for invading countries not involved in 9/11, it is reasonable to assume that a certain degree of political engineering has originally gone into its making. The windfall profits from the dotcom bonanza of the nineties allowed the US intelligence comfortable access to tax payers’ money for financing covert operations that would plant the timed eruptions of terrorism in key strategic locations in the Middle East, thereby producing a moral Disney show that would lead the world to approve of the US invasion and occupation of otherwise much weaker countries in distant lands.

Osama bin Laden was ejected out of Sudan into Afghanistan at the behest of Washington. According to the 9/11 commission report, Sudan offered his custody to the US embassy but the ambassador declined. So did the Saudi government which works in close collaboration with the US in matters related to security. The fact that a dangerous international terrorist who openly called for worldwide attacks on US military and civilian assets, besides his involvement in the assassination attempt on the US ally Hosni Mubarak, was made to leave his known residence for an unknown one — no one yet knew he would land in Afghanistan — that too without the US embassy obtaining as much as even his fingerprints, casts aspersions on the sincerity of CIA’s pursuit of him.

Instead of arresting and interrogating bin Laden about his network, or getting the Saudi government to hang him, the US chose to rain 68 cruise missiles on Afghanistan from the Indian Ocean in 1998 because bin Laden now lived there. It highlights the theatrics that have gone into the making of CIA’s war on terror.

The writer is an energy consultant and analyst of energy geopolitics based in Washington DC.

Muslims in America Okay, for anyone still clueless about the real motives behind the war:

(same source as earlier)

some insight into why there was so little offical itnerest in tstoppiing the looting ahs since been provided by two men who played pivotal roles in the occupation -- Peter McPherson, the senior economic advisor to Paul Bremer, and John Agresto, diretor of Higher Education reconstruction for the occupation. McPherson said that when he say Iraqis taking state property-- cars, buses, ministry equipment -- it didn't bother him. His job, as Iraq's top economic shock therapist, was to radically downsize the state and privatize its assests, which meant that the looters were just giving him a jump start. "I thought the privatization that occurs kinda naturally when somebody took over their state vehicle, or began to drive a truck that the state used to own, was just fine," he said. a veteran bureaucrat of the Reagan admin and a firm believer in the Chicago School economics, McPherson termed the pillage a form of public sector "shrinkage."

Muslims in America re. majumdar:
"That leaves us with one motive- Oil. And at the end of the day, oil has only become dearer..."

If you're suggesting that this part of the plan didn't work, you're probably working on the questionable logic that U.S. National interests (you know, We the people, yadda yadda..) the the interests of those who control its foreign policy (esp wrt war) are one and the same.

They're not.

"... and the AQ has got a (potential) safe haven in a country where it had not much of a presence"

Sometimes "stuff [really does] happen"

Muslims in America truthoo:

I'm very well aware of Buchanan's image in the popular imagination-- that of a rightwing bigot. Chalk that down to the stupid liberals who wouldn't know a a true patriot from a neo-con just because they both happen to be Republican.

Trust me, I have actually READ Buchanan, and see much merit in much of what he says. If you'd like to, I'd be happy to send you some links.

In any event, I didn't suggest the he was an economist; Craig is. I kinda knew that that sentence would be misread, even though I used a crucial comma. :-)

Muslims in America "truth is, it is Iraqis being killed by Iraqis in the name of insurgency day in day out; I am yet to see any condemnation of this here by anyone!...."

Yes, Iraqis are being killed Iraqis. Let's pretend now that this has nothing to do with jostling for power in a vacuum created, even orchestrated, by the occupation forces, which takes --and switches-- sides.

Let's also conveniently forget the case of the British soldiers caught red-handed PLANTING bombs, and the disgraceful action by the occupiers in attacking and destroying the prison in which they were held in order to free them. Sure, that was just a one-off thing, right??

Muslims in America More:

During the 1991 Gulf War, thirteen Iraqi museums were attacked by looters, so there was every reason to believe that poverty, anger at the old regime, and the general atmosphere of chaos would soon prompt Iraqis to respond in the same way (especially given that Saddam had emptied the prisons several months earlier). the Pentagon had been warned by leading archaeologists what it needed to have and airtight strategy to protect museums and libraries before any attack, and a March 26 Pentagon memo to coalition command listed "in order of importance, 16 sites that were crucial to protect in Baghdad." Second on the list was the museum. Other warnings had urged Rumsfeld to send an international police contingent in with the troops to maintain public order -- another suggestion that was ignored.

even without the police, however, there were enough of U.S. Soldiers in Baghdad for a few to be dispatched to the key cultural sites, but they weren't sent. There are numerous accounts of US soldiers hanging out by their armored vehicles and watching as trucks loaded with loot passed by -- a reflection of the "stuff happens" influence coming straight from Rumsfeld. Some units took it upon themselves to stop the looting, but in other instances, soldiers joined in. The Baghdad International Airport was completely thrashed by soldiers who, according to TIME, smashed furniture and then moved to the commercial jets on the runway: "U.S. soldiers looking for comfortable seats and souvenirs ripped out many of the planes' fittings, slashed seats, damaged cockpit equipment and popped out every windshield." The result was an estimated loss of $100 million worth of damage to Iraq's national airline -- which was one the first assets to be put on the auction block in an early and contensious partial privatization.

Muslims in America Passages from The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Captilalism by Naomi Klein.

WHen the war began, the residents of baghdad wer esubjected to sensory deprivation on a mass scale. One by one, the city's sensory inputs were cut off; the ears were the first to go.
On the night of March 28, 2003, as U.S. troops drew nearer to Baghdad, the ministry of Communications was bombed and set ablaze, as were four Baghdad telephone exchanges, with massive Bunker-busters, cutiing off millions of phones across the city. The targetting of phon exchanges continued - twelve in total - until, by April 2, there was barely a phone working in all of Baghdad.* During the same assault, television and radio transmitters were also hit, making it impossible for families in Baghdad, huddled in their homes, to pick up even a weak signal carrying news of what was going on outside their doors.
Many Iraqis say that the shredding of their phone system was the most psychologically wrenching part of the air attack. The combination of hearing and feeling bombs going off everywhere while being able to call a few blocks away to find out if loved ones were alive, or to reassure terrified relatives living abroad, was pure torment...."

* the author explains why the 'logic' of the annihilation of the phone system to sever Saddam's ability to communicate was completely bogus. Will reproduce if anyone's interested.

More later, on clues to the actual intent of the occupation...

Muslims in America re. tahmed #131:
#127 dm: How the hell was I supposed to know that Bush would turn out to be so totally incompetent? So that was a cheap shot, if I may respectfully say so.

The "failure" in Iraq has everything to do with Mr Bush & Co.'s competence in milking wars for personal gain. You'd have to be a complete idiot not to see that by NOW.

Maybe you could not have foreseen the way things would turn out in Iraq. That's because you (and I admit myself) are/ were ignoramuses who thought you could enter one of the oldest, proudest civilizations in the world, lay bare it's institutions, get control of its vital assets (this was clear from Day One of the occupation, btw, so claims of ignorance won't wash) deprive its citizens of electricity (even to this day!), water, respect (at home and in prison) and the right to live without the fear of a bomb going off any given hour in their neighbourhood -- all completely forseeable and predicted outcomes to the occupation -- and install a democracy in its place (with the spoils of the war of course by now firmly in you-know-who's hands ??