How real is your politik? #168 Posted by masadi on August 29, 2008 1:20:12 pm
#175 Posted by masadi on August 29, 2008 7:30:38 pm

First thing you need to do is get some proper sleep. I see that you had less than 6 hours... Not good, not good!
good sleep will clear up your mind.

How real is your politik? #158 Posted by masadi
“Lately you have been coming up with one nonsense post after another.”

The problem is not my ethnicity, it is the reverse. There is no logic beyond the one that any Pakistani-meeting certain criteria- has the right to contest elections for the post of the President. Since Zadari is not disqualified by any court yet, he is fully qualified to become the President after he wins the elections and only dense can’t figure this out. The arguments about who is the bigger thug or a smaller thug are not mentioned in the constitution neither they stopped bigger thugs before him from becoming the President.

You are just showing your own biases and nothing else. But yes you have a right to oppose him or vote against him and that is it.

Now I am tired of explaining this simple thing to you and people like you.

How real is your politik? #141 Posted by bulleya

I understand your frustration at the idea that a commoner who spent most of early life near cinema gatekeepers and helping the projector operators would bring people like him in the President House.

Badmaash are those that kill Prime Ministers and the former PMs. Badmaash are those that beat up the CJ and Badmaash are those who break the laws and the constitutions. We need people like Zardari to break the monopoly of the serial badmaash from the President House. Yes, they will fight back and yes, they will kill him too but hopefully not before he gives them a taste of what common folks in the country look like.

I don't support any of his political stand but I would love to see him in there just to ruin the establishment party.
If he wins the elections, he will be more legit than any President before him. Suck on it!

How real is your politik?
The problem is not missionaries in India, It is the overall political turn of the country with emphasis on the religious and sectarian identity.

The rise in religious identity politics saw manifold increase in sectarianism in Pakistan. In India the same religious identity politics would result in increase in clashes between the followers of different religions. Taliban come in many forms and shapes.

How real is your politik? #113 Posted by masadi

“Further he is putting his life on the line just as much as Musharraf, and Zia put their lives on the line. His 'life on the line' is not for the people or of the caliber of ZAB. It might be that you are making ethnicity a factor in your judgment?”

I will ignore the cheap shot about the ethnicity but equating Zardari with the likes of Musharraf and Zia is repugnant. No matter how you present the case, he will still come out a whole lot better, humane and closer to people than those two ever were.

Zadari certainly will have a hard time getting to the President House and even harder time after that but he is one person to ruin the 60 years long establishment party in Islamabad. You have no idea how crude this man is and how much he will degrade the social life the establishment stalwarts and the army Generals love. Once he is in the President House, I doubt any army officer would accept a promotion which might place him in the vicinity of the President House. We need people like him and some more like him and Laloos in the President House. The elite party has gone on for too long.

If ZAB had any love for the people, he would have done something substantial for them when he was in power. Politicians don’t die for the people. Get out of the clichéd world!

How real is your politik? #129 Posted by masadi
“The SU was a state capitalist system that got busy with the dynamic of US sponsored militarism.”

That is very true. State capitalism was run by a bunch of bureaucrats hiding behind an ideology that they did not believe in. Still the system not only survived the initial shock years of revolution and the civil wars from 1920s to the Second World War. The system also survived the Second World War, which in itself is a major tribute to the system. The Soviets had a relatively calm period from 1950 onwards but the desire of expansion led to incorporating many countries and areas in the Empire. The Soviet system practically sustained these parasite economies too. The cold war with the richest nations of the world finally forced the switch to a defense production economy. When you have 80% resources allocated to defense production, the other areas would begin to crumble fast.

We saw the US economic malaise of the 70s due to the Vietnam and ME wars. We are again witnessing US economy choking and coughing under the weight of an expensive war. The SU, eons behind the US in every which way, had to compete with not only the US but the other next six or seven economies for the survival. Despite all that, many former Soviet block countries (parasite economies) still have better economic conditions than most third world countries. So there must be something right about the system.

The SU practically forced health care reforms in many capitalist countries and in many places the industrialist nations pretty much copied the Soviet health care and social welfare systems.

Currently, after the Russians cut down on the defense expenses, it did not take that country long to get back to a politically prominent position based on the infra and the super structure developed by the state capitalist system from the 50s to the 90s.

I recently saw a report which tells us that India had done more towards poverty alleviation between the 50s and the 80s than in the so called shinning years from 1990 to 2007.

How real is your politik? #94 Shandana

“one who 'takes it like a man'. whether taking it like a man (as opposed to...?) is a good thing is neither here nor there”

Shandana,
A few years back, I was having drinks with some friends in a bar. For some reason, I addressed God as he. One feminist jumped on me and said, so now God is a man. I said yes, because I believe he has a penis. If you think god has a vagina then you address god as she. We would decide later if the god turns out to be a transvestite. There is nothing in semantics. A woman can be a crook and take it like a woman or womanly. It is not about neither here or there. There are several kinds of corruption and I don’t have to list them all here. Financial corruption is just one of them. It is NOT the only thing. So, he made some money…Big deal! Even the people who make a big deal out of it in the media live off lifafas. Instead of taking digs at Zardari, they perhaps first take digs at themselves and then the army Generals and then all the government employees in the country and move further down the chain and take digs at every one with some education in the country.

As for as his mental condition and the FT article are concerned, pick me a guy off the street in Karachi and I will have twenty psychiatrist, psychologist, even palmist, and astrologist declaring him mentally unstable. Don’t even think for a second because the white professional declared him a psycho, they were not doing favors to someone. Plenty of white professional are crooks.

Do you really think Musharraf, Zia and Yayha were mentally fit to lead the country and were not Psychos themselves? You don’t even need an expert opinion to figure out how much the country suffered from their psychological and mental unstableness. These freebooters and freeloaders have screwed the country and you are worried about Zardari. He can’t do worse than the psychos who controlled the country for the last sixty years and are still doing it.
As I had written somewhere else, they already have justifications for his dismissals before he has even taken oath. Articles like yours just help the narrative.

#107 Posted by masadi
“You are absolving the crookedness of Zardari by claiming that Pakistan is crooked. I think you have reversed the direction of determination. Pakistan is crooked because of people like Zardari and their sucking on the blood of the people.”

I guess I have to now come to Lahore and re-educate you in crookedness of the masses and the elites.

After years of talking about the power elites, you come back to me with an elitist opinion and think that I am absolving someone. For a Hari and a landless peasant everyone above him is crooked, rich, and cruel. Go talk to someone and he will give you the gory details of how the crooks fk his life. Pakistan is not crooked because of Zardari. Pakistan is crooked because that is the system Pakistan’s ‘power elite’ chose. Zardari is part of the system like most in Pakistan. There is reality, then there is make believe, and I live in a real world. Corruption is never a disqualification in Pakistan. If it were, we would have to import yajooj majooj to run the country. Zardari literally is putting his life on the line and it will be a miracle if he will come out alive from the President House.

How real is your politik? #80 Posted by shandana

Thank you for providing the link. Can we compare the ferociousness of this article and the docility of that one? But don’t feel bad, you are not the only one. We have a whole class that forgets about democracy, corruption, and the qualifications when an army officer takes over. Then the same people turn around, convert into the constitutionalists, cucumber cool democrats, and have an indestructible desire to ensure cleanliness and non-corruption in politics as soon as the civilians find a way to remove the army officers from the power.

There is no balance, there is no decency, and there is no sense of proportion in this class. Being crook is the nature of the Western democracy and its practitioners. You want western democracy; you live with its weaknesses too.

Do you remember the famous ‘I-am-not-a-crook’ President of the US? Even the most enlightened, the most experienced and the most educated voters make mistakes. But interestingly, only people who make mistakes in Pakistan are the most educated and the most enlightened. They have no experience in democracy and they never vote. Still they become the first to judge the politicians based on their own gullibility.

Zardari is not the right candidate for better conditions. I hope we had a better candidate but the other one Saeed Siddiqui is not right either in the current circumstances. Saeed would have made a great President in a set up where democracy is not threatened every night by the uncouth army officers. At this time, Zardari is it and let us live with it and keep the public pressure on him. He is already under pressure and can’t do worse than Musharraf or Zia.

Apparently, he is way smarter than both of them who placed Pakistan in seemingly irreparable position. Sometimes crooks do a better job of dealing with the other crooks.

A REAL Bloke does NOT whine when he's crook. He takes it like a man. That is Zardari for you. Crookedness is in both Pakistan and Zardari’s nature, live with that!

How real is your politik? "now he has the 6 (0) Million dollar man to guide him. Asif/Atlaf dosthi zindabad "

That is just the tip of the iceberg! Anyway...Birds of a feather. Pir sahib has done very well for himself in the same time frame. Maybe we should find out who hit the aarb paati in $ point first! Pir sahib will probably beat the 10% hands down there.

How real is your politik? Arif,
I only like to visit peaceful people..Not the 90 types..sorry. I decline!
Btw, I passed by there one night at about 2 AM and the whole area is changed with the big gate and all that. Does pir sain own everything there now?

How real is your politik? If I had known you lived close by, I would have met you when I was in Karachi in Feb. Well hopefully on the next visit.

How real is your politik? Nothing...Just that our family home is near there too.

How real is your politik? "Agha Siraj Durrani. He's actually the one who delivered PPP to Asif Zardari "

Agha Siraj Delivered PPP to Zadari???He might have lived in your neighborhood but you don't know squat about him.
Btw, Where is your house on Khayaban-e-Mujahid?

How real is your politik? “He has no political legitimacy; a representative democracy means power is conferred through election not (un)natural selection. He has a dodgy track record; his stints as minister for the environment and investments under previous PPP governments were marred by allegations of corruption that still refuse to go away. He lacks consistency and hence credibility: The judiciary is not a real issue…Sure we’ll restore the judiciary…We’ll restore it right now…We’ll restore it later…Judy Who?”

Shadana calls them her simple reasons. Where were these reasons when Musharraf usurped power, destroyed a duly elected government, and dismissed a duly elected President? Did shanada write an article about Musharraf’s non-experience in anything related to Pakistani politics? Has Shadana written an article about how Gen. Musharraf got the property in Islamabad and where did he get the money to spend on that luxurious villa?

Ms. Minhas missed many opportunities before that too. Zia was a son of a Tailoring shop owner. His family is now one of the richest families in Pakistan. Gen. Akhtar Abdul Rehman the ISI chief during the Zia era grew up in a two-bedroom house of mud with thatched roof. His family too is one of the richest families in Pakistan. Has anyone seen the House Ayub Khan was born in and grew up in Hazara? Can Ms. Minhas show even a single line she wrote about what the generals did to the country? She is jumping up and down now because Zardari is a civilian and is following the process of legitimate elections to become the President.

He is not trying to enter the President house behind the barrel of a gun, he is not trying to enter the President house in the dark of the night, and he has not asked his troops (the PPP workers) to climb the walls of the President House, the PM house, and TV stations.

Ms. Minhas never had any simple reason to say anything about all those Generals and the Bureaucrats who ruled Pakistan, treating it like their fiefdom. She actually admired them but when we come down to a politician and a civilian who is following all the election laws to become the President, she comes up with several simple reasons. Hypocrisy is thy middle name!

She is not happy that Judges are not restored but did she write an article asking Musharraf to restore judges? Did she condemn him for dismissing the Judges in the first place? No, she never did but now restoration of judges is one of her simple reasons.

Zardari has a dodgy track record? How is that so? His every action is out there in the open. People know everything about his corruption, his relations with his wife and how he and his wife were forced to have sex in prison cells. People also know that he was arrested after the Benazir’s government was dismissed on 1990(?) when they should have arrested Benazir who was the PM. They even talk about the time when he beat up his wife and they even know about the period they were separated because of marital problems. Is there anything that people don’t know about him? Where is the dodge here?

How much people knew about Ayub, Zia or Musharraf before they took over the country? Why their lives and their family lives are still state secrets and why they were never placed before any court? Does Ms. Minhas even know what dodgy means?

Clearly, Ms. Minhas have NO clue about the Judges issue. Even if she did, she would have blamed Zadari for restoring the corrupt judges too.

Let us get off these high horses and understand the reality in Pakistan. After living in the hell of dictatorships for fifty years, you are not going to have perfection overnight. There is going to be a transition period. The two hundred years of democracy is still not perfect in the US. There was no universal suffrage in the US for the first 100 years of the democracy. Check out the British democracy even older than the US democracy and see for yourself how perfect that democracy is.

If Zardari wins elections fairly, he has the legitimate right to remain President of Pakistan until the next elections.
Take him to courts over his corruption and let the courts decide! That is democracy!

Writings on the Wall
Instead of cliches and other things, ask Altaf Hussain why he nominated him...

Ahmed Faraz: The Light Stays
This is about a poet Ahmed Faraz. Not about Kashmir and some other dispute. Don't you have little decency?

I request Chowk staff to please remove all these posts below about Kashmir and what not.

Chowk has decided to publish this tribute to the greatest Urdu poet of our times, now chowkstaff should at least show some respect to him too.
Please remove the posts below!