The World We Live In !!

On July 26, 1955 a baby boy was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. The boy had a privileged childhood. At that time no one knew that this kid would some day become the president of Pakistan and would chant the slogan of Pakistan Khappay!

Yes! The boy was none other than Asif Ali Zardari son of Hakim Ali Zardari. He comes from a prominent Baloch family from Sindh. He received his primary education at the Karachi Grammar School and his secondary education at Cadet College Petaro. It is said though not verified from any authentic source that he pursued his further education in London where he studied Business.

“While there he attended the London School of Business Studies and received a Bachelor of Education degree. His official biography says he attended a commercial college called Pedinton School. But a search of tertiary educational institutions in London showed no such school, and associates said he did not finish his studies,” said the NYT report by Jane Perlez.

It quoted Zardari as saying: “I do have a degree. That is not an issue. I attended the London School of Business Studies much before I was married. I think it’s a B Ed degree. I haven’t really looked at it.” Say it again Mr. President! Pakistan Khappay! Read more…

I had been banned from Facebook and my account had been disabled a night before Facebook was banned in Pakistan. Before all this happened, I visited the blasphemous page “Draw Muhammad Day” and the content on the page hurt me badly. Once again a certain group of westerners called it the “freedom of expression” and went on to show extremism – something they always verbally disassociate themselves from. As a response to this lunacy, I thought it best to find out how they respond to others’ right of freedom of expression – I created an Adolf Hitler page right away and it read, “To all those who think they can ridicule Islam in the name of freedom of expression and yet punish those who speak of the genius of Hitler”. The comment on the wall read, “Let’s hit them where it hurts them the most”. Further I added some photos of the Fuhrer, Nazi Party and the Italian Footballer Paolo Di Canio who was banned and fined by FIFA two years ago for performing the “controversial” Roman Salute which according to him gave him a sense of belonging to his people. Within an hour tens of people joined the Hitler page which was named “H | T L E R”. The very next time I tried to log in I found out that my profile had been disabled for ‘violation of Facebook Regulations’.

Despite the fact that there exists no proof of the holocaust and no evidence that six million Jews died in concentration camps during WWII, let’s just imagine that it did happen. Now how is it that Hitler is termed as the most evil person in the history of mankind while those that bomb Muslims, commit heinous crimes in their countries, ridicule their Prophet and Quran and as a result hurt the sentiments of 1.2 billion Muslims are hailed as heroes? And I wonder why the victims of Holocaust are more important than victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Read more…

A resident of Swat, who claims to have prepared the fake video of flogging of a girl in Swat, has termed it drama and revealed that he received Rs0.5 million for doing so before the launch of military operation ‘Rah-e-Rast’.

Before the operation ‘Rah-e-Rast’, an NGO financed preparation of fake video of flogging in which they portrayed the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) members flogging a woman. The provincial government and Malakand Commissioner Syed Muhammad Javed ordered investigations and sought report from the authorities concerned.

After the successful operation in Malakand division, the law-enforcement agencies had arrested the children who were present in the video while a resident of Swat was apprehended by Kohat administration. The children and the arrested man revealed that the video was fake and said that it was made on the demand of Islamabad-based NGO which provided him Rs0.5 million.

Sources revealed that woman who was flogged in the video was also arrested and she revealed that she had received Rs0.1 million while Rs50,000 were given to each child. Sources said that the NGO produced the video to defame the country’s integrity and respect.

Sources stated that the law-enforcement agencies dispatched the report about the arrests of the culprits and proposed action against the NGO. They also said that the security agencies also apprehended the TTP workers who flogged the people.

Source :- The News

Muslims are numerous but powerless. Divisions among Muslims, especially between Sunni and Shi’ites, have consigned the Muslim Middle East to almost a century of Western control. Muslims cannot even play together. The Islamic Solidarity Games, a regional version of the Olympics, which were to be held in April in Iran, have been cancelled, because the Iranians and the Arabs cannot agree on whether to call the body of water that separates Iran from the Arabian Peninsula the Persian Gulf or the Arabian Gulf.

Muslim disunity has made it possible for Israel to dispossess the Palestinians, for the U.S. to invade Iraq, and for the U.S. to rule much of the region through puppets. For example, in exchange for faithful service, Egypt receives $1.5 billion a year from Washington, which enables President Mubarak to buy off opposition. The opposition had rather have the money than support the Palestinians. Therefore, Egypt cooperates with Israel and the U.S. in the blockade of Gaza.

Another factor is the willingness of some Muslims to betray their own kind for U.S. dollars. Don’t take my word for it. Listen to neoconservative Kenneth Timmerman, head of the Foundation for Democracy, which describes itself as “a private, non-profit organization established in 1995 with grants from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) to promote democracy and internationally-recognized standards of human rights in Iran.”

by Paul Craig Roberts

Read more…

A private company owned by President Asif Ali Zardari and his son Bilawal Zardari purchased 2,460 Kanals (307 acres) of prime land in Islamabad in March 2009.

Valued at a CDA price of over Rs 2 billion, for a mere Rs 62 million, proving after a long wait that a 1997 NAB reference against Zardari for the same deal was justified, but had to be dropped then for lack of some missing links.

The deal which Zardari was accused of in 1997, was thus completed this March, 15 years later, after a complex process of legal cases, suits and counter-suits, between a person once declared by the then government as a front man of Asif Ali Zardari, another person believed to be closely associated with the president and a private company that is jointly owned by the president, his son and a few others.

Documents and legal papers, including the sale deed and court judgments given by the PCO-led Islamabad High Court, available with The News, prove that a Karachi-based private company, Park Lane Estates (Pvt) Ltd, purchased almost 2,500 Kanals of land near Sangjani from Faisal Sakhi Butt, who himself purchased the land from a Pakistani-American living in Houston, USA, named Muhammad Nasir Khan, for merely Rs 62 million. Nasir Khan was the original purchaser of this land in 1994 and was declared to be the front man of Zardari in the Ehtesab Bureau reference filed against him in 1997.

The latest officially CDA-assessed price of similar land, adjacent to the land in question, is Rs 850,000 per Kanal. If the Park Lane land is assessed on the basis of the rate fixed by the CDA, its market valuewould be around Rs 2 billion for the entire lot. A big chunk of land, adjacent to the presidentís land, is being acquired by the CDA at this rate although Zardari and his company got it for only Rs 25,000 per Kanal, a magic deal by all standards.

However, what is important to note is the fact that all the legal requirements were met in the purchase and transfer of this land to Park Lane Estates Pvt Ltd.

According to the Form-A Annual Return of this company, its share capital, as reflected in the SECP record, shows it has 120,000 shares of which Asif Ali Zardari and Bilawal Ali Zardari own 30,000 shares each. Zardari is shown as a Director and his son as a member with four others who appear as members and debenture holders.

Another man closely associated with Zardari, Muhammad Iqbal Memon of Federal B Area Karachi, is not only the Chief Executive of the company but is also reflected as its director besides owning 30,000 shares. Three other persons with the same address as that of Iqbal Memon own the remaining 30,000 shares. Memon was himself a much wanted man after the dismissal of the second Benazir government.

Besides President Zardari and Muhammad Iqbal Memon, the other directors are Rahmatullah Habib, Muhammad Younus and Altaf Hussain. All these directors and Bilawal Ali Zardari own the total 120,000 shares of the company as on August 31, 2008.

Read more…

ISLAMABAD: Acting Attorney General Shah Khaver presented National Accountability Bureau (NAB) report regarding Swiss banks accounts to the Supreme Court (SC), Geo News reported Tuesday.

According to the NAB reports, there are at least six foreign bank accounts maintained by President Asif Ali Zardari and Benazir Bhutto. There are at least 13,113,000 dollars in these foreign bank accounts.

There are at least 46,343,353 dollars in the accounts of 5 companies owned by President Zardari and a company of Benazir Bhutto.

The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) also presented to the apex court all the record from Geneva court in connection with the Swiss cases.

Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif’s counsel Ashtar Ausaf supported the arguments put forward by Abdul Hafeez in the court.

Acting AG said this is not an opportune time for allowing any upheaval to take place. On this, Justice Khalilur Rehman Ramday said stemming the crimes do not pave the way for any upheaval. Read more…

India is condemning another generation to brain damage, poor education and early death by failing to meet its targets for tackling the malnutrition that affects almost half of its children, a study backed by the British Government concluded a week ago.

The country is an “economic powerhouse but a nutritional weakling”, said the report by the British-based Institute of Development Studies (IDS), which incorporated papers by more than 20 India analysts. It said that despite India’s recent economic boom, at least 46 per cent of children up to the age of 3 still suffer from malnutrition, making the country home to a third of the world’s malnourished children. The UN defines malnutrition as a state in which an individual can no longer maintain natural bodily capacities such as growth, pregnancy, lactation, learning abilities, physical work and resisting and recovering from disease.

In 2001, India committed to the UN Millennium Development Goal of halving its number of hungry by 2015. China has already met its target. India, though, will not meet its goal until 2043, based on its current rate of progress, the IDS report concluded.

“It’s the contrast between India’s fantastic economic growth and its persistent malnutrition which is so shocking,” Lawrence Haddad, director of the IDS, told The Times. He said that an average of 6,000 children died every day in India; 2,000-3,000 of them from malnutrition. Read more…

It seems that the biggest democracy has its own way of treating prisoners, especially from the neighboring country. I am referring to Jamil Khan, whose coffin was handed over to Pakistani authorities by the Indians. As always they all die there of natural causes, as our neighbor claim. The unfortunate soul, hailing from Baluchistan was on a trip to Sindh when he somehow crossed the forbidden line, 18 years back. With no real charge sheet he was sentenced to 5 year in prison, but after 18 years instead of shame on still holding him illegally, his tortured body was sent back to his relatives.

This is not the first time that an episode like this has taken place, rather it has become a custom that any captured Pakistani will seldom make it back in full shape. Numerous reports are there where the bodies have been found with drilling and burn marks all over them.

May be the champions of human right, secularism and democracy can shed some light on this treatment, which is a clear demonstration of extremism in their ranks. Our hearts go out with the family, but one feels that at least this ended his ordeal by the hands of Indians.

May be Mr. Ansar Burni gets some thing out of his news. Until now he has earned laughter for campaigning to release proved spies, why not earn some respect by highlighting the sad and brutal stories of people like Jamil Khan?

Article By :- Hamid Abbasi

Image: Dawn

The tragic case of Saad Khan, a 32-year old contestant on a Pakistani game show being filmed in Thailand who died while taking part in one of the show’s stunts, highlights the serious issue of safety and regulation in the Pakistani media.

The days of one state-controlled channel informing the obedient nation of what the president did today or which foreign dignitaries the prime minister entertained are long gone. Pakistan’s media scene has transformed over the past decade – and generally for the better. It’s a good thing that there are now dozens of television channels all competing for our attention. With just a few clicks of your remote, you can flick between the latest Bollywood blockbuster, a stern sermonising maulvi, fiery political pundits railing against the government, and all manner of foreign content.

There’s a mass of programming out there and every channel executive is eager for your viewing loyalty – more viewers mean more revenue generated from advertisers. For the most part, advertising is the primary source of income for channels and thus they are exploring ever more sensational ways to secure that money along with their survival in an increasingly ruthless market. Read more…