MAQzine

IMF seeks illiterate Pak September 24, 2010 THE countrywide protests by public sector universities reflect the extent to which the government and its IMF-thrust economic managers are prepared to destroy the quality of life for most Pakistanis by depriving them of higher education. For the members of the Federation of All Pakistan University Academic Staff Associations (FAPUASA) calling for a strike is no easy move and such calls may backfire. However, the unanimity of the present protest shows how threatened these public sector universities feel.   Nor are they wrong. A statement issued by the IMF-approved Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, Dr Haq declared rather imperiously that the country was facing a budgetary crunch and therefore development allocations had to be cut. Now if he was actually concerned about the future of Pakistan and not desperate to make it a country where only the rich under an exploitative capitalist system survive and thrive, he would have advo...

Three Steps to Establish a Politics of Global Warming by Bill McKibben Try to fit these facts together: *  According  to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the planet has just come through the warmest decade, the warmest 12 months, the warmest six months, and the warmest April, May, and June on record. * A "staggering" new  study  from Canadian researchers has shown that warmer seawater has reduced phytoplankton, the base of the marine food chain, by 40% since 1950. *  Nine nations  have so far set their all-time temperature records in 2010, including Russia (111 degrees), Niger (118), Sudan (121), Saudi Arabia and Iraq (126 apiece), and Pakistan, which also set the  new all-time Asia record  in May: a hair under 130 degrees. I can turn my oven to 130 degrees. * And then, in late July, the U.S. Senate decided to do exactly nothing about climate change. They didn't do less than they could have -- they did  nothing , pr...

By  Khaled Ahmed June 13, 2010 Ayesha Siddiqa in her June 6 column in  The Express Tribune  made a very interesting comparison between Pakistan and Israel: both were supposedly formed on the basis of religion, both are national security states with illegal nukes and are internationally isolated. The comparison is favourable to neither. There are minor differences, however. Pakistan has a constitution which says it is a religious state. Israel doesn’t have a constitution, so its legal status is undecided. But were the two demanded in the name of religion? It is not certain. The only document that lays out the nature of the Israeli state is proclamation of  Madinat Yisrael  of 1948. (Stat e  in Hebrew is madina!) This is the proclamation about the foundation of the state. It speaks of Israel as a homeland of all Jews. It says the values of the state of Israel will be based on the teachings of the Hebrew Prophets. The Proclamation of Independence, read over ...

May 18, 2010 Hatred Rising By KATHY KELLY and JOSH BROLLIER Islamabad. O n May 12th, the day after a U.S. drone strike killed 24 people in Pakistan’s North Waziristan, two men from the area agreed to tell us their perspective as eyewitnesses of previous drone strikes. One is a journalist, Safdar Dawar, General Secretary of the Tribal Union of Journalists. Journalists are operating under very difficult circumstances in the area, pressured by both militant groups and the Pakistani government. Six of his colleagues have been killed while reporting in North and South Waziristan. The other man, who asked us not to disclose his name, is from Miranshah city, the epicenter of North Waziristan. He works with the locally based Waziristan Relief Agency, a group of people committed to helping the victims of drone attacks and military actions. “If people need blood or medicine or have to go to Peshawar or some other hospital,” said the social worker, “I’m known for helping them. I also try to a...

By Ardeshir Cowasjee  Sunday, 16 May, 2010 A common reaction to the almost universal conclusion that one of Pakistan’s main exports is terrorism — bolstered by the latest would-be hero of Times Square who fortunately failed — is that the larger majority of the Pakistani nation and its would-be leadership exist in a state of denial.   Apart from the fact that most deny historical fact with impunity the trend is to ignore the mote in one’s eye and focus on how mean and nasty is the rest of the world by its censure of many of the country’s inadequacies. By far the most sensible reactions to the incompetent bomb-maker (by design or accident one does not know) come from Pakistanis in America, many naturalised US citizens.  They are puzzled as to why a seemingly well-educated well-settled man, albeit of apparently modest means, would be prompted to attempt to kill and maim fellow citizens — or to even merely make a statement (if that is what he was doing).  One e-ma...

Posted By Shahid R. Siddiqi On October 6, 2009 - - - - - - o o o - - - - - - This article was first published at Axis of Logic - - - - - - o o o - - - - - - Driven by paranoia with resurgent Islam as a threat to the established social order in the West and their obsession to control this very important oil rich region, American strategists have toyed with the idea of redrawing political boundaries of Islamic states along ethnic lines. The American attack on Afghanistan and Iraq on false pretexts of ‘war on terror’ was the initiation of this strategy. Now they seek to legitimize their actions by labeling them as efforts to dispense justice for ‘oppressed Muslim minorities’. - - - - - - o o o - - - - - - They believe that smaller entities would be easier to micromanage through puppet regimes, enabling them to contain militancy and squeeze into extinction Jehadi outfits by choking their funding. - - - - - - o o o - - - - - - This ‘remapping’ involves splintering the Muslim w...