"If we are only judged by our worst moment, there would be no need for the song Amazing Grace."
-- A Bend in the River
"It is what they do that makes them good or bad. A moment of love, even in a bad man, can give meaning to a life. None of us knows whose path will lead us to God."
-- Blood Diamond
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Monday, November 10, 2008
The quality without a name
This wild freedom, this passion, comes into our lives in the instant we let go.
It is when all our forces can move freely in us. In nature, this quality is almost automatic, because there are no images to interfere with natural processes of making things. But in all of our creations, the possibility occurs that images can interfere with the natural, necessary order of a thing. And, most of all, this way that images distort the things we make, is familiar in ourselves. For we ourselves are, like our works, the products of our own creation. And we are only free, and have the quality without a name in us, when we give up the images which guide our lives.
Yet each of us faces the fear of letting go. The fear of being just exactly what one is, of letting the forces flow freely; of letting the configuration of one's person adjust truly to these forces. Our letting go is stifled, all the time, so long as we have ideas and opinions about ourselves, which make us hug too tightly to our images of how we live, and bottle up these forces.
So long as we are still bottled up, like this, there is a tightness about the mouth, a nervous tension in the eyes, a stiffness and a brittleness in the way we walk, the way we move. And yet, until one does let go, it is impossible to be alive. The stereotypes are restricted; there are very different configurations. The infinite variety of actual people, with their vastly and utterly different forces, require a huge creation, to find the resolution of the person: and in finding this resolution truly, one must above all be free of the stereotypes.
The great film, Ikiru - to live - describes it in the life of an old man
He has sat for thirty years behind a counter, preventing things from happening. And then he finds out that he is to die of cancer of the stomach, in six months. He tries to live; he seeks enjoyment; it doesn't amount to much. And finally, against all obstacles, he helps to make a park in a dirty slum in Tokyo. He has lost his fear, because he knows that he is going to die; he works and works and works, there is no stopping him, because he is no longer afraid of anyone, or anything. He has no longer anything to lose, and so in this short time gains everything; and then dies, in the snow, swinging on a child's swing in the park which he has made, and singing.
(…)
It has above all to do with the elements
The wind, the soft rain; sitting on the back of an old truck moving clothes and baskets of possessions while the gentle rain is falling, laughing, crouching under a shawl to keep from getting wet, but getting wet. Eating a loaf of bread, torn in pieces, hunks of cheese cut crudely with a hatchet which is lying in the corner; red flowers glistening in the rain along the roadside; banging on the window of the truck to shout some joke.
Nothing to keep, nothing to lose. No possessions, no security, no concern about possessions, and no concern about security; in this mood it is possible to do exactly what makes sense, and nothing else: there are no hidden fears, no morals, no rules, no undercurrent of constraint, no subtle sense of concern for the form of what the people round about you are doing, and above all no concern for what you are yourself, no subtle fear of other people's ridicule, no subtle train of fears which can connect the smallest triviality with bankruptcy and loss of love and loss of friends and death, no ties, no suits, no outward elements of majesty at all. Only the laughter and the rain.
-- Ch. 3, "Being Alive", "The Timeless Way of Building" by Christopher Alexander, OUP New York, 1979
It is when all our forces can move freely in us. In nature, this quality is almost automatic, because there are no images to interfere with natural processes of making things. But in all of our creations, the possibility occurs that images can interfere with the natural, necessary order of a thing. And, most of all, this way that images distort the things we make, is familiar in ourselves. For we ourselves are, like our works, the products of our own creation. And we are only free, and have the quality without a name in us, when we give up the images which guide our lives.
Yet each of us faces the fear of letting go. The fear of being just exactly what one is, of letting the forces flow freely; of letting the configuration of one's person adjust truly to these forces. Our letting go is stifled, all the time, so long as we have ideas and opinions about ourselves, which make us hug too tightly to our images of how we live, and bottle up these forces.
So long as we are still bottled up, like this, there is a tightness about the mouth, a nervous tension in the eyes, a stiffness and a brittleness in the way we walk, the way we move. And yet, until one does let go, it is impossible to be alive. The stereotypes are restricted; there are very different configurations. The infinite variety of actual people, with their vastly and utterly different forces, require a huge creation, to find the resolution of the person: and in finding this resolution truly, one must above all be free of the stereotypes.
The great film, Ikiru - to live - describes it in the life of an old man
He has sat for thirty years behind a counter, preventing things from happening. And then he finds out that he is to die of cancer of the stomach, in six months. He tries to live; he seeks enjoyment; it doesn't amount to much. And finally, against all obstacles, he helps to make a park in a dirty slum in Tokyo. He has lost his fear, because he knows that he is going to die; he works and works and works, there is no stopping him, because he is no longer afraid of anyone, or anything. He has no longer anything to lose, and so in this short time gains everything; and then dies, in the snow, swinging on a child's swing in the park which he has made, and singing.
(…)
It has above all to do with the elements
The wind, the soft rain; sitting on the back of an old truck moving clothes and baskets of possessions while the gentle rain is falling, laughing, crouching under a shawl to keep from getting wet, but getting wet. Eating a loaf of bread, torn in pieces, hunks of cheese cut crudely with a hatchet which is lying in the corner; red flowers glistening in the rain along the roadside; banging on the window of the truck to shout some joke.
Nothing to keep, nothing to lose. No possessions, no security, no concern about possessions, and no concern about security; in this mood it is possible to do exactly what makes sense, and nothing else: there are no hidden fears, no morals, no rules, no undercurrent of constraint, no subtle sense of concern for the form of what the people round about you are doing, and above all no concern for what you are yourself, no subtle fear of other people's ridicule, no subtle train of fears which can connect the smallest triviality with bankruptcy and loss of love and loss of friends and death, no ties, no suits, no outward elements of majesty at all. Only the laughter and the rain.
-- Ch. 3, "Being Alive", "The Timeless Way of Building" by Christopher Alexander, OUP New York, 1979
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Update on Makli
I asked a friend's uncle, who is fairly active in local politics in Sindh, to ask around about the Makli business.
He was in Thatta last Sunday and had the opportunity to talk to people on both sides of the issue.
Palejo recently built something like a dyke to protect his land during heavy rainfall. Dr. Awab reported on his blog (see link above) that it was a drain. In any case, some kind of earthen construction that seems to have upped the ante - allegedly by damaging some of the artefacts in the Makli cemetry and possibly also by more clearly defining the extent of Palejo's land claim.
Palejo questions why only he is being held accountable on the issue and claims that it is no more than blackmail. In fact, he has sued Sindh TV (a private channel) and claimed that various journalists have tried to blackmail him on this issue. My interlocutor reminded me at this point that while the policeman was able to extort money from pretty much anyone in Pakistan, journalists as a body are the only segment who actually blackmail policemen, and that too on a regular basis - hence lending a general sort of credence to Palejo's claim.
It seems to be general knowledge that many other sites of historical interest have been damaged/violated through similar allotments.
Apparently, however, the Sindh Archives/Culture/Arhaeology people have said that the land belongs to the Palejo family, while the nationalist people feel that all such allotments, infringing on historical sites, are illegal.
The problem is that Sassi Palejo (a close relative of Ghulam Qadir's) is the Sindh Culture Minister and may have leaned on her ministry/department to issue a statement favourable to her family's interests.
The solution seems to lie in a full review of all historical sites in Sindh, investigation of all claims of expropriation/squatting and fair judgments in each case.
Pipe dream?
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Truth & forgiveness
So many things about the 2005 film The Interpreter really bugged me - it was too typically Hollywood in its soundtrack and pan shots, the way it lionised Sean Penn (then in the limelight for all the accolades he was winning for Mystic River) the character actor, rather than letting him act out his role, and perhaps most of all, the fact that the camera just couldn't seem to get over the fact that Nicole Kidman looked drop-dead beautiful. And I'd better not get started about how the film almost exclusively presents the white farmers' case in Zimbabwe (in the film, the African portions unfold in a fictional country called Matobo). All of which meant that, out of sheer irritation at a great opportunity lost, I had more or less forgotten some pretty neat stuff.
Truth:
"The gunfire around us makes it hard to hear. But the human voice is different from other sounds. It can be heard over noises that bury everything else. Even when it's not shouting. Even when it's just a whisper. Even the lowest whisper can be heard - over armies... when it's telling the truth." -- the foreword of the autobiography that the fictional president and liberation leader of Matobo is supposed to have written.
Forgiveness:
"Everyone who loses somebody wants revenge on someone, on God if they can't find anyone else. But in Africa, in Matobo, the Ku believe that the only way to end grief is to save a life. If someone is murdered, a year of mourning ends with a ritual that we call the Drowning Man Trial. There's an all-night party beside a river. At dawn, the killer is put in a boat. He's taken out on the water and he's dropped. He's bound so that he can't swim. The family of the dead then has to make a choice. They can let him drown or they can swim out and save him. The Ku believe that if the family lets the killer drown, they'll have justice but spend the rest of their lives in mourning. But if they save him, if they admit that life isn't always just... that very act can take away their sorrow."
How can we carry word to the ignorant armies within?
Truth:
"The gunfire around us makes it hard to hear. But the human voice is different from other sounds. It can be heard over noises that bury everything else. Even when it's not shouting. Even when it's just a whisper. Even the lowest whisper can be heard - over armies... when it's telling the truth." -- the foreword of the autobiography that the fictional president and liberation leader of Matobo is supposed to have written.
Forgiveness:
"Everyone who loses somebody wants revenge on someone, on God if they can't find anyone else. But in Africa, in Matobo, the Ku believe that the only way to end grief is to save a life. If someone is murdered, a year of mourning ends with a ritual that we call the Drowning Man Trial. There's an all-night party beside a river. At dawn, the killer is put in a boat. He's taken out on the water and he's dropped. He's bound so that he can't swim. The family of the dead then has to make a choice. They can let him drown or they can swim out and save him. The Ku believe that if the family lets the killer drown, they'll have justice but spend the rest of their lives in mourning. But if they save him, if they admit that life isn't always just... that very act can take away their sorrow."
How can we carry word to the ignorant armies within?
Saturday, October 04, 2008
IPSS Political School, Summer 2008
The school consisted of four sessions spread out over two days, the 23rd and 24th of August, '08.
I was lucky enough to be invited and found it a great forum for interacting with scholars and thinkers I'd heard much of (a few I'd even read) but never met or certainly not in a setting where they were so accessible.
One of the nice things about the school was that it was organised specifically with youth activists in mind, people who had participated to some extent in the groundswell of support for the movement for an independent judiciary and an end to Emergency Rule.
In addition to links to the reading material which was provided to the participants before the school, you can also listen to the sessions (both the talks and the discussions that followed) at the IPSS page. Both streaming (from imeem) and downloading from the IPSS site are supported, depending on whether you have a blazing fast connection or a slower one you can use to download the file for listening in one go (like on your mp3 player).
Friday, October 03, 2008
Dasht-e-tanhai
A friend wonders why we are afflicted with a feeling of being abnormal, of being cut off from those around us. I was reminded of something I read recently:
Seeking refuge in history, out of fear of loneliness, I immediately sought out my brother Ayn al-Quzat, who was burned to death in the very blossoming of his youth for the crime of awareness and sensitivity, for the boldness of his thought. For in an age of ignorance, awareness is itself a crime. Loftiness of spirit and fortitude of heart in the society of the oppressed and the humiliated, and, as the Buddha said, "being an island in a land of lakes," are unforgivable sins.
-- Ali Shari'ati, from the introduction to Kavir (Desert)
These Eid holidays have given me a chance to sit back and think a little, watch a little al-Jazeera too. Robert Fisk, interviewed by Riz Khan, said two very interesting things. First he said something about the most dangerous front-lines running through our minds and then he quoted Imam Ali who is supposed to have said something like "When you see another man, he is either your brother in Islam or your brother in humanity."
So, one is the message of universal brotherhood and God knows we need that to be heard and practised if we want to come out of this mess alive. The other is about the mind. Too often in the past, I've continued going through the motions, until I eventually lost steam, which would happen because I would give up mentally.
The nuclear tests in 1998, the first LFO, the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq, NGO corruption I've heard about or witnessed myself, Akbar Bugti's assassination, JI's infiltration of the PTI, the burial of five Baloch women in Naseerabad a few months ago... there's really a whole list of issues that I haven't read or written enough about. And if I can't even read about an issue, how can I possibly hope to go further and find people with whom to mount effective and long-term resistance to oppression?
So it's a mind game, first and foremost. Battle has to be joined in the solitude of one's mind.
And for that, I thank Awais Masood for leading the way with some really well thought-out posts.
So, one is the message of universal brotherhood and God knows we need that to be heard and practised if we want to come out of this mess alive. The other is about the mind. Too often in the past, I've continued going through the motions, until I eventually lost steam, which would happen because I would give up mentally.
The nuclear tests in 1998, the first LFO, the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq, NGO corruption I've heard about or witnessed myself, Akbar Bugti's assassination, JI's infiltration of the PTI, the burial of five Baloch women in Naseerabad a few months ago... there's really a whole list of issues that I haven't read or written enough about. And if I can't even read about an issue, how can I possibly hope to go further and find people with whom to mount effective and long-term resistance to oppression?
So it's a mind game, first and foremost. Battle has to be joined in the solitude of one's mind.
And for that, I thank Awais Masood for leading the way with some really well thought-out posts.
Friday, September 26, 2008
Parliamentary Procedure
Russian meetings and conventions are organized after the Continental model rather than our own. The first action is usually the election of officers and the presidium.
The presidium is a presiding committee, composed of representatives of the groups and political factions represented in the assembly, in proportion to their numbers. The presidium arranges the Order of Business, and its members can be called upon by the president to take the chair pro tem.
Each question (vopros) is stated in a general way and then debated, and at the close of the debate resolutions are submitted by the different factions, and each one voted on separately. The Order of Business can be, and usually is, smashed to pieces in the first half hour. On the plea of 'emergency', which the crowd almost always grants, anybody from the floor can get up and say anything on any subject. The crowd controls the meeting, practically the only functions of the Speaker being to keep order by ringing a little bell, and to recognize speakers. Almost all the real work of the session is done in caucuses of the different groups and political factions, which almost always cast their votes in a body and are represented by floor-leaders. The result is, however, that at every important new point, or vote, the session takes a recess to enable the different groups and political factions to hold a caucus.
The crowd is extremely noisy, cheering or heckling speakers, overriding the plans of the presidium. Among the customary cries are: 'Prosim! Please! Go on!' 'Pravilno!' or 'Eto vierno! That's true! Right!' 'Do volno! Enough!' 'Doloi! Down with him!' 'Posor! Shame!' and 'Teeshe! Silence! Not so noisy!'
-- Reed, J., Ten Days that Shook the World, Notes and Explanations, p. 23, Penguin Modern Classics, Reprinted 1970
The presidium is a presiding committee, composed of representatives of the groups and political factions represented in the assembly, in proportion to their numbers. The presidium arranges the Order of Business, and its members can be called upon by the president to take the chair pro tem.
Each question (vopros) is stated in a general way and then debated, and at the close of the debate resolutions are submitted by the different factions, and each one voted on separately. The Order of Business can be, and usually is, smashed to pieces in the first half hour. On the plea of 'emergency', which the crowd almost always grants, anybody from the floor can get up and say anything on any subject. The crowd controls the meeting, practically the only functions of the Speaker being to keep order by ringing a little bell, and to recognize speakers. Almost all the real work of the session is done in caucuses of the different groups and political factions, which almost always cast their votes in a body and are represented by floor-leaders. The result is, however, that at every important new point, or vote, the session takes a recess to enable the different groups and political factions to hold a caucus.
The crowd is extremely noisy, cheering or heckling speakers, overriding the plans of the presidium. Among the customary cries are: 'Prosim! Please! Go on!' 'Pravilno!' or 'Eto vierno! That's true! Right!' 'Do volno! Enough!' 'Doloi! Down with him!' 'Posor! Shame!' and 'Teeshe! Silence! Not so noisy!'
-- Reed, J., Ten Days that Shook the World, Notes and Explanations, p. 23, Penguin Modern Classics, Reprinted 1970
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Conversations (read bottom-up)
(4) Me:
Never made it to MIT or Harvard ( ;) ), but here's my two cents:
I am complicit in the "war on terror" inasmuch as I didn't work hard enough to start a genuine anti-war movement, neither in 2001 nor in 2003. I believed in 2001 that the "sab say pehlay Pakistan" slogan was sheer bollocks, but I didn't have the balls to act according to my beliefs.
I have never paid any taxes to the US, but I suppose every time a US-based multinational whose products I buy repatriates its profits, I end up contributing to the US economy and hence to the US-led wars. This realisation - which hit me soon after Fallujah - was one of the strongest reasons that I tried to pull out of the whole capitalist system in 2004-5, but alas, again, I was not strong enough, not ready both materially and spiritually.
But even so, I would never in a million years fight anyone else's war - and by anyone else, I mean pretty much anyone outside my family or very close circle of friends. Even there, I'd much rather be a paramedic or in civil defence. This is mainly because of my pacifist beliefs, but in the case of the war on terror, it comes from a clear conviction that these wars are as immoral as they come, the result of the worst kind of bullying and greed, a blatant grab for the world's resources - both mineral and human.
This paragraph, though, was quite the little nugget:
"I also took offense to Rakshi's statement that people only join the Army for socio-economic reasons - ABSURD!!! For many, joining or serving the armed forces is a matter of pride and honor, and for some a call of duty. In case you were unaware, for many generations the people who joined the military in Pakistan and India were from the landed gentry and deemed a noble and honorable career (you had to have a certain socio-economic status to qualify for the military). Being an officer or soldier in the armed forces is something to be proud of, and even though one may have ideological differences with those who serve in the US Armed forces, be they of American or Pakistani-American heritage, one cannot and should not rejoice or belittle their service to their country and nation. They served their nation and people proudly and should be honored and remembered for that."
It may be a matter of pride and honour for Ashfaq Kiyani or Tauqir Zia or Talat Masood - or Aziz Bhatti even - to have served in the Army. Good for them. I don't see why I should be asked to respect that when my belief system tends towards demanding an end to a world system predicated on/resulting in permanent standing armies. As for the landed gentry... I mean, really... am I now also supposed to respect someone just because he was born into a "noble" household? I do not deny the tremendous bravery required to fly a long-range bombing mission, or in being an infantry scout, or simply in being a regular soldier in a war zone. What I cannot deny, also, however, is that ever since the time of the French Revolution, war has become increasingly totalitarian, a total effort involving the civilian and military population that has led to civilians being considered fair game under the doctrine of "total warfare" - never mind all the Geneva Conventions out there. And with increased mechanisation - and computerisation of the weapons of war - we're in the process of witnessing the field-testing and perfection of the first robot warriors: the UAV's so familiar to our Pashtoon and Afghan neighbours. So now, war escapes the basic, the fundamental limit against which it used to run up in the 19th and 20th centuries: the limit to which the tolerance and gullibility of the civilian population (those contributing the foot soldiers to the war machine) could be stretched by intense state-sponsored propaganda. Now, NATO is increasingly liberated from worrying about body bags. And some research into recruitment trends since the mid-90's will easily show which social strata the US Army and Marine Corps go to for their cannon fodder: Hispanics (notably Puerto Ricans), Blacks & so-called "white trash". While you're at it, you might want to check out DARPA's huge, incredibly ambitious project to develop robotic foot soldiers, a programme which has been an area of intense research and development at the USC's (Southern Calif.) computer science (mainly AI and real-time systems) faculty.
I am deeply ashamed to belong to as jingoistic, as martial a nation as Pakistan, just as I am deeply ashamed of the terrorism carried out by both the government and the LTTE in my father's country. I am deeply ashamed of what the "Pak" Army did in East Pakistan in 1968-71 and what a detachment of the same mercenary military machine (led by the future dictator Zia-ul-Haq) did to the Palestinians in Jordan in September 1970 (the massacres they still remember as Black September). I would like dearly to send your friend a copy of the relevant chapters where Peter Ward Fay discusses of the truly mercenary nature of the armies that India and Pakistan inherited from imperial Britain. Maybe you can pass on the Google Books link: http://books.google.com.pk/books?id=Un-vVfF3f1MC&printsec=frontcover&dq=pater+ward+fay+the+forgotten+army&sig=ACfU3U0_aRgcGhySl7eA3qol6fDyNrM14w
And then there's The Garrison State. Do try to get a copy. Your library probably has it.
Of course, if one has been around military men just a little bit and has grown out of one's adolescent fetish for weapons and other manifestations of naked power, one doesn't really need books to draw the same inferences.
Nevertheless, I'm honoured that you chose to share this thread with me - and I apologise if I flew off the handle a little bit.
Aman
(3) Out of sheer courtesy, Samad forwarded me some responses he got from various friends discussing the matter. While my view was already represented among his friends, one of them went ahead and said something so outrageous, I felt I needed to respond. [scroll up]
(2) Me:
I feel sorry for his family. I feel sad that another human being has died.
But it does not go much deeper than that when I see that he consciously enrolled to serve in an imperialist army. The sadness I feel for a soldier is usually tempered by the thought that those who choose to live by the sword consciously accept that one day they may die by it - in fact, they are often rather proud of the distinction that they think their supposed bravery confers upon them.
Maybe he only enrolled so that he could get a college education - it's often the case with poor Americans. Who knows. It just goes to show that the masters of war have tagged us, that they know how best to use us. And our complicity cannot be ignored nor forgiven.
(1) Fwd from Samad and Abeer:
Never made it to MIT or Harvard ( ;) ), but here's my two cents:
I am complicit in the "war on terror" inasmuch as I didn't work hard enough to start a genuine anti-war movement, neither in 2001 nor in 2003. I believed in 2001 that the "sab say pehlay Pakistan" slogan was sheer bollocks, but I didn't have the balls to act according to my beliefs.
I have never paid any taxes to the US, but I suppose every time a US-based multinational whose products I buy repatriates its profits, I end up contributing to the US economy and hence to the US-led wars. This realisation - which hit me soon after Fallujah - was one of the strongest reasons that I tried to pull out of the whole capitalist system in 2004-5, but alas, again, I was not strong enough, not ready both materially and spiritually.
But even so, I would never in a million years fight anyone else's war - and by anyone else, I mean pretty much anyone outside my family or very close circle of friends. Even there, I'd much rather be a paramedic or in civil defence. This is mainly because of my pacifist beliefs, but in the case of the war on terror, it comes from a clear conviction that these wars are as immoral as they come, the result of the worst kind of bullying and greed, a blatant grab for the world's resources - both mineral and human.
This paragraph, though, was quite the little nugget:
"I also took offense to Rakshi's statement that people only join the Army for socio-economic reasons - ABSURD!!! For many, joining or serving the armed forces is a matter of pride and honor, and for some a call of duty. In case you were unaware, for many generations the people who joined the military in Pakistan and India were from the landed gentry and deemed a noble and honorable career (you had to have a certain socio-economic status to qualify for the military). Being an officer or soldier in the armed forces is something to be proud of, and even though one may have ideological differences with those who serve in the US Armed forces, be they of American or Pakistani-American heritage, one cannot and should not rejoice or belittle their service to their country and nation. They served their nation and people proudly and should be honored and remembered for that."
I am deeply ashamed to belong to as jingoistic, as martial a nation as Pakistan, just as I am deeply ashamed of the terrorism carried out by both the government and the LTTE in my father's country. I am deeply ashamed of what the "Pak" Army did in East Pakistan in 1968-71 and what a detachment of the same mercenary military machine (led by the future dictator Zia-ul-Haq) did to the Palestinians in Jordan in September 1970 (the massacres they still remember as Black September). I would like dearly to send your friend a copy of the relevant chapters where Peter Ward Fay discusses of the truly mercenary nature of the armies that India and Pakistan inherited from imperial Britain. Maybe you can pass on the Google Books link: http://books.google.com.pk/
And then there's The Garrison State. Do try to get a copy. Your library probably has it.
Of course, if one has been around military men just a little bit and has grown out of one's adolescent fetish for weapons and other manifestations of naked power, one doesn't really need books to draw the same inferences.
Nevertheless, I'm honoured that you chose to share this thread with me - and I apologise if I flew off the handle a little bit.
Aman
(3) Out of sheer courtesy, Samad forwarded me some responses he got from various friends discussing the matter. While my view was already represented among his friends, one of them went ahead and said something so outrageous, I felt I needed to respond. [scroll up]
(2) Me:
I feel sorry for his family. I feel sad that another human being has died.
But it does not go much deeper than that when I see that he consciously enrolled to serve in an imperialist army. The sadness I feel for a soldier is usually tempered by the thought that those who choose to live by the sword consciously accept that one day they may die by it - in fact, they are often rather proud of the distinction that they think their supposed bravery confers upon them.
Maybe he only enrolled so that he could get a college education - it's often the case with poor Americans. Who knows. It just goes to show that the masters of war have tagged us, that they know how best to use us. And our complicity cannot be ignored nor forgiven.
(1) Fwd from Samad and Abeer:
PAKISTANI AMERICAN SOLDIER DIES IN THE LINE OF DUTY
Second Lt. Mohsin Naqvi
The Pakistani American community all across the United States joins their fellow Americans to mourn the death in Afghanistan of a Pakistani American Muslim US soldier, Second Lt. Mohsin Naqvi.
Lt. Naqvi, was 26 year old and was in a group of five soldiers killed while on patrol Wednesday the 17th in Afghanistan. He had just been married about 4 months ago. Lt. Naqvi enrolled in the Army Reserve a few days after the 9/11 attacks and later served in Iraq. When he returned from Iraq in 2003, he re-enlisted for active duty after earning bachelor's and master's degrees.
Lt Naqvi while he lived in Newburgh, NY, would be frequent visitor to the neighboring Connecticut. He had worked in CT in the past as well. The Pakistani American Public Affairs Committee (PAKPAC) joins with the larger community to show their respect to him and prays that the family can sustain this huge loss. Burial is being planned at the Albany Cemetery in New York.boogie shoes
trying to explain or just plain communicate the urge to boogie (abhi! yahaan!), I sent a friend this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oq1MTRfiXMU
she cranked it up a notch, sending back links to these hilarious videos:
http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=RqzR-KwjlrI
http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=rIFh1ydXWmg
she cranked it up a notch, sending back links to these hilarious videos:
http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=
http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Some rants are just too good!
This one, for example, covers all the relevant issues without so much as pausing for breath:
"For god sakes wake up you slumbering fools. Musharraf’s exit does not have to mean the return of another evil period for us. Why cant we make it mean something more and bring in more educated people into the services and politics. Talk, speak out, and demand action and accountability so that these goons don’t get to loot us again. Lets not be quiet and say lawyers are liars and politicians are pansies. Maybe if we just worked just as hard as making things work as we do in criticising, things could get better. Start by doing your bit – bit by bit – and wait for the change to happen. Don’t sit and complain in your comfortable houses and cars. Don’t do that because it doesn’t help anyone."
Get the full note here >>
Brilliant job by the author Saira Ansari.
"For god sakes wake up you slumbering fools. Musharraf’s exit does not have to mean the return of another evil period for us. Why cant we make it mean something more and bring in more educated people into the services and politics. Talk, speak out, and demand action and accountability so that these goons don’t get to loot us again. Lets not be quiet and say lawyers are liars and politicians are pansies. Maybe if we just worked just as hard as making things work as we do in criticising, things could get better. Start by doing your bit – bit by bit – and wait for the change to happen. Don’t sit and complain in your comfortable houses and cars. Don’t do that because it doesn’t help anyone."
Get the full note here >>
Brilliant job by the author Saira Ansari.
D.H. Lawrence
Freida Lawrence wrote the foreword to the first published version of Lady Chatterley's Lover. The second part of the foreword deals with her husband.
"It is hard for me to write about Lawrence," she starts out. She picks up the thread again with, "I will try. I believe the spring of his being was love for his fellow men, love for everything alive, and almost all creatures were more alive to him than they actually were. He seemed to infuse his life into them. You cannot translate Lawrence into intellectual terms because he was so much more than a man with ideas, an intellectual. But he had a superb human intelligence in big and little things. It exasperated him to see how boring most people's loves were and how little they made of them, and he tried with all his might, from all angles to make them see and change. He never gave up, he did not get discouraged like most reformers. Always he took a new sprint. He was not tragic, he would never have it that humanity, even, was tragic, only very wrong, but nothing that true wisdom could not solve. It was not pity he felt; he never insulted anybody by being sorry for them. We have to learn to take it. It is strange to think that he never got into more trouble than he did, with his absolute independence. He was attacked and abused. It made him angry, but he never felt sorry for himself. It was a spur to go on. Years after his death, I saw in Buenos Aires many of his books in a shop window as I wandered through the streets. It was a shock. 'Here,' I thought, 'where he has never been, people buy his books.' One thin, narrow man has such importance all over the world. He was intensely aware of the importance of time, of the responsibility of every hour and minute. The span from the cradle to the grave is all we have to make our show, to prove ourselves. The older you get, the shorter is the time given us. The fact, 'I am alive', seems more valuable every day. Lawrence knew this quite young.
He made me share what went on in him. His inner life was so powerful you had to be a part of it, willy-nilly. It was hard for me to realise that nothing goes on in many people's insides - nothing at all.
For Lawrence, all creatures had their own mysterious being. Only humans seemed to have often lost theirs.
[...]
Lawrence had this desire to know all the universe in its different manifestations.
[...]
There was an urge in him to find new places on the earth as well as in the human soul. All races, all thoughts, all there was interested him. He had a full life, but the fullness was mostly in him. There is so much to experience and most of us experience so little. A little job, a little house, a little wife has little George and George gets older and one day he is dead and that's all. He has missed the great, vast show.
For me, Lawrence's greatest gift was this sense of a limitless universe around us, no barriers, no little social world to fidget over, no ambition to be a success. We felt we were a success in spite of the tiny bit of money we had, but we felt so rich. If a man owns a Botticelli painting and I enjoy more seeing it than the man who owns it, then that picture is more mine than his. We don't have to put things in our pockets to make them our own. Enjoying is more of possession than ownership.
[...]
We always lived very simply, he was just a man going his own way and I tacked along.
Even such a little thing, that might have looked pretentious, as a topaz ring I offered him with the Richthofen arms on it, he would not take. He looked at it - it was nice for a little while. 'No,' he said, 'that isn't me for me.'
The Lincoln story, when a senator finds Lincoln cleaning his boots and says, 'But Mr President, gentlemen don't clean their own boots,' and Lincoln replies, 'Whose boots do they clean?' might have been true of Lawrence.
They called Lincoln names too. 'Ape' and 'baboon' and pretty names they called Lawrence. The scarecrow they make of him! But birds never have been scared of him. Some make him a sad, mournful, sacrificial object. He wasn't often sad, but very often mad. Mostly, he was very gay and full of pep. The mournfulness lies mostly with the critics.
[...]
He died unbroken; he never lost his own wonder of life. He never did a thing he did not want to do and nothing and nobody could make him. He never wrote a word he did not mean at the time he wrote it. He never compromised with the little powers that be; if ever there lived a free, proud man, Lawrence was that man.
"It is hard for me to write about Lawrence," she starts out. She picks up the thread again with, "I will try. I believe the spring of his being was love for his fellow men, love for everything alive, and almost all creatures were more alive to him than they actually were. He seemed to infuse his life into them. You cannot translate Lawrence into intellectual terms because he was so much more than a man with ideas, an intellectual. But he had a superb human intelligence in big and little things. It exasperated him to see how boring most people's loves were and how little they made of them, and he tried with all his might, from all angles to make them see and change. He never gave up, he did not get discouraged like most reformers. Always he took a new sprint. He was not tragic, he would never have it that humanity, even, was tragic, only very wrong, but nothing that true wisdom could not solve. It was not pity he felt; he never insulted anybody by being sorry for them. We have to learn to take it. It is strange to think that he never got into more trouble than he did, with his absolute independence. He was attacked and abused. It made him angry, but he never felt sorry for himself. It was a spur to go on. Years after his death, I saw in Buenos Aires many of his books in a shop window as I wandered through the streets. It was a shock. 'Here,' I thought, 'where he has never been, people buy his books.' One thin, narrow man has such importance all over the world. He was intensely aware of the importance of time, of the responsibility of every hour and minute. The span from the cradle to the grave is all we have to make our show, to prove ourselves. The older you get, the shorter is the time given us. The fact, 'I am alive', seems more valuable every day. Lawrence knew this quite young.
He made me share what went on in him. His inner life was so powerful you had to be a part of it, willy-nilly. It was hard for me to realise that nothing goes on in many people's insides - nothing at all.
For Lawrence, all creatures had their own mysterious being. Only humans seemed to have often lost theirs.
[...]
Lawrence had this desire to know all the universe in its different manifestations.
[...]
There was an urge in him to find new places on the earth as well as in the human soul. All races, all thoughts, all there was interested him. He had a full life, but the fullness was mostly in him. There is so much to experience and most of us experience so little. A little job, a little house, a little wife has little George and George gets older and one day he is dead and that's all. He has missed the great, vast show.
For me, Lawrence's greatest gift was this sense of a limitless universe around us, no barriers, no little social world to fidget over, no ambition to be a success. We felt we were a success in spite of the tiny bit of money we had, but we felt so rich. If a man owns a Botticelli painting and I enjoy more seeing it than the man who owns it, then that picture is more mine than his. We don't have to put things in our pockets to make them our own. Enjoying is more of possession than ownership.
[...]
We always lived very simply, he was just a man going his own way and I tacked along.
Even such a little thing, that might have looked pretentious, as a topaz ring I offered him with the Richthofen arms on it, he would not take. He looked at it - it was nice for a little while. 'No,' he said, 'that isn't me for me.'
The Lincoln story, when a senator finds Lincoln cleaning his boots and says, 'But Mr President, gentlemen don't clean their own boots,' and Lincoln replies, 'Whose boots do they clean?' might have been true of Lawrence.
They called Lincoln names too. 'Ape' and 'baboon' and pretty names they called Lawrence. The scarecrow they make of him! But birds never have been scared of him. Some make him a sad, mournful, sacrificial object. He wasn't often sad, but very often mad. Mostly, he was very gay and full of pep. The mournfulness lies mostly with the critics.
[...]
He died unbroken; he never lost his own wonder of life. He never did a thing he did not want to do and nothing and nobody could make him. He never wrote a word he did not mean at the time he wrote it. He never compromised with the little powers that be; if ever there lived a free, proud man, Lawrence was that man.
FREIDA LAWRENCE
1944
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Lakht-e-jigar - this is what they have brought us to
I can take a lot but not this:
Not an aged mother forced to come out on to the streets to demand justice for her missing son. To this, I have no answer. In the face of this, any criticism - rank reformism, "bleeding heart", non-representative nature of the lawyers' movement - becomes irrelevant, pointless.
Not this.
Not an aged mother forced to come out on to the streets to demand justice for her missing son. To this, I have no answer. In the face of this, any criticism - rank reformism, "bleeding heart", non-representative nature of the lawyers' movement - becomes irrelevant, pointless.
Not this.
Sunday, May 04, 2008
Pushing the neo-liberal agenda - this is how you do it
A correspondent brought my attention to the newly released World Bank report on the state of rural education in Pakistan:
So just when she started to explode with indignation and outrage, I asked her to put down her thoughts in writing:
From: World Bank South Asia <enora@worldbank.org>My correspondent has some experience with education in Pakistan - as a relatively privileged student herself, as a volunteer at various schools in Lahore (teaching and fund-raising), as an evaluator for an education-oriented NGO in London seeking out partners (schools or school networks run by NGO's/CBO's) in the Punjab and Pakhtunkhwa (NWFP).
Sent: Friday, April 18, 2008 7:48:36 PM
Subject: Dramatic Increase in Private Schools in Pakistan: World Bank ReportA new report released today by the World Bank calls for a reevaluation of education policies in the context of a dramatic increase in private schools for primary education in Pakistan. Between 2000 and 2005, the number of private schools increased from 32,000 to 47,000, and by the end of 2005, one-third of enrolled children at the primary level was studying in a private school.
While overall enrollments increased by 10 percent between 2001 and 2005, the report says quality of education is lagging. Children in private schools score significantly higher than those in government schools, even when they are from the same village. In fact, it will take children in government schools 1.5 - 2.5 years of additional schooling to catch up to where private school children are in Class 3.
- Access the full report
- Watch interview with report author
# # #Permanent URL: http://go.worldbank.org
/YUFOT05SA0
So just when she started to explode with indignation and outrage, I asked her to put down her thoughts in writing:
Advocating policy recommendations on a national level based on a study in one province - that too, the one with the most resources - is a basic flaw in their research methodology.
Some of the analyses and recommendations of this report are quite inhibiting and do not take stock of the cost of sending children to private schools - the economic burden on a poor family is so enormous that sending a child to a private school means less food to go round, no money to buy medicines and chronic undernutrition. This is the disconnect between the reality of the lives of the masses and those who claim to project their voices. If only the researcher could appreciate exactly how many hours a day a couple has to slog in a factory, toil in the fields in abominable working conditions, or in people's houses without the labour entitlements we enjoy, only to live in a rented room with a bulb, to send their children to school every morning with one roti and diluted tea and to work the evening shift without a break just to be able to buy school books and stationery. Advocating for the spread of private schools simply because of the current poor quality of the state school system is not the solution for it tends to push the masses into even greater poverty - what the country needs is an improvement of the state education system which can only be brought about by appropriate and effective quality control mechanisms. On the other hand, to talk of the education sector in 'market' terms (as the report does) is itself a renunciation, a priori, of the citizen's right to education. This viewpoint also absolves the state of its responsibilities to its citizens. It's the WB's classic privatisation, and public-private partnership agenda. In the developed world, nobody would argue in this way for the replacement of the state school system with private schools which of course benefit only a slim section of privileged society. But for the big multilateral funding institutions operating in the Third World, somehow the poor performance of the state school system (which is even more a question of accessibility to masses than in the developed world) is an acceptable basis to advocate for the mushrooming of private schools.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Changes
It's been quite a while... this blog started out as a replacement/continuation of my first essay on chowk... but somehow, the sharp edge of despair - that, with me, often acts as a motive force to write - got dulled, was lost in the routine of pretending to grow up, putting on the disguises of respectability, tempering my anger.
But the "winter of our discontent", as the fashion editors at The News perceived it, has been a season of changes and experimentation for me: discovering Khoj, working with the Students Action Committee, the Concerned Citizens of Pakistan and the Institute for Peace and Secular Studies, trying my hand at amateur dramatics, learning about revolutionaries, a little bit about Marx, about transformation as a series of experiments.
These days, I'm thinking seriously about content provision as service that may pay for itself. The content I have in mind is diverse: scholarly discussion, esoteric, original photography, reporting on events in town, maths puzzles, scientific articles... anything that provokes a potentially fertile stream of thought.
I have concerns - is it ethical to work with an advertising service? Even one such as Google whose context-sensitive/semantic search technology is pretty good (though, not a 100% accurate)? Am I giving in, joining the rat race by a different route? Or is it okay to accept payment for helping readers get to a service that actually helps them?
As part of the whole try-it-out philosophy, I've decided to give it a go. I've submitted an application for AdSense and if it comes through, I'll put up a couple of ad boxes to see what happens.
Major concerns:
relevance,
embarrassment,
ability to block ads from particular services I don't approve of.
Questions:
How good is the context-sensitive technology, after all?
Do the ads change each time a post is viewed, or are they fixed as long as the content of the post remains substantially the same?
Correlations between:
blogging frequency and earning.
content type (text, images, video, audio, mixes) and earning
All this is a way of finding out about the world of online revenue generation, learning that will help me decide the direction in which I will take certain web-oriented projects I have in mind.
If you have any articles to share on ethical advertising or ethical business practices (is that an oxymoron?), please do share them with me.
But the "winter of our discontent", as the fashion editors at The News perceived it, has been a season of changes and experimentation for me: discovering Khoj, working with the Students Action Committee, the Concerned Citizens of Pakistan and the Institute for Peace and Secular Studies, trying my hand at amateur dramatics, learning about revolutionaries, a little bit about Marx, about transformation as a series of experiments.
These days, I'm thinking seriously about content provision as service that may pay for itself. The content I have in mind is diverse: scholarly discussion, esoteric, original photography, reporting on events in town, maths puzzles, scientific articles... anything that provokes a potentially fertile stream of thought.
I have concerns - is it ethical to work with an advertising service? Even one such as Google whose context-sensitive/semantic search technology is pretty good (though, not a 100% accurate)? Am I giving in, joining the rat race by a different route? Or is it okay to accept payment for helping readers get to a service that actually helps them?
As part of the whole try-it-out philosophy, I've decided to give it a go. I've submitted an application for AdSense and if it comes through, I'll put up a couple of ad boxes to see what happens.
Major concerns:
relevance,
embarrassment,
ability to block ads from particular services I don't approve of.
Questions:
How good is the context-sensitive technology, after all?
Do the ads change each time a post is viewed, or are they fixed as long as the content of the post remains substantially the same?
Correlations between:
blogging frequency and earning.
content type (text, images, video, audio, mixes) and earning
All this is a way of finding out about the world of online revenue generation, learning that will help me decide the direction in which I will take certain web-oriented projects I have in mind.
If you have any articles to share on ethical advertising or ethical business practices (is that an oxymoron?), please do share them with me.
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