Archive for the 'Politics' Category

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Day 212 – Why does man kill angels? In everyone of us is a beast…

I am sorry to surprise You, but I am not talking about Benazir… She was far from an angel, I want to tell You about a man and his mission, a man nobody of You has ever heard about, who has started an organisation that wants to save the world….

Abdul Sattar Edhi – a man who from nothing has created the “largest and most organized social welfare system in Pakistan. Foundation works round the clock, without any discrimination on the basis of color, race, language, religion or polictics. The Foundation modifies the phrase “Live and let live” to “Live and help live”.” Foundation that owns the worlds biggest privately owned ambulance car fleet. A organisation=man who does for Pakistan what in other countries government is trying to do – care about the common people – but much more effectivelly.

Simply said: if You are born, ill, orphaned, injured, mentally or physically handicapped, addicted, poor and unskilled girl, raped, on run from family, uneducated in jail, street dog or just dead… in all these cases Edhi foundation, run solely from private donations, will take care about Youfor free.

You have to understand that this man has created an organisation that is saving thousands of lifes of people and thousands of animals every year… With no benefit for himself – he still owns only a small flat (with only a table and two chairs), that he inherited from his mother, two pairs of clothes and well, the whole Edhi foundation, because he audits every expense in it…

…Why am I saying all of this?

Because there was only one moment that made me cry out (in both meaning of word) during the last days of blasts, shootings and riots… While reading this simple line:

29/12/07: Buildings and ambulances run by the Edhi Foundation, a charity that runs welfare centres, were vandalised. “Seven of our centres have been burnt in Karachi. Nineteen of our ambulances have been burnt, and eight others have been damaged,” said Anwar Ali Kazmi, a spokesman for the non-governmental organisation.

To finish the info: rioters had burned or damaged 947 vehicles, 131 banks and 31 petrol stations up until midnight on Friday. Dozens of banks, vehicles and fast food outlets were set on fire in Hyderabad. Six people died in Karachi on Friday after a factory was set ablaze, while more than 2,000 people torched a police station and stole weapons, police said.

I have always known a man is suicidal and acts without sense when in frenzy, but this is just too much.

My understanding of all peoples movements has been changed. Forget about men trying to free themselves or act together in a protest… Most of them are hell-sheeps, sheeps because they follow the crowd and act like it… To the extent that when the crowd shows anger, these hellish sheeps find the beast in them – and let it out.

…both God and Devil participated at our creation, thats the only explanation I have. Only few people can be admitted to heaven without doubts… but the rest of mankind takes some sick pleasure in destroying their work.

Day 156 – day of State of emergency, a.k.a. Happy Emergency!

Well, this happened during the conference, so to get You into the mood

Sesion is over, me, Jeremy and the Islamabadis are sitting at the pool (the venue was perfect) with feet in water and just doing random chats when…

…understand, most Islamabadis are actually from Rawalpindi. And exactly in this moment of pure relaxation, one (and than another and another one) gets and SMS that in Rawalpindi was a bomb blast with I dont know how many people dead.

Worried expressions come, followed by calls home and checking on everybody possible if they are all right. Thanks God, nobody from their circles got hurt. (…would You care about other circles?) And as the home-checking calls slowly diminish, somebody gets another piece of news…

…a State of emergency was imposed on Pakistan!

Calls start all over again, everybody trying to reach some cousin, brother-in-law, uncle, family friend who ranks the highest in military to find out WTF is going on.

Pieces of news come: TV channels cut off, consitution dumped, flights cancelled, arrests, Islamabad and Rawalpindi closed down… And after a while some of them start to prove exaggerated.

Thats the real story. But the most fascinating was the behaviour of people. As soon as the safety of personal circles of the guys there was checked, the discussion went to for me into quite surreal ways. Seriousness got turned into sarcasm, biggest concern became if they will be on time for exams and all of them sure that the university (in Islamabad) will not do a shit about the chaos and keep up to the schedule. The speed with whitch people accepted the status, adapted and started to think and act as nothing has happened was astonishing.

Some people actually started to wish each other Happy Emergency Day :)

Observing this something became clear: stirring any kind of revolution in here will be difficult. People of pakistan have seen a lot and actually expect to see even more. They actually remind me of the character of Donkey Benjamin from “Animal Farm” by Orwell that I read recently. His approach is very clear – things wont change, I will get old and see new things come and become old and I will try to be still there and live my life.

And thats the story, not very entertaining, but giving an image, image that calms some of You down, that might frustrate some people and maybe might explain a few things. Heck, I guess it pretty explains why nothing has changed after all the rallies by lawyers and all those arrests, because the basic question is – why should anything change, why should I change?

Last thing… this article shows how much I suck in trying to be a journalist stirring peoples emotions. If You want some better stuff go to e.g. blog of this guy Emad

There are two images that stuck in my head… The Black ribbon, symbol of protest against the State of emergency and the pic of the character “V” from the movie “V for Vendetta”… A friend came with a pretty chilling slogan for it “Remember, remember the 3rd of November!” (if You have seen the movie, You know what am I talking about…). What will be remembered? And who except of Wikipedia will? I dont know, ask Benjamin.

Day 102 – An exiled premier (tried) come back

This is something like news break

Today morning I am chatting with Cileia from Switzerland who is in Islamabad working for Mobilink… …I knew that exiled prime minister Sharif is planning to come back from articles already a while before, but since than it was so quiet that I have forgotten.

And today morning she is asking me “How is Karachi?”… As there was absolute no difference between this day and the day before for me, I said “nothing“.

And only than she told me that she is at home, because whole Islamabad is closed down, roads blocked, offices and shops closed (actually is holydays), communal right canceled… Sharif is comming and gov is afraid about uproars…

How did it finish? As soon as he got out of plane, he got busted and sent back to Saudi Arabia.

…Asking me what it means? I dont know, his rule was not considered by very good by anybody I asked (said to do corruption BIG time), so his talks about bringing democracy back are quite questionable. What I know is that Pakistan is supposed to have elections this Fall. But nobody knows if they happen in 3 weeks, 3 months or not happen at all.