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Category: Pakistan
Pakistan
Mush Address at 2300, Blog While You Can
I just got news from a reliable army guy that we are all set for martial law. The cable news channels (including PTV – "Baakhabar Pakistan") are going off after every few minutes, so I'll wait till 11PM before checking again.
The President of Pakistan address is scheduled at 2300 – probably so that people have had their dinners (and their tea, and after-meal smokes, and maybe a shot or two of whiskey to celebrate, if they are in the ruling class) and are too drowsy to complain or start protests. Also, its a weekend. Nice use of psychology there. Its a wonder the internet is still working, the first time Mush ousted Nawaz Sharif, I was in my office and had a satellite connection, but most of the dialup ISPs were shut down.
PS. I am surrounded by army guys (and ex-army guys) from all sides – my home address says "Officers Colony, Lahore Cantt" – with a huge ammo depot a few meters behind my house. All the land in Cantt supposedly belongs to the army, and could be reclaimed in 'states of emergency' according to the lease agreements.
Musharraf’s Two Hat Tricks and Pro-BB CNN
Despite my aversion to political commentary, I couldn't help checking out the couple of remaining news channels that are still online. One of those channels has a news ticker saying:
"Chief of the Army Staff Pervaiz Musharraf has imposed a state of emergency…" and immediately afterwards:
"President of Pakistan Pervaiz Musharraf will address the nation anytime tonight".
Wicked.
CNN, on the other hand, in [this] post, thinks that its a euphemised Martial Law, and says "Emergency declared by president" … confusing me on whodunnit.. the President or the COAS? The CNN report seems to be more about portraying BB as a hero than Pakistan actually, claiming that "…Bhutto, who has defied death threats, is working to lead…" and "Bhutto received light wounds, but escaped largely unharmed [in the suicide attacks]". I had the impression she was safely towed away from the mess in her armored vehicle. Stop confusing me CNN!
I guess I should start watching TV again. :-/
Robert J. Sawyer, Pakistan, Synchronicity and Last Minute Changes
Robert J. Sawyer, winner (and multiple times nominee) of Hugo and Nebula awards, has become one of my favorite science fiction authors recently. I was reading one of his novels "Flashback" last week, and noticed a small mistake where it said:
"Islamabad, Pakistan (autotranslated from the original Arabic): In my vision, I have two arms-but today, I have only one (I am a veteran of the India-Pakistan ground war)."
The above sentence implied that Arabic (and not Urdu) is the language spoken in Pakistan, which comes as no surprise as a lot of Americans think we are part of the Middle Eastern Arab nations (I've been called a towel-head in jest more than once before I corrected their misconceptions).
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Pakistani Leader or Pakistani Ruler?
A leader leads, serves and guides, while a ruler governs and rules – people follow a leader, they are dragged and ruled by a ruler.
It never ceases to amaze me when the media refers to our ruler as a 'leader'. Do a google search for 'pakisani ruler' (557 results today) and another one for 'pakistani leader' (124,000 results today). While its true that there have been many real Pakistani leaders that those thousands of websites refer to, why do only 557 (Five hundred and fifty seven only) websites exist that acknowledge that some such thing as a "Pakistani ruler" actually exists?
Pakistani bloggers, please be a bit honest and at least use the correct term in your posts – unless, of course, you think you are being 'led'.
I just changed the wikipedia entry text from 'leader of Pakistan' to 'ruler of Pakistan' in the text:
"After the coup of Pervez Musharraf in 1999, Musharraf assumed the role of Chief Executive, and was the sole ruler of Pakistan."
on the page Prime_Minister_of_Pakistan as the first step. Lets see if it stays that way. Maybe one of you can edit Musharraf's page now.