Moborate

I had promised a comprehensive post about the unraveling of Husain Haqqani when it first happened. The different aspects of the case (technical, political, legal) that led to his resignation as Pakistan's ambassador to the United States - now commonly and irritatingly dubbed 'Memogate' - however, not only required a lot more time to deal with than I then had available, but has already been commented upon in bits and pieces by various analysts all over in newspapers, on television and on the net. Far more importantly, it now seems like a footnote in the rush of current events.   Eye of the storm: Husain Haqqani Because I had promised a post on it, I will state briefly what I thought of the entire episode as well as state some things that all should be aware of: *** The Unravelling of Husain Haqqani *** 1. The military establishment was never pleased with the appointment of Haqqani as Pakistan's ambassador to the US and had been gunning for his head right from the beginni...

I have to admit I'm not particularly fond of PPP Senator Faisal Raza Abidi 's appearances on television. But that's just because, my ears having been bled from the apparent dominant paradigm of anchors and participants on Pakistani television talk shows, I have a general aversion to over-emotional and LOUD grandstanding. And nobody gets more emotional and louder than Senator Abidi. However, this typically cataclysmic rant from him on Aaj TV 's Aaj Ki Khabar programme on March 17th (which one missed partly because the England - West Indies thriller was on the same night and partly because one doesn't normally bother with Aaj in any case) deserves to be heard. To be fair, he only let loose after the other participants (including the host Absar Alam , Khalifa-ul-Waqt Ansar Abbasi , Justice (retd) Tariq Mahmood , PMLN's Pervez Rashid and Jamaat-e-Islami's cretinous  Fareed Paracha ) all pointed fingers at the federal government for either letting 'Raymond...

OMG. I don't think anyone could have done a better parody even if they had tried. I laughed so hard I almost cried. A Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) supporter / activist presents his case to an Aaj TV cameraman. See this clip to understand why, as the title of the clip says, Imran Khan is doomed. (Thanks to Syed Ali Raza Abidi for the link.) For those who do not understand the revolutionary Urdu slogans, here is a word-for-word translation of what Islamabad's Che Guevara says: "See what is happening with our sisters and mothers in this demonstration. We are all from good families. We have come out on to the streets to raise slogans for Imran Khan. We are being beaten by our own police. They're pushing us. We have come for a revolution, for your country. Every person here has come out of his house for this. Who would do such demonstrations in such heat [otherwise]? The police is shoving us, for what? For a foreigner? For Raymond Davis? He caused such bloodshed in Lah...

By the way, just in case you would like to see copies of the court documents from the ' Raymond Davis ' case, attesting to the relatives of the deceased accepting diyat (blood money) and allowing the court to acquit the accused, here are some of them. I can't put all of them up (there are too many) but here's a representative sample of relatives' documents of one of the two men killed by 'Davis', Faizan Haider . Here's the main prayer to the court setting out that the persons named have no objection to 'Raymond Davis' being acquitted by the court since they had accepted compensation and reached agreement to settle the matter. Here's the individual affidavit of the mother of Faizan Haider, attesting that she has reached an agreement with her son's killer of her "free will, without any fear or pressure, without any enticement, and in her full senses." She further testifies that she has not been subjected to any injustice and has r...

If you thought Pakistani society was polarized, take a look at the open warfare going on under the same media house roof. The issue being discussed was, of course, the sudden release of the man known as Raymond Davis from jail after the payment of diyat or 'blood money' to the relatives of the deceased. What better time than that, thought Geo's analysts with wildly divergent points of view, to attack each other in the most personalized manner possible? First up, Geo's Capital Talk programme, where host Hamid Mir assembled a long list of panelists and commentators he knew (or hoped) would raise a hue and cry about the release, among them the odious Irfan Siddiqui , the slippery Mohammad Mallick , the dissenting lawyer for the victims' families and former foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi . But star attraction was of course the once journalist-now-self-righteous turd known as Ansar Abbasi . Abbasi had made his contempt for the result of the case known earlier...

Continuing moronic statements by trolls on this blog and some no doubt military establishment-goaded television anchorpersons have forced me to address - hopefully for the last time - certain basic issues to do with the whole ' Raymond Davis ' saga. Unfortunately, such is the deterioration of our national discourse and perhaps of our educational system that not only are people often unable to grasp simple arguments but are willing, immediately and without understanding the nuances of the points being made, to ascribe ulterior motives to anyone presenting facts that go against popular opinion. So for the sake of clarity, I will attempt to make my points as questions and answers in bullet form (no pun intended). Roughly the same questions have come up repeatedly in earlier comments. The man known as Raymond Davis in custody 1. Do I 'support' 'Raymond Davis'? No. I hold no brief for him or others like him. Nor do I wish to see 'security contractors' / yahoo...

Since we Pakistanis often suffer simultaneously from the twin demons of megalomania and paranoia - verily we are better than everyone else and that is why everyone is out to get us - we often also look at history through a rather selective and distorted lens. Unfortunately, none typify this mindset more than the doyens and doyennes of the Pakistani electronic media, in whom a curious mix of hyper-patriotism, half-baked information, sincere ignorance and arrogant bluster seems generally to hold sway. Take the issue of the day on Pakistani media: whether the American known by his apparent pseudonym " Raymond Davis" - who shot dead two men in Lahore - can be tried by Pakistani courts or whether the US government has any right to claim diplomatic immunity for him. I am not going to offer my own opinion on this because, for better or worse, this is an issue for the US and Pakistani states to sort out. (I should, however, point out that, personally speaking, I do not think armed A...

Can we just express how refreshing it was to watch  Najam Sethi 's first appearance on  Geo  tonight? In the middle of the hyperventilating cacophony surrounding the  shooting to death of two men in Lahore by a contractor of the US embassy  (and the death of a third in a hit and run accident apparently at the hands of an American consulate vehicle), Sethi began his new programme  Aapas Ki Baat  with the warning that he wanted to put emotionalism aside and analyse the incident only in terms of the facts. That in itself is an all too rare approach on our television screens these days. But what followed was close to a masterclass for other television anchors on how to impart clear, precise information with a logical, rather than emotional, analysis. Not only did Sethi cite the actual clauses of the  Vienna Convention  on diplomatic immunity (which Pakistan has ratified) that have been furiously talked about but never actually specifically refere...