Crow's Nest...

Lt. Gen. Mushtaq Ahmed Baig became a victim of suicide bombing in Rawalpindi. He was one of our kin, a medical doctor by profession. He was a healer; someone who everyone seeks when injured or dying. It is hard to believe that someone would consider him a villain in the larger scale of the politics. He was a doctor not a killer. True that he was a soldier but he was also a doctor. He was the surgeon general of Pakistan. I do not know him but his picture speaks of a gentleman who was pretty much innocuous and kind. Who would benefit from his death? Local Taliban have reportedly postponed their strikes till the new govt. comes into shape. So they in all possibility are out of the suspect list. Any political party has no interest in destabilizing their new achieved political power. So they are out too. A personal/domestic disagreement leading to killing through suicide is a far fetched idea too. On the other hand Al-Qaeda will want to destabilize the country so that they can g...

It is actually a sad thing to note that Pakistanis in essence lack an international outlook. In the global village we are just another nation who looks at everything from their own narrow perspective. One of the reason that comes to mind is the language barrier and little stress paid on learning one in Pakistani educational institutions. Language is a doorway to a new and different culture. Language is a plateform for information sharing. It is a way of expression. It is an effective way of cultural development and at the same time an effective tool for cultural development. We, as a Pakistani nation, do not interest ourselves with learning new and different languages. The result is that we end up knowing little concrete facts about the culture of the west that we so unintentionally admire all the time. Granted you can read translations and try and learn something about a society but that is a restricted form of learning. Granted that English is a global language and the...

Fidel Castro has officially stepped aside from the seat of power that he so diligently clung onto for the past half century. His name has been so maligned by the western media that any mention of Cuba provokes an unwelcome image of Fidel with it in everyone's mind. We forget to see a country but instead are forced to see a man - who we are made to believe is - a dictator. But finally Fidel Castro is a thing of the past. He is behind the curtain and Cuba has something new to celebrate for - a new leader. Raul can not be termed a new face as he has been hanging around his brother, lurking in the power corridors, since the revolution in 1959 . He personally saw to the execution of anti revolution people in the years ensuing the revolution. But for that matter change is welcome as that is the only permanent thing to go around uninterrupted in this world and in this cosmos. My concern is the change in the relationship between Pakistan and Cuba. Cuba was one of the first count...

The elections are done and dusted with. The past is over and the future lies ahead of us. Foe a common Pakistani or for any common citizen of the world all the most important thing is the stability in the budget in his/her life. In the end that matters to most Pakistanis - and what lead to the fall of the previous administration - is infact, the cost of living and inflation in day to day use commodities. I was going through the Economist's Intelligence Unit's forecast for Pakistan. Things are not very encouraging. For the year 2008-09 the economist predicts , The continuing instability may begin to have a strongly negative effect on foreign investment inflows. The economy is also likely to suffer from a lack of effective policymaking caused by political strife. The GDP growth is expected to slow down to 5.4% for the present year and the next year. Inflation will exceed the 6.5 - 7.5% target range and is expected to average 7.9%. When we look at the outlook of the key eco...

Mozilla Firefox has been a love at first sight for me. I stumbled upon the browser at Usman's place. Used it once and fell in instant love with it. It is way better than Internet Explorer 6 and 7. For one thing it loads pages faster and this enhances my web experience. For the other it can be customized to fit individual needs and likes and dislikes. The number of useful Add-ons is simply remarkable and each better than the other. It has been some time since I installed FireFox on my computer and since then I have been actively adding things to it. Zotero is one such tool of help that i find very useful. It has effectively taken away the need for a stand alone research tool. Zotero is a easy to use plug in that helps you collect, manage and cite research sources. It works from within the browser and integrates with almost any application. It has been brought to us by Center for History and New Media and George Mason University. Zotero features automatic capturing of cita...

YouTube is not available for browsing in Pakistan for the past one day. I say, 'not available for browsing', instead of 'banned' or 'blocked' because i have no concrete information as to the cause of the outage. The rumors are ripe that the outage is because of a ban on the domain enforced by PTA through PIE. This ban has been placed for the reason of blocking user access to amateur video of poll rigging in some parts of the country. Other rumors suggest that the ban has been placed by PTA to block access to soft pornography and other morally objectionable material available on the domain. In my opinion if this outage is a result of a ban on the part of PTA then it is most probably orchestrated by political factions that are most hurt by video footage showing their supporters rigging the elections like there is no tomorrow. But equally possible could be the problem at YouTube end. For the past one week or so most of what seemed credible information presente...

What is Nawaz Sharif thinking right now about this country, his party and himself? It is hard to believe that he can actually think. But let us assume for the sake of an argument that he is thinking. The thought about the country and reforming it is his last thought, to this much i am certain. Right now he is thinking of building himself and his part around himself as is the normal custom of any feudal party. He is thinking of ways to get into the parliament. He is not thinking of becoming the prime minister but he is certainly yearning for the post. He is thinking of staying behind rather than in the fore front so that the party that forms the govt. bears the burden of blame when this egg basket of development of their predecessors breaks suddenly on the resumption of normal governance in the country. He is also thinking about gettign rid of Musharraf as he fears him as someone who can make him wet his pants in the night. The restoration of pre 3rd November judiciary is not in...