So the badly written but immensely interesting farce continues. The little pigs continue their game of dodging the enemy or trying a hand at a ‘deal’ with each other or getting kicked back into exile. And since we call ourselves a pig-free nation I think all the pigs should follow suit and just leave. In this case I think the three little pigs (nawaz sharif, benazir, musharraf) and the wolf (being a general enemy of all things sane and normal) should settle in with the treacherous king pig altaf in London and stay there. Since Britain seems to be keen on giving refuge to idiotic, retarded and sometimes vicious politicians I think they wouldn’t mind taking in some more. The more the merrier for them I say!
STAR WARS PAKISTAN…
Return of the Jedi?
Nawaz Sharif sent packing to Jeddah
The Empire Strikes Back?
Shove off Sharif – An undeclared state of emergency - From Economist.com Sep 10th 2007
(Excerpt)
With an election approaching, General Musharraf wants a fresh term of presidential office and another supportive—or craven—government elected beneath him. Yet he is facing an invigorated opposition, centred on the Supreme Court. Its judges are likely to be asked to appraise the constitutionality of any extension to General Musharraf’s rule, even as unprecedented feelings of power and separation beat in their hearts.
The court’s ruling that Mr Sharif could return to Pakistan, although General Musharraf had said that he could not, was an example of this. In banishing him nonetheless, the general has told the custodians of Pakistan’s constitution to go hang. In effect, the country is now in an undeclared state of emergency.
How it will respond is more complicated. Mr Sharif’s arrest sparked a few protests in Rawalpindi but was more notable for the failure of his Pakistan Muslim League-N party to organise almost any gathering in Punjab, the country’s most populous province and the party’s stronghold. It did not help that General Musharraf’s agents had arrested most of the party’s leaders and, reportedly, 2,000 of its activists in recent days.
Nonetheless, Mr Sharif has not yet raised enough of a clamour to trouble a military dictator. If not he, then who? One candidate is the country’s lawyers. Their recent demonstrations in support of the Supreme Court’s top judge, Iftikhar Chaudhry, have emboldened the judges as a whole. Hundreds of thousands of ordinary Pakistanis joined the lawyers to cheer for Mr Chaudhry—and he was reinstated. Now that General Musharraf has treated the court’s ruling on Mr Sharif’s right to return with such contempt, the lawyers may protest again. The Supreme Court is expected to hear petitions against Mr Sharif’s rough treatment on Tuesday.
The only other obvious champion for the opposition would be Mr Sharif’s great rival, the leader of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), Benazir Bhutto. But in recent months Ms Bhutto has not sought to confront General Musharraf, rather she has tried to coddle him. In exchange for freedom from a fistful of corruption charges against her, and other concessions, she has provisionally offered to support General Musharraf’s bid for presidential re-election. While still interested in maintaining a scrap of democratic cover, General Musharraf seemed keen on this co-operation. But it has looked unlikely in recent days, especially after Mr Sharif’s rude ejection. Dallying with a dictator is a risky strategy for Ms Bhutto, the leader of Pakistan’s most liberal party. Attaching herself to one could leave her already fraying creditability in tatters.
For his part, if there are no serious protests in next few days, General Musharraf might think he does not need Ms Bhutto. His supporters can muster the simple majority in Parliament that he needs to get himself re-elected president, while also retaining his job as army chief. If he is happy to defy the orders of the Supreme Court—which would probably take exception to this action—he would not need to rewrite the constitution in his favour, a step requiring a two-thirds majority in Parliament. Then he would not need the support that Ms Bhutto has all but promised.
In the short term, this draconian drift might just put a lid on Pakistan’s latest troubles. After all, Pakistanis are accustomed to the bit and bridle of military rule. But a solution that sustains an army dictatorship by smashing faltering institutions and democratic politicians, in a country where supremely undemocratic Islamist forces are seething, does not augur much stability.
The Phantom Menace
VIEW: Triangles —Farrukh Saleem
Come June 2005, Iftikhar Chaudhry was made the Chief Justice of Pakistan. He sat and invalidated Pakistan Steel’s privatisation, invalidated the Hasba Bill and demanded answers from invisible forces. Then came March 9 followed by July 20. The military regime’s first vertex is compliant no more… click on title to read the whole article
Attack of the Clones? Revenge of the Sith? Whateverrr
A New Hope?
When all is terrible at home, its sometimes ok to look further and see how others are pretty f&!$-ed up in the head too. And since George Idiot Bush seems to be my usual victim I think I’ll jump to a former superpower for inspiration.
MOSCOW: Russia has tested the world’s most powerful vacuum bomb, an explosive device unleashing a destructive shockwave with the power of a nuclear weapon, the military said on Tuesday.
Russia builds most powerful vacuum bomb
***
And another wonderful quote to get your day go by:
A White House statement defending, “War on Terror” followed the video, “We are fighting violent extremists in Iraq and Afghanistan and across the world so that we do not have to fight them on American soil.” “These extremists want to overthrow rising democracies, claim a strategic country as a haven for terror, destabilise the Middle East, and strike America and other free nations,” the statement added. Snow added, “It is the responsibility of this government in protecting the American people to pursue terrorists wherever we find them.”
