The Pakistani tradition of cyclical retardation

Pakistanis as a people are a curious bunch. Sometimes we’ll be passionate and full of cunning; our hearts will be full of love and trust. On other occasions, we’ll be cynical and downright stupid, playing out the same beaten arguments again and again for no reason whatsoever.

Despite the fact that it is clear as day that the taliban problem needs to be addressed, at least in half, by the military, some “intellectuals” will still feel it is their duty (to the gods of idiocy) to argue otherwise.

Step forward, Ansar Abbasi:

 

We are on a suicide mission. At a time when our sovereignty is seriously threatened and is being violated and our foreign policy being entirely run on alien diktat, Pakistanis are being made the scapegoats on a daily basis as their lives serve as fodder for the US war on terror, imposed on us on Washington’s terms.

Initially it was General Musharraf, who after 9/11 served as Washington’s poodle and badly divided the nation. And now it is the democratically elected but NRO-laundered regime that has owned the US war as its own war.

And who is it that is threatening our sovereignty then? The US? An ally who attached conditions to aid just like any state? You wouldn’t be talking about the taliban now would you?

Ah yes, the US War on Terror. Surely it can’t be our war, despite you know, the taliban routinely killing Pakistanis. Or, you know, taking control of Pakistani territory and cutely negotiating a huge chunk of it for themselves (Swat). You do know that that’s also a violation of our sovereignty, right?

 

When last year, the only time the issue was ever referred to parliament in nine years, the people’s representatives unanimously disowned this war and without even a single dissenting voice passed a resolution demanding a homegrown solution to extremism and terrorism through a dialogue. But who cares what the people say.

That’s fair. The Pakistani people got their wish, to an extent, with the talks that handed Swat over the taliban. Ofcourse, the taliban then decide to flounce over to Buner – 60km from Islamabad. Isn’t that when the people of Pakistan thought, “oh shit. they’re coming closer to us!” And so Pakistan woke up. When I say Pakistan, btw, I mean the powerful Punjabis and Sindhis, because lets face it: what are a couple of thousand pashtun deaths eh? Sharia Law and lashing of girls is a-okay as long as it happens in the NWFP. Or Afghanistan!

I haven’t even touched on the argument that you can’t really negotiate with the taliban either. By that I don’t mean a “we don’t negotiate with terrorists” stance. Fuck that. What I mean is that there is nothing we can realistically give the taliban. What do they want? NATO/US forces out of Afghanistan? We can’t do that. Sharia law in Pakistan? Nops. Swat? Not really. I mean okay, the government might give it over cause who cares, it’s Swat, but a government can’t hand over a substantial piece of the country to a militant group. What next? Rich kids with Uzis owning Defence in Lahore?

So, I ask again Ansar Abbasi, what can we give to the taliban?

 

Blah blah blah blah blah general banalities blah blah blah blah vague statements that are on the mark – because they’re vague blah blah blah blah safe rhetoric blah blah blah another generalization blah blah blah safe moral argument blah blah blah.

Fair enough.

 

We don’t want our people to be killed but others do. We don’t want our army to be dragged in a situation where it is compelled to use its muscle against its own people and get unpopular but others do. We don’t desire to see brothers killing brothers here but others do.

Wahey! The reason for the title of the post! The comeback of the same godawful, 10th grade level arguments! YES!

Our army kind of got us into this mess you know, by, um, training people like these cuntchops? That said, it is unfortunately the infantry that gets screwed over. That is a shame. People like Col. Imam are the ones who ought to find themselves facing a blunt knife heading towards their testicles.

 

But what we want and desire cannot be achieved if we follow the foreign dictat. It can’t be achieved through military options either. It can be effectively achieved only through a process of dialogue, rethinking of our strategy, pondering into the whole situation to address the root causes, the US war on terror, drone attacks, enslavement of Islamabad to the whims and wishes of Washington and US and Nato forces presence in Afghanistan. A political initiative in line with the unanimous resolution adopted by the parliament last year is thus a vital and urgent need. Terrorism is condemnable but it cannot be defeated only through the use of force, which is counter productive.

Come on now. Dialogue schmialogue. Unless you can, through dialogue, ensure that the state of Pakistan maintains its sovereignty and can enforce provincial and federal laws throughout the country. But you can’t do that now can you? Root causes of terrorism? How about thirst for power, religious fanaticism fostered in unchecked Madrassahs, a ‘better’ life by virtue of the extraordinary amounts of cash channelled to terrorists, training provided by ‘rogue’ members of the Pakistani Army/ISI and so on?

Terrorism is condemnable? What the fuck is this wimpish league? Shit. I can’t remember what Wikipedia calls ‘vague’ language but the word they use is brilliant for this half-assed twattery. Blowing up women and children in Peshawar is condemnable?

 

This is precisely what is happening in Pakistan. Washington would not like this but we need to focus on political means instead of entirely depending on the military option, which should remain restricted and quick. The US war on terror is neither in the interest of Muslims nor in favour of Pakistan. Therefore, the US war, now owned by our rulers and fought in the fashion the US expects us to fight, is not our war and it will never be.

The War on Terror isn’t in the interest of muslims? It isn’t in our interest to weed out a fanatic element of Islam that wants to do nothing more than distort and pillage the religion and its teachings? It isn’t in our interest to ensure that an ideology like that of the taliban at the very least takes on a non-militaristic route? It isn’t in our interest to ensure that muslim women aren’t whipped because they were talking to a guy who wasn’t their father/brother? It isn’t in our interest to ensure that a man who doesn’t want to keep a beard is lashed to the seventh circle of hell?

We do fuck all (if not encourage) to take care of a bastardization of Islam, but when someone else wants to have a crack at it we throw a fucking strop? As a muslim if I’m going abroad I’d rather not have Visa problems and security problems simply because I belong to a faith whose followers are a bunch of tossers who don’t want to help clean their goddamn backyard.

Pakistan is stuck in a cycle – a cycle of violence, arguments, justifications, democracies and dictatorships. It rises inherently from a seemingly imbedded antipathy towards anyone who dares to criticize us, no matter how true their criticism rings. That’s why our arguments never develop from the same tired soundbytes. That’s why we never listen to what the other party says and take that into account, in order to better streamline our positions. That’s why one thrown plate of pudding is followed by another, and another, till infinity.

And just as I say that, Imran Khan pops up with his usual gems.

I don’t think it’s possible to even cry anymore.

Friday Night Lights

Too often teen-soap operas suffer from extremes: they are either loved to bits and heralded undeservingly, or they are ignored and largely fall by the wayside. Over the years, the most popular teen-based shows (with One Tree Hill being the exception) have been those based around wealth (The OC/Gossip Girl) because they offer an opportunity to vicariously experience the lives and troubles of the rich few.

One Tree Hill to an extent avoided falling into this circle by basing the show around sports, namely basketball. For maybe two seasons, it survived because of it. After that, coupled with one of the lead’s atrocious acting (Chad Michael Murray – GROW AN EXPRESSION) it pretty much went down the shitter as a whole.

Anyway, nearly all teen shows ultimately end up being detached from all forms of reality. The longer the show, chances are the more you’ll see it turn to absolute shit. Plot lines because convoluted and the writers end up chucking in twist after twist as a cheap means of entertainment. Every crap twist brought about the ability to rape that story arc for another half dozen episodes. So, though you might start out watching a seemingly entertaining teen drama, after two seasons you’re pretty likely to stick a finger down your throat so that you start vomiting – because frankly using “this show is vomit-inducing” as an adjective is not enough.

Anyway, one teen show completely bucks this trend. Friday Night Lights.

I simply can’t recommend this show enough. In fact, if I know you, consider this a fair warning for all the infuriation I will cause you as I attempt to get you hooked to it.

3 seasons of the show have already taken place – the fourth season has just started. Aside from a rather mediocre second season (mediocre by the show’s standards – save for a weird and frankly rather shit secondary story arc, the show itself is still miles ahead of its contemporaries), FNL has consistently lived up to the hype it’s gotten from people who aren’t fifteen year old girls and/or remarkably shallow/stupid/callow (delete as appropriate).

There is very little wrong with this show. Actually, that’s me playing it a bit safe. There’s nothing wrong with this show. Nothing.

Based around American Football, and a crazy town, you’d except it to be overflowing with teen romances and alpha male based story arcs. Granted, a considerable amount of time is allotted to these arcs, they don’t consist the bulk of the shows themes. This is an opera, a show that is unlike any other. The actors aren’t untouchables; they come and go, both mentally and physically. Their lives are real, their problems actual problems. This show is ultimately challenging – it takes apart the insanity of Texas without touching politics. It takes apart the American psyche of high school sports, and of high school as non-Americans have never seen it before.

Aside from all that, the direction and the use of music is exceptional. You will see scenes in this show that will stay with you for a long, long time. After every episode you’ll stick around for an additional 10-12 minutes, re-watching those scenes and taking in their glory. It edifies and destroys side by side.

The acting is as perfect as you’re likely to ever get in a show of its nature. Everyone is perfect. The cunts are cunts; believable cunts. The heroes and anti-heroes are legit; they’re understandable, loveable and abhorrent when they need to be. Primarily, I suppose kudos must be handed out to the show’s creators, because they employ a very unique aesthetic to the show. The dialogues are not laid out for word, instead the actors are told to improvise within the limits of their character. With handheld cameras, the show never feels glossy, as you’ll see cameras hover and sometimes even find your view partially blocked by an arm or a wall. This is not the handheld at the start of Quantum of Solace. In fact, you’re probably going to forget that it’s a handheld five minutes into the pilot.

I honestly cannot stop emphasizing how good this show is. It is as entertaining as it is intelligent.

Oh, and it has some of the hottest women on television, just in case.

Monty Python

Everytime I read or hear about an organization like the PLF I simply can’t help but grin (or laugh) because the following keeps playing out in my head:

Ironing

Isn’t it ironic that just as most people are up in arms over the patently misunderstood Kerry-Lugar Bill, with the primary criticism being that it violates our sovereignty, the GHQ ends up being invaded by the TTP, a collective of terrorists who have for the past 3-4 years been regularly violating our sovereignty?

But that would require an understanding of what sovereignty is. Amongst other things, it is to paraphrase Weber, “the monopoly that a government possesses over violence.” It’s just not questions of interference from other states.

However, if I may stoop down to their level, it begs a question. What’s better: the taliban subverting the state’s sovereignty via violence and in the process killing scores of hundreds of Pakistanis, OR, the US violating our sovereignty by handing us $1.5b each year and attaching some conditions to it?

All I’ll say is, for the past half decade we’ve been okay on the taliban regularly dismantling whatever writ or sovereignty the state possessed. It’s amusing that the question only arises when the US is brought up.

A facepalm is only so appropriate

This was in the letters part of today’s The News:

Friday, October 09, 2009
The government has denied the presence of Blackwater or Xe International personnel in Pakistan. I have seen six men working as bodyguards of a senior US diplomat in Peshawar myself and these men looked as if they were the Blackwater type. Since the government denies their presence, my question to it is that if tomorrow one of these security men was to shoot a Pakistani — as has happened in Iraq — who will be held responsible and punished?

Saman Basir

Peshawar

Yes. I’ve even, for the sake of clarity, bolded what I think is the logically infallible part.

This, is the only sentiment for that letter:

Frighteningly, it’s not that she’s alone in this. Her discernment, and that of others like her, has found its way into the general publishing ability of a fair few ‘journos’. In other words – there are some fucking morons thick enough to think that just because some random ass nutcrackers apply preconceptions to reality, it automatically becomes ‘newsworthy’.

Mekaal Hasan Band

What a band. Seriously.

Sampooran was a lot, well, drier. It was smart and eclectic, but it seemed to be an album made for musicians, for critics. But the last two songs released by MHB show that the band has somehow managed to create a sound that owes as much to intelligent pop sensibilities as they do to Sub-continental classic music.

I can’t fucking wait for their new album!

Big Muff Pi

YAY!

After a month and a half, I finally get my fuzz pedal: an EHX Big Muff Pi with Tone Wicker.

I can finally make some fuzzy goodness in the shape of noise-pop!

Hemingway and the six word story

I’m not a big Hemingway fan. For some reason or another, his disjointed literary style really grates me. I’m not saying he’s a shit author, or simply because he, as Faulkner said, “He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.” Far from it, in fact, because here I side firmly with Hemingway. It’s just that I can’t get past his unique writing style.

Anyway, as the story goes, Hemingway was once in a bar dared to write the fabled six word story. This is what he came up with:

“For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn.”

That is simply stunning.

9/11

So it’s the eighth anniversay today of September 11th, 2001.  Over the past couple of days I’ve seen some embarrassing and shocking articles/youtube vids put up by people on my facebook (FFS) relating to how 9/11 was part of the New World Order bollocks to how it was planned and operated by the Bush administration.

What shocks me most, aside from the ludicrousness of these “theories” is the complete failure of most of their proponents when it comes to looking up official responses to their criticisms or the original story as it is. Loose Change for example omits, subverts and bastardizes many official accounts in order to shape their criticisms better. They present a changed official story that fits in with their mundane criticisms, in the process alluding to out-of-context quotes and indulging in frivilous quote-mining and attribution to ’sources’ that really don’t exist.

That said, I suppose there’s an argument to be made about the complicitness of the US in terms of negligence. That is to say that maybe they could’ve been smarter, sharper and better prepared. But that is quite a long way from arguing that they deliberately perpetrated this abhorrent act of terrorism (though all acts of terrorism are abhorrent, morally).

9/11 was an act that has and will define our generation, mostly through it’s after-effects. The Asian Tsunami took more lives, and Srebenica was more horrid, but one was a natural disaster and the other occurred at war-time. But 9/11 was a show of force and terrorism that took apart one of the United States’ most famous landmarks, and it’s major economic hub. It was a blow to a great city, and it was frightening because of how it was perpetrated. For better or for worse, it changed the lives of billions around the world – it changed politics and it changed the very idea of international security.

102 Minutes That Changed America is a documentary that shows amateur and news footage of 9/11 without narration, seamlessly blending videos together to show a different perspective to what happened. It shows the (in)humanity of what happened, and it shows the fear and chaos that rippled through NYC and it’s habitants as the two towers were hit, and as they ultimately collapsed. It is not easy viewing, but it must be watched, if in spurts of 30 minutes a day.

Anyway, I sincerely hope no other country on earth ever has to go through something like this.

Hendrix

I really need to build up my patience levels. What makes everything worse is that when I do stick to something I end up learning it fairly quickly, as opposed to the ‘ages’ i think it’ll take me. But that first hurdle is what seems to stump me.

Unfortunately that hurdle isn’t present only when I’m trying to learn Hendrix’s Little Wing. Instead it seems to be a permanent fixture in my psychological existence, showing up at just about everything I try to do – music, writing, studying, reading. So far, I’ve been shambolic at trying to overcome it, which ofcourse beckons the unwanted, frightening thought of whether I’ll ever overcome it.

Anyway, Hendrix is god.