If police will beat us...POLICE MARAY GI TU HAM INQILAB KAISAY LAAIN GAY.mp4

If this is how we want revolution....God may help us...

And Davis is gone!

Guest post by Samir Anwar Butt

Just a day before Raymond Davis’ release, news reports confirmed bilateral talks between the ISI and the CIA. A breakthrough was likely between the two organizations. Both decided to finally settle all outstanding disputes and rejoin forces for sake of their joint missions in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The next day, Raymond Davis had already left Pakistan. This was expected. The two murders he committed were no longer important. The judiciary and government were no hindrance. Nobody cared to try Mr. Davis for espionage, a case that could hardly be overlooked. Eighteen members of the family willingly forgave the murderer of their loved ones. Everything happened so quickly that it became hard to digest all at once.

Add the above two paragraphs, and the story becomes crystal clear.

At the end of the day, the US government realized that there was only one body in Pakistan that could help them. The arrest was never about the individuals who lost their lives or the integrity of the people of Pakistan. It was a rift between the two country’s agencies. It was a chance for the ISI to prove to the US that it was not going to be downplayed. The Obama administration was starting to understand Pakistan under Ambassador Richard Holbrooke. The US was finally starting to change its priorities and turn to the government of Pakistan instead of the army. No, the army and the government are not the same. The new aid being promised by the US was increasingly civilian oriented under the Kerry-Lugar bill. Moreover, last year General Shuja Pasha, the head of the ISI, was summoned by an American court on alleged charges. General Pasha is a close associate of the Chief of the Army Staff and recently got an extension at the ISI. When it gets personal, it gets rough. And Raymond Davis gave ISI the opportunity to hit back.

Many journalists and politicians, including a former Foreign Minister, polished their image using Raymond Davis. Nobody wants to talk about the dozens who die on a daily basis because of the drone attacks. That breach of sovereignty and continuous chain of murders is not popular enough these days and doesn’t appeal anymore to the masses. Playing with popular sentiments is the oldest game in Pakistani politics. And guess what? It still works.

The government handled the Raymond Davis case in the most inappropriate way. Their conduct was shameful by all means. But let’s not put all the blame on the sitting government alone. There are more players in the national policy game that never let the limelight hit them.

"Bol" The Movie: Join the movement to revive Pakistani Cinema

 

The official trailer of the upcoming movie "BOL" (speak out) directed by ace director Shoaib Mansoor "ShoMan" was released a little while ago. The film among others boasts of performance from first Atif Aslam and Mahira Khan. Wishing to be part of the movement to revive Pakistani Cinema, I am sharing the official trailer of movie on this blog. Hope many amongst you further join in this cause as we need to project this image of Pakistan as well.

Coke Studios Season 4 goes in the studios for recording...a rare leaked audio release on KoolMuZone website

Coke Studio is what Pakistani music buffs wait in the summer season every year. This year is definitely going to be a make or break year for Coke Studio Pakistan Franchise as the show gears up to meet its potential on international front. The news are already pouring in that famous and world renowned contemporary Indian musician Rabbi Shergill has entered in the coke studios for this season and Coke India is planning launch of Coke Studio India Franchise. It is also being speculated that entire Coke Studio Pakistan entourage might launch a world tour at the end of season 4 to highlight diversity of Pakistani performing arts.It is perhaps the only news item coming out of Pakistan in the past few years that has always generated positive vibes for Pakistan. A brilliant effort by any means.

The good news is that coke studio has started recording for this season and a very secret leak of the recordings has been acquired by well renowned Pakistani music website www.koolmuzone.com. The leak is an audio file of jam session of "The Sketches" featuring Faheem Allan Fakeer (son of legendary Allan Faqeer). The audio file is available at http://www.koolmuzone.com/main/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/The-Sketches-Hik-Insan-Coke-Studio-Season-4-Raw-Leak.mp3. If this kind of music is being part of season 4, I am more than willing to leave everything behind to become a couch potato and watch every single episode of Coke Studio this year. So, my recommendation for this summer, another dose of Coke Studio.

PS: Watch out for a couple of very good Pakistani movies such as BOL (Speak Out) by Shoaib Mansoor and Gidh (Vultures) by Shamoon Abbasi apart from World Music Festival from Rafi Peer Group. After a long pause, I believe this year will again be the year of Pakistani arts.

Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud: Is it the next big thing for humans?

Ubuntu has been around for a while now and has been instrumental in making us mortals understand what Linux is all about. And now with the popularity of cloud computing reaching new heights, Canonical has now also officially deemed Ubuntu as “the cloud OS.” What needs to be seen is whether this is what actually "matters" to those who ultimately "matter" for Ubuntu? This is also important when we remember that Canonical’s been pushing Ubuntu’s cloud-centric features hard in recent months.  Recently, Canonical  released Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC) on Dell servers, official support for the OpenStack cloud management infrastructure and the introduction by Autonomic Resources of a UEC-based product for federal agencies in the United States. So, a lot has been happening on cloud computing front from Ubuntu side.

First and foremost these developments highlight the growing confidence that stakeholders have in Ubuntu's ability to generate revenue and its future role as a vehicle of economic change in the market. Even as Ubuntu’s most dynamic source of popularity remains the desktop, where the distribution enjoys unparalleled popularity among users and on which Canonical continues to push innovations like the Unity interface, the actual sustainability of Ubuntu Linux is being increasingly seen as rooted in the server room and, especially, the cloud. The focus is now shifting where the marketing strategy focuses on Ubuntu Server Edition as an entity that provides the base on which custom-built, self-hosted cloud environments are forged.  It means, in future, we are going to see more and more Ubuntu as infrastructure vendor for small, medium and start up cloud businesses worldwide in active support of Hardware providers such as DELL.

This makes Ubuntu perhaps the first concrete mainstream entity in the cloud computing domain with a level of clarity that the cloud totally lacked previously. So far, all that we have seen is a very ambiguous sketch of potential applications and benefits that emerge out of cloud environment and it all sounds very fascinating. But as one blogger has very aptly pointed out "it’s another thing to enunciate a clear conception of what the cloud actually means in practice, and how it can be useful for businesses beyond the relative confines of Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)".

So, appreciation is all the more due for Canonical for being the first enterprise to take cloud computing seriously. They now have the tools developed and strategies prepared to move ahead in the previously uncharted waters and provide users with an opportunity to take advantage of the cloud in a smooth and understandable manner.

Ultimately, it is going to be the users who will decide upon the fate of this initiative. And it still is to be seen how far Ubuntu can go to meet its stated goals and honor its desired objectives. The market, however, now has a quantifiable benchmark to test the viability of cloud computing. And in my assessment, cloud computing is definitely the next level to go so very soon, we should expect several other competitors rushing in to fill the void. With the rise of Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud, we may see a day when in the words of a chief strategist at Canonical . That day may not be far but for now, even with this initiative, the world of cloud computing is still very young and needs to be nurtured very carefully.

George leaves Pakistan...finally

No more a Pakistani in Pakistan

George Fulton became a household name in Pakistan when about nine years ago he conducted a program for a well known private channel called "George Ka Pakistan". In this program George traveled the whole breadth of Pakistan and recorded his feelings as a foreigner roaming around. The program made him a very dear name in Pakistan and at the end he was conferred citizenship of Pakistan by the prime minister of Pakistan. Later he also converted and married to a Pakistani lady. He is father of a son now. He has been working with local television channels and has been giving his opinion in various newspapers.

Well, it seems he has also realized some hard facts despite leading a leisurely life in Pakistan. Somethings that we mortals of this land are fighting for years with no real support coming in this battle from his quarters. But, he always was a sensitive man and he was unique in the sense that he observed Pakistani life very closely. And today he has announced that after all these years, he is leaving Pakistan. He wrote a quite heartfelt piece for today's express tribune George ka khuda hafiz — I

In the lines below, I am reproducing what he said...with a hope that some amongst us are really thinking and perhaps someone has a "solution", a realistic solution...

"For the past nine years, I have been in a dysfunctional relationship. My liaison started somewhat unexpectedly, quickly becoming an all-consuming passionate love affair. My partner reciprocated strongly, bestowing deep affection and adoration upon me. Blinded by love, I was naive to her failings. Yes, at times she was self-destructive, irrational and grossly irresponsible, but I hoped by appealing to her nature’s better angles she could change. Instead, as the years progressed, and, supported by her ‘friends’ in the media, she corroded, simultaneously displaying signs of megalomania and paranoia. Once the relationship turned abusive and I feared for my life, I decide to call it quits. Today, the divorce comes through. Her name is Pakistan. And today, I am leaving her for good.

This was not a difficult decision to make. In fact, I didn’t make the decision. It was made for me. You do not chart your own destiny in Pakistan; Pakistan charts it for you. It’s emigration by a thousand news stories. I am aware that bemoaning the state of Pakistan as a final shot appears churlish and arrogant. After all, I have the luxury to leave — many others do not. Nor do I want to discredit the tireless work of the thousands who remain to improve the lives of millions of Pakistanis. They are better men and women than I. Pakistan has also given me so much over the years. It was Pakistan who introduced me to the love of my life. And it was upon her manicured lawns that we married, and upon her reclaimed soil that we set up our first home. She brought the love of a new family and new friends into my life. And it was Pakistan that witnessed the birth of my son, Faiz — named after one of her greatest sons.

She embraced me like no other gora post-9/11. I appeared in a documentary/reality series titled “George Ka Pakistan”. It allowed me to explore the country. I ploughed fields in the Punjab, built Kalashnikovs in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (probably couldn’t do that now), and mended fishing boats in Balochistan. The culmination of the series saw the then prime minister, Shaukat Aziz, confer Pakistani citizenship upon me, after the viewing public voted overwhelmingly to make me one of them. I was their George. Fame and affection followed.

But that love was conditional. Conditional upon me playing the role cast — the naïve gora. The moment I abandoned the Uncle Tom persona and questioned the defined establishment narratives — whether through my television work or columns — excommunication began. No longer a Pakistani in the eyes of others, my citizenship evidently was not equitable to others.

So, as I depart, I could go with my reputation tarnished, but still largely intact. Or I could leave you with some final words of honesty. Well, true love values honesty far more than a feel-good legacy. So here goes.

Pakistan, you are on a precipice. A wafer-thin sliver is all that stands between you and becoming a failed state. A state that was the culmination of a search for a ‘Muslim space’ by the wealthy Muslims of Northern India has ended up, as MJ Akbar recently pointed out, becoming “one of the most violent nations on earth, not because Hindus were killing Muslims but because Muslims were killings Muslims”.

The assassination of Salmaan Taseer saw not only the death of a man but also represented for me the death of hope in Pakistan. I did not mourn Taseer’s death. I did not know the man. But I mourned what he represented — the death of liberal Pakistan. The governor’s murder reminded us how far the extremist cancer has spread in our society. A cancer in which I saw colleagues and friends on Facebook celebrate his murder. A man murdered for standing up for the most vulnerable in our society — a Christian woman accused of blasphemy. He committed no crime. Instead, he questioned the validity of a man-made law — a law created by the British — that was being used as a tool of repression.

In death, the governor was shunned, unlike his killer, who was praised, garlanded and lionised for shooting Taseer in the back. Mumtaz Qadri became a hero overnight. But Qadri is not just a man — he’s a mindset, as eloquently put by Fifi Haroon. Fascism with an Islamic face is no longer a political or an economic problem in Pakistan, it’s now become a cultural issue. Extremism permeates all strata and socio-economic groups within society. Violent extremists may still make up a minority but extremism now enjoys popular support. As for the dwindling moderates and liberals, they are scared.

Pakistan does not require a secret police, we are in the process of turning upon ourselves. But then what do you expect when your military/intelligence nexus — and their jihadi proxies — have used religious bigotry as a tool of both foreign and domestic policy. It is ironic that the one institution that was designed to protect the idea of Pakistan is the catalyst for its cannibalisation. Christians, Ahmadis, Shias and Barelvis have all been attacked in the past year. Who will be next? Groups once funded and supported by the state have carried out many of these attacks. And many jihadi groups still remain in cahoots with the agencies.

So as I leave Pakistan, I leave her with a sense of melancholy. Personally, for all my early wide-eyed excitement and love for the country and its people, Pakistan has made me cynical, disillusioned and bitter over time. I came here with high hopes, adopting the country, its people and the language. I did find redemption here — but no longer."

PS: Today another minister was assassinated in the broad day light...Not because he was corrupt and not because he had criminal past...because he dared to speak...Some people might draw conspiracy theories out of it but I will strongly recommend against it. MY suggestion will be to think and act responsibly as nation and bring some semblance of order to otherwise very unruly and messy state of affairs. May god be with us.

National integration through educational exchange

Guest post by Samir Anwar Butt

Education is often confused with a predefined curriculum and a grade point average. However, it is much more and holds the capacity to shape a society. Successful education is one that evolves with time to inspire the youth towards positive and progressive change. It encourages critical thinking and creation of knowledge rather than following an existing pattern designed by others. Clearly, the Pakistani education system is not providing that. The adopted models of teaching have miserably failed. The consequences include the diluting of national integrity and pride, two things that are essential for any country to survive.

The people of Pakistan do not understand each other. Distinctions based on culture, language, region, religion, sects within religion, clothes and any other possible factor exist and plague the future of the country. Each group is adopting a cult-like following and moving towards a more rigid approach with every passing day. Some threaten to break loose from the country, while others tend to enforce their lifestyle on the population. The rule of law is becoming weaker and the lines of distinction between the people are becoming clearer. Tolerance, an essential ingredient of any society, is completely missing and extremism, not just religious, is being adopted. The very essence of a community has evaporated: minorities are being oppressed and freedom of speech is being suppressed. All this is a result of an education model that promotes isolation and hatred. Having an opinion is considered a curse.

There is no shortcut to this problem. A long term education policy is the only way forward. Intolerance requires a whole generation to phase out, that too, if strong education reforms are implemented during the phase-out process. Education is the strongest tool available to the government at any point. Intolerance and extremism are not commodities that can be destroyed, rather ideas that need to be reshaped. The lack of political say, dearth of education and nonexistent alternate opportunities are all scoring against the troubled nation.

I will not propose an expensive, idealistic solution to this government of modest authority and resources. Instead, I will focus on a solution that is easy to implement and quick to bear fruits. I propose an extensive student exchange program within the borders of Pakistan. I support a Pakistan where provincial borders are limited for administrative purposes only. I dream of a Pakistan where people are entitled to an opinion. Integrating the society is the first and foremost step if Pakistan is to prosper.

The world over, student exchange programs are extremely popular. Students are encouraged to spend some time outside their home country to learn about other environments and cultures. It works as a seed of tolerance and respect whereby the student learns to accept, adapt and adopt an alien lifestyle. It highlights the need to realize that one’s culture is not superior to another’s. Students see firsthand that humans come in different flavors of which all are to be relished. Various organizations are working in this department and facilitating opportunities for interested students.

Since having international exchange programs is very expensive, a more practical approach can be taken. The landscape of most Pakistani public universities is very unfortunate. Most students never get the opportunity to study in more than one province. Students reside in hostels based on their ethnic background. Each group flocks together, speaks its own language and indulges in fortified activities. The boundaries become so strong that no outsider can think of squeezing in. The slightest chance of learning about other people’s way of life is eliminated. Not realizing that meeting people from different backgrounds is education in itself, they deprive themselves of a tremendous opportunity to grow as a person. This is very similar to the national scenario, just a more crisp representation.

A simple exchange program between the universities of different provinces can help reduce the divides. People dislike each other not because of their behavior, but because of the developed stereotypes over an extended period of time. Instead of inducing harmony, hatred has always been promoted for political gains. There is no better way of washing away these negative stereotypes than actually living in the host environment. The public and private sector can help create a system where students can easily move from one institute to the other. Some financial support can be provided and credit be offered to students who pursue a few months of their university education in a different province. The exchange student will not only experience the new medium themselves but also contribute to the host society. He will experience firsthand association with other parts of Pakistan and will return as an ambassador for the host region. To further enhance the experience, some volunteer activities and discussion groups can be formulated as well.

Students love to study languages like English, French and Spanish. If provided with the option, many would love to learn regional languages as well. Incentives can be provided to students who learn one of Pakistan’s regional languages. Language forms an important part of any community. It can instigate violent movements or lay the foundations of peace. It is easily the biggest barrier when it comes to bringing together different communities. It is pertinent to note here that teaching English should be a high priority. As an international language, English holds the key to the latest research in all branches of sciences.

How wonderful would it be to see a Punjabi, wearing a Sindhi topi, speaking Pushto and eating Balochi Sajji in the streets of Quetta. Diversity represents beauty in most societies around the world. Unfortunately, it has turned into a burden for Pakistan and coexistence of culture and opinion has turned violent and bloody. The suggestions given above will help blur the lines of distinction and bring together a united Pakistan. They require modest resources but a strong determination.