In a country where human rights are blatantly ignored, there’s not much heed paid to animal rights. But today I was forced to right this post. I heard the sound of bagpipes playing somewhere in the street so I thought there was some “baraat”. Yes I know it’s a holy day but that’s what I thought. But when I went out, there was a “bear show” caravan on it’s way. People were paying the madari to watch the bear “dance’. Now to some it may be very entertaining to see an animal dance. But most people don’t know what goes on behind drawn curtains.

“The bear show in I-8/3, Islamabad”

Taken from the PETA (people for the ethical treatment of animals) :-

“No animal should have to endure this type of abuse. Never patronize roadside bear shows, and when traveling in India and Pakistan, if you see tourists encouraging such a show, speak to them about the cruelty. If you see someone forcing a bear to “dance,” report the incident to the closest police station.

Even though it is illegal to capture bears in both India and Pakistan, more than 1,600 sloth bears are being forced to “dance” by madaris—the people who capture and keep the bears. Bear cubs—who are barely 1 year old—squeal in agony as red-hot needles are jabbed through their noses and thick ropes are forced through the throbbing wounds. When the ropes are tugged, the bears lift their legs and “dance.” Most of their teeth are pulled out, and they are forced to perform for up to 12 hours a day. Bears are “trained” to dance through a regime of pain and starvation. Many cubs die before the training begins because of the stress of capture, the terrible transportation conditions, starvation, dehydration, and rough handling. Although bears used in these acts would live up to 30 years in the wild, they rarely live more than eight years in captivity.”

PETA

Go to the website mentioned above and see a video of what is done to these poor animals, also there’s a petition there for you to sign to do something about it.

Rana Market, F-7/2. Islamabad. Yum. Yum.

Somehow, rain and samosas/pakoras/jalaibies just go hand in hand. So when it rains, drive to this very place and have their yummy samosas, jalaibis and pakoras

p:s: If you notice hard enough, you’d see a mullah giving me the “WHAT A HARAM THING YOU DO BUSTER” glare lol.

Once again, the parking at the dam side of Rawal Lake is open for all. And I suspect it wasn’t crowded when I went there because few know about this and that it’s free. And just because I am posting it here does not mean you can spread the word.

If you live in the vicinity of I-8/3 or F-10 then you must be familiar with the extremely excellent Nageena Burger. For those of you who don’t, this is an informative post. Go to either F-10 Markaz or I-8/3 Sangam Market and try it out. These people make the best burgers. Anda shami, chicken or beef. With or without cheese, scrumptious and delicious is their middle name.

An affordable meal and tasty as well. Hashim recommended :)

On Saturday, the clash between the judiciary and the government was surfaced once again despite the fact that on various occasions earlier both the Prime Minister and the Chief Justice denied publicly of a confrontation between the judiciary and the government. As this drama unfolds, the Chief Justice of Pakistan, in a sou motu action, has suspended two Presidential orders pertaining to the elevation of Chief Justice of Lahore High Court Khawaja Sharif to the Supreme Court and of appointing Justice Saqib Nisar as Acting Chief Justice Lahore High Court.

The prime reason for this suo motu action is that the presidency has not ‘consulted’ Iftikhar Chaudhry, Chief Justice Supreme Court prior to the issuance of aforementioned presidential orders and therefore is a violation of Article 177 of the Constitution of Pakistan. Nevertheless, the government’s stand is that the formal consultation was held with the Chief Justice and judges’ appointments were as per constitution. So far, government has failed to provide a documentary proof of any such ‘consultation’ on the issue of appointment of judges of the superior court.

The above-stated news has already become the ‘lead’ story of all the Pakistani national newspapers. Different newspapers have used different vocabulary to the nature and severity of this incident. For instance, one English daily newspaper calls the Supreme Court’s verdict as a ‘stinging rebuke’; another English newspaper discusses it as ‘dangerous escalation’ and an international newspaper calls it as a “simmering power struggle”. Undoubtedly, it is a worrisome development for the nascent elected government in Pakistan, who presently is also confronting the looming security threats within the country and a Taliban insurgency on country’s western border. Many political parties have already reacted strongly by categorically calling the presidential act as “unconstitutional”. However, some opposition leaders such as Mr Nawaz Sharif (Chief PML-N), is using it as an opportunity to pressure the government, particularly Asif Ali Zardari. The News on Sunday reports PML-N Chief as saying:

“It is the biggest disservice to the democracy by a person who claimed to be a democrat and happens to be the elected president”.

PML-N Chief has been very vocal for the past two or three years on ‘independence of judiciary’ despite the fact that in 1997 in his term as Prime Minister, he also made a disservice to democracy by ordering an assault on Supreme Court building. Certainly PML-N Chief’s above stated comment elucidates that he is using a different yard stick to check incumbent government’s performance relating to independence of judiciary.

This whole judicial crisis highlights the need for a crucial missing element which is called ‘good governance’. Good governance which as defined by the OECD is “the management of government in a manner that is essentially free of abuse and corruption, and with due regard for the rule of law”. But do our institutions comply with the principles of good governance? Our history suggests that good governance is either used in elections to win people’s votes or the term appears in political speeches of opposition leaders, meant to destabilize the ruling political party.

One of the slogans of our elected government was certainly ‘good governance’ in February 2008 elections. But the current situation of the country (price hike, electricity shortage, security situation etc) has already nullifies the claims made during February 2008 elections by of our elected representatives. The worse of it is that the elected officials and appointed officials, legislatures and executive, at the moment are at war against each other. The recent politico-judicial turmoil is a clash between two personalities, Asif Ali Zardari Vs Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry’, which has been shaped up by now as a clash between the ‘executive and the judiciary’, and as rightly said by Asma Jehangir in her article dated December 19, the clash which began after the Supreme Court’s NRO judgment, has resulted in disturbing the equilibrium of power and an imbalance has been created in favor of judiciary.

Regardless of Prime Minister’s assertion that the country’s institutions will work within their respective domains, political experts of the country view it as “escalating political tension’ in the country which could have dangerous consequences for the incumbent elected government. Mr. Hussain Haqqani, Pakistani Ambassador in the US has been reported as saying that Pakistan would experience massive economic set-back if the democratic process is derailed in the country. This implies that to prevent Pakistan from going through another series of crises, both the legislatures and the judiciary should focus on constitutional provision, responsibilities and institutional integrity.

I don’t claim to be much of a fan of political talk shows or shows on news channels related to politics, but one show I love to watch is Siyasiyaat. I recently came across their Facebook fan page and thought I’d share it.

“Siyasiyaat with Ejaz Haider is a news discussion, debate and analysis show.

Past shows will be posted on the fanpage regularly.”

Siyasiyaat Page on Facebook

Ejaz Haider is a veteran journalist and is also a consulting editor for:-

The Friday Times

Across the world, Universities are a place where anything can be debated at length and professors are respected due to their scholarship and grasp of the subject matter. But is it the case with the Pakistani universities? On February 4, 2010 in Islamabad, the registrar of the National University of Modern Languages beat-up a university Professor Tahir Malik at a students’ reception ceremony organized by the International Relations Department of the university.

The registrar of the university is an ex-military serviceman who got maddened after hearing the criticism on General Musharaf’s role in power brokering deal with the PPP through the National Reconciliation Ordinance. The registrar also got enraged when Professor Tahir Malik questioned the registrar’s appointment which was made without any advertisement or following the prescribed selection criteria. The registrar is neither guilty of his act nor the university administration has taken any disciplinary action against him as yet other than calling for an inquiry of the incident.

According to “The News” this is not the first incident at NUML where a University professor has been assaulted because of criticizing army. At another such incident, Azaz Syed, a journalist teaching in the NUML’s Journalism Department, was sacked from his job because of criticized ISI’ chief. The News also reports that after these two incidents the tension between NUML’s civilian and military staff (retired army officers) has grown to a great extent.

Surely, NUML is one of the many military businesses or “MILBUS” in Pakistan and as Dr Ayesha Siddiqa Agha discusses in her book “Military Inc.”, the purpose of these MILIBUS like NUML is to ensure a very dominant social presence as well as gain political and economic control. Besides, the recent incident of assault of a professor by the NUML administrator also suggests that criticizing army can not be tolerated by any means if you are being employed by any of the MILIBUS. But then where goes the fundamental constitutional guarantee of “freedom of speech and expression”? Or probably freedom of speech and expression is only limited to books and it has not yet been accepted by the masses and institutions. Or probably we are not that democratic yet and therefore freedom of speech and expression has not become a norm here.

Update: The President of Pakistan who is also the Chancellor of the NUML has ordered an inquiry into the incident. More Details can be found here http://thenews.jang.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=27097

I read a hilarious news report in today’s Dawn. The news report pronounces President Zardari’s superstition and the adopted measures to protect Mr. President from ‘black magic’ and evil eyes’. According to the news report, the measure taken to protect our dear President from black magic is an everyday slaughter of a ‘black’ goat. Sure, currently, our President is confronting some harsh criticism from political parties particularly PML-N, nevertheless, I really wonder if Zardari is really taking this criticism as ‘black magic’? But this news item really shows how progressive Mr Zardai is. Holy cow, if we made rough calculations then probably at least 600 goats have already been slaughtered so far.

This year, Islamabad turned 50.

Islamabad has been through ups and downs of her life, but she has always managed to emerge as a beautiful and a lovable place to live.

May Almighty bless our city with the peace and stability that she was once popular for.

Amen!

*Sigh of relief*… Yes, today was the last day of the leader and entrepreneur summit. I can safely say, it has been fun, and it’s been tiring, it’s been annoying, disappointing, smiling and so on and so forth. Today was the final round of the Business idea competition which I don’t know who won but I’m sure the chosen team was the deserving team *I hope*…

The event that I did attend (well half of it) was the PLAY-IT ad making competitions final. The selected teams were to re-present their ad to the panel of judges (new panel; more later) and also make a 40 second radio jingle along with it.

I’ll be very honest here, last minute good judge backing out is bad. It showed, the panel of judges consisted of the guitar player of the band Irtaash from Islamabad who “has worked in the telecom industry”, and three other people that I did not catch the name of. Now I might be biased, or jealous or simply bitching. But I’m sorry to say, the FINAL, didn’t really get the right panel of judges. And well, I don’t know who won or who lost, because mid-way I lost interest (Sorry everyone, I just did)… so I’ll find that out later *again*…

The closing ceremony is under-way, so as the delegates bid each other farewell and receive their certificates. I need to mention that whatever the competitions were like, or the social events and all that followed. It was a very very well organized event *organized*… I bear witness to the fact that it takes months and months of pre-event logistic work, organization, tears, sweat, hard work etc. But the whole team put up an amazing 4 days for the people.

I am extremely thankful and very grateful to Momna Azad, who was the external affairs director for YLES’10. She tolerated my annoying calls, she got me an observer tag, she made sure everything worked fine, and even though she wasn’t as visible as say the social event manager or the media manager, she did a mighty fine job and worked super hard. So Thank You Momna =)

Goodbye everyone =)

Today was solidly an uneventful day. Well in the start at least. The same foggy state of mind and thought prevailed as I got on the rickshaw to make it to LUMS. Yes, again at 8:30 am. I have learned my lesson now. Never ever will I go anywhere on time in Lahore.

Today, the starting events were the “leadership quiz” and the “Harvard case study competition”. Again I had to choose between the former and the latter. And I chose the latter simply because I think (or perhaps thought) that case studies are fun (More on this later). The delegates were handed out a huge pile of papers that I’m sure made little sense (if any) to 70% of the delegates, or maybe it was their facial expressions that gave out that very impression.

I read a little through the case study and it was basically a case study that talked about raising finance options for the tea company called “Honest Tea”. The judges for this competition were an MBA student from LUMS, and a faculty member of LUMS as well. I couldn’t get their names (so if there is a 1/10000000 chance of anyone actually reading this from this very competition… I’m sorry *sniff* ). What made me really let go of my usual serious stance and laugh was how the delegates took the “BCG MATRIX” and totally raped it

“This firm is a star firm, just like starbucks”…. WTF? =p

“They should.. erm.. aah.. like.. ahh.. like… umm… you know.. like.. ummm.. do something? ” …. Ahawn!?
=p

“The company should opt for venture capital because it’s a coperation and they should cooperate”… R missing anyone?!

For all the people who know what this finance is. This would make sense to them. But at the end of the competition, one team was selected from that room to compete against the teams selected from the other room in round two. I unfortunately couldn’t attend round two because I couldn’t. So I don’t know which teams made it to the final.

Next up was PLAY-IT. The competition which requires teams to come up with a 1 minute advertisement for an assigned product. Again the teams were divided so I could only sit in one room. The advertisements that were played in the room I was in were interesting. Some very good and catchy, some crappy and sloppy, one ripped off advertisement as well (Funny no one noticed). Some notable mentions were the advertisement for “Total petrol pumps”, “Rafhan Jelly”, “Knorr ketchup”.. and “Dairy Milk”… The results weren’t announced right there, right then so I will find out tomorrow who made it to the finals.

The social event for today is the “grand dinner”. And the theme for this dinner is “Greece”. Zeus, Apollo, and Aphrodite will be plenty (I hope). For today.

C ya? =p

I left early in the day (7:30 am) in pursuit of a rickshaw to get me to LUMS so I wouldn’t miss the business idea competition which was “scheduled” to start at 8:30 am. But due to the state of mind that is prevalent these days, it didn’t start till my watch sounded the 11:00 am hourly chime.

In my head was the though that it’d be the best that YLES has to offer, but an hour into the presentations, I couldn’t stop yawning. Oh and since there were A LOT of teams, there were two places where there were presentations so like I mentioned previously in my earlier posts, I trusted my instinct and went into one of the two venues. Oh and yes, they were boring, didn’t catch my attention, except for 2 or 3. But then again that is my view. The judges for the competition were:-

a) Ambreen Waheed who is an executive director at Responsible Business initiative.

c) Iram Fatima Jafry who is the manager advisory for KPMG Tasweer Hadi and Co Lahore.

The presentations revolved around one team wanting to open a fitness center, another wanting to open a Cafe’, another wanting to open an institute to groom ACCA students. (Being an ACCA student, I particularly found his presentation very offending =p). One team wanted to open a security company and one individual wanted to open a Fashion swapping business, which in my discussion with the judges after wards floated as their favorite presentation. Half of the total number of teams who presented their ideas were chosen for the second round.

Though I’d like to mention here that the judges were very careful as to what they say to me, or maybe it was the fact that they just didn’t like me *laugh*.

Round two had the first round chosen teams presenting in detail to a panel of judges the financial plan of their business followed by a question and answer session. I’ll be honest here, I was half asleep by then and the judges (except for one) were asking STUPID questions in my opinion. Regardless of the presentation or idea at hand, the judges shouldn’t shove their “experience” or “thoughts” in the faces of the teams who have worked really hard. One judge even had the nerve to go up to one team (after the computer was troubleshooting) and say ” beta koi chota idea socho, woh na socho j o tumharay baray bhee na kar sakay hon”.In my view, that is as demotivating as a Maulvi trying to tell you to be a nice person.

Anyways, the results will be announced today so I will update that later on. The social event for the night was a concert. The band playing at the concert was none other than “a thousand girls dilo ke dharkan”…. NOOOORI.

I sat through 3-4 songs. The concert though was marred by sound issues, and pretty much an average performance by the band.

That’s about it I guess.

Day two activities at YLES’10. The day started with a rickshaw wala “trying” to rip me off. I say “trying” because over the course of the past two days I have gained wisdom as to why I get ripped off and what I should do to prevent me getting ripped off:-

1) I apparently look like a “forun-er”.

2) Judging by my body language, it seems I have a lot of money *laughs*

And to prevent the outcome of the above mentioned points, the only thing that got me out of this dilemma was to speak in Punjabi.

“Punjabi ich bolo tay masla solve ho he janda ay ustad” – Learned rickshaw wala

After I got to the venue, I was directed to a huge canopy tent with 4-5 big screen projectors displaying the rather interesting video clip of the song ‘Billi Jean” from Micheal Jackson’s Budapest 1992 concert. I say interesting here because the crowd in this very concert went absolutely “cuckoo” when they saw Mr. Jackson. One could see screaming, crying, dancing, stoned, sober, semi-stoned, semi-sober and other humanly emoted people present. The crowd were seated and Umair Jaliawala started the proceedings. He tells the history of his last name as the “remembrance of his grand father meeting his grand mother in the Jalianwala garden”.

Deemed Umair the Turner on his website:-

School of Leadership website

The start to his presentation was rather interesting. He apparently likes to “turn people on”. Sexual innuendos were a plenty linked with a lot of interesting ploys and activities to do for the delegates present. He started off with explaining why the youth needs energy, how they can nurture it, how self love is important ( or maybe that was later on in the show but it cracked me up). His theme for the whole workshop was “Screw it, let’s do it”, based on the Virgin Empire mogul, Richard Branson’s autobiography by the same name. Delegates were divided into groups, assigned a Leadership facilitator. Made to ask people random questions, get question papers filled, hug each other, basically network. Which came to par with the theme. The most interesting activity in my opinion was him telling the delegates it’s lunch time. The lunch time announcement was received very well but he had something else under his belt (NO THIS IS NOT A SEXUAL INNUENDO). He told the delegates that they had to make their lunch from the raw materials present there and sell it to some other team. Interesting exercise in my opinion. Then at the end of the day they had to use trash to make something useful that was “sellable”..

This is in fact a very brief summary of what happened but I’m pretty sure I covered everything. A little profile about Mr Umair is available on the website I mentioned above. Worth mentioning is:-

His humble exterior and age doesn’t echo the crowds he has transformed, at SoL (including YLC, TTYT & HPJ) and other schools, colleges, universities, and organizations (including Habib Bank Limited, The Citizens Foundation, Institute of Chartered Accountants of Pakistan (ICMAP), Aga Khan Sports and Welfare Board, All Pakistan Memon Foundation, Institute of Business Administration (IBA), Iqra University, Karachi University, PAF KIET, Foundation Public School and Beaconhouse School). He immediately relaxes his audience, guards down, receptive to learning, before he shakes their paradigms again. His sessions are a rollercoaster journey of change, exercises/games, questions, quotes, challenges and realizations.

1) Never get ripped off EVER AGAIN.
2) The Chicken Cheese shawarma from Cock N Bull (NOT ANOTHER INNUENDO I SWEAR) SUCKS.

And a couple of other things too which are not relevant or maybe they are. But then again, I might have forgotten them. Too much knowledge is a hassle after all.

Oh and currently there is a “surprise event; social event” going on which I couldn’t be bothered by because it’s just a snazzy version of the kiddy scavenger hunt concept.

A workshop will be conducted at 10 pm related to the “PLAY-IT” competition which I will write about when it takes place.

So I depart. *wave*