Ripple Effect

editing the editorial pages of a newspaper can be a tricky job at time -- but its something that one should take with a bit of humour -- if you dont do that then you wont be able to do your job properly -- and sometimes you will make changes to an article that will be misconstrued or misunderstood -- or sometimes it will simply be a difference of opinion -- the worst thing would be though if you lost a good writer because of that

yes you read it right -- last night while driving to do an errand i turned on the radio and came across an FM channel where the host was talking in what appeared to be Gujarati -- initially i thought it was perhaps a new channel in gujarati -- apna karachi 107 FM has a segment in Gujarati i believe as well so perhaps someone took the initiative to cater to karachi's sizeable gujarati-speaking population. However, this morning again, as I was checking various FM channels, I came across the same one -- 93.5 FM -- with a man and a woman both talking in a mixture of what seemed to be urdu, English and Gujarati -- the songs were all indian but that doesnt necessarily mean that the channel would be indian because many pakistani FM channels also air Indian songs -- but then came an ad for Bisleri which is India's leading mineral water provider -- Bisleri is not sold in Pakistan so the ad couldnt be for Karachi -- and then it made sense -- this was clearly an FM channel coming from the...

at work today -- we make two days pages on sat which means four pages in all -- a colleague was talking of an impending visit to the US, via dubai and to LAX non-stop -- wanted to ask her how long the flight would be -- and what do i do? i said: "acha, so how many words?" --

Editorial -- Express Tribune -- April 18 Benazir Bhutto’s death was not the result of a few, frenzied militants acting on their own. There seems to be a very real conspiracy behind the blast that killed her. There was evil afoot at every stage. It was aimed at ensuring the country’s most significant political leader would not return alive from her last outing at Liaquat Bagh. By denying Ms Bhutto adequate security, by failing to direct provincial authorities to ensure it was offered to her, former president Pervez Musahrraf at the very least connived and conspired in this. In many ways he is responsible for the fact that she is not amongst us today. In his comments on the report which he made a day after its release, President Asif Ali Zardari spoke of being vindicated; of the PPP’s apprehensions regarding the murder being upheld. Some of what the report says certainly answers questions about why the government led by Benazir’s party has struggled to make headway in the investigation. ...

the first 4 days the op-ed pages have had the following writers: Farzana Versey, Salman Masood, Sami Shah, Ayesha Siddiqa, Quatrina Hosain, Osman Samiuddin, George Fulton, Mubasher Lucman, Omar Bilal Akhtar, Pervez Tahir, Aaker Patel, Marvi Memon, Amina Jilani, Kamran Shahid, Khalid Aziz, Dr Rubina Saigol, Fasi Zaka, Dr Meekal Ahmed, Faiza S Khan, Wajahat S Khan, and Feryal Gauhar -- the rest of the week you can expect to read Fahd Hussain, Naveen Naqvi, Dr Asad Zaman, Zafar Hilaly, Sanaullah Baloch, Mikail Lotia, Shandana Minhas, Khusro Mumtaz, Mohd Waseem, Rasul Baksh Rais, Ayesha Ijaz Khan, Absar Alam, Talat Hussain, Ahmed Rafay Alam, Munizae Jahangir, Javed Ch, Abbas Athar, Farhat Taj, Shahid Amin and soon Omar A Khan -- and these are all regulars -- doesnt include unsolicited articles -- and others that may be approached in the near future or are being approached

Editorial -- Express Tribune -- April 14 Pakistanis and Indians love a good wedding, especially when it involves famous people who also happen to make a pretty couple. Rational and forward-looking people on both sides of the border will be happy and relieved that after the initial fiasco and controversy Shoaib Malik and Sania Mirza have managed to tie the knot. This, by all accounts, is a happy end to what some had feared would become a long, drawn-out matter. Was Shoaib already married and if not then what was Ayesha Siddiqui doing insisting that he was? Was he duped into marrying a girl who was not the one he said he had met over the internet? And if that was the case, could he be that gullible? Then came charges that he had defrauded Ms Siddiqui, after which Indian police quizzed him and took his passport into their possession. All this happened until a few days before their marriage on April 12, and that left many people wondering what would eventually happen. While the Pakistani a...

Editorial -- Express Tribune -- April 14 The new goodwill in Washington between Pakistan and its hosts has been becoming increasingly obvious by the day. In a meeting with visiting Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and his delegation US President Barack Obama has made some fairly clear-cut assurances that America has no intention of grabbing Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal and trusts its ability to safeguard it. The comments are especially relevant in the face of past US warnings that the Taliban were seeking to seize weapons and were indeed desperate to obtain a nuclear device. The very possibility of this conjures up visions that are too awful even to contemplate. However, as the US president himself said so to Prime Minister Gilani, Pakistan’s nuclear facilities are ‘immaculately well guarded’. Of course differences remain. During the most recent round of talks the most significant ones concerned Pakistan’s opposition to a ban on new weapon production. The reasons cited for this by Prime...

Editorial -- Express Tribune -- April 13 The deaths of at least five people in Abbotabad on Monday after protests against the NWFP’s name-change turned violent are most tragic and serve to remind us just how emotional this whole issue is. The lives were lost after police tried to break up protests which had been continuing in the city since the passage of the 18th amendment in the National Assembly late last week. The protesters are part of a movement that seeks to create a new province from NWFP’s Hazara district on linguistic grounds and bases its argument along the same lines as the one that enabled the province to get a new name Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. That said, it is worth pointing out that living in a democracy often means having to accept the views of the majority and this is precisely what has happened in the case of the people of Hazara vis-a-vis the ANP’s successful challenge to the province’s existing – colonial – name. It also means that one can express divergent views but wit...

the new paper that i work for is finally coming out tomorrow (April 12) -- initially in Karachi -- and then in Lahore and Islamabad -- the first day we have Ayesha Siddiqa plus the Pakistan Cricinfo editor, a former founder member of Blackfish, a published author of a book on India and Pakistan and being Muslim, a television host and someone who writes regularly in the NYT -- there is also Zahoor, arguably Pakistan's best political cartoonist

Yesterday had to make a quick dash to Lahore -- Took a PIA flight at 3 pm -- the plane reversed from the gate and was slowly taxiing to the beginning of the runway -- and i have a habit of looking out of the window as much as i can -- and i saw one of the PAF sheds on one side -- you can tell from its camouflage colours -- and in front of it were three unmarked jets -- with very few windows -- they did not have any tail design or colour -- one however had a blue and red marking on the fuesalage and it said 'meridian' -- saw the same plane when i got back to Karachi later that night. The plane that I saw is kind of identical to the one shown in the picture here. The issue is that it's not a military plane but a private one and hence the question arises that what is it doing at Karachi airport. (Juxtapose this with a well-researched and detailed report by Jeremy Scahill that appeared in The Nation in November 2009 of the presence of US private contractors in Karachi hired by ...

Editorial -- Express Tribune (coming out soon in the market) President Asif Ali Zardari was quite on the spot when he said during a charged speech in Naudero over the weekend that the 18th amendment would prove to be a milestone in the country’s history. Speaking on the occasion of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s 31st death anniversary, the president said that the first two years of the PPP-led government had been spent “strengthening democracy and institutions”. A day prior to this, Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani had also said pretty much the same thing – and one would wholeheartedly agree with the assessment of both these men. The 18th amendment, when passed, would be arguably one of the most important amendments to the Constitution of 1973 in that it would hopefully make parliament and its leader -- the prime minister -- the main source of authority and power. It will do away with the infamous Article 58 (2)(b) which has been used by military dictators in the past to dissolve parliament and...

why in the world are some pakistani newspapers continuing to use 'dysfunctional' to describe the AJK chief justice -- dont they know what it means - if the official communication suspending him used that term then it needs to be put in single quotes -- surely someone in the newsrooms of these newspapers should know that the word 'dysfunctional' is not used in that sense -- wonder what will readers think of the newspaper itself when they see something like this

Call it boredom or living the life of a loser but yesterday I decided to play an April Fool's prank on facebook -- just to see the reaction that it would get -- a good joke is always one which people will or should fall for, and hence believability is an issue -- with rumours of late alleging that I am about to switch jobs I thought what better to say just that -- so the facebook status page said that i had decided to 'call it a day' and to 'take the other offer' -- the prank lasted for a few hours, well from early afternoon till late evening when i told people who kept asking me where i was heading to and why i had left to note today's date -- several phone calls and sms's were received and a couple of people said that they had heard i was leaving -- some at work also got calls asking them why i had resigned hence the title of the posting is quite apt