Media Watch: World and Desi - March 17, 2008

Today a new beginning is being made in Pakistan. The newly elected parliamentarians are gathering at the National Assembly at Islamabad to take oath.

The Pakistani voters in their manifest wisdom have not bestowed a majority to any one party. Hence the majority PPPP is forced to seek out alliances. It has come to an understanding of a coalition government with PML-N and ANP. PPPP and PML-N are oil and water. This Assembly is not expected to last the full five year term for this reason.

They appear united in their hatred of President Musharraf and his ally PML-Q. Their chances for survival would be much better if they look forward rather than back.

The issues facing the nation are aplenty and it is hard to prioritise them. Suicide Bombings, Affordability of Essential Commodities, Electricity, Water, Presidency, Judiciary, Feudalism, K(h)akistocracy, Transparency, Employment, Corruption, Law and Order are some of the issues that defy simple governance. By September it would be evident who will really govern Pakistan. This will be a warm, long and dark summer.

Today we are combining the two columns World and Desi into one.

Iraq: 'Rules of Engagement Thrown out the Windo - Dahr Jamail

Garret Reppenhagen received integral training about the Geneva Conventions and the Rules of Engagement during his deployment in Kosovo. But in Iraq, "Much of this was thrown out the window," he says.

"The men I served with are professionals," Reppenhagen told the audience at a panel of U.S. veterans speaking of their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, "They went to Iraq to defend the U.S. But we found rapidly we were killing Iraqis in horrible ways. But we had to in order to remain safe ourselves. The war is the atrocity."

The event, which has drawn international media attention, was organised by Iraq Veterans Against the War. It aims to show that their stories of wrongdoing in both countries were not isolated incidents limited to a few "bad apples", as the Pentagon claims, but were everyday occurrences.

Fahim may go to SC against Zardari’s ‘interference’

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPPP) President Makhdoom Amin Fahim might go to the Supreme Court to stop PPP Co-chairman Asif Zardari from “interfering in party affairs”, party sources told Daily Times on Sunday.

The PPP, of which Asif Zardari is the co-chairman, is not registered with the Election Commission. It was the PPPP, headed by Makhdoom Amin Fahim, that contested the elections and won the most number of seats.

Sources in the pro-Amin Fahim camp told Daily Times on Sunday that he would not compromise and would approach either the Supreme Court or the Election Commission of Pakistan against Zardari, who was neither an MNA nor an office-bearer of the PPPP.


Qaim Ali Shah summoned to Islamabad

KARACHI: Pakistan Peoples Party Co-Chairman Asif Ali Zardari has summoned the PPP’s nominated candidate for Sindh Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah to Zardari House in Islamabad.

PPP sources said here on Sunday that Shah was called because the co-chairman wanted to finalise the formation of the next government for which he wanted to consult Shah.

World Banker and His Cash Return Home - Jason DeParle

Working from his office in Washington five years ago, Mr. Ratha produced the first global tally of remittances, the money that migrants send home, and stunned experts from himself on down with the discovery of their size. Gathered from a trickle of hard-earned cash, the sums now exceed $300 billion a year.

In subsequent work, Mr. Ratha, 45, has pushed to reduce money-transfer fees and increase the productivity of the money that is sent. Allies say his work has prompted projects in governments and beyond that could benefit millions of people. Skeptics argue that if migration brought development, Mexico would be Switzerland.

Poetry and the English Imagination by Bryan Appleyard

HERE are two opening lines:

“Give me my scallop-shell of quiet,”

“Lord, the Roman hycinths are blooming in bowls and”

The first is from Walter Raleigh’s ‘The Passionate Man’s Pilgrimage’, the second from T.S. Eliot’s ‘A Song for Simeon’. I quote them here solely because they both send a shiver down my spine. I could try to explain why – that haunting sc-sh-qw sound in the Raleigh, or the odd, unexpected stillness of the Eliot line caused, I think, by ‘in bowls’ and that hanging ‘and’ – but, in truth, my shiver comes from wells deeper than those plumbed by practical criticism. It comes from being and speaking English.

It is unfashionable to speak of national characteristics. Queasy types think it is akin to racism. But the truth is that nations are definably different. Most importantly, they differ in what they do best. No nation has produced better essayists than France, none has produced better composers that the Germans, better painters than the Italians, nor better novelists than the Russians. America invented jazz and still masters the form and, though some may dissent, her record in film is unsurpassed. And the English? The English do poetry.