Baithak Desi Jun 15: On the Long March - Cowasjee - Irfan Hussain - Aitezaz - DT - Anjum NIaz - Ghazi Salahuddin, Kala Kola Klub and lots more

If street thinking or street power is to be believed, the funds for the lawyers’ movement and for this culmination have emanated from the coffers of Mian Nawaz Sharif and his brand of Muslim League, whose coffers were and are filled to the brim with the nation’s money.Our great redeemers – 2 by Ardeshir Cowasjee

Irfan Hussain is more circumspect: Clearly, many of those now gathered in Islamabad to demand the restoration of Mr Iftikhar Chaudhry as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court are idealists who feel deeply for the cause they have taken up. But many are not. Let us be clear that many in the ranks of the marchers are seeking to benefit, whatever the outcome of this movement. These elements have no concern for an independent judiciary, and their game is purely political. The sudden presence in their movement of retired generals, who were once the lynchpins of past military governments, should give activists a reason to pause and reflect.

It is all about politics: Persuading them to disperse peacefully, he said: “One thing which I did not want to say before the full glare of the media is that if we go ahead and stage the sit-in, this huge gathering will dwindle to just 2,000 and the impact of this show of strength will be spoilt. Aitezaz Ahsan on accusations that he sold out.

The DT heading says it all: Long march ends without roadmap

But their editorial [Who is the movement against?] begins with a roar and ends with a whimper

But tell me Anjum Niaz, where is the literati? Do men have a bad hair day? The four I watched last week on television certainly appeared as having one. Getting into each other’s hair, the quartet exposed itself to being men of straw and not steel as they have always tried portraying themselves.

And on the "long march" Ghazi Salahuddin suffered from a hangover.

And Khalid Hasan from DC in Kala Kola Klub —continues with hair: What is common between President Pervez Musharraf, Imran Khan, Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain and Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry? Even a schoolboy knows the answer: They are all members of the Kala Kola Klub. Imran Khan is a member with enhanced credentials. He has had a hair transplant too and he has had it dyed. I am a life-long member of the Imran Khan fan club and I would be in his corner even if he dyed his hair shocking pink. And even if he had no hair.

Assassination has long been an appealing subject for male novelists. Geoffrey Household’s “Rogue Male” (1939), Richard Condon’s “Manchurian Candidate” (1959), Frederick Forsyth’s “Day of the Jackal” (1971), Don DeLillo’s “Libra” (1988) and James Ellroy’s “American Tabloid” (1995): all are fictions plotted by men about men plotting to murder other men.

Henning Wagenbreth

First Chapter: ‘A Case of Exploding Mangoes’ (June 15, 2008)

Mohammed Hanif’s exuberant first novel, “A Case of Exploding Mangoes,” extends this tradition of assassination fiction and shifts it east to Pakistan. The death at its center is that of Gen. Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, president of Pakistan from 1978 to 1988. Zia’s fate is one of Pakistan’s two great political mysteries, the other being the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. The established facts concerning his death are as follows. That on Aug. 17, 1988, after inspecting a tank demonstration in the Punjab, Zia boarded a C-130 Hercules — “Pak One” — to fly back to Islamabad. That he was accompanied on board by a number of his senior army generals, as well as by the American ambassador to Pakistan, Arnold Raphel. That shortly before takeoff, crates of mangoes were loaded onto the plane. That shortly after takeoff, the C-130 began to fly erratically, alternately dipping and rising: a flight phenomenon known to aviation experts as “phugoid.” And that the plane crashed soon after, killing all on board. Theories as to the cause of the crash have ranged from simple machine failure to the idea that one of the mango crates contained a canister of nerve gas, which, when dispersed by the plane’s air-conditioning system, killed both pilots. Among those many groups or persons suspected of being behind the assassination — if assassination it was — are the C.I.A., Mossad, the K.G.B., Murtaza Bhutto (Benazir’s brother) and Indian secret agents, as well as one of Zia’s right-hand men, Gen. Aslam Beg. The Late Dictator

Ambassadors of law are here
Missionaries of justice are here
Messengers of virtue are here
Emissaries of due process are here.

They seek no seat of power
No umras at state expense
They demand no foreign junkets
They long for no bullet-proof limos;
All they seek is justice
Justice for all their only call.

Long March for Justice - Dr Farrukh Saleem

On the Man of the Hand-written Will Amina Jilani writes: Our local media had it that Zardari was present at the prime minister's begging meeting with the King, yet diplomatic sources in the Kingdom have it that his non-official status rightly precluded him from being there. This would make sense, knowing Saudi custom. They rightly need to know what is what and who is who. Some of us out here also want to know what is what and who is who when it comes to Zardari. It was announced in the press on June 12 that "...he will preside over a special meeting of the Sindh cabinet.... to review the performance of the provincial government as well as the prevailing political and economic situation in the province." Keeping on pushing, as exhorted, one must ask in what capacity, and as what?

The people of Sindh are, for the most part, a strong and hardy race, with a complexion similar to that of the natives of western India. The higher ranks are corpulent to a proverb and this habit of the body is here even more than in other Asiatic countries looked up to as no less adding to the respectability than to the beauty of its possessor. Those, therefore, who are wealthy or of consequence in the scale of society, encourage this tendency to corpulency, by indolence and full diet, and every other means in their power. The Belluches and many of the Samma tribes have, in a remarkable degree, those features commonly called Jewish, and which are strikingly different from those of the other inhabitants. An oval contour of face, aquiline nose, arched eyebrows, and high forehead, with expressive eyes, are the characteristic features of the Sindhians above alluded to. The people of both sexes are certainly extremely handsome, if a judgment can be formed (from the opinions of several gentlemen who have visited the country,) and from an acquaintance with the people on the immediate borders of Sindh, who are chiefly natives of that country (province). History of Sindh by Captain James McMurdo

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