Senile Chairman, Apathetic Team - What a Great Combination !

Pakistan fell to an ignominious defeat yesterday to the least favoured major team in the tournament. Let us be very clear, it wasn't England's sterling performance that won them this match, it was Pakistan's utterly pathetic display. No less than 4 catches were dropped and close to 25 runs given by the most clumsily butterfingered display by any team in a major cricket tournament ever.

To cap it off, Pakistan produced the most spineless batting since Sunil Gavaskar decided to go slow from ball one against England in the 1975 World Cup because by his estimation the target of 340 odd was impossible to achieve.

Here are some questions I have for the so-called team management, a misnomer if ever there was one. (How can a team of people with the sloth like, utterly untalented, completely useless Intikhab Alam at its helm be called management?)

1. Why did Younis Khan decide to bowl on a belter of a wicket, knowing full well that Pakistan can't chase their own tails let alone a decent score?
2. Why was M. Aamir played instead of Sohail Tanvir?
3. Why was Yasir Arafat, the team all-rounder, made to open the bowling?
4. Why was Shoaib Malik given an over before the specialist spinners in the team had been given a chance?
5. Why is it that even with the presence of a long list of coaches can the Pakistani fielders not field to save their lives?
6. What is the bowling coach good for if every bowler is going to bowl no balls and give away free hits (including the spinners?)
7. What possessed Younis Khan and Shoaib Malik to take singles for 5 overs when chasing 185 in 20?
8. When it was clear that defeat was inevitable why was there no inclination to make the margin of defeat as low as possible so that a win against Holland could conceivably let Pakistan through? Or do they know that they're not capable of even beating Holland?
9. What good is Misbah-ul-Haq at #7?
10. Why was Younis Khan still laughing like a moron after the worst performance by Pakistan in a long long time? Does he not care? Should a person like that be at the helm? Should a person like that even be in the team?

There is no doubt that the Pakistan cricket team is a reflection of the country it belongs to.

The chairman of the PCB is a senile geriatric about whom close aides joke that he often forgets in mid-sentence what he was talking about. A couple of days ago he publicly announced that Imran Nazir would never play for Pakistan again because he'd shown dissent to an umpire in the domestic T20. Disregarding the fact that the chairman PCB does not have the power to do anything of the sort, it is laughable for the chairman of a board whose players have been caught doping and smuggling contraband but are still playing, to imply anything of the sort.
This is the same chairman under whom a visiting cricket team was attacked by terrorists because the PCB did not provide adequate security. Ijaz Butt then had the gall to accuse one of the victims, Chris Broad, of lying and claimed that the security for the Sri Lankan team was of Presidential level. He also obviously refused to step down, giving the logical reason that Zardari the Patron-in-chief of the PCB still had complete faith in him !

Ijaz Butt's incompetencies will take more than a column to narrate, suffice to say that this Country, this Captain and this team deserve this Chairman and vice versa.

The Restoration of the CJ – Winners and Losers

Iftikhar Chaudhry – Winner – PCO Judge or not, Corrupt or Not, the restored CJ has been vindicated and his part in the whole two year struggle has been quite exemplary. He has tried to remain neutral (as much as that is possible in an essentially political struggle) and in triumph and failure has been quite dignified, something rarely expected or achieved by prominent figures in Pakistan.

Asif Zardari – Loser – Cornered into submission by the lawyers, the public, Nawaz et all, the army, the ever present 'external forces' and even people within his own party. Nobody in Pakistan trusts him anyway and Zardari and Co's. belated attempts to give this one a positive spin aren't really succeeding.

Lawyers of Pakistan – Winners – The real winners, more so than even the CJ. He at least was fighting for his seat, they were fighting for the supremacy of the Law of the land. Kudos to them. They deserve to be feted.

Shujaat Hussain & Co. – Losers – The Q League tried to blackmail whoever they could during the crisis and with its resolution they will once again be thrown back into the dung pile they belong in. Their opportunism will not endear them to either of the two major players. (Having said that and knowing Pakistani politics, they will be playing some kind of role pretty soon - and not likely a positive one)

Nawaz Sharif – Winner – At the crucial juncture of his house arrest, Nawaz's decision to come out fighting endeared him to his party and essentially gave the momentum to the Long March when it seemed to be flagging (and at a time when the brave people congregated at the Lahore high Court seemed to be losing the fight to the Police). He's won a few more supporters over this for sure and proven his hold over Punjab. It is unlikely that the order to disqualify him and his brother won't be taken back pretty soon.

Pervez Musharaf – Loser – The man who started it all. Had been on TV regularly over the last few weeks, nowhere to be seen now. Time to haul him up by the collar and ask some serious questions about his 8 year conduct.

People of Pakistan – Winners – The students, the civil activists and everyone else who protested in whatever way, proved something that everybody had stopped believing in Pakistan. The people do still care and indeed still have power. Probably the best positive to come out of this all.

Rehman Malik – Loser – The definition of loser. With the crisis at its highest, with section 144 effective in the whole of the country, with hundreds of activists being arrested, Rehman Malik on Live TV was denying everything. This is the kind of person that needs to be kicked out of Pakistani politics, soonest.

Sherry Rehman and Raza Rabbani – Winners – Their principled stance could only have endeared them to their constituents and the people of Pakistan. It takes bravery of the highest order to stand for a principle, especially in the corruption ridden halls of Pakistani politics.

Salman Taseer – Loser – Another of those who were more loyal than the king. He will have a hard time in the Punjab Governership role in the very near future. When power is this tenuous, it behooves one to wield it with circumspection.

Feel free to add any you think deserve to be winners or losers, or to disagree with my list.

Pakistan and nobody else to blame for the attack on the Sri Lankans

I'm quite fed up with all the bullshit spewed forth by every Pakistani whenever anything goes wrong in the country. It is never our fault. There is always a conspiracy theory and everyone else from India to the US to the Jews and everything in between is to blame.

The horrendous unpardonable attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team is a case in point. Within minutes of the attack people had started blaming RAW, the sister concern of the ISI in India. Whether RAW had anything to do with today's attack is besides the point. The truth is that the security lapses that led to this tragedy were horrendous and the blame for them lies squarely on the Pakistan Government and the PCB.

Presidential level security had been promised to the Sri Lankan cricket team, but what they got was a cheapass bus, two rickety police jeeps (with under trained, incompetent policemen) and a couple of motorcycle riders. Having suffered Presidential motorcades for the last 30 years I can assure you that is not how President's travel in this country.

I remember once counting 106 cars in the motorcade of the useless Farooq Ahmed Khan Leghari. Musharaf had decoy routes and cars and a huge entourage, not too long ago I had to wait 45 minutes on a road adjoining The Mall because Musharaf was going to pass that way, in the end they decided on a different route! Unarguably the most useless President of Pakistan ever, Rafiq Tarar, had a huge posse of Police protecting him years after he had left the presidency. Zardari has literally hundreds of policemen and his own personal force protecting him at all times. With all due respect to Leghari, Musharaf, Tarar and Zardari, the Sri Lankan players' lives were and are far more important than these hopeless pieces of lard we call Presidents.

6 policemen gave their lives in the ensuing battle, they are to be saluted and the nation should honour these heroes who gave their lives in the line of duty, but, that should not take our focus away from the fact that these were Punjab Police personnel, much less trained than Presidential Guards or Army Commandos and equipped with much inferior weaponry, not to mention the shabby vehicles they were travelling in. Presidential motorcades have shiny brand new double cabin Toyota Hilux 4X4's filled with commandos armed to the teeth.

If the Sri Lankan's were being given President level security let us have Zardari travelling in non-bullet proof vehicles from now on. We need to find out who was responsible for this state of affairs. Who authorized such abysmal security. Heads need to roll.

The other area we need to carefully think of is the lack of condemnation for such heinous acts among the general population of our country. As said before we blame everybody else for our ills, we are somehow always the aggrieved party. How many of us will come out into the streets to protest this incident? Is this issue less important than reinstating a corrupt Chief Justice, or the equally corrupt and unethical PML Nawaz leadership? And if we fail to protest against incidents like these do we have a right to blame anyone?

Introspection is a tool often neglected in our society. Since in the defeatist philosophy of our culture, everything that happens is either God's Will or the machinations of unseen forces we have come to a point where we have stopped even the basic thought processes.

Time to stop this stupidity.Time to start thinking again.

Who is Zardari accountable to? and what is "Shariah Law" anyway?

The question that immediately sprang to my mind when I read the news that Zardari had agreed to let 'Shariah' law be implemented in Swat was, "Who is he to decide that?".
Unfortunately, on reflecting for a couple of minutes, the conclusion was that we gave him the mandate. Personally I wouldn't vote for Zardari if somebody put a gun to my head, but for better or worse (mostly for worse) he is the elected representative of this pathetic little unfortunate banana republic of ours.

I think Zardari, along with George W. Bush, is probably the best example in the world of why democracy is not all it's cracked up to be. If a loser with the IQ of a Gnat, and a looter without any compunction or shame can so easily come (repeatedly) into power through democracy, the system cannot be very good. It might be Ok for a first world country, where (theoretically) a system of checks and balances insures that the damage is not irreversible, but in a third world country like Pakistan, where no systems exist and the basic machinery of Govt. grinds to a standstill at the whim of every Tom, Dick and Harry, democracy just doesn't work. (For Dick read Mullah, the biggest Dicks in the world).

So let's see what is "Shariah Law"? Shariah, funnily enough means the 'path to the water' (gives you a good idea of how provincial Islam (and all religions for that matter) really are when stripped of their false grandeur) or more generally it means, 'the way'. Muslims agree that Shariah comes from the Quran and Sunnah, but it gets really murky, really fast after that. Some Muslims (Sunnis) believe that Ijmah (consensus) and Qiyas (analogy) have a very important place in Shariah Law, others (Shias and a major Sunni sect) don't.

Let me start at the "fountain" of all knowledge first, the Quran and Sunnah. In many many matters of law, there is no help from these sources, most contemporary subjects are obviously not touched upon. When there is something said about a particular subject, it is often vague and amenable to interpretation. Things can mean this or that, depending on the translator and his stance. A classical example is Muttah. Read a Sunni translation of the Quran and the valid surah 4:24 seems obviously against any such practice, read a Shia translation and it sounds murky but possible. (Anybody who comes up with the stupid argument that you need to become a scholar in Arabic to know the right answer is of course full of it for several reasons; 1. God’s word should be clearer, 2. After becoming a scholar it’ll still be amenable to my particular interpretation)

For more serious stuff there is either absolutely nothing in the fountains of knowledge or vague platitudes. Abortion, for example. The Quran says on separate occasions, 'Do not kill your children', but it always adds 'for fear of want'. (6:151 and 17:31) So is it allowed for other reasons? How about euthanasia to end a child's suffering, or abortion of a child of rape? And how to interpret the word 'children'? How does Islam deal with the question of when life begins, is a foetus a child? The Quran obviously is befittingly silent. And even when it says do not kill your children for fear of want, the reason given is that it is God's job to provide it sustenance, but as we all know that is patently not the case, in say Ethopia or other third World countries. So if God has failed to live up to his promise, does abortion become OK? Clearly then not all answers are available in the Quran and Sunnah, and that's when we enter the slippery slope.

In the face of this obvious vagueness, Islamic scholars had to come up with a better system and thus different schools of Law came into existence, the thing is which one is Shariah Law?

Amongst Sunnis, there's Hanafi, Hanbali, Maliki and Shafii schools of thought, which pray should one follow, and more importantly which one will be used in Swat? And if you think for a second that the differences amongst them are trivial, think again. And this is just the Sunni's, the Shia's which make up a substantial 20+% of this country are on a completely different tangent altogether.

Abu Hanifa, the originator of the Hanafi school, believed that wine was prohibited but it was allowed to drink small amounts of other alcoholic drinks. (Later Hanafi's disagreed with this and decided all alcohol was prohibited). So under "Shariah Law" would a Muslim following the beliefs of the premier jurist in Islam be allowed to drink in moderation? Abu Hanifa believed you could do the namaz in any language, would the Swat Shariah allow the recitation out loud of namaz in Urdu or Punjabi? The Shaafi's (Ahl-Hadith) form 28% of the Muslim World and believe there is no room for new interpretations in Islam and reject Qiyas and Abu-Hanifa's method, and narrow down the possibility of interpretations. The Maliki's pray with hands held to the side. The Hanbali's prefer a very strict, very narrow interpretation. They're representatives used to patrol the streets and smash musical instruments, chessboards and utensils that could be used for drinking alcohol. Each school in short views Shariah differently. So which version are we going to come up with? How will the consensus be reached? What happens when a large proportion of the population doesn't agree with a particular interpretation?

Muhammad is quoted in the Tirmazi as stating, “My community will never agree in error", ... err.... they elected Zardari, Benazir and Nawaz Sharif, need I say more?

The Economy and Israel

In the last few months I have increasingly become convinced of two things;
1. NOBODY really has a clue about the world economy and

2. Israel is a rogue state created out of the guilt of the West for which the Palestinians are suffering, but shouldn't.

I'll rant about Israel some other time, today let's rant economy.

- Nobody is a 100% sure of what is right or wrong for the economy or what works and what doesn't; it's all unproven theories and experimentation on a colossal scale.
- There really are no rules if you're big enough, rules are only for the small players.
- The simplest solution to economic trouble that the US has come up with is 'Print more Dollars'. It is probably extremely foolish of the other world economies to peg themselves to the Dollar and increasingly after this crisis economies will move away from this state of affairs.
- Nothing being done right now by the world economies is in any way meant to change the rotten system that is the root of all the problems.
- There is no acknowledgment that a system built and based on greed (individual and collective) is bound to fail sooner rather than later. There are no long term systems being put in place to ensure that such catastrophic failures of financial institutions are prevented in future.
- Once economic recovery happens in 2 years or 10, things will return to exactly as they are now. The world will exist on debt, greed will rule again.
- The $800,000,000,000 economic stimulus of Barack Obama is unlikely to be very helpful. Most of the money will be squandered, it will go and line the pockets of people who's pockets are already lined.
- Barack Obama and his team know as much about reversing the economic downturn as anybody else, that is to say, bloody near nothing.
- The often villified, often joked about French are the only people who were on sort of the right track. Their economy was the least leveraged, they had the most Governmental control of economic institutions. They are the ones who will suffer the least in this recession. Lesson: Less greed in the boom translates to less hardship in the depression.
- Free markets are probably not the answer. If they were, these stimulus packages go against any free market philosophy. Let the bad businesses perish. Let the big 3 fall, break up RBS, let Citibank go to the dogs. If this cannot be allowed, free markets are NOT the answer.