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.

Greedy, Racist Australians

I'll admit I have a problem with Australians and Australian cricket, and not just the fact that they are too arrogant by half for my liking or that in general they are some of the most racist people around.

Whether it be Australian crowds at Perth abusing the South Africans (December, 2005) or the Adelaide Oval crowd throwing racist taunts at the Sri Lankans (January, 2006), racism seems to be an accepted norm for Australians.
Crowds, admittedly, can sometimes get carried away and it's easy to justify such abuse by saying that it was a few bad eggs doing it, but there is enough evidence of individual cricketers and cricket officials doing it to know that such excuses don't wash. When Dean Jones called Hashim Amla a terrorist, and got fired from Ten Sports for his trouble, ex-Australian cricketers defended him with the old "oh he's a really nice bloke if you know him" defense, which is nothing short of bullshit. The same defense was used when Darren Lehman called a Sri Lankan player a black cunt and Brad Hogg called Kumble a bastard. Few outside Australia have any doubt that Darrel Hair was racially motivated in no-balling Murali or falsely calling the Pakistan team for ball tempering. The fact that he later asked the ICC for $500,000 to go away quietly just shows that he is stupid as well as a racist.

But this rant was not supposed to be about racist Australians. It is about greedy lying Australians. The fact that the Australians are falling all over themselves to tour India despite recent bombings in Delhi that claimed 20 lives should leave no one in any doubt that security concerns had nothing to do with their refusal to visit Pakistan for the Champion's Trophy. It's all about greed and lying.

Andrew Miller puts it best in his blog,
"They wanted a break in their never-ending calendar, and quite rightly so, but not one that would jeopardise their unparalleled earning powers. They saw in a little-loved tournament in a little-loved country the perfect combination to bend and abuse. The tournament never stood a chance, and nor does it have any hope of a revival in 2009."

and therein lies the rub. The reason for refusal was not security, it was the fact that Pakistan doesn't offer Ponting's men the multi-million dollar contracts they can potentially get in India.

Clueless Obama

The idiocy of the American Govt. and American politicians (and all politicians for that matter) rarely ceases to amaze, but even by political standards Presidential hopeful Barack Obama's latest is a new low in stupidity. He basically says that as President he would order hits at 'Al-Qaeda' targets within Pakistan without feeling the need to inform the Pakistani Govt., and that this should have been done in the past when such occasions arose. We are further asked to believe that if the US had acted on such intelligence earlier (specifically in 2005) the entire Al-Qaeda command structure would have been wiped out at the time.

Since we are in fairyland we can also believe that this would have resulted in the Iraq situation resolving itself too, since everybody knows it is the few Al-Qaeda fighters left there who’re making it difficult to bring things back to normal in Iraq, especially since the fighting there has been over for a long time.

First of all I have to take exception to the usage of the words ‘US’ and ‘intelligence’ in the same sentence, it is anything but. US intelligence agencies have time and again proven how unintelligent they are, and there have been very few colossal mistakes in world history that can compare with that WMD fiasco on which the whole Iraq War was based. If Barack Obama is going to be basing his bombing decisions on that US intelligence, I suggest he think again.

Secondly, what Americans in general and their politicians in particular fail to gather after repeatedly making the same mistakes again and again and again is that they are not going to wipe out anything, least of all terrorism, by indiscriminate bombing of any and every country they come across. The more innocents they kill (and they’ve killed their fair share and more around the world), the more fertile they’re making the ground which will sprout exactly the kind of people they’re trying to eliminate. The answer is not carpet bombing, it was not the answer in Vietnam, it isn’t the answer in Iraq and it most certainly won’t be the answer in Pakistan or Iran or any other country that becomes ‘evil’ overnight just because their world view happens to be a bit different.

Mr. Obama would do well instead to look to the root causes of terrorism, and he’ll do well to start looking in his own backyard first. He should look towards criticizing policies which release $55 Billion in arms to Arab countries and Israel in the name of ‘peace’ and he should especially look towards keeping his mouth shut when he doesn’t know what he is talking about.

The trouble with iPod and iTunes

Apple aficionados have been overtly and covertly enjoying the failure of Microsoft Zune. The Zune is ugly and buggy and I see no reason to defend it or Microsoft. But I'd been having a discussion with a fellow blogger and here's why I think the iPod is no great shakes either. The following was posted in the comments section of Zak's blog. (http://www.kidvai.com/zak/jottings.html).

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I fail to see how the Zune being a shitty product makes the iPod any better? Ok, let me put it another way, the iPod is crap, the Zune is crappier, hope that satisfies you. Let me take a stab at what is wrong with iPod-iTunes and you can call me a liar.

1. The iPod to computer transfer needs to be unlocked. It's my iPod and my songs and my computer, i'll do whatever I want with them, I don't want 'big brother' Apple telling me how to behave, thank you. (Funny, how the pursuit of money makes a company that was inherently anti-1984 into exactly that).

2. Get rid of the DRM crap, LET ME USE WHAT I WANT, HOW I WANT IT. Fairplay? Not for me it ain’t fair.

3. Get rid of the software that's even crappier than iTunes (if that was possible), Apple Quicktime. I'll play the videos I want on my iPod in the format I want them. Quicktime is just bad. There are far better media players and encoders, I don't want just Mpeg4. This might be getting repetitive but, I WANT TO USE IT MY OWN WAY, QUIT TELLING ME WHAT TO DO.

4. Provide REMOVABLE batteries. 5 generations and those idiots at Apple still haven't figured that out. It will not spoil the 'industrial' design of the case whatever that means, and even if it does, I don't care. My Video iPod plays video for 2 1/2 - 3 hours at most (forget Apple’s claims), so I need a replaceable battery or a better battery.

5. As successive generations of iPods come along Apple wants to give the consumer less and less. My 5th doesn't even come with a charger, and the cloth cover is a joke. A charger for my $400, please !

6. Build it so it doesn't scratch. My PSP doesn't, why do I have to wear gloves to operate my iPod?

7. There is a whirring hard disk in there (at least those without the flash drive) beef up the resistance to thumps, bumps, and pressure, or provide us with a clear rubber casing to protect our expensive investments, this is not the same as point 5. And why do I say this, I’ve had a HDD crash on one of my iPods.

8. Stop coming up with new restrictions on uses and users, and lift the old ones. Specifically, don't make small changes that cause third party software to quit working. I use 3rd party software to do what Apple doesn't allow me to do, but with iTunes 7 that's been restricted. It will be gotten over inevitably, but quit already.

9. Sloooow syncing. It takes ages to get updated. Plug it in and forget it, the annoying ‘Do not disconnect’ thing makes me want to break the damn thing. Why can’t I sync and use the iPod at the same time, my Pocket PC does it (oh, but then it uses Windows!).

Not only that but if a problem occurs during syncing, you never know, it just keeps displaying the damn message till eternity. AND I’m not done with syncing yet. If I just make a minor change in iTunes like putting in ratings for my songs, it’ll take as much time to update that small piece of information as it does to update an entire song. Something is wrong here Apple.

10. Order of appearance in iPod. Why don’t my songs appear in my iPod in the same order as in my iTunes. I have audiobooks with sometimes a 100 different parts, they never appear quite in the correct order in the iPod, no matter how I name them, or place them in playlists or whatever.

11. iTunes 7 (add around 5 points about iTunes 7 !), so just think of any 5 bad things about software you can think of, it’ll fit iTunes. Here’s my 5:

1. "Unknown error 0x666D743F" (as someone pointed out, note the 666 !), it gave me this a couple of times right off the bat.

2. A lot of the painstakingly typed info in my database (and a few playlists, not all for some reason) suddenly disappeared after installing iTunes 7.

3. Resurce Hog to the power of 10. Its often using 100MB of my RAM, even when NOT playing a song!

4. Try and play videos in iTunes. It stutters and splutters like an old Bedford truck, and almost always never plays a complete movie through without a few jerks and stops. (and I’ve been embarrassed a couple of times trying to show videos on my iPod because it just froze, though the newer patches seem to have gotten rid of that problem).

5. The preview thumbnails of videos get constructed from zero every time I start iTunes, and it goes without saying that they take an eternity to appear.

A Nation of Cheats?

Shaoib Akhtar and Mohammad Asif have been recalled from the Champions Trophy because they tested positive for the banned steroid, Nandrolone. Few people I’ve talked to were surprised that Shoaib Akhtar was found out, it would have been a bigger surprise if his tests had turned out negative. Asif’s presence though is slightly surprising and from a purely cricketing point of view, unfortunate. He had a bright future ahead of him and this will be a big dent to his career, though if indeed the charges are proven, he deserves to be banned for at least a year and possibly more.

The whole sordid saga of Pakistan cricket in recent weeks raises a bigger issue though, which is the question posed in the title of this blog, and whose answer to me at least is quite clear and has been for some years now.

The Pakistan cricket team is nothing but a microcosm of the nation itself and will obviously comprise of individuals steeped in the same values as the rest of the nation. This simile is apt in more ways than one. The team like the nation is inclined heavily towards religion, and both have completely failed to understand the basics of it, though I’m not quite sure if knowing the fundamentals would help any or improve things any.

Every individual in the country is looking for a short cut to success, the team is no different.

The team like the nation is led by a clueless leader whose claim to the top job is anything but merit. Inzamam is probably the greatest batsman Pakistan has ever produced, but captain material he’s not, and does not deserve to be. As for the leader of the nation, don’t get me started.

And finally what despairs us all, there’s obvious potential in the nation and the cricket team, neither has lived up to it, and neither is likely to live up to it in the near future.

Wherever you go in the world the word ‘Pakistani’ is synonymous with unethical and rude behaviour. Whether it is the Taxi Cab driver in New York or Toronto, the sweeper or electrician in Kuwait or the embassy staff in any High Commission, if it is a Pakistani you’re interacting with don’t expect amiability. Want to see the difference, here’s a little experiment you might do: in any major city in the world, go into a restaurant run by an Indian and then one run by a Pakistani. The later will always, without fail, be more rude, more sullen and more rigid in his dealings. Is it any wonder we are where we are and are headed we are.

Musharaf the Moron

I always find it fascinating to read people who are trying to justify Pervez Musharaf. The following rant basically materialized because of comments on a blog (http://kokaine.blogspot.com/) about how well Musharaf has handled himself while in the US.

I find it fascinating because I myself cannot muster an iota of respect for the guy, not only because he is an army man and has no business running a country but also because he is an idiot to boot and I tend to put him in the same category as the Nawaz Sharif's and Benazir's of this world. Maybe Nawaz is a bigger idiot, but it is a close run thing. The Foreign Office of Pakistan (according to a close friend of mine who works there) spends more time in spinning Musharaf utterances into acceptable fodder than on anything else.

Musharaf is uncouth, speaks without thinking and puts his foot in his mouth more often than not. I’ll refrain from mentioning his personal indiscretions, which are many, as I’m no moralist and frankly he can go do whatever he wants as long as the country is not paying the tab, but unfortunately the tax payer in Pakistan is paying the tab, not only for this book launching but for all the other pleasures that our much loved ‘leader’ cannot live without.

I'd have greater respect for him if he'd at least done a decent job of running the country (though i'd still be against him for the simple reason that he is from the Army, that most malignant and vile institution of our country) but that is decidedly not the case.

Propaganda to the contrary not withstanding, Pakistan is NOT doing well. The economy MAY have improved over the last few years but is it because of his policies or the general upturn in world economics? And when you think about it, have things improved at all for 99% of the population. The real estate bubble may have created a few millionaires but it has harmed as many too, as is the case with economic bubbles. On the whole though, life in Pakistan is considerably worse than it has ever been. If that sounds like a sweeping statement, let me assure you its not and it is not made carelessly either.

Musharaf has failed on the one count that is more important than any other to a citizen of a country, Law and Order. Pakistan has never been the safest place in the world to be, but things have undoubtedly reached a new low. In Karachi you cannot walk outside with a cell phone in your hand because it is guaranteed that you’ll be dispossessed of it sooner rather than later, but in recent times the same has become the norm in Lahore, Islamabad and other major cities. I have never met an individual in Karachi who didn’t have their cell phone stolen at gunpoint at least once, I’m not kidding, I had 200 people working under me in the city, every single one had a story, EVERY single one, and every other day or so a new story was added. Kidnappings are common; shopping with your VISA while holding you at gunpoint is an everyday occurrence. And its not just Karachi, in the last year Lahore has become equally bad and of course the kicker is that you do not have recourse to the law. There is no law.

Heightened rampant lawlessness is just one dimension of it though, there is no improvement in any other sector or sphere of life. The Canadian Bill of Rights, a great document if ever there was one, starts with the following words,

“It is hereby recognized and declared that in Canada there have existed and shall continue to exist without discrimination by reason of race, national origin, colour, religion or sex, the following human rights and fundamental freedoms, namely,

(a) the right of the individual to life, liberty, security of the person and enjoyment of property, and the right not to be deprived thereof except by due process of law;”

Not even one of these fundamental rights can be guaranteed to an individual in Pakistan.

Let us not delude ourselves in believing that power hungry, self righteous, morons like Pervez Musharaf are somehow doing a good job or even a fair one, that is both demeaning to us and to our country.

PS. Always wanted to post a Blog with that heading.

The Seer without a Future

I took this photo in a fair at the Race Course Park (now renamed the ‘Jilani Park’). The renaming of old buildings and roads is a separate rant, so I won’t get into it right now :-)

The ‘Palmist’ himself was an interesting figure, and his marketing ploy was what made me take the photo. ‘Only God Knows Better’, well maybe, maybe not. What is also interesting to note is the mixing of pseudo sciences, Palmistry and Astrology, which he seems to be unaware of. (Well also the different spellings of his name).

But what is ultimately the most ironic part of the photo is that the seer sitting there in his makeshift booth telling people about their future is unaware that he doesn’t have much of one himself.

Photo: The Seer without a Future.
Nikon D200. Nikkor 18-70mm. ISO 800. 1/60s @ f4.

Happy Birthday Pakistan, my sincere commiserations

Driving around Lahore today looking to find a photo that would sum up the 59^th Independence Day of Pakistan I could not bring myself to take a picture of the hundreds of thousands of ‘patriotic’ citizens running around in their Paki green attire. Some of them would have made interesting subjects and there was no lack of enthusiasm among the revelers, but I kept wondering just exactly what they were celebrating.

59 years of unfulfilled promise, corrupt inept leadership and poverty?

I drove around for an hour or so and finally saw the ad above on the Jail Road. Just a Pakistani flag, an innocent face and a simple message. I’ll take that over misplaced optimism any day.

By the way, it is interesting to note how the white strip in the Pakistani flag has become less and less important over time, just like the role of the people it is supposed to represent.

Photo: Happy Birthday Pakistan.
Nikon D200. Nikkor 18-200mm. ISO 100. 1/125s @ f5.6.