Debris is being cleared off from the building next to the KFC .The building which housed KFC wears an ashen look. Surely the Coopera Art Gallery in the basement of the building has lost it’s collection of art too

This is Suzuki showroom which was raped by the mob. The banner hanging outside it translates as “Why isn’t there any protection for a company which pays crores of rupees in taxes. Who is responsible for the plundering, sabotage of the showroom and brand new cars? Government should address our loss immediately.”

The historical Dyal Singh Mansion wears a pale look. It’s pillars and left part were badly damaged .

Although this is Lahore my friends, but a lot of us know a few in Europe!

Taking results from various neighboring testing stations around London, a study cited that radiation levels in Britain increased ‘fourfold’ around the time of start of the ’shock & awe’ (what is shock & awe? Wikipedia answers here) bombing campaign in Iraq in March 2003. ‘Uranium Aerosols’ were released in Iraq and blown across towards and over Europe.

So this means, not only Britain but the rest of Europe is under threat! Or one can say, they are at war with themselves because the weapons they created and used are their own. Talk about karma!

As expected, the Ministry of Defence of the Britain dismissed the claims and called this true recording a ‘coincidence’. Since when did the Defence ministries, of all the people, believe in conincidences?

And check this, Robert Fisk in an article printed in Daily Times (LINK) has already mentioned this fact of ’spraying uranium aerosol’ in Iraq by the ‘coalition’ forces. And this was in March 2003!

Not so much of an ‘instant’ karma, but karma nonetheless!

I wonder how long this sort of radiation takes to go awayy… Chernobyl at Russia is still highly dangerous for the radiation takes more than just one lifetime to become harmless. And Chernobyl was an accident, US and UK bombing Iraq and ’spraying’ the place with Nuclear-grade-deodrant-type-crap is straight-out genocide and neglect of the highest order. Regardless who takes the blame for this, but who will punish them? Who will bring the big guns to justice? Hmph!

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my original source: The News

dreamer

Originally uploaded by fadioz.

fadioz has some interesting pictures of lahore on his flickr - http://flickr.com/photos/55626972@N00/
thought i’d put one up here - since this one particularly got to me somehow..

Most of the offices around my work place have been closed or very few people are showing up due to safety concerns. Mobilink, Telenor, Warid and many more. Even I saw huge shamianas and chikhs on glass walls of Bank Alfalah and InDesign buildings just to protect them from incoming pathrao (people throwing stones). Not to mention just like Telenor, many foreign outlets have also put Kalima banners on their buildings with statement that they fully respect Islam and the Prophet pbuh. Like this.

So anyways even in these difficult circumstances (or not that difficult and we are a bit over reacting?) one of my colleagues sent his resignation in a very very poetic manner on Friday. No idea who originally wrote this, but funny ;). For those of you planning to resign anytime soon, this is the way :D.

Note: If anyone finds this post unrelated to lahore, sue me for that. I won’t mind!

Resignation
The name is good, the place is bog
But the work I do is that of a dog
The work or the brand; what is my way?
I don’t know if I should stay.

A friend in Karachi recently wrote to me, asking how I felt about the unrest in Lahore these days. Another Karachiite friend puts it succinctly: “Lahore, Karachi-style”. Karachiites here are more relaxed about all this, while we ring up family and friends at each mention of a riot that may be near somewhere they are….I think in some part of our selves we don’t really believe that Lahore could really have burned. I daren’t go see what the Freemason’s Lodge is looking like, or Dyal Singh mansion.
The canal is dry and trees are still bare, and Lahore limps along, blackened and bruised by her own. This is supposed to be Lahore at her most festively happy; the sarson ke khet are turning yellow and the air is balmy- and instead we’re looting, burning and now killing each other. I know everyone’s written extensively about this here, but it’s only now that I can bring myself to face it. Horrible cretins wrecking my city, get your grubby paws off it!

It’s been a while since anyone posted a picture of Lahore’s life. I thought I would share this photo of a chai wala (tea cafe), taken by a friend. This kid wears a beautiful smile all the time, is fun to talk to and salutes you whenever you pass by. The tea cafe belongs to his father and he only works in the evening, just in case if you’re wondering about child-labour. And he makes zabardast tea!

A few things I want to talk about before wraping up my view on what Atif wrote. I may not be adequately qualified to speak on the subject, but let me then exercise my right of ‘freedom of expression’.

Let’s begin with a few comments shared here:

First; I’m not reasoning. For that matter, I do not justify anything what has happened. Don’t read between the lines. We don’t exercise our right of moderation on comments, but at the same time, expect readers to at least not use hard language. Posts marked with asterisks and SHOUTING are certainly not one of those we like to see. Please, if you’re commenting, bring up something positive, don’t just babble in defence.

Second; Let’s just not be a victim of CNN jargon. Jihad, Mullah, Fundamentalists all fall in that category. There’s a big difference between your gali-mosque Mullah and those bearded men of Political parties. Make no mistake, they are not same. Watch something else for a change.

Third; The mob that caused destruction was anything but Mullahs. School/college kids driven by Political parties. Period. The smile you seen were on the faces of kids who were having a good time.

Fourth; and not directly associated with Atif’s post. What beats me is what Denmark’s pronounciation had to do with all this. English has little purpose in their lives, but on the other hand, you certainly can’t challenge their Arabic (and sometimes Persian) proficiency. The point is, their medium of study is totally different than ours.
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I took a quick tour of Mall and Edgerton road today to see for myself the aftermath of violence. It was shocking to see more damage than I expected or seen on television. I could immediately identify a number of destroyed/looted shops that I have seen in business forever. It took an hour or so of madness, frustration, criminal mind or whatever you call it to destroy what was built after hard work put in by generations after generations. My father says he has seen a few ‘tahreeks’ (movements) in 60’s against Ayub Khan and then particularly the so called Nizam E Mustafa Tahreek in late 70’s against Bhutto, but never he has seen anything like that.

So everyone is supposedly talking about Mullahs, the inefficient government and that protestors have damaged our image and hit our own people, not to mention the ugly west and so on. Are you sure if every Pakistanis is worried about all this? Or even those cartoons? Funny thing is that majority of those who are protesting violently on streets can’t even pronounce Denmark correctly. Why we suddenly get all charged up and emotional about cartoons but never think about any other issues which are extremely important too? Is it really because we love our Prophet (pbuh) whose teachings most of us do not necessarily apply in our practical lives or there is some other driving force too? Why the same driving force is not there in matters of life and death for 1/3 of our population? Atif has touched a very important subject in his post – The theory of war of socioeconomic classes – which I think has a very strong connection with what happened in Lahore. Perhaps, different segments of our society have become so disconnected with each other that one has forgotten the existence of other. Most of us think that Rickshaw wala, fruit wala, bus driver or the guy selling beautiful balloons outside Dunkin Donuts, the cook or even the maasi who cleans our home are the people who fulfill our definition of poor. But even these people have some kind of flow of income and they are surviving.
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