Yesterday’s situation in Pakistan’s stock exchanges was no different from each day during the last four months that saw the markets plunge consistently resulting in the main Karachi bourse losing more than 30% of its value.

Protestors burning tires outside the LSE - Daily Times

Angry small investors went on rampage in the Karachi Stock Exchange demanding the closure of market for a few days to curb its slide. Scenes were a bit calmer in Lahore where a crowd protested outside the Lahore Stock Exchange building by burning tires and shouting slogans against the regulators and the big players.

This grim situation follows the failure of the new coalition government in tackling rising food & oil prices, electricity shortages and burgeoning trade & budget deficits triggering mindless inflation and depreciating the Pakistani Rupee to record lows against the US Dollar.

All this is happening when the country is facing a huge security threat on its western borders from the militants and NATO forces as its cities are no better safe from street-crimes, robberies and bomb blasts. Amidst all this lawlessness and chaos, our leaders seem to be least concerned when they are visiting their ‘families’ abroad leaving no person of strength and character in authority behind in the country.

I’ve never beeen pessimistic about my country’s situation but this has to be sorted. People in authority need, I repeat, desperately need to become serious in tackling the country’s problems. People in the north-west are Pakistanis, they need to be heard not bombarded upon; Balochistan deserves its gas-royalties and Sui itself should be supplied with gas; Thar coal should be exploited to create a mega-pool of electricity supply which can provide at least 20,000 MW of electricity by using only 2% of the reserves over the next 20 years.

Forget the judges, forget the president, yes, I mean it! Focus on the core issues, the main problems of the masses and the industrialists alike for poverty can only be elevated if industry flourishes.

Bring peace, bring food, bring prosperity, bring unity - only this is what has elected you guys to the seats of power and the failure in bringing what will pull you down. We have seen the violence at the Stock Exchanges; I’m afraid it’s not that hard to imagine when it comes to the streets soon…

What does he really want, no one knows.
What he possibly could want, a lot of us can guess (a higher percentage this time around perhaps?).
What he has gained by losing so much, all of us can see.

His dilly-dallying over the judges issues is not a surprise at all. He could not afford to restore a judge that is going to take away Zardari’s ticket to freedom, namely the NRO. This much should be quite obvious. And this much is the real test of the litmus variety, for our judiciary; will they or won’t they nullify the NRO.

The NRO, in all legal aspects, is considered to be the epitome of legalizing illegality; an insult to the process of lawmaking itself. The beauty of it is that the majority (more than two-third) of the lawmakers (the graduate assembly of President Musharaf) did not approve of it to begin with. Transparency International’s Pakistani chapter, apart from telling us how corrupt we really are, has called the NRO an offense against convention itself! NRO was also designed to ensure that PML-N leadership gets nothing out of it.

Now, Zardari, in all his potential wisdom accumulated over all these years, is playing for the whole package. I have never voted for PPP, before or after Mrs. Benazir Zardari. I find the appearance of MQM in Lahore and subsequent rise in mobile theft, kidnapings and arson to be more than just a coincidence. I really want to meet an MQM supporter in real life, because till now I find it hard to imagine someone actually believing Altaf ‘expat’ Hussain. I want to meet him (or her) and then stay quite, lest ‘they’ shoot me in the leg, or my right eyeball.

I like the way the insanely corrupt bureaucracy is already cringing and returning their ‘accessories’ in fear of a strict administrator in the form of Shahbaz Sharif. Strict is good when even the good is the worst.

Have I completely lost more than just the plot when I link MQM with a higher number of ‘related’ theft here in Lahore? Anyone?

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Let me laugh first …(Lolllzzz)
I am sorry guys, i cudnt help myself when i saw these two people having a little conversation (Now, Thats called exaggeration …lol) in midst of busy road (actually on lights) and the reason was not clear to me, but this guy sorta’ jumped out of his car (white) and “presented” some must-be-beautiful words ;) action packed with a big smack of the driver’s side door, i was astonished at the ONLY bang he came up with in that much ANGER. I was feeling like sitting outside the ring , ….and the bell rings …….tunnnGgggggggggg …

Lets see what you guys can make out of these two pics, share your story with LMB team :) …

The Cantonment, Lahore established in 1850, with wide roads, tree-lined streets, parks and well laid out residential and army unit areas is the prettiest cantonment in Pakistan. But, Sui- gas has been an issues for it residents for quite some time now. A common problem faced mostly in the Holy month of Ramadan when the supply gets affected for unknown reasons but it’s been two days from now that there is very little or no gas. Apart from the fact that there is no gas for heaters, not to mention that it’s getting colder each day, but the absence of gas is felt the most when there is no gas for cooking.

A note to Sui Northern Gas department: Please look into this matter.

What the anti-IJT students of University of the Punjab demand of the University administration in specific and the Government at large:

“Swimmin’ in half truths and it makes me wanna spit —
Instructor come separate the healthy from tha sick”

“Holes in our spirit causin’ tears and fears
One-sided stories for years and years and years
I’m inferior? Whose inferior?
Yeah, we need to check the interior
Of the system that cares about only one culture
And that
is why
We gotta take the power back”

Ah. Memories, like old flames, don’t die. Somewhere in the corner of your heart, the memory lies in wait; somewhere in the dark recesses of your mind, the old flame waits in ambush. What seems trivial now may turn out to be relevant tomorrow. What seems the world now may as well end up being the memory that you wish you never had. But it waits, lies silently in between your firing neurons and burning ambitions. Heh.

Then, old friends like Rage Against the Machine pops out of nowhere and you realize you used to be as rebellious as the kid you lament now; the relevancy of rebellion fades out as you grow older. But it waits, as if it must. Given the sordid reality of our political and social scene, a passing mention of the band RATM brought all of it back.

I am not joking in the single bit when I say that musicians/lyricists like RATM can sum up our political and social affairs in one piercing line. Add to the razor sharp lyrics the anger of rock and the reality of rap and you have yourself a friend in RATM.

A few lines that are now as relevant to us as anything.

“Your friendship is a fog that disappears when the wind redirects”

And most relevant, given how you can change history by distorting it today and that of course leads to a controlled future, at least that is what ‘they’ try:

“Who controls the past now controls the future
Who controls the present now controls the past
Who controls the past now controls the future
Who controls the present now?”

Or perhaps this:
“What we dont know keeps the contract alive and movin’
That dont gotta burn the books they just remove ‘em
While Arm warehouses fill as quick as the cells
rally around the family, with pocket full of shells”

“Raise my fist in resist!”

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If you live in a cave, here’s a little bit about RATM (Rage Against The Machine). You can check out one of their ‘very relevant’ song’s video here.

Students of University of the Punjab continued protests against IJT’s existence this Monday. This time there were more than 1,500 participants of them who marched within the university premises upto the Vice Chancellor’s office.

Girls and boys were holding banners and playcards with their demands written on them while copies of anti-IJT movement’s objectives were distributed among the students and faculty. The document asked for removal of all political elements from the University’s campus and hostels as well as formation of a neutral students’ body with elected members good in academics as its caretakers.

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Participants of the rally were later joined by some senior professors, deans and directors of different institutes and university departments. Together they staged a sit-in protest in front of the Vice Chancellor’s office and asked for their demands to be fulfilled. The VC came out to deliver a lukewarm speech promising to remove political elements from the prestigious instituion though, did not answer the students’ call to openly speak on Jamiat. This was widely seen as a proof of the VC’s close association with the IJT and JI for he is known as an avid sympathizer of Jamaat himself.

All went safe except for an incident at the University’s Institute of Communication Studies where some members of the faculty including the institute’s director were manhandled and roughed up apparently by the anti-IJT protestors. People are strongly looking at it as a conspiracy by some elements who have joined the anti-IJT movement to create such situations and give this, otherwise a neutral and peaceful movement, a bad label.

Students of the Punjab University have decided to hold protests every Monday and Thursday until the IJT and its influence on campus is totally expelled.

Visuals of Jemima Khan protesting in front of the Pakistan High Commission in London have been flashing over the world’s media for quite some days. Yesterday, she again joined a group of some 500 British-Pakistanis to ask for her ex-husband’s release and return to democratic rule in Pakistan.

And, stood in front of her, Imran’s younger tiger :)

Photo courtesy of Daily Mail

Read more on the story here and here.

This man was one of the many thousands who protested against IJT at the Punjab University New Campus on Thursday. He speaks of what the students of PU are against and why IJT should be condemned for what it has done. Accordingly to him, he and his friends have been members of the IJT and had resigned in protest following the Wednesday events.

TRANSLATION

First Person: “Imran Khan was our guest and guests should never be treated like this. Whoever he was, whatever decision IJT had taken to keep politics out of the University’s campus, still, we students are apolitical and everyone that has gathered here in protest is not supporting any political party. It is not a political movement, and the cause to fight for democracy is one for which people stood united and these guys from IJT have tried to break that unity. Its totally a very shameful act. ”

“Especially we being students of law, why are we studying the PPC (Pakistan Penal Code). We are studying the constitution for its restoration, improvement and to stand for the rule of law and for that we are with the Chief Justice, we are with anyone who is fighting for saving the constituion.”

Second Person (on the left): “Just as my brother has said, we are law students and we cannot see IJT going after Imran Khan who is fighting for the cause of free-judiciary in Paksitan. Yesterday, the IJT has only played to its own political interests and has tried to politicize a neutral movement.”

First Person, again: “Students were beaten by the IJT workers and we still are being threatened by them”

Eye-witnesses have put the number of students, who continued a protest rally against IJT, again, today, almost in double numbers (close to 6,000)!

After thursday’s massive turnout of students, University of the Punjab New Campus, saw another huge rally against IJT and its activities this morning.

The origin was again the AJ Block (Anti-Jamiat Block - a cluster of departments with strong anti-jamiat sentiments including Law College, ICS, IBA, IAS and IBIT) from where students started a rally at around 9:30 AM and proceeded towards individual departments and institutes, instantly ballooning to a crowd of more than 1,000 students.

Way after they had left for a round of University’s other blocks, some Jamiat activists, around 50 of them, gathered in front of the Institute of Communication Studies (ICS) to support Qazi’s call against emergency today. The jamiat gathering was a minnow as compared to the anti-jamiat rally and mainly consisted of IJT activists brought from outside the university.

Meanwhile, police authorities have blocked the canal road passing through New Campus (the section between Shah Di Khoie, Jinnah Hospital underpass upto the Campus Bridge) resulting in massive traffic jam from Doctors Hospital to Jinnah Hospital and onwards. Police is showing strong presence outside the Unviersity campus to prevent any anti-government protests after the Jumma prayers.