… where clients take feedback from their 6-year-old, and expect you to incorporate her advice.
I recommend this discussion board to anyone thinking of hiring a designer:
http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=2218393664&topic=2844#topic_top
If you don’t want to be on this board, take designers seriously, please.
It probably is unfair to lay the blame at KESC’s door – just because we finally decided to service our generator, who’s to say we wouldn’t have used it even after a 70 hour blackout? Who’s to say that filling the generator with petrol, which we’ve done hundreds of times over the past year, would still have been a disaster any other time? Who’s to say, after all, that it wasn’t the lack of sleep for three days, the extreme heat and the general frustration we were feeling that caused such pain?
No, this would probably have happened in any case. The generator was off, we’d just tested it before getting a 12-liter can of petrol to fill it. My husband, standing out in the balcony behind the kitchen, holding the petrol can, still can’t figure out why flames suddenly shot out of the generator. I think it was the pilot light in the water heater a few feet away – fumes from the petrol travelling, maybe? I was just inside the balcony door when the flames erupted. In the blink of an eye, the jerry can in my husband’s hand exploded, and the flames swept towards me. All I could hear was him screaming (afterwards, in a saner moment, he told me he was yelling at me to get back, but I don’t remember that).
The flames licked my feet, and I panicked. He was caught behind the fire, and I searched desperately for a source of water to douse the heat. I yelled at my husband, and he came running through the flames, both legs still flaming, until he reached carpet and stamped out the flames. By that time, the kitchen was ablaze. I flung open the front door and yelled at the top of my lungs, and my employee, still waiting at the elevator bank, came rushing back in. We have 19-liter water cans for drinking and he picked one up and flung it into the kitchen. My husband and I were hanging over the balustrade, 9 floors up, yelling ‘Fire!’
3 adult cats, and a tub with three kittens were still in the apartment, so we went back in. Black smoke was moving through so quickly that finding them seemed impossible. I grabbed a towel, dropped it in the sink and pushed it under an open tap and used it to cover the kitten’s tub; carried them out the front door and ran back in to help in the search of the cats. We have a big french window at the other end of the apartment, and I needed to get the smoke out, but fumbled, couldn’t get the blinds open, and the smoke was filling up the room fast. I finally managed to pull it open and my husband, panicking because we could no longer see anything, started yelling for me. The cats had found the safest spot in the apartment, under the bed in the back, low to ground, where the smoke was still clear, and they fought and scratched in their own panic, but he got them out.
The men working downstairs kept their heads. They turned off gas and power to the entire block, raced up 9 stories (no power still – after 70 hours, the generators were dying) with a hose and went rushing into the flames. Management called the fire department, and we grabbed essentials where we could – phones, wallets, laptop (strange things we pick up), checkbooks (my husband also kept his head). His legs and face were an angry red where the fire had touched. Days later, we noticed the uneven eyelashes, the strips of skin that peeled off his eyelids, his lips, his nose, his brow. I had burnt all 5 toes of my left foot, and the agony was unbearable, but my husband is still peeling skin off his legs, both blistered and raw up to his knees. His right ankle still hurts, where the fire had taken hold. By the time the fire truck arrived, though, the fire was out.
My mother and sister arrived to take us across the street to the Aga Khan Urgent Care services. They gave my husband a pain killer, applied balm and medication to both of our wounds – but it took nearly two hours to bandage us up. Tetanus shots, antibiotics, and the quiet hum of the air conditioner, and both of us began to calm down.
When I had gone back to the apartment that same night, (July 21, 2009), water was still running in the sink where I had dampened the towel. The power and gas were off, the floor was slick from water from the hose, and the walls and ceilings were black from smoke damage.I found out later that windows had exploded outwards, falling nine floors onto the car park, but thankfully, noone had been hurt.
My sister and I had gathered essentials and travelled back to my mother’s place, where we soothed terrified cats out from under the cupboard. Now, it’s a distant memory. A month later and we’re back in the apartment. The black walls are painted, the charred kitchen cabinets replaced, the melted appliances thrown out. We need a new washing machine and the fridge had to get a face-lift. We’re still pulling out books and finding soot in odd places, but the overpowering smell of soot that was in my hair, my skin, my clothes, my papers, my curtains, my furniture for days after the fire – that seems to have gone.
We need a fire extinguisher for the apartment, but my nightmares are now different. We’re on the ninth floor. There’s one exit – the front door. If we’re ever trapped again in the apartment, our choices are burning in the fire, charring our lungs from the smoke, or jumping from the balcony and breaking every bone in our bodies. There are no zoning laws that decree fire safety for any of these multi-storey buildings. And while we’ve gotten off lightly, my husband and I (we’re sure it could have been, should have been a lot worse), how many others will suffer before we begin to value basic safety laws? How many deaths before we insist on fire escapes, earthquake proofing, flood warnings, and any other disaster we can think of? Just how backward are we?
In a burst of irony that day, when we finally drove away from the charred apartment block, a KESC truck pulled out from the substation next to the main gate (which KESC, over several calls made to their call center during the blackout, kept insisting was under water, though our road and building had been miraculously clear of water throughout the rainstorms), and the building lit up with lights in every apartment. Ours was a black gaping hole. I found out later that some minister’s/big shot/VIP needed a transformer, so they had simply taken out the transformer that fed our area, and had used it in the big shot’s area while they waited for a new one to be delivered to ours. Because of this, 4 apartment blocks in Clifton Block 2 had remained dark for 3 days.
In the southern deserts of the old continent lies a small town, Polpak, which is lorded over by two ruling families, the Montagues and the Capulets. For almost 7 decades, the land has been at war, though not in a form humans may recognize. Greed and desire for power has held the continent a stagnant hostage to a vicious game of musical chairs. Despite a small respite from the war, a cruel wind is blowing across the land, for the members of the Supreme Council have recently decided that, rather than be a pawn in the games of the Montagues and Capulets, they would like to be players. This is the beginning of the end, no doubt.
But perhaps you should know how it all began, or the story onwards may seem a bit confusing. You might recognise the names of these families, and you may already know of their famous feud. We’ll start with that.
The Montagues came by their wealth through stealth and thievery, but hid it so well that even their slaves believed the Montagues came by their wealth honestly and through hard work. Blinded by the small tokens of appreciation that was handed down to them from time to time, the slaves served loyally and worked tirelessly for their master. It wasn’t long before old man Montague claimed the town of Polpak as his personal fiefdom, declared himself king, and with the help of his trusted Captain of the Guards, Captain Capulet, set out to conquer the South Continent.
Several years and almost a generation went by under the rule of the Montagues. During that time, the continent’s wealth seemed to fade away, for the king was selfish, and refused to consider the woes of any except those who catered to his every whim. Large parts of the continent withered in neglect, as the king’s family grew larger, and his appetite for luxury became insatiable.
In time, men came to the small town to beg the Captain for assistance. The king’s levies were becoming impossible to bear, their families were starving and Montague showed no sign of aging or stepping down. They laid their meagre savings at his feet and swore allegiance to him if he were to remove the king from power. Capulet considered the small amount of gold being presented to him. In his years with the Montagues, he had come to appreciate the glimpses of their lifestyle, but as an outsider to the family, he had felt the stirrings of envy, and the germ of a desperate need to have for himself what his king luxuriated in every day.
Now, the pleas of these men seemed to open a golden window in front of his eyes, and a vision came to him.
Capulet saw himself in a robe of softest silk, trailing far on the ground behind him. Huge emeralds sparkled at his collar, and his sword shone blue from encrusted diamonds in the hilt. Behind him, in large swathes of movement, a crowd so immense that it stretched beyond the eye could see, the people of the continent roared out a chant of ‘Our Captain, our King’.
A red haze seemed to descend upon the Captain. He accepted the pitiful offerings of the people. With the gold in his hand, he ordered the blacksmith to create armor from the strongest steel to fit his able body. In the meantime, he strode to the home of the head of the Supreme Council, and signed a pact of blood. Together, they conspired to kill the King, and exile his offspring to the cold mountains of the North Steppes. In return, the Supreme Council were to receive a share of the King’s wealth.
The Captain carefully whetted his guards, and chose those most loyal to him to carry out his mission. On a moonless night, in the depths of darkness and wrapped in his new armor, he crept into the palace of the King, and silently stole the power he craved.
Before the sun could cast its first shadow, the Montague survivors and their most loyal slaves were already on their way to the North Steppes, and the Supreme Council had handed the treasury keys to Capulet.
When Capulet returned to the men who had approached him, he carried a bloodied dagger in his hand. Upon seeing this, the men of the continent almost wept with relief, and immediately bowed down before Capulet. They had sworn their allegiance, and could look forward to favor from the new king.
In the distance, a bent and tired old man sat on a rock and watched the small ceremonial gathering of men. He watched as one of the kneeling men rose to wrap the armored man with a long robe that trailed far behind. As the procession moved towards the palace, people coming out of their homes on their way to work fell in with the men, and the old man let out a sharp breath of fear.
In the strange light of early morning, the dark clothing of the men seemed to turn deep red, and the pushing, heaving bodies of men behind their new king looked like a trail of blood. As an omen for the future, the old man considered this among the worst. He began to shout to the followers to fall back, but he was too far, and too feeble to move fast enough to keep up with them.
His words flew out into the air and seemed to dissipate in a wist of fog, falling unheeded to the ground, now red and bloodied beyond recognition.
(Check back soon for Part 2)
Imran Khan has been making the rounds with TV presenters and talk show hosts ever since the Rah-e-Haq Operation went into action. His immediate press release after the military move stated the military operation should have been the last resort and called for an inquiry to ascertain who violated the Swat accord first.
On Express News, yesterday, Imran Khan claimed to know what the people of Swat really want. He kept saying, over and over, that the people of Valley just want peace. Apparently, the accord with Sufi Muhammad was perfect in this context.
The first thing I would like to know is, Mr. Imran Khan, what poll did you conduct in the Valley to ascertain what the people wanted? Do you have a breakdown of their demographics? Were you able to access the female population that has been forced into house arrest by the Taliban and Sufi’s barbaric form of Sharia? Could we see the full results of this poll, including the questions asked?
And, if you haven’t conducted a poll, what long-standing connections do you have in the Valley that opens you up to the pulse of its population? What network of people have you set up to gather and analyse information from the general population (and, especially, from the women), besides what the Swat Bar Association head (who happens to also be a card-carrying member of the party) passes on to you? Tell me this, then. What treasure of data is this gentleman sitting on? Can it be shared? Or are you arrogant enough to believe that a random person living in Swat speaks for the entire population?
It’s a pity more people cannot see your hypocrisy: you claim your party wants to bring justice to the nation, yet you supported and admired the cruelty of Taliban rule after the Soviets withdrew (read Hasan Shakoor’s letter to you on Chowk). You say you helped bring about the restoration of a free judiciary, yet you cannot stop from beaming with pride at the implementation of a completely autonomous judicial system in Malakand – barely months after your CJ of choice came back to the bench. Are we to take from this stand the fact that you really have no faith in the restored judiciary of Pakistan? You say you are a muslim, but you clearly support the terrorists who commit suicide for their cause. May I ask what religion on earth allows suicide, leave alone Islam?
Frankly, Mr. Khan, you’ve shown yourself to be just another politician. Like the deluded leaders of a quarter of this nation, you like to believe you act and speak on behalf of this nation. I’m pretty sure none of you do. PPP, PML(N), PTI, JI, JUI, MMA – the whole lot who claim to speak for 160 million people based on the number of votes cast – well, they need to check their numbers.
Of the roughly 180 million population of Pakistan, approximately 44 million are eligible to vote: that’s less than a quarter of the entire nation. Out of the eligible voters, the Pakistan Election Commission lists a 45% turnout for the February 08 elections. Which means about 12% of this nation actually voted anyone into office. Divide those further into the myriad parties and independent candidates fielding the votes, and the truth is that no single party nor any coalition party in Pakistan can truthfully say that they speak for a majority.
Of the voters who do vote for any single party, a large population is bused in from outlying districts and paid the equivalent of one month’s salary in order to cast their votes in favor of the payee. I know a young boy who insists, no matter what we say, that one month’s salary is worth the trouble, and that the politics of the nation have no effect on him or his family’s daily lives. His family works for a feudal lord in South Punjab; he cares for my ailing father here in Karachi, and earns more than his entire family combined.
There are no honest votes here. And Imran Khan can’t seem to get a single one. This may be the only thing in your favor, Mr. Khan – that you’re too honest to buy the votes. But you aren’t really bright or savvy and your political ideology favors the barbarians, and however honest you may be, barbarians and corrupt politicians are two peas in a pod. I care for neither.
I smell fear. The stench of it permeates the entire country. Our ‘bold’ parliamentarians cower behind their security detail, nervously hiding from the threat of being labeled ‘non-muslim’ by a band of renegade mercenaries. Our security forces, busily trying to protect the elite government ‘servants’, are now stricken with notions of bombs in their own vehicles and compounds. Our army, pounded in recent months by an over-zealous media, are too afraid of being accused of manipulating a coup to do anything except exactly what the civilian government tells them to do. And the lawyers, with all their street power and recent victory? Well, they proved their point, and it’s time for them to return home and start earning the bucks they had forsaken for two years. And the people? The ‘masses’, the ‘common man’? He’s weighed down with the fear of possible starvation as prices continue to make a steady climb.
Yes, I smell fear, and the nation has yet to feel the consequences of this fear. In our fear, we’ve lost more than the ability to function normally. We’ve lost yet more of what was Pakistan, and we’ve set a precedence. For once, I have to say ‘Bravo’ to India, who, with at least 100 insurgencies within their own country, have yet to cave in to even one.
Today was the historic passing of the Nizam-e-Adl Bill by our parliament. It was probably foolish of us to expect this government to do anything but back down in the face of the Taliban and Sufi Mohammad gang, and it will be equally foolish to expect them to stand up for us in the future. We should face this fact and brace ourselves for the penalty. They ran from militants in the northern areas. They cowered in face of a stick-wielding mob of lawyers in their black coats. They shook under pressure from the US and India after the Mumbai attacks, and only grew some cojones when David Miliband finally stood up for Pakistan in a public address.
And it’s not just the government that backs down in fear. Take the recent Shanakht Festival, and the ruckus at the art exhibition. A group of ‘unknowns’ rioted the exhibition and threatened the organizers to the extent that the Festival was shut down, because they didn’t like a picture that was displayed there. In a video of the riot at the festival, a man clearly demands that someone from ‘management’ come out and face the mob. No one did. I caught a glimpse of one of the organizers, but by the time the stands and banners were being torn down, he was nowhere in sight. Even the members of the Citizen’s Archive of Pakistan have given in to fear, and rather than take a stand, they bowed to the inevitable. When they later disbanded the festival altogether, they were ably supported by the Sindh government who refused them protection for the duration of the remainder of the Festival.
In a nation of law-abiding citizens (pardon me if I snigger a bit), offensive images would have resulted in complaints and perhaps media criticism, a protest outside the venue, maybe even a sit-in. Negotiations would have ensued, and both parties would have reached a compromise. In Pakistan, we learn that might is right and when you have might on your side, why compromise? Use violence and political threats, and when you know that fear is a driving force in a nation, you will invariably get your way. Ironically, a large part of democratic practices include the art of compromise. Ironically, the rioters at the Festival were supporters of Benazir (the protector of, um, democracy?), out to enforce the democratic principles of Freedom of Expression.
There are no ‘democratic’ parties in Pakistan, not even the PPP or the MQM (who, kudos to them, chose not to be a part of the Nizam-e-Adl farce), nor is there any democracy. All our political parties work from fear of their leaders, not love for them. If anyone were to criticize either ZAB, Benazir, the Sharif brothers, the Chaudhry brothers or Altaf Hussain, they wouldn’t last a second in any of those parties, and would probably face financial and physical consequences. As a result, these leaders are all elevated to the seats of Gods, for they can do no wrong, and as appropriate, are feared by their followers. It’s unlikely fresh blood with revolutionary ideas will ever enter their parties; I’m sure all of these leaders have already hand-picked their successors in the time-honored traditions of any autocracy. The fear under which these party members live, whether they choose to recognize it as such or not, will never allow any evolution into a real democratic set up.
Then there’s the media. The PPP, PML-N, PTI and various religious parties were all part of a ‘civil’ movement to restore the judiciary, which, they promised, would bring us justice and peace to all the land. While any fool can see that these were empty promises and impossible to boot, I have yet to see any anchor on TV ask all these parliamentarians some basic question: how could you agree to the Nizam-e-Adl bill when you’ve just brought justice to the land? Is the Malakand Division’s nizam-e-adl bill so much better for them than this fabulous, new and improved, ‘independent’ judiciary system we all live with in the rest of the country? In which case, shouldn’t we all switch over to the Nizam-e-Adl? Or perhaps, do you have no faith in this judiciary yourselves? No belief that justice will now be speedier, fairer and less corrupt?
My question to the media is, are you, too, bound by the fear that grips the parliamentarians? Or is this just the fear of possible Contempt of Court directives that just a few months ago you were claiming as ‘Draconian’ and ‘Barbaric’? What happened to the lions that faced down a military dictator?
Let’s face it. We aren’t a nation for whom democratic principles and civil co-existence will work, not when we’re afraid to question men in power (except Musharraf, who ironically, as a dictator wielded less might than his civilian counterparts), or back down when their mob is larger than ours. Each and every one of us has allowed fear to rule us. Whether it’s religious leaders, politicians, influential businessmen, the Taliban, dacoits, our own police or just the bulky neighbor who encroaches on our land; whether it’s fear of opening our mouths against injustice, our fear of criticizing where criticism is due, fear of shouting alone in the face of overwhelming silence, fear of standing out in a crowd for having ‘different’ views, fear of living a life that might conflict with your neighbor’s values, fear for our families, our wealth or of change in our comfortable existences, we live in fear and denial. Even I, with this blog, have to think twice before suggesting that we remove the ideology from Pakistan’s name and become a secular nation. What kind of repercussions do I face with such a suggestion?
And we will continue to be ruled by iron fists, masked in the garbs of democracy and justice, or flagrantly displayed in a uniform, until we let go of the fear and stand up to the bullies.
In between the wailing of a 17 year old girl who was held down and flogged mercilessly in front of a crowd of people, I can hear Mushtaq Minhas from ‘Bolta Pakistan’ insisting that this is a ‘non-issue’ and that he and Nusrat Javed are wasting their time discussing it. The word ‘conspiracy’ floats in and almost word-for-word, Minhas parrots the words of Muslim Khan, a Tehreek-e-Taliban representative, when he says the release of the video is a conspiracy to defame Islam.
A logical, rational person may point out to Minhas that the real defamation of Islam comes when illiterate, ignorant men repurpose the laws of the Quran to make their lives easier, and use the verses of our Holy Book like a weapon against defenceless women and children. A logical, thinking human being will point out that the cornerstone of the Prophet’s life, whom we are to emulate, was compassion, decency and honesty, and that he never would have allowed women to be locked up inside 4 walls, that the first muslim society was an open, tightly-knit community, where men respected women, rather than slandering them. A decent compassionate human being would have put himself in the position of those women under siege in the valley of Swat, and would have agreed, that while other issues pertaining to women in Pakistan are swept under the carpet, that ANY discussion of this sort is preferable to the silence. An intelligent man would have used this to bring up the wretched practices of Karo Kari and marrying women to the Quran; a smart man would have understood that this has nothing to do with religion, and everything to do with humanity.
But, like Nawaz Sharif, like Zardari and their respective parties, Minhas considers himself a God. They aren’t human beings, they cannot make a mistake; because whenever anything shows them up in a bad light, there’s always a conspiracy being hatched in unknown dark rooms, by unknown dark men, to defame these Gods. Otherwise, who knows, they may have to acknowledge the flaws in their own ideologies, and admit to making a mistake. Gosh! That would be a tragedy of unimaginable dimensions, wouldn’t it?
On the other side of the coin is the jubilation that everyone feels at Iftikhar Chaudhry’s suo moto notice, and I can’t help but wonder what that will achieve? When Nawaz Sharif arrogantly claimed that he will not accept the courts of Pakistan as an authority over him, he set a precedence that will have long-lasting, detrimental effects on this country. Right after his debacle, the Taliban decided that they, too, have no need to accept the authority of Pakistan’s Civil Judiciary on Swat (and their concerns have nothing to do with PCO/non-PCO judiciaries – all of Pakistan’s judges are irrelevant to them). Under this basis, and as soon as Zardari signs the ‘Nizam-e-Adl’ bill into law, CJ Chaudhry has no jurisdiction over the Taliban, and certainly cannot order anyone into his court. Even if he did, who is going to bring them in? Our police forces have no jurisdiction to the valley of Swat anymore. We sold it to the devil a few short weeks ago. Short of bombing them back to the Stone Age, all we can do about Swat is sit back and watch.
Rather than languish on the sidelines, however, let’s stop letting these damn mullahs and politicians get away with blaming everything on the rain (have you noticed how nothing is ever their fault? It’s always either a conspiracy or the previous government’s fault, or the policies of ‘foreign hands’). Let’s kill this precedence now, put aside this irrational fear of discussing what has become taboo, and let us acknowledge these truths:
This needs to be done openly, and with the involvement of all sections of society, or we will soon be a bitter parody of Afghanistan under Taliban rule. We need to develop a culture where we listen to the other’s point of view and learn to live with dissent.
In a meeting for Take Back Pakistan (TBP) several weeks ago, a gentleman approached our group and asked for help with his school at Shirin Jinnah Colony. Apparently, his school, run under the aegis of the Baseer Foundation, has been struggling for almost 10 years through lack of financial aid. Mr. Baseer himself attended our meeting to appeal for funds, or time, to take over the school, or to find sources of aid to help the school continue. He’s an elderly gentleman who has spent his life in the Pakistan Army, and upon retirement, he began an ambitious plan to bring relief to the poorer sections of our society. He calls it ‘Social Responsibility’.
Now, its impossible to say that enough is being done for the poor – the affected are too many, the resources too few, and any social welfare program, private or public, is often welcomed by the Pakistani public. So it surprised us to hear that Mr. Baseer was rebuffed in all his endeavors to raise funds for his Foundation. He had two schools in some of the poorest areas of Karachi (Mauripur and Shirin Jinnah), and the bulk of his funding came from his own pocket, or from members of his family. The schools provided free education, and included vocational training for adults, and free medical care. The concept was noble, and we came up with suggestions on how to raise funds.
I was knee-deep into the KaraFilm Festival when Mr. Baseer approached TBP, so I had to step out of the situation myself. My mother, however, took it upon herself to donate her time to the school. As a retired teacher with over 20 years of experience, she managed to bring in other teachers also willing to donate time or funds to the cause. And then, she visited the school.
The school is situated in a rented building next to railway tracks and not far from a heavy-goods and oil truck stand. It’s not a large building, big enough for a few classes. They offer primary school education (up to class 5) only (according to Mr. Baseer, this should be sufficient to help lower income families get on their feet). The school provides books and writing material, none of which the children may take home with them; the textbooks are hopelessly out of date. Apparently, the owner of the building refuses to let them paint the walls or drive nails into them, so there are no blackboards, no diagrams, no teaching aids. Because the premises are small, sports are limited to indoor activities, such as volleyball, or very, very short sprints. Citing limited financial means as a reason, no sweepers or cleaning staff are hired at the school. The children are expected to take up these duties along with school work. Capital punishment is very much alive and flourishing here.
Teachers are mostly young girls, hired at salaries of Rs. 2000/- a month, and the promise of Montessori school training (which they will receive if they sign a 5-year bond with the school). After 4 months at the school, a teacher is considered qualified enough to train new teachers.
In the vocational skills section, they have mostly young girls from the neighborhood. The skills being taught to them? Hemming. They spend hours in the vocational training building learning to sew the edges of handkerchiefs.
My mother has not visited the Baseer Foundation Clinic.
All of these shortcomings can be attributed to a lack of funds – Mr. Baseer could be lauded for struggling on in his quest. Except, he has the funds to open a new school in Neelam Colony, and he has already started preparations to do so.
When we suggested to him that he might improve the current school before opening a new one, he was offended and we were rebuffed. He doesn’t believe that children from lower income schools deserve anything more than the barest minimum – he thinks it would be wiser to open multiple schools with no quality of education, no standards, but with a widespread reach. He thinks this is a far more effective way to educate the populace. He refused to consider the possibility that a family whose main concern is food, would benefit from at least one member being able to do more than 5th grade math. Or the probability that education to the 5th level, and that too education that inspires fear, not a love of learning, is of no use to someone without access to libraries, the internet, or any source of self-improvement. He refuses to see that education to the 5th grade is only useful when someone wants to get into the 6th grade, and is of no help in acquiring white collar jobs; or that learning to sew the edges of a handkerchief will be of no consequence whatsoever to any of the girls in his “vocational” training institute, escept making sure they can serve their husbands better.
His sole objective is to open as many schools as possible, and offer a maximum of 5th grade education, for free, to the lowest income groups he can find. This, he firmly believes, will change their fates.
Well, guess what, Mr. Baseer? Someone’s already tried the same experiment and failed miserably. It’s called the Pakistan Government Public School System. It’s more widespread than you could ever hope to be, and believe it or not, even their standards are higher than yours. They haven’t been successful in raising standards of living, or even standards of education. And it’s become clear to me now why in ten years, you have been unable to fund your ideas beyond your own family members.
More and more now, I am dragged down by the implacability of vision, the immovable ideologies that allow for nothing but one train of thought at a time. More and more now, I am terrified that the only path left open to this nation is anarchy, failing which, we will bow down to the inevitability of talibanization, because the alternative is single-minded self-aggrandizement of people like Mr. Baseer, the Sharifs, the Bhuttos, the Zardaris, and the whole clan that runs this country.
The KaraFilm Festival has suffered an underhanded blow by its sponsors, who waited until the last possible minute (15 days before the scheduled opening) to walk away from an event that has been instrumental in reviving Pakistani cinema. 4 days ago, the Festival Director began cutting back on merchandize, events and screening options for this year’s festival, when Mobilink, their platinum sponsor, broke a 2-year contract and withdrew their support.
In order to ensure that the Festival, already victim to politics and violence in the city, was not postponed yet again, the organizers are asking ordinary Pakistanis, and fans of the festival, to help keep it afloat. This is the appeal they posted yesterday:
Dear Friends,
The last two years have been a very rocky one for the KaraFilm Festival. We had been forced to postpone the 7th KaraFilm Festival twice in 2007 and 2008 because of issues related to the security environment as well as a continuing political upheaval in the country that perhaps did not allow government officials to find time to address any of our critical concerns. This was disappointing not only for all the tens of thousands of people who look forward to the Festival each year but also for us, who had invested so much time and effort – all of it on a purely voluntary basis – in gathering films, making selections, securing venues, building linkages with filmmakers and institutions, and preparing for the spectacle that is the KaraFilm Festival. We have done it continuously for the last eight years because we feel this is important, for arts and culture in Pakistan and for the city of Karachi. If there is one thing you can be sure of, it is that the Festival not being held over the last two years was not due to a lack of effort or will on our part.
When we grudgingly rescheduled the Festival for February this year, we knew in our hearts that this was our final chance to salvage the Festival. We understood perfectly that the prestige and credibility that we had worked so hard over the last eight years to attain for the Festival, could not survive another postponement. Unfortunately, we have now been hit by the disaster that is the global economic recession. Most of our sponsors, including our title sponsor, have backed out of their commitment to support the Festival citing the economic downturn. Even more unfortunately, this has been done at the very last minute, leaving us little time to raise the funds required for the Festival.
So does this mean we are not going to have the Festival? No. A thousand times no! We have seen what the Festival is capable of achieving. We have seen how the Festival has revitalized a cinema culture in Pakistan, built bridges between Pakistani and international filmmakers, initiated an environment of debate and inter-cultural tolerance, and encouraged creativity especially among the youth. And we have given too much of our lives and have too many hopes for it to let it die. We intend to go through with the Festival on the scheduled dates (Feb 4-15) even if it means we have to drastically scale back the Festival and its activities, cut down on venues and film screenings, and apologize to invited guests for being unable to bring them to Karachi. We will have the Festival regardless but how much of it we can pull off depends entirely on how much we can afford. We intend to carry on against all the odds.
It is in this context that I write to you now. We are putting in all the resources at our disposal to run a very barebones Festival and are still coming up short. We still need to raise some 5 million rupees. Simply put, we need all the financial help we can get at this time. I realize that these are not easy times for anyone but, perhaps, if all those thousands of people who support the Festival and its aims were to contribute even as little as 1,000 rupees each, we can raise enough to pull this off. So if you would like to see this Festival continue, I hope you will consider backing up your good intentions with cash and becoming a supporter.
What I can assure you is this: all of your contributions will be utilized only for the costs of the 7th KaraFilm Festival and will be acknowledged and accounted for. And that we will continue the fight.
I hope we can count on you.
Onwards!
Hasan Zaidi
Festival Director
KaraFilm FestivalIf you would like to contribute, you can:
- Make a cash or cheque donation directly at the KaraFilm Festival offices:
Indieville Level 2, 14-C Khayaban-e-Bokhari, DHA Phase 6, Karachi 75400, Pakistan.
Tel: +92-21-5344477; Fax: +92-21-5345954- Wire Transfer your contribution to:
KaraFilm Society
Account No. 145101010008673 / Muslim Commercial Bank
Khayaban-e-Saadi Branch (Branch Code 1451)
Clifton, Karachi 75600, Pakistan.
Swift Code: MUCBPKKA(Please do email us at karafilm.festival@gmail.com or fax us to let us know so we may verify with the bank)
I believe they are looking into a Paypal account for easy transfers from overseas; however, this appeal is incredibly urgent as the festival starts on February 4. I realize it is inconvenient to mail cheques, or set up a wire transfer, but I hope that people will find the time to do it just this once.
The more vicious Israel’s actions towards the Palestinians, the more Jews around the world will find themselves in a twenty-first century version of Hitler’s Germany; hated and despised and targetted, Israel is effectively recreating the conditions which led to their 6-year plight in the first place (I say ‘plight’ because the 6 years of what they call the ‘holocaust’ is nothing compared to the 60 years they have spent cleansing the Palestinians). We know they’re intelligent people, we know they have the education, the brains, the capacity and the money to understand what a monster they are creating by alienating the billion or so muslims who aren’t living off American doggy bags. For every Palestinian child they kill, another child from a country far away straps on a gun and sets out to defeat the ‘infidels’. As David Bromwich says:
“Those to whom evil is done, do evil in return.” In every culture and every civilization, to kill the innocent is evil. Fifty civilians who live in a neighborhood where one terrorist has built a hidden sniper’s nest are understood to be innocent. If you kill the fifty, you have done something worse than not killing the one.
The Israelis know this. Perhaps they’ve planned for it. Perhaps creating a billion ‘terrorists’ is their ultimate aim and they have a plan to defeat them (draw them all to Gaza and nuke them all at once, maybe?). With this latest act of aggression, however, chinks are beginning to show in their armor. It seems to me, from the little browsing I’ve done recently, that the great Israeli propaganda machine is looking a little worn, a little jaded and tired. The arguments from the ‘Israel apologists’ have gotten thin, their voices more shrill, their information weak, even though Israel’s Hasbara or Foreign Affairs Ministry has been hyperactive as usual in their efforts. The Ministry recently sent out this email in an effort to recruit ‘media volunteers’ for its propaganda war:
Dear friends,
We hold the [sic] military supremacy, yet fail the battle over the international media. We need to buy time for the IDF to succeed, and the least we can do is spare some (additional) minutes on the net. The ministry of foreign affairs is putting great efforts in balancing the media, but we all know it’s a battle of numbers. The more we post, blog, talkback, vote – the more likely we gain positive sentiment.
I was asked by the ministry of foreign affairs to arrange a network of volunteers, who are willing to contribute to this effort. If you’re up to it you will receive a daily messages & media package as well as targets.
If you wish to participate, please respond to this email.
People who responded were given target sites that included The Times, The Guardian, BBC, Huffington Post and various european sites considered critical of the invasion. It’s telling that CNN was not on the list!
For the first time that I can recall (can’t go further back than 15 years or so, so anything before then has definitely escaped my notice) voices against Israel are no longer classed as Muslim extremists, or ‘Islamic apologists’. I’ve finally seen and read (scroll down to read the comments on this page) voices that don’t think of themselves in terms of a religion, but as simply human. And for many, that has been the call: Take religion out of the equation. Yet the voices that will actually effect change, ironically, will be those that identify themselves by their religion, most importantly, Jewish voices.
On a website called Tikun Olam (Repair the World), I spotted this comment from a former IDF (Israeli Death Forces) member:
I was lucky to serve at the time when there was very little friction with the Palestinians and in non-combat role in the territories, while spending most of the time in Lebanon where there was almost no contact with the local population except for the collaborators that supplied our outposts. Still, I am totally aware that a lot of people I served with indeed see [the Palestinians] as human beings worthy of respect or dignity (someone once mentioned to me that IDF is so humane that there are practically no rape cases in the territories, to which I replied that this is, first and foremost, because of ingrained squeamishness that the typical Jewish IDF soldier feels towards the Palestinians) and I am ashamed to be the one who not only ignored it at the time, but also accepted it. For example, I remember meeting somebody from my former battalion in my university and him bragging about shooting a Palestinian boy (who, supposedly, threw a Molotoff bottle at him) during his reserve duty and me, while uncomfortable with the his bragging and callousness, never saying anything. Another example is a doctor(!) in my reserve duty battalion saying that the fact that IDF killed a thousand Palestinians in Jenin in 2002 (it was during the events and the real numbers were unknown) was very good since this meant a 1000 less terrorists. Same thing, I would have never thought or said anything like that myself but I said nothing at the time.
I wonder how many blogs, how many websites, how many videos and emails the Hasbara brigade can counter?
