Lady in white

Benazir Bhutto was not the saint that she is made out to be in the innumerable eulogies. She and her ex-con husband squirreled away a billion odd dollars by granting licenses to import gold, setting up a regulatory body to enhance customs duties(and happily embezzling part of the funds to offshore a/cs),setting up sugar mills,granting exclusive rights to aircraft manufacturers, illegal commissions from overseas tractor companies... the list goes on.She has even been accused of complicity in the killing of her brother Murtaza Bhutto in 1996 by uniformed police officers whilst she was Prime Minister.

A exclusive video footage of the last few moments of Benazir.

Musharraf declares Martial Law

So, it had to happen - it was just a matter of time before Pervez Mussharraf proved that he is desparate to cling on to every conceivable means to remain in power. The Supreme Court ruling on the constitutional validity of his last month's clearly contrived elections was due to come up and probably go against his favor.
Benazir Bhutto too left the country in a hurry and has come back again after hearing the news of the clamping down of emergency!
Musharraf defends his action of declaring emergency rule by saying that he could not allow the country to commit suicide with the spreading of lawlessness.Sure,Pakistan has been lawless from its inception 60 years back and more so in the recent past. No surprises there! The country and its various leaders have been duplicitous and Musharraf is cut from the same cloth. What a pitiable state of affairs!

For related entries:
Is Musharraf going to declare emergency?

Kleptocrat Benazir

Jemima Khan Goldsmith(ex-wife of Pakistan skipper,Imran Khan)has no love lost with Benazir Bhutto,ex-PM of Pakistan, who has, with a flourish now returned-after her self imposed exile- to take up cudgels from where she left off.
Jemima has written a nice piece worth reading about Benazir knowing her probably better than others as her ex-husband's rival.

She preferred instead to kowtow to the mullahs in order to cling to power, forming an expedient alliance with Pakistan's Religious Coalition Party and leaving Pakistan's women as powerless as she found them.

Make no mistake, Benazir may look the part, but she's as ruthless and conniving as they come--a kleptocrat in a Hermes headscarf.

Benazir is said to have stashed millions of her ill-gotten wealth in Swiss Banks and offshore accounts. Inquiries have so far found that Zardari, Benazir's equally corrupt husband,went on a shopping spree in the mid-1990s, purchasing among other things a $4 million, 355-acre estate south of London.Officials leading the inquiry in Pakistan say that the $100 million they have identified so far is only a small part of a much larger windfall from corrupt activities. They maintain that an inquiry begun in Islamabad immediately after Bhutto's dismissal in 1996 found evidence that her family and associates generated more than $1.5 billion in illicit profits through kickbacks in virtually every sphere of government activity -- from rice deals, to the sell-off of government land, even rake-offs from government welfare schemes.
In the largest single payment investigators have discovered, a gold bullion dealer in the Middle East was shown to have deposited at least $10 million into one of Zardari's accounts after the Bhutto government gave him a monopoly on gold imports that sustained Pakistan's jewelry industry. The money was deposited into a Citibank account in the United Arab Emirate of Dubai.

Among the string of big ticket real estate that she owns are Rockwood, a 355-acre estate south of London, and a $2.5 million country manor in Normandy.

Benazir, in her third run in Pak politics will be a must-watch on power politics and with an enhanced chaotic alliance with Musharraf, a gloom and doom scenario is all set to unfold.

Defiling of the holy book , or not

These guys are real phonies. They kick up a huge load of protests and violent acts when the Quran was, supposedly, desecrated in Guantanamo but when it comes to their own dirty acts, they undergo temporary amnesia about the desecration bit and use the holy book for their unlawful ends. According to TheNews, drugs were stashed in cut-out pages of the Quran and smuggled! Way to go,hypocrites!

Meanwhile, in Palestine, Hamas and Fatah are continuing the blame game about desecration of Islam and positioning themselves as defenders of the faith! Below is Hamas' accusation of Fatah in animation!

A Q Khan 'elected' Pakistan's 'President'

The infamous and disgraced scientist,Dr. Abdul Qadar Khan,father of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal,who ran an arms bazaar that spread nuclear technology to Libya, Iran and North Korea, seems to be a highly popular man in Pakistan. He has been 'elected' as 'President'of Pakistan in a mock poll there. Many Pakistanis revere Dr. Khan as a national hero for creating the country’s nuclear weapons. Precisely the attitude that India has to be on guard about.

Abdul Qader Khan, the detained scientist who pioneered Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme, was "elected" the country's president, defeating the incumbent, Pervez Musharraf, in a mock poll held by lawyers.

Musharraf received only one vote and Khan, whom he has placed under detention since January 2004, got 2,103 votes in the "presidential referendum" organised by the Save Judiciary Committee of the Lahore High Court Bar Association (LHCBA).

Is Musharraf going to declare an Emergency in Pakistan?

Pakistan, in recent times, has been under the eye of a storm and President Musharraf is trying very hard to play his game of chinese checkers balancing the increasing militants in his home turf and appeasing the Bush Government on his government's anti-terrorism stand. He was to attend a 'peace jirga' with tribal and other leaders in Afganistan today but didnt. The possible reason could be an imminent declaration of emergency by him in Pakistan.
The Guardian says that the government of President Gen. Pervez Musharraf is not ruling out imposing a state of emergency because of "external and internal threats" to Pakistan and deteriorating law and order in the volatile northwest near the Afghan border.
Very likely, I would say considering elections are slated to take place soon and there are rumors regarding the return of ex-PM Nawaz Sharif.

Surely not Media-Savvy

ROTFL. Just could not resist posting this very short video of Pakistani Law Minister, Wasi Jafar, scratching his, er..crown jewels on TV! Watch the guy on the extreme right.

Pakistan Ordinance Factory

An advertisement for Pakistani weaponry systems? Wonder if the Taliban and the ISI backed terrorist outfits are its valued customers!
Dr Ayesha Siddiqa, a military analyst,has written a book titled 'Military Inc: Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy' in which she details about the role of the military in transforming the Pakistani society, and the armed forces becoming an independent class entrenched in the corporate sector and their five giant welfare foundations, or conglomerates, running thousands of businesses ranging from petrol pumps to industrial plants.As per reports,the list of industries, where military or ex-military and its officials, were in charge included steel mills, sugar factories, cement factories, fertilizer factories, cereal factories, banks, logistics companies, construction companies, utilities, even universities and other higher education institutions.She has estimated the net worth of the army’s commercial empire at Rs 200 billion.
As per an article in the Hindu Newspaper, the `Milbus’(combining the words military and business) perpetuates the military’s political predatory style.She defines Milbus as military capital used for the personal benefit of the military fraternity.
The author says that the military establishment is trying to disrupt her life and her official book launch in Pakistan. The launch was subverted at various locations by the officialdom but it finally went ahead at a small private office almost in virtual sanctuary on the 1st of June.
The book's publication certainly comes at a sensitive time for the military-led government and for Gen.Parvez Musharraf who is fighting a losing battle with internal strife.