Pakistan – Rumour, rumour, everywhere

By Cyril Almeida

When gossip is your oxygen, expect all sorts of silly rumours to proliferate. And when politics is your national sport, the silliness tends to grow exponentially.

Like the monster hiding in the cupboard that parents use to scare their children, the government is being warned, ‘Shape up or Kayani will come and eat your dinner’. The MQM’s warning to the PPP has been lapped up by conspiracy theorists eager to see …

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I’m Alive – Celine Dion

I get wings to fly

I’m alive …

When you call on me

When I hear you breathe

I get wings to fly

I feel that I’m alive

When you look at me

I can touch the sky

I know that I’m alive

When you bless the day

I just drift away

All my worries die

I’m glad that I’m alive

You’ve set my heart on fire

Filled me with love

Made me a woman on clouds above

I couldn’t get much higher

My spirit takes flight

‘Cause I am alive

When you call on me

(When you call on me)

When I hear you breathe

(When I hear you breathe)

I get wings to fly

I feel that I’m alive

(I am alive)

When you reach for me

(When you reach for me)

Raising spirits high

God knows that…

That I’ll be the one

Standing by through good and through trying times

And it’s only begun

I can’t wait for the rest of my life

When you call on me

(When you call on me)

When you reach for me

(When you reach for me)

I get wings to fly

I feel that…

When you bless the day

(When you bless, you bless the day)

I just drift away

(I just drift away)

All my worries die

I know that I’m alive

I get wings to fly

God knows that I’m alive

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Pakistan’s ugly secret – Pervez Hoodbhoy

There is a complete blackout on the effects of uranium mining in Dera Ismail Khan in south Punjab. Researchers too were defeated by the powerful nuclear establishment that keeps even health information as a national secret.

Sadly, absolutely nothing is known about disposal of nuclear waste in Pakistan. Are the authorities dumping low-level wastes in the sea or river? Where and how do they plan to bury the high-level wastes that will be lethal for thousands of years to come? Also, there is a complete blackout on the effects of uranium mining in Dera Ismail Khan in south Punjab. About 10 years ago, mine workers and other affected villagers had banded together after large numbers fell sick from lung disease and cancer. To the dismay of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, they managed to produce a petition for the Lahore High Court. But,as invariably happens, the powers that be forced them to withdraw their case and some token compensation was given. Researchers too were defeated by the powerful nuclear establishment that keeps even health information as a national secret.

There are, however, other aspects of Pakistan’s nuclear programme that I have focused upon earlier and bring up yet again:

Pakistan got nothing from The Bomb

About twelve years ago a million Pakistanis danced in the streets after six nuclear weapons had been successfully tested. They had been told that making nuclear bombs was the biggest thing a country could do. Burma is said to be trying to make a bomb and may succeed too, but surely the North Korean nuclear test gave rock-solid proof that we Pakistanis have been fed a diet of lies.

North Korea is a country that no one admires. It is unknown for scientific achievement, has little electricity or fuel, food and medicine are scarce, corruption is ubiquitous, and its people live in terribly humiliating conditions under a vicious, dynastic dictatorship. In a famine some years ago, North Korea lost nearly 800,000 people. And it has an enormous prison population of 200,000 that is subjected to systematic torture and abuse.

Why does a miserable, starving country continue spending its last penny on the Bomb? On developing and testing a fleet of missiles whose range increases from time to time? The answer is clear: North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missiles are instruments of blackmail rather than means of defence. Brandished threateningly, and manipulated from time to time, these bombs are designed to keep the flow of international aid going.

Surely the people of North Korea gained nothing from their country’s nuclearisation. But they cannot challenge their oppressors. But, Pakistanis — who are far freer — must ask: what have we gained from the bomb? …

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