Free speech values not yet standard in Greece either!

27-Year Old In Greece Arrested For Blaspheming A Monk On Facebook

By: Joe Weisenthal

Evidently in Greece, blaspheming a monk on Facebook is an arrestable offense.

Via @lolgreece and Peter Dimitrakos, here’s the Google Translated version of the arrest announcement for a 27-year old who blasphemed a famous Greek monk (Elder Paisios) using the mocking name Geron Pastitsios.

Pastitsios is a Greek pasta dish (hence the picture from the Facebook page showing the monk with a big plate of pasta)

Unconfirmed, but according to twittererers, his arrest was agitated by Golden Dawn nationalist types, and the government apparently complied.

Quotes from the Quaid – How frustrated will you feel reading the following?

Quaid said: “Those days have gone when the country was ruled by the bureaucracy. It is people’s Government, responsible to the people more or less on democratic lines and parliamentary practice…Make the people feel that you are their servants and friends, maintain the highest standard of honor, integrity, justice and fair play.” ….

Read more: → Book Review: Quotes from the Quaid 

Let us strengthen Pakistan

– Let us Unite to Uphold 18th Amendment including Devolution of HEC

By Khalid Hashmani

As more and more information comes out in the waning days of Higher Education Commission (HEC), most Sindhis are shocked to know that out of ten thousands (10,000) foreign and domestic scholarships that have been distributed by HEC so far, Sindh received only 892 (http://ejang.jang.com.pk/4-7-2011/Karachi/pic.asp?picname=99.gif). This amounts to about one third of the number that Sindh would have received even if the NFC award rules were applied. There is no province/ state or ethnic group anywhere in the world that has suffered as much as Sindhis have when it comes to scholarship opportunities in Pakistan. Instead of defending an institution that has denied Sindhis their due share in educational opportunities for so many years, we should be demanding trial of those officials who were responsible for denying Sindh its due share in scholarships. It is doubtful that an agency of such dreadful performance should even be given a role of standard setting and quality assurance. The Government of Pakistan should seriously consider creating a new agency with proper representation from each province/ state to oversee the jurisdictions that 18th Amendment allows at the federal level.

HEC Not Worth Defending

by Mahmood Adeel

Judging by newspaper headlines and TV talk shows, one might be forgiven for thinking that devolution of the HEC will result in the end of education in the country. What a bunch of non sense. If we take an objective look at the HEC – and the status of education more generally – it is quite clear that the HEC is simply not worth defending.

Attaur Rahman, former chairman of the HEC, writes in The Express Tribune that the central planning by the institution is required to produce graduates needed to build the country’s economy.

The minimum quality requirements and the numbers of engineers, scientists, doctors, economists and social scientists needed for nation-building have to be determined through careful central planning regarding human resource requirements in various sectors. A multiplicity of standards and regulations would be disastrous. That is why the world over, including in India, higher education planning and funding is done centrally, even though universities are located in the provinces.

But the US, which has the world’s highest standard for higher education, does not practice central planning, nor does it set a uniform national curriculum. Actually, quite the opposite. US schools compete with each other by setting their own standards and curricula and, through this competition, raise the quality of education all round.

In fact, an article in The Wall Street Journal looks at the state of higher education in India and concludes that despite praise from Attaur Rahman, the centralized bureaucracy has created graduates ‘unfit’ for good jobs. ….

Read more : New Pakistan