Yesterday our President Mr. Asif Ali Zardari chaired a high level meeting to decide that Karachi’s local administration should start registering all people coming to Karachi, as well as tenants of the city, at police stations and adopt better and modern methods for making the city more secure. The directive is an effort to enhance the security of Karachi.

While today Governor Sindh Ishrat ul Ibad was actually more direct and mentioned that this effort is to control the influx of immigrants specially coming from the NWFP and FATA areas. Some how this new decision seems to have been to appease the MQM lobby in its recent surge to de-Talibanize Pathanization Karachi

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This happened a few weeks back but it still has the power to shake me up. It was a regular evening for me. I left work at the usual time; little did I know that I would be subject to moral policing par excellence – Taliban style – in the day light and that too in Karachi.

On my way back from work, I was waiting at signal of Hotel Crown Plaza. The driver of the taxi next to me knocked on my window, I thought there must be something wrong with the car or something so I rolled down the window and raised my eye brow in question. It was then all hell broke lose. He went ballistic, first he accused me of promoting promiscuousity by leaving home un chaperoned and then said that we, as a nation, are facing so much trouble because our women have stopped observing hijab and what not. After the initial shock and paralysis which lasted a full ten seconds, I rolled up my window and decided not to listen to his tirade.

The signal turned green and I put the car in motion but that taxi driver decided to teach me a lesson and started following me and banging my car with his hands which was very dangerous in rush hour traffic. It was then I got really scared and decided to stop by next to a traffic police constable who was manning traffic at the signal. I complained to him but he couldn’t help because the taxi driver drove on when I stopped next to the constable. He asked me to wait it out for a few minutes so I parked my car there for ten minutes. After waiting for a while, I too decided to go, but instead of taking the usual route, I took the more crowded route because I was too scared to go anywhere less crowded.

I have lived in Karachi most of my adult life, I love living here but if this is the shape of things to come, then things look very bleak.

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Situation in the country or the globe isn’t the greatest but it is sad when you catch something like this. This is the roundabout that sits in on the intersection in between DHA, Gizri and Clifton and a man sitting in the middle of the city’s busy streets is a rare sight. Read more

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Indeed a commentator said it right . . . Zinda hai BB zinda hai . .  and so is her legacy….

Read FULL story

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Lately there have been shady reports coming in from different parts of Karachi that Pakhtun hotels and dhabas are being put out of commission overnight.

There are also reports that Pakhtuns are being systematically sought out and removed from mohajir based areas as the leader of MQM has warned his party of the dangers these people somehow pose. Removal means eviction by landlords, refusal to buy goods from pakhtun businesses and so on

I thought it would be a good idea for us to engage in some citizen journalism and see if this is actually taking place or is more here say to fan the flames of ethnic violence in our city. This can easily be accomplished as most of us live in different areas of Karachi and can report via comments as to what is actually going on while trying to stay away from a political tilt in any direction.

So answer the above poll and tell us why you think this is or is not happening, based on your own locality. Pretty soon we should have a city wide grasp of the ground reality in this matter

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Karachi's Clifton Beach Front

Credit Basit Sami’s Flickr Stream

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A recent report published in AFP shares some serious concern about Karachi being a potential disaster spot for an earthquake. Though the faultline lies a little to our west but a major the major bustling city of Pakistan is seemingly ill prepared for such a disaster if it were to God Forbid strike

AFP: Seismologists say Karachi is as much at risk from earthquakes as Los Angeles. But unlike the sprawling US west coast city, or other supercities lying on or near faultlines, Pakistan’s business capital is ill-equipped to cope if disaster strikes, according to experts. “We are not realising the danger we are surrounded by.” Noman Ahmed, an architect associated with Karachi’s NED University of Engineering and Technology estimates that virtually all of the city’s 500,000 buildings are structurally unsound.

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I found these poster outside some of ATM machines. Click on image below to read.

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It is just being reported that Geo.Tv has been blocked in Sindh, initially the reports were coming in that this censorship was limited to Karachi, but a recent update on the Geo.tv website shows that this problem is throughout the province.

GEO.TV KARACHI: Geo Network’s transmission has been stopped on cable in a number of cities across Sindh including Karachi. Cable operators blocked the transmission of Geo Network in a number of areas across the city Monday morning, without assigning any reason for the stoppage. Similar reports of stoppage of Geo’s channels are being received from different parts of Sindh including Hyderabad, Mirpurkhas and Sukkur.

The government as well as Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) has expressed unawareness about the stoppage of channels.

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Hear ye Hear ye good denizens of the marvelous place known as Karachi.  The government in its utmost genorosity has deemed that we have to pay Rs 10 less per litre for petrol from 12am Nov 16th. The new prices of petrol and diesel have fallen now to 66.66 from 76.66 and Diesel 61.14 from 64.14 respectively.

This is great news not only for the people who were overburdened by the rising petrol cost but specially for the lower income classes of the city which will now have their bus fares slashed down due to the falling diesel price.

Although Ogra (i think Ogre is more appropriate) have managed this great feat today, its been a long time coming as the price of crude oil has been down to 53USD a barrel from 140USD for some time now. Still “der aye par durust aye”

I sincerely hope that the roads of this city of lights will be full of cars at night again as it has been looking like a ghost town after 10pm for too long :)

Now if we could get 5500MW from somewhere we seriously have a shot of turning this back into the awesome place it was some years ago.

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Working with the CDGK, Crosby Asset Management is organizing an initiative to plant trees all across the city. The idea is to shed the concrete and dust laden Karachi image to bring out a city that’s cleaner, greener and healthier.

As part of this program, the city govt and Crosby Asset Management will be doing a tree plantation campaign near the City School PAF chapter. Students from the school will also be participating in this plantation drive

Join and lend a hand in helping making Karachi cleaner, greener and healthier.

Date: Nov 16 2008
Time: 1 pm onwards
Location: Opposite City School PAF Chapter.

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Comedy for a Cause

Since March 2000, through Concern for Children’s Community Driven Development Project, organization has made efforts to counter the deplorable conditions of Mohammadi/ Machar Colony. Mohammadi Colony is located in Karachi, behind the railroad tracks on Maripur Road. Its illegal status deprives it of water, sanitation, education and health care.

At this point CFC’s most dominating component in the Community Driven Project is Education and Using art to raise awareness and funds is exactly what CFC aimed at as part of its education component in Mohammadi colony. For the same, CFC has arranged a fundraiser, all proceeds of which will benefit this project.

Featuring: Saad Haroon and Shark troupe.

Date: 16th Nov, 2008

Time: 8:00pm

Location: Pakistan American Cultural Center (PACC)

Tickets available at CFC’s office (2203269), Muzika and Hotspot.

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A few days back Dawn had reported from a press release issued by the Karachi City District Government that our 36-year old mayor was ranked as the 2nd Best Mayor in the world along with Berlin’s Klaus Wowereit, and Chongqing’s Wang Hongju.

But what has suddenly turned into an embarrassing situation for the CDGK, is when Joshua Keating an editor of Foriegn Policy Magazine revealed in a blog post that we never ranked him in any way. This entire mess could have been avoided with some very basic fact-checking and now in response the Karachi City Government has also scrambled to edit its own website to quietly amend its text to reflect the changed position
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