Well its all over the news, Imran Khan has not been allowed to board the Lahore to Karachi flight as per the instructions of the Sindh Government.

Which ever political party you may belong to – the question that must be asked as to why should citizens of Pakistan NOT be allowed to come to Karachi?

Rightly then it has been asked – Is this city run by a government or a mafia

Go Figure – let the comment circus begin :)

Part I : The Background

This had to happen, it was meant to. The ground was all set, the preparations ready and the city, like an orphan at the helm of few terrorist wings of some political parties who keep churning out some nonsense political agendas, and a cover up with dodging words like “talibanisation” , “ethnicity”, “india ki sazish”, “democracy”, “awaam ki taqat”, “land grabbers”, “shaheed” . . .  ETC, words you keep hearing them as their answers to almost all questions. Bring on any TV program, any anchor and any question and you will find these words in their answers. For ordinary man these answer are satisfactory and so he keeps believing them every time he goes for vote and every time he is fooled. He is fooled by the ALLADIN lamp known as DEMOCRACY. DEMOCRACY that never came at first place ever, to begin with. Democracy is not a medicine that will react instantly. Its a seed, and so like all seeds it needs water,air,sun etc to become a TREE. To add more confusion we have some self CERTIFIED religious thekedaars telling us how to pray, walk, dress in the name of shariah. A shariah that has 70 odd interpretations and everyone is hell bent upon eliminating all others by their self proclaimed divine authority. This circus of political deception, dishonest leadership, incompetent religious ulema is continuously adding more misery to the ordinary man, who HIMSELF is THE most responsible unit for his and this city’s state, as it stands now.

Even an animal changes its path once  deceived on one route and can understand that this route is not meant for my objective. Why is it then that the ordinary man in this city keeps electing these people, who lack competency, honesty, loyalty and the vision to lead. They are all selfish, some natural jokers and some trained by their parties, some fool using religion some do it using ethnicity and yet an ordinary man doesn’t get it and so he is paying price for his own choice.

Is it not the time he awaken to the fact that like a human body, we need fresh blood. The old blood is cancerous with zaati, siyasi, mzhabi, firqawarana and lisaani mafadaat. They are all of the same circus only with different skill sets. Its quite possible that there would be some good souls between them too but they are POWERLESS and the decision making is mostly done by the evils and not the few saints. We can differentiate those few good men but cant allow their parties to be elected again as too much time is lost and too much blood at our hands.

Time has come for a change . . .

Yesterday was a milestone achievement for the bloggers of Pakistan as the Information Technology Ministry, Government of Sindh organized the National Bloggers Conference 09. This is the first time in the history of our region that a government has not only recognized the importance of blogging but had also gone a step forward to appreciate and support the bloggers community without attaching any strings to undermine or restrict their right to the freedom of expression.

The conference held at a local hotel here in Karachi started off with great energy and enthusiasm, two of the front tables hosted a number of bloggers who meticulously covered the event live using a live blog applet, tweet feeds, and photo inputs trying not to miss out even the even the slightest bit of the details while battling a number of jittery but yet working wifi connections provided by the organizers.
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Hurridly organized, loosly knit but touching, the protest done today at the press club in Karachi was a thrill to attend for me. It started at about 3pm with a press conference inside the press club which funnily enough I had to talk my way into as I did not have a bonafide “journaalist” card, at one moment I even thought of telling the gate keeper I am a blaager but by the look on his face and the time on my watch neither would have been feasible.

Inside was a hotch potch of wires and suspicious looking duffel bags all of which contained cameras thank god, and a push of hot sweaty cameramen as they jostled for posiiton, funnily enough even in the middle of the press conference. i swear i think Pakistani media is the dumbest of them all as they cued, waved and screeched to each other all while arguing and pushing for place while the speaker was speaking. It was so bad tha tone of the ladies of the women’s action committee got quite pissed and told the people to please observe some sort of decorum. However the speeches were good, hard hitting and very passionate. I thought the speaker from the Pakistan medical board was pretty intense and got a due clapping at the end.

After the insane question and answer session that followed in which the media made bigger fools out of themselves by asking things like “madam kia aap samajhti hain ke ye saza sahi thi” ummm yea thats why we are all here doofus, seriously….we all trooped out to be greeted by a chorus of people shouting slogans in the favor of ummm bugti of all the people, apparently the protest had coincided with the balochistan cause as well.

So we all gathered togather and then the banners were raised and the “nara bazi” started.  The numbers seemed quite decent with a lot of women from different walks of life participating as well as a lot of journalists and some tv personna’s like “George” as well. I spotted 3 blaggers aside from myself in Sabeen, Awab and Tazeen, if there were more I certainly didnt know them. After about 20 minutes of rip roaring narays by the civil society and mazdoor jihad lo and behold a truck laden with “Sunni tehreek” activists complete with giant loudspeakers and mikes appeared to stand in front fo us and sing naats on top of their voices “Sarkar ki amad” kind of stuff. They kept insisting they were with us but still managed to try to drown our voices out quite frequently, however it was heartning to see the people standing firm in front of them and raising their own protest.

All in all we might not have had the numbers seen in Islamabad today, but we still managed to register a due protest against the barbarity on display yesterday. Whether that video was 1 or 2 or 5 months old, the civil society made their displeaure felt quite vividly today sending a clear message to the government and the barbarian hordes up north that these kind of actions are not only intolerable but will deem an equal response.

Next to come is a huge protest rally organized by MQM’s womens wing for the same purpose tommorow, we must all participate and raise our voice in as many forums as we can against the march of evil into our cities, I commend all the parties involved in making these and the protests to come possible in all the cities of Pakistan, long live sanity and long live Pakistan.

So Mr. Nawaz was right. Musharraf ki rooh shayd waqai mai Zardari mai ghus gai hai (and here) although he was enough himself). I have just been informed by few friends from different areas that GEO is blocked on their side and seems like we may see a repetition of 2007 when the dictator turned it into hell. We were already saying that Feb 17 elections will result in more corrupt gov. since how can be a child legal when the marriage is illegal (NRO).

Its pathetic that our governments never learn from history. And this will just be the beginning I guess. Media is under threat as earlier it was mentioned in recent newspapers. After loosing media battle at an early stage and since GHQ is in full support to the civilian dictator, I hope that Zardari continue to make mistakes like these so his exit come as fast as his spiritual mentor came.

[Image : Buzzvines]

Long march begins today from Karachi as section 144 is in place. The so called democratic setup has decided to crack down any attempt by people to use their DEMOCRATIC RIGHT. While criminals and gangs can roam around freely people cant protest and the infamous pretext is same, to safeguard the life and property of the ordinary man, who is no where in gov. priorities that remained busy distributing ministries for an year now. Our predictions regarding a corrupt setup after elections last year came very much true. The NROrified leadership is heading good way to sink whatever left while a militant group is in coalition to support it in Sindh. No law bears anyone from peaceful protest but the fact that current leadership is a den of corrupt, incompetent, selfish and opportunist gangs proves that RULE OF LAW and JUSTICE are a far cry here. JC in his recent article hinted that REHMAN DAKAIT from Liyari may be ZARDARi’s man to disrupt lawyers movement and with our ever capable police i hardly see anything peaceful coming in lawyers way especially when establishment is itself CORRUPTED while Washington also says that “current democratic setup should continue” signaling that they are also with ZARDARi as he is doing well to beat Musharraf in Puppet competition. While gov shakes hands with MILITANTs from swat, its afraid of few thousand unarmed lawyers, proving my point that Mr. Musharraf had laid the foundation of politics of gun (remember May 12 ??) that dictates that peaceful movements will be crushed and those who take up arms will be negotiated. [Image: PKpolitics].

Former Nazim of Karachi Naimatullah Khan has raised concerns over the imposition of the ‘infrastructure tax’ by the City District Government and said that the Sindh Local Government Ordinance does not cover any such amendment.
You can read the rest of the story here.

What I wanted to know is what visitors at Karachi metblog think? Is the imposition of this tax justified and will benefit Karachiites in the long run or is it just another excuse of making some money.

Anyone planing to go out of city or to receive a relative or friend from the airport can forget about it.

The lawyers’ movement is once again making sure it does all in its power to agitate the commuters on the busiest road of the city.

Shahra-e-faisal is closed for public traffic beyond the Drigh Road station due to a demonstration by the lawyers. Traffic is being diverted on Rashid Minhas Road which is causing great inconvenience to the commuters. A friend called and said he had to navigate through Gulshan to get to his home across the airport.

Not sure what others hearing but i am hearing (and reading) war rumours whose authenticity is not yet verified. Two incidents that made me make this post was 1. Saw 10-12 Huge Military trucks carrying small tanks, armoured vehicles and equipment last night on Shahra-e-Faisal. I immediately rang Raja who was also at SF then but didnt have a camera. The qafila was moving towards Karsaz ( i was at Nursery then) and 2. This this afternoon i heard a PAF plan sound coming from some distance on SF again (verified through BBC though it doenst mention KHI). I have been told by some CS people that people are requesting national songs as call back tunes on mobile. I also have some inside stories but wont share just to escape creating tension without much substance. Karachi being the main city, is very sensitive to any such event, if ever come GOD FORBID. What others hearing ?

State Bank of Pakistan here in Karachi announced that it will issue about 300,000 special 10-rupee coins. The coin will read in Urdu, “Daughter of the East, Benazir Bhutto”. I shall reserve my comments for 27th when the coin will be issued but i would like to know what readers think on this. Previously we had only Quaid-e-Azam, Allama Iqbal and Fatima Jinnah in the list.