I wish...

...this could be read by the schools in Pakistan, or at least in the city of Lahore. This article says that children should not start formal learning until they are seven. My son is 5 years old, and goes to class one!! He can speak, read and write in two languages, English and Urdu. As far as reading and writing is concerned, these languages are very different, i.e. one is left to right, the other right to left. The children cope with it, but I wonder what advantage they have as compared to those children who start formal learning at 6 or 7 years of age.

Things don't...

...get any better than this. Put the data (bank details) of 7 million families on "computer disks", and send them off by courier!!

While the law...

...of the jungle continues, having successfully bulldozed what it was primarily intended for, a piece of news got very little attention. But it ain't any less heart-wrenching. Read about it here. In summary, a journalist, having reported an inconvenient truth, was picked up by state's goons and killed. Now, a few months later, his home was bombed, and the widow murdered. Only the children are left. This is war on terror at its best.

So its law...

...of the jungle in Pakistan now...not that it was any different before, but at least the appearance wasn't as bad as now. Now its emergency, some call it martial law, some emergency plus, but in reality its the law of the jungle.
Is there any other country in the world which is as much of a laughingstock as Pakistan?
Interestingly, just a day before this so-called emergeny was imposed, Jordan's King Hussain visited Islamabad for a few hours. I wonder why. He is the scion of a paid CIA agent, so I don't expect him to have repented. Which makes me wonder what message he had brought.

he he...

...being found responsible for a (lethal) misdeed and not resigning happens in the UK also...I had thought this happened only in Pakistan.
Met police guilty over De Menezes shooting

After enduring lots...

...of pain in the butt due to the "group messages by conversation" (mis)feature in Outlook Express, which had somehow turned on without prompting me even, I finally got rid of it when I found out that this (mis)feature can be turned on and off through the View menu.

The Saudi king...

...visited the UK; and who else is more qualified to comment on him than Robert Fisk?