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Archive for category ” RIAZ THE SHAITAN OF PAKISTAN

PAKISTAN’S REAL TERRORISTS: POLITICAL HYENAS & FAT BUTT BITCHES ROBBING POVERTY STRICKEN 200 MILLION PAKISTANIS

THIS SITE IS THE FOR CHILDREN OF CORRUPT PAKISTANI POLITICIANS,BUSINESSMEN,COMMUNITY LEADERS. IT MOCKS AT THE 200 MILLION WHO CAN BARELY SURVIVE IN THAR,BALOCHISTAN, SOUTHERN PUNJAB, FATA, PARTS OF KARACHI,HYDERABAD,KHUZDAR,NOSHKI, LAHORE,MULTAN,RAWALPINDI,YES EVEN ISLAMABAD,THE PLAYGROUND OF THE RICH POLITICIANS;

http://zuhaybshah.blogspot.com/2011_01_23_archive.html

A child sits along a road median as he eats his breakfast of a single piece of "roti" (South Asian bread) while waiting for work in Karachi early morning May 6, 2012.

A child sits along a road median as he eats his breakfast of a single piece of “roti” (South Asian bread) while waiting for work in Karachi early morning May 6, 2012.

THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE IS COURTESY

PKonWeb.com

415 super-rich Pakistanis worth $30m each; number surged by 34pc in one year

IRSHAD SALIM,

SEP 16: There are as many as 415 ultra-high net worth Pakistanis — – super-rich people with a wealth of at least $30m each.

The recently released Wealth-X and UBS World Ultra Wealth Report 2013 says the number of these ultra-wealthy Pakistanis increased by 34 percent in just year, from 310 in 2012 to 415 in 2013.

Interestingly last year loadshedding, dire strait of the economy, violence, sectarian killings,cases of corruption, and terrorism at large played havoc with the national sentiment and psyche. It found its natural abode in thechange of guard at the polls.

For the motley super-rich individuals the party went on it seems.

classic and vintage car show rawalpindi pakistan 415 super rich Pakistanis worth $30m each; number surged by 34pc in one year

The report says the collective wealth of these supernova Pakistanis is currently $50bn, which is up 25 percent from 2012 when their total wealth stood at $40bn.

The World Bank estimates Pakistan’s gross domestic product (GDP) at $231 billion, which means that the wealth of 415 wealthiest Pakistanis is worth more than one-fifth, or almost 22 percent, of the country’s GDP.

A global prospecting, intelligence and wealth due diligence firm, Wealth-X worked with private banks, educational institutions and luxury brands to compile this report with sponsorship from UBS, an international financial services firm.

Out of the 20 countries listed in the Asian category, Pakistan’s rank is 12th in terms of super-rich individuals’ population. Interestingly, Pakistan posted the biggest percentage increase in terms of both the super-richindividuals population as well as total wealth such individuals possess.

The report also highlights that the average wealth of a Pakistani super-rich in 2013 was $121 million. In contrast, the global average wealth of a super-rich in 2013 was $139 million, which is 16 percent higher than the average Pakistani super-rich.

While the United States and Europe grew faster than Asia in the last 12 months, the report forecasts that Asia will have more ultra-wealthy individuals and wealth than both regions in the next five years.

“At the current growth rates, Asia’s ultra-wealthy population and wealth will eclipse that of Europe in 2021 and 2017, respectively,” the report said as cited by Internews.

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Pakistan Army Should Seek the Thailand Solution Against Incompetent Nawaz Sharif

Pakistan Needs a Thailand Style to Kick Out Absolutely Incompetent and Corrupt Nawaz Sharif Government

The earlier we get rid of the corrupt and incompetent political leadership, the better for Pakistan …a soft coup is the need of the hour

 

 

 

 

 

Pakistani government feels weight of army’s heavy hand

BY MEHREEN ZAHRA-MALIK

ISLAMABAD Fri May 23, 2014 12:30pm BST

Please Tell Us How Many Pakistanis Live in Such Luxury

 

RAIWIND PALACE

 

(Reuters) – At Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s palatial offices in Islamabad this week, the army chief sat down to deliver the head of government a message he did not want to hear: The time for talks with the troublesome Pakistani Taliban was over.

Sharif came to power a year ago promising to find a peaceful settlement with the Islamist militant group, but as round after round of talks failed, the powerful armed forces favoured a military solution.

Their patience finally ran out and, late on Tuesday afternoon, during a tense meeting, the army effectively declared it would override a crucial plank of the government’s strategy and take matters into its own hands.

“The army chief and other military officers in the room were clear on the military’s policy: the last man, the last bullet,” a government insider with first-hand knowledge of the meeting told Reuters.

Asked to sum up the message General Raheel Sharif wanted to convey at the gathering, he added: “The time for talk is over.”

The next day, Pakistani forces launched rare air strikes against militants holed up in the remote, lawless tribal belt near the Afghan border. It is not clear whether Sharif authorised the operation.

On Thursday, they backed that up with the first major ground offensive against the Taliban there, undermining Sharif’s year-long attempt to end a bloody insurgency across his country through peaceful means.

Disagreement over the militant threat is the latest row to flare up between the government and military, and relations between the two branches of power are at their lowest ebb for years, according to government officials.

The government did say talks with the Taliban would go on.

“We will talk with those who are ready for it and the (military) operation is being launched against those who are not ready to come to the negotiating table,” spokesman Pervez Rashid told local media on Thursday.

But the operations put the military, which has a long record of intervening in civilian rule through plots and coups, firmly back at the centre of Pakistan’s security policy.

The balance of power is shifting at a time when foreign troops are preparing to withdraw from Afghanistan, and arch-rival India has just elected a Hindu nationalist leader promising to be more assertive on the international stage.

“This is the clearest signal yet that the army will dictate its terms now,” a member of Sharif’s cabinet said.

TALIBAN ON THE OFFENSIVE

The Pakistani Taliban, as distinct from the Afghan Taliban which is actively targeting NATO forces in Afghanistan, is believed to be behind attacks on Pakistani soldiers and civilians that have killed thousands in recent years.

The Pakistan army has distinguished between “good” Taliban like the feared Haqqani network – who do not attack Pakistani security forces but fight in Afghanistan – and “bad” Taliban, indigenous Pakistani militants who are seeking to create an Islamic state.

While Pakistan’s military wants to go after the “bad” Taliban, it has, despite pressure from Washington, largely avoided taking on groups who launch attacks against coalition forces in Afghanistan from Pakistan’s North Waziristan region.

Prompting the latest intervention, the Pakistani Taliban have become increasingly bold, striking the army in tribal areas including a recent battle in which an army major died. Earlier this month, nine soldiers were killed in an explosion near the Afghan border. 

“We will avenge the blood of every last soldier. Talks or no talks, the army will retaliate,” said one military official, who, like most others interviewed for this article, spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the subject.

The army has ruled Pakistan for more than half of its history. Sharif himself was toppled by the army in 1999 during his previous tenure as prime minister.

But, humiliated after a secret 2011 U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden on Pakistani soil, the army stood back from politics and supported last year’s first democratic transition of power which brought Sharif back to office.

Sharif manoeuvred carefully, hand picking a new army chief and trying to forge a partnership with the military in the early days of his tenure, but the overtures had little lasting impact.

TRADE, DIPLOMACY

There are other signs of civil-military discord.

Sharif came to power promising to rebuild relations with India, but has been under pressure to toughen his stance from hardliners at home, particularly within the army.

The nuclear-armed neighbours have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947, two of them over the still-disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir.

Sharif’s policies towards India have been heavily scrutinised; some in the army justify its hefty budget by pointing to – and, critics say, playing up – the potential threat from India.

And despite signs the military has become more amenable to overtures from its old foe than in the past, a trade deal pushed by the prime minister and aimed at improving ties with India was cancelled at the last minute after pressure from the army, top government officials said.

Sharif now faces a dilemma over whether to accept an invitation by Indian Prime Minister-designate Narendra Modi to attend his inauguration next week.

The army is also bitter about the trial of former military ruler Pervez Musharraf, who ousted Sharif from power in 1999 and was arrested after he returned to Pakistan to take part in last year’s election.

Ties with Afghanistan have never been easy, but some officials believe the army wants to torpedo the government’s relationship with a future Kabul administration, risking a deterioration in regional security as NATO troops prepare to leave this year.

Generals have jealously guarded the right to dictate policy on Afghanistan, seeing friendly guerrilla groups as “assets” to blunt the influence of India there.

TENSIONS COME TO SURFACE

Though simmering under the surface, tensions between the government and the army spilled into the open last month when a popular journalist was shot by unknown gunmen, and his channel, Geo News, blamed the army’s powerful spy agency, the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

Public criticism of the shadowy ISI is almost unheard of in Pakistan. In a rare public response, the army demanded that Geo News, the country’s most-watched news channel, be shut down.

The government’s media regulator has since resisted the army’s demands to cancel the channel’s license, which the military sees as a direct sign of defiance.

“Everyone was looking out to see how the government would treat the army in this crisis — as a friend or foe?” said a senior military official. “But the government allowed this to become a free-for-all, army-hunting season.”

For Sharif, buckling under military pressure is a major risk. “This is not about one TV channel but about freedom of expression and about living in a democracy,” Rashid said. “We should live and let live.”

But despite putting on a brave front, officials say the government is feeling under siege.

“Never in the last year has the government felt weaker or more vulnerable,” one of Sharif’s key economic advisers said. “Now every time we have to take a major decision, on India, on Afghanistan, we will have to think ‘How will the army react?'”

A serving general said the army chief would always pick the “institution over the constitution if push comes to shove,” adding: “As a society and a state, we have to avoid a context in which the army is pushed to do something it doesn’t want to.”

 Reference

 

 

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It’s the System, Stupid

 

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Crux  of  the  whole problem , a SICK SYSTEM which  is  flawed ;  It  has  to  go .  kayser  durrani

 

 

PAKISTAN TODAY

Sunday May 11, 2014

It’s the System, Stupid

Humayun Gauhar

Imran Khan is holding a one-day rally in Islamabad today to protest against blatant rigging in four constituencies where he wants re-elections. Perhaps his real intent is to show that the entire electoral exercise was deeply flawed and illegitimate, which it blatantly was. But that is no longer the issue. The issue is that this system must go. 

Tahir ul Qadir on the other hand is also holding a one-day rally today. His intent is to overthrow the political system and craft a truly democratic constitution. He is right. The continuous protest movement will start around July, says Qadri. 

Qadri sees the big picture, Imran doesn’t. Imran doesn’t even want mid-term elections, just re-elections in a few constituencies. “See the big picture, Imran. Leave your alpha male ego aside and join hands with Qadri. Take our people to revolution that they so badly want. Remember what I told you a long time ago? ‘You cannot change the system from the inside. It will change you instead without your even realizing it’.”  

What I am about to say may be yet another pipedream but it is worth trying, for then there will be no regrets and we can stand confidently before the Almighty on the Day. People should do what they believe is right and let the devil take the hindmost. A Muslim never loses hope. Don’t expect success in your lifetime. Become a link in the chain of revolution. One day your children and children’s children will see the dawn. Allama Iqbal wasn’t there to see Pakistan’s birth. But without him it may never have come to pass. 

The world is always changed by dreamers and idealists, not by pragmatic realists who worship the satanic status quo or are afraid of rocking the boat. Dreams are the stuff revolutions are made of, mindless pragmatism born of fear of the unknown is the stuff decadence is made of. All God’s Messengers were initially called unrealistic dreamers. When they succeeded they were called great revolutionaries who changed the world. Their enemies are remembered only because they were their enemies. Their followers deformed their Messages but others became reformers and returned to the original ideal. This is so with secular revolutions too. See how Deng Xiao Ping reformed Mao Zedong’s ideology and gave it new life, taking China so high so quickly that the greatest number of people came out of hunger and poverty in the shortest time ever. It was a revolution as great as the Great October Revolution, but without Mao’s revolution Deng’s revolution would never have happened. Each is a link in an ongoing process of change and progress – The Permanent Revolution. The time for Pakistan’s Revolution of  2014 is nigh, to return us to the ideals of our founders.  

When the irresistible force of the people meets the immovable object of an anti-people autocracy camouflaged in the cloak of democracy, it blows a hole through it. Don’t get diverted by this politician or that, this political party or that, sham democracy or rigged elections. Focus on upturning the system that begets such politicians, political parties and rigged elections. 

 

We have to free our country from the tentacles for an avaricious few. But sitting back to witness the spectacle and hoping that Qadri and Imran will succeed won’t do. Unless all of us participate in our own way with whatever energy and talent the Almighty has bestowed upon us, they cannot do it alone. 

Nothing is working. All we have are hollow shells passing for institutions. Our governments are pantomimes playing government-government, like children play doctor-doctor. Adults playing such games are retarded and cause incalculable damage. Children playing doctor-doctor don’t actually cut open another’s stomach pretending to do a surgery. Adults playing government-government actually do rip open stomachs by taking unconsidered decisions driven by personal benefit that leave the country bleeding. By now Pakistan has lost so much blood that it is totally anemic and in danger of dying of blood loss. 

The executive treats Pakistan like a fief, not realizing that when it deviates from its mandate it loses legitimacy and the right to rule. The people have not given them a mandate to rule for five years. They have given them five years to deliver their mandate. When they forget their mandate they lose the right to rule and become usurpers. If your lawyer deviates from your brief you sack him and get another. Same with rulers, five years be damned. Five years more and our country could be dead or beyond reprieve, God forbid. 

Our parliament is just a building infested with violators of Articles 62, 63, toothless in checking the executive and balancing its excesses – obviously, when the executive is born from parliament’s womb. The judiciary fails to deliver justice down the line. All institutions and organizations under them are in a shambles. The media are unregulated and have become runaway political groups, some mindlessly working against the State for pecuniary gain. Laws and courts don’t exist in the book of the rich, powerful and ugly, except when they work in their favour or to take revenge. 

The only institution left standing is the military, but it is under vile attack by the government in cahoots with powerful parts of the media and judiciary. Their nefarious design is to degrade our army and upgrade our enemies so that it can never intervene again when a civilian government goes completely over the top, like hijacking our army chief’s aircraft and asking the pilot to take him to India with all our military secrets, war plans and nuclear codes in his head. Talk of being bananas. They don’t have the brains to understand that if they rule well and don’t violate their mandate no one would dare overthrow them or even wish to. 

Pakistan has been serially abused but still has enough life left in it to kick, with the non-errant media, writers and the public hitting back. Many tunes have changed diametrically as happens when an intelligent person realizes that his survival is at stake because the Big Bad Wolf is about to blow his house down. If only they could see the pathetic condition of stateless people. They are without identity, without rights, with only a piece of paper that allows them to live somewhere at someone’s compassion, charity and mercy. They are non-persons. Their identity is their struggle. Their sole objective: to regain their statehood. Ask the Kashmiris in Indian Occupied Kashmir or the Palestinians moving from ghetto to ghetto. Their homes are burned down at will, their women raped, their lives in perpetual danger of being extinguished. It is worse than the old slavery because those slaves at least had owners. No one owns stateless people and stateless people own nothing except their pride, self-esteem and struggle. Struggle, struggle and perpetual struggle is the story of our Holy Prophet Muhammad’s life (pbuh). It should be our life story too. Struggle is Jihad against an inhuman, anti-people system to forge a better one. That is exactly what Muhammad (pbuh) did. That is exactly what we should do to win our freedom from our own ruling elite. No one will win it for us and give us freedom on a platter. We have to win it ourselves.  

I don’t know what will come of Imran and Qadri’s efforts. They might fail. That is in the hands of God, on whether He thinks Pakistan is worth saving or not. But we have to try saving it ourselves before God does because He helps those who help themselves first. Our situation is so dire that the time has come for all patriotic Pakistanis to come out in protest. Not everyone may like or agree with Imran and Qadri, but in the face of extinction such feelings become facetious. Save your home, your identity, and your country first. Overthrowing this horrible system should be our only objective right now, so we should support all forces trying to save Pakistan and not indulge in nitpicking. This may be our last chance. It is incumbent upon us to see the big picture and support Qadri, Imran and others taking to the streets in protest against this vile dispensation. 

 

Imran is right, but re-elections in certain constituencies will not solve the problem. It’s the system, stupid, not its spawn the politicians or particular governments. Elections under this system will always throw up the same sort of dreadful governments. Even if you win Imran, your government will be infested by your collection of ‘electables’ that degrade your party. Democracy will obtain when there is a system in which the carpenter defeats the carpetbagger. Imran should see the big picture that it is Pakistan that needs to be saved, not an election or this system. 

Qadri is out to change this alien system born of our perpetual colonial hangover by changing the constitution that begets all our rapacious systems. The legitimacy of this constitution is questionable anyway, made as it was by a rump assembly of losers, mutilated repeatedly by civilian more than military dictators. Hopefully, others will join him too, most importantly the downtrodden people, media, civil society, small bureaucrats, traders, shopkeepers, farmers, women and youth to bring revolution. All put together we can build such a powerful head of steam that this ugly fairyland of criminals that our ruling elite has built for itself will be swept away by the tidal wave of humanity and “crowns flung high and thrones overturned” in victory. Defeat or victory, the struggle goes on. Pakistan Zindabad. 

[email protected] 

 

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IPPs : The Stealth Economic Hit Men Sent to Destroy Pakistan Economy Under Incompetent Nawaz Sharif

COMMENTS BY PAKISTAN THINK TANK MEMBERS ARE SHOWN IN BLUE

“WE ALL ARE COWARDS AND BUNCH OF IDIOTS  THINKING THAT PML-N GOVERNMENT IS MAKING FANTASTIC ECONOMIC PROGRESS UNDER THE LEADERSHIP OF OUR MOST TALENTED  FINANCE MINISTER, ISHAQ DAR” 


Debt of Rs1 billion per day or Rs 41 million per hour

Sunday, May 04, 2014 

Dr Farrukh Saleem

 

Fact 1: On June 5, Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif took the oath of the prime ministerial office.

 

Fact 2: Soon after coming to power, the PML-N government paid off Rs480 billion worth of accumulated circular debt.

Fact 3: Over the past 330 days, the government has accumulated Rs330 billion worth of brand new circular debt – Rs1 billion per day, every day of the past 11 months.

Argument 1: The government argues that the cost of production of electricity is higher than the sale price – and thus the government ends up accumulating multi billion-rupee circular debt. Why is the government then not doing anything about the cost of production of electricity?

Just consider this: Pakistani Independent Power Producers (IPPs) are consuming up to 24 kg of oil to produce 100 kWh. Internationally, power plants take in 14 kg of oil to produce 100 kWh. Why isn’t the government after the IPPs?

Now consider this: Pakistani IPPs are consuming up to 12,000 BTUs of gas to produce a unit of electricity. In India, they are producing the same unit of electricity by taking in a mere 5,000 BTUs. Why isn’t the government questioning the IPPs?

The government’s only solution to circular debt is the doubling of the electricity tariff for consumers. The PPP government doubled the tariff and got us into more trouble than we were in before the doubling. And now the PML-N government is bent upon doubling the tariff once again. Isn’t that insane? Albert Einstein defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

Argument 2: The government also argues that the circular debt is because of ‘theft’. It is true that our line losses are around 25 percent. To be certain, there are two types of lines losses – technical and non-technical. Technical losses are because of old transformers and poor infrastructure. Non-technical losses are essentially ‘theft’.

Well, we haven’t spent much to improve our electricity infrastructure over the past 50 years – and now we have huge technical losses. Yes, there is power theft but even if we manage to imprison each and every power thief in the private sector we would still be left with at least 90 percent of the circular debt.

Conclusion: The government, by design or by default, is focusing on all the wrong places. The government, by design or by default, is missing the elephants in the room. The elephants in the room are the IPPs. The IPPs are gulping down way too much oil. And the IPPs are taking in way too much gas.

The government, by design or by default, is looking at all the wrong places for ‘thieves’. The government-owned generating companies (Gencos) have managed to steal Rs29 billion worth of furnace oil. A total of 1,920 transformers and truckloads of cables have been reported stolen. The federal government, the provincial governments and their departments owe more than Rs200 billion in past bills.

Lo and behold, exactly 482,120 minutes have passed us by over the past 11 months of PML-N rule. And we have been losing Rs1 billion a day the equivalent of Rs41 million per hour or a loss of Rs700,000 per minute every minute of the past 11 months.

Electricity, I have been told, is like faith – “you can’t see it, but you can see the light.”

The writer is a columnist based in Islamabad. Email: [email protected]


ALL THOSE TRYING TO TELL PEOPLE OF PAKISTAN THAT  PML-N GOVERNMENT IS MAKING FANTASTIC ECONOMIC PROGRESS UNDER THE LEADERSHIP OF OUR MOST CORRUPT  FINANCE MINISTER, ISHAQ DAR, AND BONGA PRIME MINISTER 
 ARE COWARDS AND BUNCH OF IDIOTS  THINKING THAT COUNTRY WILL MAKE PROGRESS BY BEGGING MONEY OR RECEIVING CHARITY   FROM DIFFERENT CHANNELS, RATHER IT ESTABLISHES THAT PAKISTAN IS A BEGGING STATE

Pakistan among 10 countries facing severe energy crisis: Agriculture Sector

ISLAMABAD, Dec 3: About 1.3 billion people in the world are living without electricity; two-thirds of them being in 10 countries and four of them, including Pakistan, in the Asia Pacific region, says a report of the United Nations. Agriculture Sector

According to the Statistical Yearbook for Asia and the Pacific-2013 released by a UN commission on Tuesday, an estimated 60 per cent of capacity-addition efforts in future will be focused on mini-grids and off-grid connections in which renewable energy sources will play a vital role.

In the generation of electricity from renewable sources, the Asian and Pacific region led the world in 2010. But this amounted to only 15.8 per cent of the region’s total electricity, which is below the world average of 19.4 per cent.

With less than 400 kilowatt-hours per capita, the annual household electricity consumption in the region is the second lowest among the world’s regions, after Africa where it is 200kwh.

About 2.6bn people in the world and 1.8bn in the region use solid fuels for cooking. The WHO estimates that more than 1.45 million people die prematurely each year from indoor air pollution caused by burning solid fuels with insufficient ventilation.

Women’s economic empowerment

The report says that despite its economic growth, the region lags behind in economic empowerment of women. It calls for targeted policy measures to facilitate women’s economic empowerment.

Women still bear the burden of unremunerated productive work, shouldering the major share of household management and care-giving responsibilities.

The report says that in Pakistan women spend 5.5 hours a day on housework and 1.2 hours on childcare whereas men spend 2.5 hours on housework and 0.9 hours on childcare.

It also says that women are overrepresented in sectors and positions that are vulnerable, poorly paid and less secure. For instance, 42 per cent of working women/girls belonged to agriculture sector in 2012 compared with 36.0 per cent of male workers.

Courtesy DAWN

 

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POWER IMBALANCE: POWER OF WADERA SIKANDER JATOI & VULNERABILITY OF BHATTA MAZDOORS (BRICK-KILN WORKERS)

MODERN DAY SLAVERY & FEUDAL gods IN PAKISTAN: PAKISTAN KILN

LABORERS HEMMED IN BY DEBTS THEY CAN’T REPAY

Feudals and Industrialist Politicians are gods of Pakistan. They have decided to destroy the country by stealing from the 190 million poor. They are good at it and no one can touch them. The reason being, that their god is ready to rescue them. It is the only global power and these guys are having a ball playing in its lap. Their god,  comes to their rescue instantly, whenever their fiefdoms are threatened. Their lord is the most powerful nation on this earth.They can kill and get away with it. Sikander Jatoi, a feudal, even in jail is enjoying “A’ Class. He is the blue eyed boy of his Zardari Sain, who told him to hang in there, till the Shahzeb Murder storm dies down and memories fade. Then Zardari will do his magic .  Sain Sikander Jatoi will be sprung from jail, by his mentor Zardari. Sikander Jatoi and his son, Shahrukh Jatoi will lead lives of luxury, protected by their god, Zardari.  Pakistanis are committing shirk, by letting these mere mortals like Zardari, Pervez Ashraf, Sikander Jatoi, and the rural khachar like Asif Pervez Kiyani continue their misrule of a nation with a great potential.  These thieves are holding Pakistan hostage,only an Act of God, can free this hijacked nation. Pakistan’s poor are becoming slaves and indentured for life, NO ONE CAN STOP THIS TRAVESTY OF HUMAN LAWS. THE CORRUPT PAKISTAN JUDICIARY IS SILENT, EVEN AFTER THE OUSTER OF ITS MOST EGREGIOUS MEMBER, IFTIKHAR CHAUDHRY, A TOUT OF NAWAZ SHARIF.

SIKANDER JATOI, AN  ANGEL OF god OF PAKISTAN ASIF ZARDARI WILL GET AWAY WITH MURDER AND ENJOYS A-CLASS IN “JAIL.”

THESE LIVES OF THESE CHILD BRICK KILN LABORERS ARE WORTH LESS THAN DIRT UNDER SIKANDER JATOI/SHAHRUKH JATOI AND THEIR PROTECTOR ZARDARI’S FEET

Two woven rope beds are wedged into one side of the room next to Sadiq’s small Honda motorcycle and a large bag of cow chips used as fuel for fires. A faded Bollywood action movie poster hanging from the hut’s weathered front door serves as the home’s only decoration. Exhausted, Shahzad and Shahbaz flop onto their beds. They have no toys, no diversions, but it doesn’t matter. They’re too tired to play.

SLAVERY IN PAKISTAN IS ALIVE AND WELL COURTESY NAWAZ SHARIF

ASIF ZARDARI’S CORRUPT COMBINE OF

FEUDAL/INDUSTRIAL MAFIA GOVERNMENT COMPACT IN PUNJAB & SINDH

Brick makers and others live a life of indentured servitude known as bonded labor.

They must borrow to live, and their debts pass on to their children when they die. In Multan, Pakistan, Shahbaz, 10, unloads a cart of mud that will be made into bricks by his mother, Nazira Bibi, brother Shahzad and father Mohammed Sadiq

The Eternal Tragedy

MULTAN, Pakistan – The mounds of clay are so heavy that they have warped Shahbaz’s creaky wooden cart. The 10-year-old boy’s spindly arms struggle with the weight, about 45 pounds. He teeters as he wheels cartload after cartload to his mother, a waifish woman crouched on the ground who is turning the wet clay into bricks at a rate of three per minute. A few feet away, 12-year-old Shahzad matches his mother brick for brick. Without the help of the two boys, their daily brick yield wouldn’t be high enough to feed a family of seven. “I hate this,” says the mother, Nazira Bibi, slapping a clod of mud into the brick mold and flipping it over with a thump. “I hate the fact that my kids have to do this work, that they’re not in school. When I see other kids going to school, I wish my kids were those kids.” “But we’ve got no choice. If we don’t work, we don’t eat.

Taliban Attacks and Growth are a result of corruption and poverty

” The Pakistani Taliban’s brutal attack on teenage education activist Malala Yousafzai provided the world a window on the insurgent group’s long-running campaign against “un-Islamic” schools in the country’s northwest. But in much of the rest of the country, one of the most entrenched barriers to education comes from moneyed landowners, brick kiln operators, carpet makers and other business people who rely on a form of indentured servitude known as bonded labor. Among the victims are millions of children such as Shahbaz and Shahzad, who cannot read or write and are likely to spend the rest of their lives tethered to debt they inherited – and can never repay.

Shahbaz Sharif & Nawaz Sharif are no less corrupt than Zardari

Their Mistresses Make-up Costs Are Higher Than Child Labourers Lifetime Earning

 

In Punjab province, bonded labor is a way of life at thousands of brick kilns that for generations have ensnared workers in a hopeless cycle of loans and advances. The workers don’t earn enough to survive, so they’re forced to accept loans from the kiln owners. The meager pay keeps them from being able to repay the loans. When they die, the debt is passed on to their children. From the brick kilns and tanneries of the Punjab heartland to the cotton fields of the southern province of Sindh, millions are doomed to bonded labor. Kashif Bajeer, secretary of Pakistan’s National Coalition Against Bonded Labor, says there are no statistics on bonded laborers in Pakistan, but most estimates put the number at up to 8 million.

Morbidly Corrupt Government has no time to care for slavery

Pakistan officially outlawed bonded labor in 1992, but enforcement has been almost nonexistent in the face of the financial and political clout wielded by southern Pakistan’s wealthy landlords and kiln owners, who provide payoffs to keep police and administrative officials at bay. Bajeer estimates that 70% of bonded laborers in Pakistan are children, few of whom attend school. Pilot projects in eastern Punjab province have put children from 8,000 kiln families into classrooms, but those efforts have yet to be expanded to the rest of the province. “The government is supposed to provide schooling to these children, but it doesn’t take the issue seriously,” Bajeer says. “Most parents in bonded labor don’t have national ID cards, and so they don’t have the right to vote. And because of that, they are not a big priority for local lawmakers.” Many bonded laborers live in impoverished regions where few people obtain birth certificates, which are required for a national ID card. At the kiln where Bibi, 30, and her boys work, the acrid odor of chemicals from a fertilizer plant next door hangs over a dirt field where dozens of families toil amid the ceaseless clapping of brick molds as they hit the ground. Bibi’s husband, Mohammed Sadiq, also 30, readies the day’s supply of trucked-in clay by adding buckets of water and trudging through it to knead it into the right consistency. Life at a brick kiln is all Bibi and her husband have ever known. Both are children of kiln laborers; Bibi began working at a kiln when she was 10, Sadiq when he was 12. Their debt to kiln owner Akram Arain built up shortly after they got married more than a decade ago. They took out a loan to pay for their wedding, more loans to pay for the births of their five children, and still more to get through the annual monsoons, when kiln work shuts down and no one gets paid. Arain declined a request for an interview. Their current debt stands at 20,000 rupees – about $200, but to Bibi and Sadiq it might as well be $2 million. The family gets 500 rupees, about $5, for every 1,000 bricks it produces. That’s about $7.50 for a grueling eight hours of work. At midday, the family sits together for a few minutes to eat what usually serves as its lunch: a few fist-sized plastic bags of boiled orange lentils and a small wheel of bread. Shahzad and Shahbaz gulp down their lunch and get back to work. As he churns out bricks, Shahzad’s thoughts wander. He daydreams about playing cricket, or anything else to get his mind off the kiln. “Right now, I’m thinking about being far away from here,” Shahzad says, wiping a fleck of mud from his cheek. “Sometimes I dream about studying. I think about these things all the time.” Shahzad is tall for his age, with a wiry frame and jet-black hair that falls over his forehead. He is his father’s right-hand man, never needing a nudge or a rebuke to keep pace with the rhythm of the brick-making. When the wheel on his younger brother’s wooden cart gets wobbly, Shahzad fixes it in seconds. The kiln field is filled with mothers, fathers, sons and daughters squatting as they churn out new rows of gray bricks alongside ever-growing stacks of drying bricks. Only a small cluster of white egrets wading through a small pond at the kiln breaks the monotony of the landscape. If Shahzad were in school, he would be in the seventh grade. A government teacher is supposed to show up at the kiln to run a classroom in a tiny mud hut, but she appears so sporadically that most parents have stopped bothering to send their children. Shahzad can write his name but nothing else. He can count to 10 in Urdu and no higher. His younger brother, Shahbaz, winces when asked what two plus two is. He thinks for a moment, then shrugs. “I can’t do it.” Both boys know education is their way out of life at the kiln. They just don’t know how they can make it happen. “I want to go to school; I want an education to get a good job and to make something of myself, to be a respected man,” Shahzad says. “Maybe I can be a doctor. Even an office job would be fine.” As the day wears on, a dull ache creeps into the boys’ shoulders, arms and knees. The tedium wears on everyone. Nearby an argument breaks out between two families over who has the rights to a small pile of mud behind a reedy ditch. Sadiq and Bibi’s youngest, a toddler named Komal, sleeps on a bed of bricks, a small shawl shielding her face from the hot sun. Though Komal is a year old, she could fit into a shoe box. Her hands and feet are not much bigger than those of a newborn. Sadiq is convinced that Komal is undersized because she is possessed by demons, but Hyacinth Peter, a Multan-based child welfare activist who works on improving conditions for families at the kiln, says the child is severely malnourished. “She’s had so many fevers,” Peter says. “Her father has taken her to phony street doctors, and of course they don’t help at all.” By midafternoon, Bibi, Sadiq and their children are spent. A thick black plume spews out of the kiln’s smokestack, where everything from used motor oil to discarded plastic sandals are used as fuel to dry newly formed batches of bricks. Shahzad moves slowly as he digs out a new mound of clay, splashes buckets of water on top and begins trudging through the mound to make tomorrow’s mud. Sadiq and Bibi are slapping down the last of the day’s tally of bricks. As a bracing wind chills the air, the family tosses shovels and brick molds into the wooden cart and heads to its home on the kiln compound: a dark, 11-by-11-foot hut, itself made of mud and bricks. Ashes from yesterday’s cooking lay piled on the hut’s dirt floor. The family’s clothes are stuffed into plastic bags that hang from the mud walls. Two woven rope beds are wedged into one side of the room next to Sadiq’s small Honda motorcycle and a large bag of cow chips used as fuel for fires. A faded Bollywood action movie poster hanging from the hut’s weathered front door serves as the home’s only decoration. Exhausted, Shahzad and Shahbaz flop onto their beds. They have no toys, no diversions, but it doesn’t matter. They’re too tired to play.

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